Her phone rang several times in a row.
Ke Ni received WeChat messages.
Some were from Lin Xirun, the rest were from Ke Ni’s best friend.
Ke Ni opened the chat window with her best friend first.
Her best friend was also concerned about Ke Ni’s competition results, and even sweetly asked if Ke Ni felt nervous participating in such a hardcore selection contest, and whether she had eaten lunch properly.
Her best friend joked that she wanted to order Ke Ni a takeout of grilled brain and six walnuts, so she could nourish her brain well.
Ke Ni replied to her best friend with a few sentences while smiling, even sent a little fist-thumping-the-chest emoji, and then finally clicked into the chat with Lin Xirun.
“Ke Ni, it’s a good thing you didn’t take the cab back to school with us.”
“Feng Zi’an and Zhu Ye started arguing in the taxi.”
“So awkward.”
According to Lin Xirun, Zhu Ye didn’t do well at all in the second round of the competition, and most likely was one of the last finishers in their group.
Looks like he won’t make it past the preliminaries.
Because of this, Feng Zi’an kept poking at Zhu Ye.
Ke Ni could almost picture Feng Zi’an’s annoying smirk, with his lips curled up.
Even the most studious person wouldn’t be able to stand it—no wonder they started arguing.
The second round was an obstacle maze.
Zhu Ye himself had said before that he wasn’t good at memory-based events, and with the high-pressure atmosphere of the timed competition, it was inevitable his mindset would be affected.
Not everyone is as exceptionally gifted as Jing Sicun…
Jing Sicun even had time to watch others!
What are you looking at!
Thinking of this, Ke Ni smacked her innocent pillow again.
Ke Ni replied to both her best friend and Lin Xirun, chatted for a bit.
They all had their own things to do, and soon the conversation faded into a string of reaction emojis that didn’t require further replies.
She lay on her back on the big hotel bed, turned her head, and looked at the dent in the pillow where she’d smacked it.
Ke Ni harbored quite a bit of resentment toward Jing Sicun.
But Ke Ni also knew that, perhaps even she herself was one of the culprits who had fanned the flames of her own psychological shadow.
That night many years ago, when she was crouched at the door peeking into the living room, Ke Ni was trembling with fear.
She understood that her parents were arguing because of her, and she was so upset she didn’t sleep a wink all night.
The next morning at breakfast, Ke Ni did everything she could, exaggerating stories about fun things that had happened in her various training classes, and talked about the teachers’ praise for her.
Ke Ni knew that when she talked about these things, her parents were the happiest.
She wanted them to be happy.
Ke Ni didn’t dare show her own misery anymore.
Every day, she pretended to be energetic and interested in her extracurricular classes, and in this way, she got through day after day.
One weekend, after her abacus class, Ke Ni went to the bookstore with her parents.
Bookstores always have some brain development books, with all kinds of challenging questions printed inside.
Ke Ni’s father turned to a puzzle about moving matchsticks.
He looked at it for a long time, flipped forward, smiled and shook his head, then turned back to the puzzle page.
Father asked Ke Ni: “Ni Ni, take a look at this question.”
Ke Ni knew the answer to that question.
Her math olympiad teacher had taught it before, so she blurted out the answer without even thinking.
Her father looked surprised.
Her mother turned to the answer page at the back, and said with delight, “Our Ni Ni got it right! Amazing!”
Father’s voice was full of joy, crouching in front of Ke Ni: “Did you figure this out yourself?”
Under her father’s eager gaze, Ke Ni lied.
She answered, “Yes.”
This was something Ke Ni would regret on countless sleepless nights.
It was she herself who gave her parents the illusion that she was a “Zhong Yong,” and also shackled herself with a heavy chain.
Father, delighted, discussed with Mother: “There’s an event I wasn’t planning to take Ni Ni to, but now I think we should go. Next Friday night, clear your schedule, we’ll all take Ni Ni to check it out.”
What Ke Ni’s father was talking about was an event organized by the bank:
If you buy the bank’s wealth management insurance, you get a free memory master class.
That memory master had participated in some international competitions, and was hyped up with quite a reputation.
When Ke Ni and the other children participating in the event were taken to the next room, Ke Ni’s parents were sitting in the auditorium, listening to a staff member give a long-winded speech—
“The same knowledge points—other children need three days to memorize them, but children who’ve taken the memory class only need a few minutes to remember them solidly.”
“The high school and college entrance exams are both watersheds. Do you want your child to reach the watershed easily, or to reach it utterly exhausted?”
In the room Ke Ni was taken to, more than twenty words were displayed, like “flower,” “jungle,” “sky,” “leaf,” all neatly arranged on the projected screen.
The staff led Ke Ni and the other children to read the words, made up stories to help them remember, and the children who memorized them first even got snacks.
After a long memorization session, the staff with a stopwatch went to each of them to check.
The staff member was a smiling young lady, who said Ke Ni only took fifty-three seconds to memorize all the words, praised her as especially great, gently applauded for Ke Ni, and gave her cookies to eat.
Back in the conference room with her parents, Ke Ni, who had been praised as “especially great,” recited those words with the other kids, and just like in the next room after endless practice, when a parent called out a word, they would say the words above, below, left, and right of it.
The parents’ eyes sparkled.
After reciting, the parents started asking their kids how long it took them to memorize the words.
The child sitting next to Ke Ni’s family said she took sixty-two seconds, and her mother happily hugged her and showered her with praise.
At that time, Ke Ni was only in second grade, and didn’t realize anything was wrong.
Caught up in the atmosphere, she proudly reported to her parents that she had memorized all the words in just fifty-three seconds.
Back at home, her parents were on the phone with someone, talking about Ke Ni’s amazing performance.
Father asked, “Ni Ni, how long did it take you to memorize those words?”
Ke Ni said, “Fifty-three seconds.”
Ke Ni vaguely doubted herself—did she really memorize them in fifty-three seconds?
She ate the KFC family bucket her parents bought for her, and in their proud conversation, she got happy along with them, ignoring her own sensitivity.
For more than half a year after that, Ke Ni still had to attend a ton of classes, and still watched the quiz show that Jing Sicun participated in every Friday night.
She watched him clear each round, finally losing to a girl and taking second place in the show.
The show had pretty good ratings, and the next year they recorded and aired a second season.
Jing Sicun didn’t participate again, only appearing for an interview before the first episode of the second season aired.
Ke Ni watched the interview alone.
Jing Sicun, the same age as Ke Ni, sat inside the TV screen.
The host held a microphone and asked Jing Sicun if he had ever attended any interest classes.
Jing Sicun said, “No.”
Ke Ni was stunned.
Then she heard Jing Sicun share with a faint smile, “My parents took me to a really ridiculous memory class promotion once, felt like a total scam.”
The host asked, “Meow? Why do you say it was ridiculous and a scam?”
In the interview, Jing Sicun recounted the staff’s actions, and like a surgeon, he dissected step by step the way those staff members misled and tricked people.
Ke Ni’s hair stood on end.
She stared at the TV screen in a daze for a long time, so long she didn’t even notice the popsicle in her hand had melted.
The air conditioner was on, but she felt like her chest was blocked by a thick, sticky fog.
She found it hard to breathe.
Shock, surprise, frustration, jealousy, rejection…
It was from that moment that Ke Ni realized, there really was a gap between people.
She just wasn’t smart enough.
No matter how many cram classes she took, she would never become someone like Jing Sicun.
Ke Ni’s feelings toward Jing Sicun were complicated.
It was Jing Sicun’s appearance that made Ke Ni’s father realize her shortcomings.
She hated his existence.
She hated natural talent.
But she hated herself even more—hated that she couldn’t see through the tricks of those fraudsters, and that she couldn’t become a “Zhong Yong” or another Jing Sicun.
But now, what bothered Ke Ni more was:
She didn’t seem able to completely merge the person on TV with the real-life Jing Sicun.
When she met his eyes, she didn’t feel a strong sense of disgust.
A burst of messy conversation outside the door interrupted Ke Ni’s thoughts.
A few boys chatted as they passed by her hotel room, the sounds of doors opening and closing faintly echoing in the corridor.
Then those noisy words, mixed with things like “timing” and “results,” faded away.
The room fell quiet again.
Ke Ni fell asleep on the hotel bed, and in her dreams, she met that persistent ghost again.
Ke Ni dreamed of the show she’d participated in, and also dreamed of the competition she’d abandoned halfway.
But in her dream, her opponent wasn’t the mental arithmetic prodigy Shen Min, but Jing Sicun, wearing a bathrobe.
The dream was a total mess.
Ke Ni opened her eyes to find the weather outside had gotten even worse.
It was raining again outside, heavier than last night.
She’d already tried the highest-rated coffee shop and barbecue on the food delivery app, so she decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant.
Most of the contestants in this preliminary competition had already checked out and left the hotel, and the lounge chairs downstairs no longer had groups of people slouched over them.
The restaurant was sparsely populated as well.
Song Yi sat in the hotel restaurant, ordered stir-fried pork with chili, and handed the menu to Dai Fanze: “I looked everywhere at the venue and didn’t see Ke Ni at all. She must’ve been in your group, Ah Zhi, did you see her?”
He Zhi was so nervous all afternoon, he didn’t have the energy to pay attention to anyone else: “I didn’t even see Jing-ge anywhere…”
Dai Fanze pointed at the menu, and as the waiter asked, “Would you like braised eggplant?” his finger slowly landed on the black pepper ribs below the eggplant.
Waiter: “…. Okay, black pepper ribs.”
Song Yi glanced at the picture of black pepper ribs, swallowed, and then, still unwilling to give up, turned to ask Jing Sicun: “Hey, big shot, you can’t be so nervous you didn’t even look at anyone, right? You never saw Ke Ni?”
Jing Sicun said, “No.”
Song Yi frowned: “Don’t tell me Ke Ni didn’t come for the preliminaries? That can’t be.”
Dai Fanze finally finished ordering and handed the menu to He Zhi: “Why are you so interested in her anyway, do you have to be friends with her?”
Song Yi was about to say something when his gaze was suddenly drawn to someone who had just walked into the restaurant.
Song Yi’s mouth hung open.
Jing Sicun followed Song Yi’s gaze and saw Ke Ni sitting alone at a two-person table not far from them.
Ke Ni looked around, trying to spot the waiter responsible for taking orders.
She turned her head, and once again met Jing Sicun’s gaze.
He really is a persistent ghost.
Almost by reflex, she glanced over at him, making sure he wasn’t like in her dream, with his bathrobe open, but instead was wearing a loose black T-shirt.
His skin was quite fair.
Realizing what she was thinking, Ke Ni frowned.
Luckily, the waiter came over with the menu at that moment, saving her from her awkward mood.
Ke Ni ordered a dish and a soup, then turned her head again, only to find that not just Jing Sicun, but all four people at his table were looking at her.
Are they sick?
Do you really need to form a team to mock a low-level noob?
Ke Ni didn’t know the others, so she only looked at Jing Sicun.
But Jing Sicun’s eyes…
Staring long enough, you’d get the illusion you could fall right into his pupils.
Ke Ni glanced uneasily at the boy next to Jing Sicun, and then, the boy she glanced at suddenly grinned and stood up, striding toward her.
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