Looking back on her rather unremarkable life, Liang Mei felt there were two things she had done absolutely right.
The first was becoming a teacher, and the second was, to celebrate Hong Kong’s return in 1997, throwing a rotten egg into the window of the teacher she hated most—even though she was caught red-handed.
She’d thought she’d get a scolding, but the teacher didn’t get angry. Instead, with great benevolence, the teacher cooked her a bowl of noodles, pushed it in front of her, and with a “let’s see you get out of this” look, said, “You threw the rotten egg, so you eat it yourself.”
She held back her tears and ate it, but the rotten egg wasn’t as disgusting as she’d imagined.
That year, she was only twelve.
No matter how cynical she was, in the eyes of a teacher who had enough tricks up her sleeve to choreograph multiple sets of exercise routines, she was just a paper tiger—one with neither teeth nor claws.
Liang Mei grew up in the orphanage.
The only difference between her and the other kids was—she didn’t know her own birthday.
She only knew she was born in the winter month of 1985.
In 1999, spurred on by that teacher’s provocation, she shocked everyone and unexpectedly got into Qingyi Normal School—at the time, one of the few secondary normal schools in S Province, commonly known as a vocational secondary school.
Not only was the tuition cheap, but they guaranteed job placement after graduation.
During her three years at the normal school, the teacher used her old tricks again.
Under her close guidance, Liang Mei mastered beautiful chalkboard writing and a bunch of unimpressive “talents.”
As the teacher put it, in this teaching business, students aren’t afraid of those with a formal background.
What they really fear is a street-smart underachiever turning over a new leaf, coming back to school with wild ideas to teach and nurture others.
Such teachers can outplay the school leaders above and the students below, and become the biggest troublemaker of their year.
After graduating, Liang Mei was assigned back to Fengtan to teach, starting at a middle school as a language arts teacher.
The teacher still looked down on her, thinking she was hopeless, while Liang Mei still disliked her.
Every time they met, they’d almost always argue, and if she didn’t make the teacher fume, she’d consider the meeting a waste.
Later, as educational standards rose and policies changed, without a bachelor’s degree or connections, she was kicked out of the middle school teaching team and transferred to Huacheng Primary School as a homeroom teacher.
The teacher stopped bothering with her, knowing she was a lost cause, beyond saving.
If only she’d worked harder those years and finished her correspondence degree sooner, she wouldn’t have been kicked out so easily.
Liang Mei hadn’t expected the policy reform to move so swiftly—by the second year after the document was issued, it was already implemented.
She had no connections and certainly wasn’t shameless enough to beg her teacher, so naturally she became one of the first to be transferred out.
That night, walking through a narrow alley, Liang Mei was soaked through, as if she’d just been fished out of water.
Her thin skirt clung to her legs, water dripping down onto the flagstones, spreading into little puddles.
She didn’t even have the strength to wring out her skirt.
Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, like a malfunctioning printing press, jumping about in her mouth without rhythm.
She honestly didn’t know if she was cold or just scared.
She hadn’t meant to get involved, and had already decided that even if it was her own student, she’d pretend not to see it.
Let them be, a bunch of ungrateful brats, taking a teacher’s efforts for granted—
If it hadn’t been for her class’s average score coming in dead last in the grade on the midterm, she wouldn’t have been kept so late by the grade leader, giving him an opportunity.
Even though she didn’t let him succeed, and even smashed his head open with a trophy, leaving him with several bloody gashes, blood splattered all over her.
She washed up in the bathroom for a long time, and after cleaning herself up, she squatted on the floor and cried her heart out, then still called 120.
She heard Li Yingqiao shouting in the alley, threatening to crack Shi Dapeng’s head open, and her feet wouldn’t move.
She had just cracked someone’s head open herself—she knew that kind of terror all too well.
She thought, if a child really lost control and crippled someone, Li Yingqiao’s life would be ruined.
So Liang Mei rushed in.
But what she didn’t expect was that the two kids went to buy her medicine, and obediently squatted down to help her apply it.
Even though they guessed she wasn’t the Li Yingqiao who fell into the ditch, they didn’t chase after her asking what happened.
Instead, they called out loudly, “See you tomorrow, Miss Liang!”
Tomorrow.
Would she even have a tomorrow?
If Qian Dongchang died, there would be no tomorrow for her.
Originally, Liang Mei planned to submit her resignation the next day, then call the police.
But after calming down, she realized she had no evidence, there was no surveillance in the office, and Qian Dongchang was more seriously injured than she was.
If she called the police, he could easily turn things around and accuse her.
While she hesitated, she saw Qian Dongchang, his head wrapped in gauze, acting as if nothing had happened, standing at the podium and teaching as usual.
Even more absurd, because he was teaching while injured, the school went out of its way to give him an “Outstanding Teacher” award.
Fengtan Daily even ran a feature on his “inspiring story,” which brought readers to tears, and the students all addressed him respectfully as “Mr. Qian.”
So Liang Mei changed her mind.
She didn’t resign right away, but stayed at Huacheng Primary School for almost another year.
Until the year Li Yingqiao and the others graduated, when she found out the school leadership was withholding Li Shuli’s salary, she gathered the evidence she’d collected that year and took both Qian Dongchang and the school to court.
The lawsuit lasted almost two years, but she won.
The school paid compensation, Qian Dongchang was fired, and of course, she was targeted and nitpicked for all sorts of reasons—none of them officially “because she sued the school,” but in the end, she lost her job.
And after that, no elementary school in Fengtan would hire her.
She didn’t plan on teaching anymore anyway.
After getting the compensation, the first thing she did was take the money to Li Shuli, planning to leave Fengtan for good.
Li Shuli had moved away completely, but Liang Mei guessed Li Yingqiao must be at Xiancheng No. 2 High School, so she asked her former teacher to make inquiries at No. 2, and finally found out where they lived.
The moment the door opened, she changed her mind again.
She decided to be a teacher one last time—
Li Yingqiao’s life shouldn’t stop here.
***
Inside the private room at Guoying Hotel, it was so quiet you could only hear the cold wind whistling through the cracks in the window.
It was early February of 2012, just after the second semester had begun.
There was no heating in Fengtan, and Li Yingqiao wasn’t even wearing a down jacket.
She only had a thick sweatshirt on.
It wasn’t that Li Shuli wouldn’t buy her a coat—she just refused to wear one.
She didn’t like wrapping herself up like a winter melon.
However, Guoying Hotel was the tallest building in all of Fengtan at the time.
Li Yingqiao had never heard such a ghostly, howling wind, like a hurricane beast gnawing at the doors and windows, letting out mournful roars.
She’d never thought Fengtan was cold before, but for the first time, she felt freezing.
Maybe this was what they meant by “it’s lonely at the top.”
She turned to look at Yu Jinyang, the childhood friend she hadn’t seen in two years.
He was bundled up in a thick black down jacket, a scarf around his neck, and even a baseball cap on his head.
Who knew, he might even have a heat patch on under his clothes.
Clearly, Tang Xiang Auntie wouldn’t let him catch the slightest chill.
“Hey.”
Li Yingqiao sighed for no reason.
Yu Jinyang, who had been quietly eating since he came in, finally turned his head and glanced at her—then silently took off his hat and scarf and tossed them onto the empty chair next to him.
He knew what she was complaining about. Ever since they were kids, she’d always hated how much he bundled up in winter, looking like a winter melon.
After tossing his hat and scarf, Yu Jinyang didn’t say anything to her, just continued eating quietly.
Liang Mei came in, ordered a whole table of dishes with gusto, then barely ate a few bites before going out to smoke.
The only ones left in the room were the two most polite middle schoolers. Li Yingqiao leaned back in her chair, staring at the back of Yu Jinyang’s head as he sipped his soup for a long while, before she couldn’t resist and slapped him on the back, “Meow Meow, what are you pretending to be so proper for!”
Clang—
Yu Jinyang’s spoon fell into his bowl, his hand still hovering over the rim.
He glanced back at her, his gaze cool, but what he said made Li Yingqiao want to throttle him, “Li Yingqiao, you’re an idol now, can you stop being so handsy?”
Li Yingqiao glared at him, eyes wide, “Who made up that song? Wasn’t it you?”
Yu Jinyang leaned back in his chair too, side by side with her, looking at the food on the table that was getting cold.
He instinctively glanced at the door, but didn’t see any sign of Liang Mei coming back.
He looked at Li Yingqiao and said, “Wasn’t me. I don’t have that much free time.”
Li Yingqiao looked him up and down—head to toe, all designer brands.
Looks like Uncle Yu was getting even richer.
She’d heard he’d opened a wooden toy castle in Fengtan last year, like something straight out of a fairy tale, grand and dazzling—a real “Disneyland” for Fengtan.
Lots of students from No. 2 High School queued up there every weekend, and tickets were hard to get.
“Are you still practicing street dance? But Yu Meow Meow, you don’t seem to have grown much taller!”
Li Yingqiao ran her hand from his head over to herself, drawing a line in the air.
Yu Jinyang hadn’t heard anyone call him that in years, and was a bit unused to it.
He watched Li Yingqiao’s exaggerated gesture, and couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth.
“Save your little tricks for fooling yourself. I’m at least five centimeters taller than you now.”
“Pfft! Stand up and let’s compare! Come on, get up.”
Li Yingqiao refused to accept it, grabbing at his arm.
Her tugging made his down jacket rustle, but Yu Jinyang didn’t bother to fight with her.
He stayed put in his chair and changed the subject, asking, “Do you know why Miss Liang called you here this time?”
Li Yingqiao made a noise, then sat back down, getting serious.
She looked at him and answered honestly, “No, but she helped us get back the salary the school owed my mom. Miss Liang is a good person—she wouldn’t sell me out. Besides, just now at the door, she said she’d invited a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, and asked if I wanted to meet them. I could guess with my toes it was you!”
“Meow Meow, it’s really nice to see you!” she added shamelessly.
“Is it? Then why’d you hit me as soon as we met?”
Yu Jinyang sneered.
He was too used to her routine—give him a slap, then a sweet word, always saying the nicest things but hitting the hardest, just so she could be even rougher next time.
“Li Yingqiao, next time you can’t control your hands, you better chop them off.”
“Huh?”
Li Yingqiao was stunned.
“There won’t be a next time. My mom won’t let me wander around, I can barely get out. This time, Miss Liang brought me.”
Yu Jinyang asked, “Then how am I supposed to give you the practice exams and real test papers for the experiment class? Are you going to take the Tancheng exam?”
Li Yingqiao was even more confused, “Who said I was going to take the Tancheng exam?”
Yu Jinyang was about to say, Miss Liang called me, otherwise why would I be here, just for fun?
Right then, Liang Mei pushed the door open.
She saw the two kids staring wide-eyed at each other, and Li Yingqiao’s words slipped right out through the door crack.
Liang Mei shut the door, pulled out a chair, and said without room for argument, “I said you’re taking it.”
Li Yingqiao refused, “…I don’t think so, Miss Liang. I never liked studying.”
Liang Mei asked, “Who likes studying from the start?”
Li Yingqiao glanced at the person beside her, “He does. Loves it.”
Yu Jinyang shot her a sidelong look, not even bothering to argue, “You think I like it?”
Liang Mei asked again, “I just asked you—what kind of person do you want to be? Have you thought it through?”
Li Yingqiao answered quickly, “I haven’t figured that out, but I know what kind of person I don’t want to be.”
Liang Mei said, “For example?”
Li Yingqiao looked again at the guy next to her, “I don’t want to be like him—busy like a donkey all day, either studying or in meetings, or in competition classes, or in talent classes learning all sorts of skills. Just watching him makes me tired. I don’t even know who he’s planning to serve with all that hard work after he graduates.”
“Meow Meow, don’t wear yourself out like this! Why bother with the Tancheng exam? Come join me in the factory screwing bolts. I have a classmate at No. 2 High who makes a thousand a month just putting screen protectors on phones at the school gate! I’ll be your supplier, guarantee you’ll make a fortune.”
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