A Literary Life Starting from the First Year of High School

When the car stopped in front of the High School Affiliated to the Normal University, Lin Shubai's scarf was already askew, forming an irregular polygon. Wang Xiulan's knot was too tight, so she simply gave up on treatment.

"We're here." Old Chen was the first to get off the bus. Standing by the door, he held up a folder like a tour guide. "Everyone get off, don't forget anything. Pens, ID cards, exam admission tickets, check them all."

Zhang Siyuan rummaged through his backpack, his expression as serious as if he were defusing a bomb: "I brought my pen, my ID card, and my exam admission ticket."

Li Yiming jumped down from behind, chewing on something: "I brought them all."

"What did you eat?" Lin Shubai asked.

"The leftover steamed bun from this morning. My mom said that you can't think straight when writing an essay on an empty stomach, and that you can't think straight when you eat too much because all the blood goes to your stomach. So I ate half of it, which was perfect, not on an empty stomach and not too full."

Lin Shubai glanced at him: "Is your mother a nutritionist?"

"She works in the elementary school's logistics department, in charge of the cafeteria. You'd better believe her, because when she says 'this dish can't be eaten today,' it really can't be eaten."

The gate of the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Normal University was much more impressive than their school's. Two marble pillars stood with a huge bronze plaque in the middle, bearing the words "High School Affiliated to Shanghai Normal University," gleaming golden in the afternoon sun. A number of people were already standing at the gate, gathered in twos and threes, some looking down at their phones, others holding notebooks and muttering to themselves.

"So many people." Zhang Siyuan pushed up his glasses.

"There are sixty people from the whole city who passed the preliminary round, plus their team leaders, that's about a hundred people." Old Chen glanced at the crowd at the door. "The three of you come with me to the registration desk first."

The registration area was located in the lobby on the first floor. Behind a long table sat two young female teachers, with a stack of forms and a pile of admission tickets in front of them. Old Chen handed over three registration forms, which the female teachers checked, and then stamped each of the three admission tickets with a red seal.

The female teacher glanced up at Lin Shubai, her gaze lingering on the scarf around his neck, her lips twitching slightly. Lin Shubai pretended not to notice, pulling the scarf up even higher to cover half his face. That way, even if he messed up his essay, no one would recognize him.

"The exam room is on the third floor of the teaching building, and it will start promptly at 3 o'clock. You can go and familiarize yourself with the exam room now, or you can wait in the rest room." After the female teacher finished speaking, she continued to process the next batch of candidates.

The three followed Old Chen toward the teaching building. The corridor was plastered with various slogans—"Knowledge Changes Destiny," "Diligence Creates Glory," "Did You Work Hard Today?"—red backgrounds with white lettering, densely packed. One of them read, "Details Determine Success or Failure." Lin Shubai thought to himself, "Then my detail today is my scarf. My success or failure is already decided"—he was about to be strangled.

"This school has twice as many slogans as our school," Zhang Siyuan whispered.

"Our school has quite a few too," Li Yiming replied, "but our slogan is 'Don't spit on the ground,' so the overall approach is different."

"Indeed, one focuses on the fate of humanity, while the other focuses on public health."

The exam was held in a large classroom on the third floor. The desks and chairs were already set up, and each desk had a number tag on it. Lin Shubai found his seat—the third row by the window, strikingly similar to the seat he usually sat in at school. He put down his backpack, unzipped it, and took out his pencil case, ID card, and admission ticket, placing them on the desk.

Four pens were laid out side by side, like four soldiers ready for battle. The gold fountain pen that Liu Yang had borrowed was placed in the very center; it was as thick as a small gold bar, gleaming under the fluorescent light. Lin Shubai picked it up and weighed it in his hand, thinking that if he couldn't write a good essay with this pen, he could at least use it to knock out the proctor and escape—of course, he wouldn't do that, but knowing that was an option made him feel much more at ease.

Zhang Siyuan leaned closer for a look: "This pen of yours... is it a weapon?"

"It was borrowed from a friend; he said his dad had treasured it for twenty years."

Zhang Siyuan nodded. "Your friend is a real friend."

Li Yiming, standing next to him, took out another half-chocolate from his pocket, silently put it in his mouth, and looked as peaceful as a cat basking in the sun.

Old Chen poked his head in through the door: "Come out when you're done reading, don't stay inside. The rest room is on the second floor, there's a water dispenser, go drink if you're thirsty. Don't drink too much, otherwise you won't be able to hold it in halfway through writing, and then 'details determine success or failure' will happen."

"Understood." The three of them said in unison.

The lounge was a small meeting room with several rows of plastic chairs and a long table. On the table was a thermos and a pile of disposable paper cups. There were already more than a dozen people sitting inside. Some were flipping through books, some were resting with their eyes closed, and two boys were quietly discussing "how to write an essay if the topic was this or that".

"If the exam is about 'My Ideal,' I'll write that I want to be an astronaut, that I've looked up at the stars since I was little and felt that the universe is vast and humanity is insignificant—I can easily write a thousand words of this kind of cliché."

"What if the test is about 'My Father'?"

"Then write that my dad is an engineer and taught me from a young age to contribute to the construction of our country—another thousand words."

"What if the exam tests environmental protection?"

"Then write that Mother Earth is crying and we are unfilial children—start with 'Ah, Earth,' add a few parallel sentences in the middle, and end with 'Let us take action'—a universal template, just change the subject."

Lin Shubai listened and thought that these two people were probably the legendary "assembly line workers of exam-oriented essays". Their thinking was very clear and their routines were very familiar, but what they wrote was probably the same kind of "false words, false emotions, and false ideals" that Lao Chen had mentioned.

He found a corner to sit down and loosened his scarf—only a little bit, because Wang Xiulan's knot was so tight that he struggled for a long time before he could only create a small gap that was barely enough for him to breathe.

Li Yiming sat down next to him and took out a piece of chocolate from his pocket.

"My mom gave it to me, saying chocolate can relieve tension." Li Yiming broke off half and handed it to him. "Want a piece? After eating it, the essays you write will all be sweet, the teacher will be in a good mood and give you a high score."

"Is there any scientific basis for your theory?"

"What my mom says is the absolute truth, just like what the elementary school's logistics department says. If she says, 'Today's braised pork is from yesterday,' then it's definitely from yesterday."

Lin Shubai took it and put it in his mouth. The chocolate was a little melted and sticky, but the sweetness did make him feel a bit more relaxed.

At 2:45, the person in charge of the examination entered the rest room, clapped his hands, and said: "Students, please line up at the entrance of the examination room and prepare to enter."

Sixty people poured out of the lounge, like a flock of chickens released from their cages—no, more like chickens that voluntarily walked into the cages. Lin Shubai was in the middle of the line, with Zhang Siyuan in front of him and Li Yiming behind him. Zhang Siyuan had a tuft of hair sticking up on the back of his head, probably from sleeping on the table at noon, and he couldn't press it down no matter what he did.

The proctor was a woman in her forties, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, with an expression as serious as a judge who had just stepped out of court. She stood on the podium, her gaze sweeping over the entire class, the temperature of which was probably around absolute zero.

"Are all your phones turned off? Don't keep them on your person; if you're caught, it will be treated as cheating." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word pierced everyone's ears like nails. "Don't whisper to each other, don't look around. Don't write your name on the essay paper, only write your admission ticket number. Stop writing immediately after the exam ends when the bell rings, otherwise your score will be invalid."

After she finished speaking, she glanced at the clock on the wall.

"Three minutes left. Now distribute the official paper and draft paper."

Lin Shubai neatly wrote his examination admission ticket number in the upper left corner of the composition paper—a string of sixteen digits that he had memorized for three days, even more diligently than when memorizing ancient poems.

"One minute left," the proctor said.

The classroom was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. Lin Shubai took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He did as Wang Xiulan told him to "go to the toilet first," he ate the chocolate, and even though he couldn't untie his scarf, he did everything he could to prepare.

"The exam begins."

The proctor turned around and wrote four large characters on the blackboard. The sound of chalk scraping across the blackboard was so loud it made your teeth ache—exactly the same feeling Lin Shubai had on his first day after transmigrating, except this time he wasn't spacing out in the classroom, but in the exam hall.

It was written on the blackboard:

"Earth Home"

Below is a line of small print that says: "Please write an essay on the topic of 'Our Earth Home.' There are no restrictions on genre, word count, or perspective. You may draw on reality or use your imagination."

Lin Shubai stared at those four words for a few seconds.

The theme was environmental protection. It was pretty much what he had guessed on the bus. But the topic of "Earth, Our Home" was broader than he had expected—it could be written in a very realistic way, such as about pollution, garbage, and climate change; it could also be written in a very science fiction way, such as about aliens coming to Earth and finding it in a terrible mess; it could also be written in a very heartwarming way, such as about the story of people and nature in a small village.

But the first thing that popped into his mind was the work that had been unlocked but never used—"Feed—Out".

Shinichi Hoshi's short story. A bottomless hole where people dump all their garbage—nuclear waste, industrial wastewater, discarded weapons, rotting corpses—they throw everything in. The hole is like a perpetually hungry mouth, accepting anything that comes its way. People cheer, believing they've found the ultimate solution to their environmental problems.

Then one day, the hole started spewing things out.

It started with a small pebble, thrown in by a child many years ago. Then came more and more garbage, pouring out like a reversed rain. And among the first things to emerge from the hole was a forgotten voice—"Feed—out."

Lin Shubai closed his eyes and went through the whole story in his mind. The original text was about three thousand words long, not long, but with a very ingenious structure. It began with an ordinary village where a bottomless pit appeared, and scientists studied it for a long time but couldn't figure out what was going on. Later, someone suggested: Why don't we try dumping our garbage in there?

I tried it, and it really works! I poured everything in, but it was never full.

The news spread, and people from all over the world came. Nuclear waste, industrial wastewater, chemical weapons, medical waste from hospitals, animal carcasses from slaughterhouses—garbage from all over the world poured into that hole like a waterfall. No one cared about environmental protection anymore, no one worried about pollution anymore; there was just a hole, so they could just dump it in.

Years later, a villager was taking a walk near the cave when a small pebble suddenly fell from the sky and landed right in front of him. He scratched his head, unable to remember where the pebble had come from. Then he heard a voice from the sky—"Feed—out."

That was the sentence he shouted into the cave many years ago.

The story ends here. But everyone knows what will happen next—that pebble was just the beginning. Everything thrown into the hole will eventually "come out."

Lin Shubai opened his eyes and picked up the gold fountain pen.

He doesn't need to copy the entire text or make complicated localization adaptations. The core of this story is universal—humanity's greed and ignorance towards nature, and the consequences that will inevitably follow. He only needs to express this core in his own words, place it under the theme of "Earth, Our Home," and it will be a perfect essay for the competition.

"It all started with that hole."

"The hole appeared at the foot of the mountain behind the village. It was round, dark, and bottomless. The first person to discover it was an old shepherd. He threw a pebble into it and waited for a long, long time, but he didn't hear it land."

He wrote about how the villagers discovered the cave, how they reported it to the government, and how groups of scientists came. They lowered a lead ball down a rope for 10,000 meters, but when the rope reached the end, the cave still hadn't reached the bottom. They shouted into the cave, but there was no echo. They lowered a tape recorder down, and all they recorded was silence.

"No one knows how deep the hole is, or where it leads. But soon, nobody cares anymore."

Lin Shubai continued writing. The first person to dump garbage into the hole was a factory owner whose factory produced dozens of tons of wastewater every day, which was too expensive to treat. He heard about the hole and secretly dumped his wastewater in it. The next day, the wastewater was gone. The third day, the hole was still there.

The news spread.

"All the world's garbage has started being dumped into this hole. Nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, toxic wastewater from chemical plants, needles and gauze from hospitals, animal offal from slaughterhouses, expired medicines, used batteries, plastic bags, styrofoam lunch boxes—everything is dumped in. That hole is like a mouth that can never get enough to eat, accepting everything without complaint."

He wrote about how humans revel. Environmental problems solved! The Earth saved! That hole is our savior! Scientists announced on television: "From now on, humanity will never have to worry about garbage again."

The factory continues to emit smoke, the cars continue to emit emissions, and plastic bags continue to be used as usual. There's always a hole in the packaging, after all.

Lin Shubai paused here. He knew what he was about to write—the pebble, the sound. This was the core of the entire story, and also the part where the pacing needed to be controlled most. He couldn't write too fast; he had to guide the reader step by step to the answer.

"One evening a few years later. It was the same old shepherd, the same mountain. He was herding his flock past the foot of the mountain when he suddenly heard a sharp whistling sound overhead. He looked up and saw a pebble falling from the sky, landing with a 'thud' on the ground just three inches in front of him."

He wrote that the old man picked up a pebble, which looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen it before. He scratched his head and continued herding the sheep.

"Then he heard that sound."

"Feed—out."

Lin Shubai wrote the final paragraph:

"That pebble was just the beginning. Nuclear waste will come out, toxic wastewater will come out, needles, entrails, batteries, plastic bags—everything that's thrown in will come out. That hole isn't a mouth; it's a mirror. Whatever you throw in, it will return to you."

He put down his pen and read it once.

There are no fancy words, no parallel sentences, no exclamation marks. It's just a story, clean and simple from beginning to end.

He turned the composition paper face down on the table, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long breath.

A boy at the next table was writing furiously, the pen tip scratching against the paper. He was probably writing a series of parallel sentences like "Ah, Mother Earth." Lin Shubai glanced at his back and thought: Good luck, bro.

The clock on the wall shows 4:20. Forty minutes to go.

He checked the essay, corrected two typos, and added a concluding sentence: "That cave has always been there. Not at the foot of the mountain, but in everyone's heart."

Then he put down his pen and looked out the window.