A Young Woman's Heart

Mo Xueyao looked at Li Wanyan, who was carefully peeling corn kernels one by one, unlike her, who would bite off a whole piece at once.

……

(four)

Pan Jiexiang left the room in a daze and saw Li Wanyan leaning against the wall, vomiting.

She vomited until the walls were covered with undigested food residue, then started vomiting bitter fluid, followed by a few dry heaves, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

"Yan Yan! What's wrong?"

"Mom, I'm fine." Li Wanyan wiped her mouth, then quickly covered up the bright red bloodstains.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"It's nothing..." Li Wanyan's voice was a little weak, "It's just that I feel a little dizzy, have chest tightness and nausea... and my heart is palpitating."

But back then, we didn't have the money to see a doctor.

In fact, after the man took the money, he didn't even have money for food.

Pan Jiexiang glanced at the dilapidated house and picked up the uneven rice cooker inner pot from the ground.

At that moment, she felt like vomiting too.

"Mom... I'm fine. The house is a mess, why don't you go out for a walk and clear your head? I'll tidy it up."

“Yanyan… Mom is so sorry…” Pan Jiexiang wiped away her tears and grabbed her hand. “Come on, let’s go have dinner first. We, we’ll cook outside…”

"I have ten yuan here..." Li Wanyan pitifully pulled the crumpled bill out of her pocket. "Let's buy some food and save some money..."

"It's okay, it's okay. I'll just buy some meat today... I'll figure out what to do with the rest of the meal."

In the end, they still didn't buy any meat that day.

I went to the store and bought brown sugar and ginger, and then splurged on two enamel mugs.

The two of them walked on and on.

I want to calm myself down.

Li Wanyan vomited again halfway through, and her leg was also weak, so she walked with a limp.

But she still tried her best to make her mother laugh, telling her about interesting things that happened on campus or when she was working.

Pan Jiexiang could only manage a forced smile.

……

(Fives)

Even now, Hangzhou is mostly farmland, but it was even more so back then.

There are few lights in the countryside, and the cicadas sing incessantly on summer nights.

The stream flowed with murky water, and in the distance, a few faint barks of dogs could be heard.

The soft soil still carries the warmth of Mother Earth.

The farmland consists of vast stretches of cornfields.

As she passed by, Pan Jiexiang secretly picked a few.

We didn't pick too many, just enough to eat.

Then it stopped under an arched bridge not far away.

The bridge was covered in moss, but the stream here was exceptionally clear.

She lit a campfire with corn stalks and gathered branches, and boiled ginger and brown sugar water in the old rice cooker pot.

The corn was thrown into the fire, waiting for it to slowly roast and for its aroma to fill the boundless wilderness.

……

(six)

Li Wanyan raised the corners of her mouth, as if she could see the sky she had seen that day: "That day, for the first time, I felt that the world was so big, the wind felt so comfortable on my face... and the corn tasted so good."

"Oh—the scene back then was similar to now?"

"Hmm, more or less, that's why I remembered what happened back then, hehe..." Pan Jiexiang's mouth was a little dry as she spoke. She drank several mouthfuls of brown sugar water, looked up at the sky, as if savoring the beauty of the night.

Did you see a doctor afterwards?

“I didn’t have money for medical treatment back then, but it was nothing serious. I just slept it off. I was still young after all,” Pan Jiexiang said, still feeling somewhat relieved.

"But I think the best dish to go with corn in the world is tofu soup!"

"Hmm, tofu soup, with some diced bamboo shoots and enoki mushrooms. It would be even better if there was some minced meat in it."

"Yes, yes, yes—let's eat this tomorrow!"

“Okay.” Pan Jiexiang nodded.

The silver-gray lampposts of the streetlights seemed warmer under the dim light, unlike their otherwise cold color.

The fruit shop not far away was doing fairly well, and Mo Wenli and Yang Xiaoyu were busy serving customers.

Lu Chengyuan and Lü Bolun have already gone public with their relationship with their parents. The two of them have been appearing together in the neighborhood a lot lately. Just now, they came out of Lao Mo's noodle shop and were waving and smiling at Mo Xueyao and the others.

Thinking back to the story she had just heard, Mo Xueyao suddenly felt a longing for the cicadas' chirping in the summer.

Winter, after all, is rather cold and desolate.

……

(seven)

On the night she vomited blood, Li Wanyan lay in her mother's arms, listening to her mother's gentle lullaby, and drifted into a beautiful dream.

The campfire burned all night without going out.

……

Chapter 111 and the National Unified Examination for Senior High Schools

The term "unified examination" means that the exam is taken together with other high schools, and the same test papers are used.

This unified exam was jointly conducted by several regular high schools and several key high schools. The difficulty level of the exam paper was based on the actual college entrance examination questions, with the aim of testing the true level of the students in these schools.

After all, the exam papers in one's own school will more or less be set according to the level of one's own students.

In other words, in this kind of exam, even students who rank among the top in their grade in regular high school may not rank very high among all the schools taking the exam together.

Such standardized tests not only include the school's own rankings, but also the rankings of the top 150 students from each grade across all participating schools.

Without a doubt, almost all the top rankings will be taken by students from top high schools.

At this time, the second and first classes of each grade are often expected to achieve high results, with the hope that some of the top students will stand out, even if only a few do, it would be a great honor for Yukong High School.

The sun had just risen into the sky, and the thin, misty clouds were gently parted when the exam began.

This was a very formal standardized test, so the students from each class were completely shuffled and distributed into different examination rooms.

Mo Xueyao's exam room was on the third floor, which was the classroom for the second-year high school students, and it was also the classroom she had sat in before—when she was a second-year high school student.

She was sitting at the same table she had sat at before.

It was so coincidental that it made her feel like she had returned to the relaxed and carefree days of her second year of high school.

She couldn't help but gently stroke the knife marks on the table, as well as the indelible pen marks written on it, and she became somewhat lost in thought.

"Alright, you can start doing the questions now. Remember to write your answers on the answer sheet. Write your class and name clearly, don't write outside the lines, and write Yukong High School..."

On the stage, Ye Yu, the physics teacher whom we haven't seen in a long time, was earnestly instructing the students below the stage, and had even written the exam time on the blackboard.

Actually, it hasn't been that long since we last saw each other. After all, Class 2 is right next to Class 1, and I can occasionally see him in the hallway after class.

The feeling of "not seeing him for a long time" here probably just means that it's been a long time since I've heard him lecture or spoken to him.

Even though they were in the same school, the division into arts and science classes created this strange sense of unfamiliarity.

Mo Xueyao refocused her attention on the exam paper.

Ye Yu's voice continued to reach her ears: "The test papers for the humanities class are different from those for the science class. The teacher may have given them to the wrong class. Please check the words written in the upper left corner again. If you received a science test paper instead of a humanities test paper, or if it was reversed, raise your hand and I will come and replace it for you."

She glanced at the top left corner subconsciously.

Yes, it's an exam paper for the humanities class.

The first exam always seems to be Chinese.

The 'scratching' sound of a pen writing rapidly on the exam paper could already be heard in my ears.

It turned out that Zhang Yumeng, who was in the same examination room, was writing her essay with her head down.

After all, this is where you can get a lot of points, so they're probably worried about not having enough time to finish writing...

Today, the senior students will finish all their exams. As for the first and second year students, since they don't usually have evening self-study sessions, their exams will be held over two days.

—This is their second day.

Mo Xueyao flipped to the end and glanced at the essay topic: "After reading the short story above about saving money and spending in advance, which viewpoint do you agree with more? Why? Please write an essay of no less than 800 words on this topic."

She pursed her lips and, without hesitation, chose the option to save money.

She'd rather delay enjoying herself than buy things once she has enough money.

Otherwise, I always feel empty and insecure.

My own family members are the same way. If they owe money, they want to pay it off as soon as possible. Even if they have very little money, as long as they are not in debt, they feel relaxed.

Pre-consumption is also a form of overdraft. If many people choose to consume in advance, then society will be very fragile—that's what Mo Xueyao thinks, because she believes that if many people can't repay their money, it will create a chain reaction and lead to an economic crisis.

After all, no one can guarantee that a country can continue to develop smoothly forever, right?

If it cannot continue to develop, this fragile system is likely to collapse.

Mo Xueyao tilted her head, thinking about the essay while flipping the test paper back to the beginning.

If Mr. Xue were to write this essay, how would he write it?

But in any case, they must see things more deeply than I do...