A Young Woman's Heart

"Whoosh... So cold, so cold..." Mo Xueyao only turned on the tap a little, and the water poured onto her palms in varying amounts. The icy temperature made her murmur softly, and she quickly withdrew her hands after washing them a few times.

Even the flour stuck to the tiger's mouth wasn't wiped off.

"All done, pretty girl?" the father said with a hint of teasing. "I cut some dragon fruit for you two and put it on a plate. It's too cold outside, so it tastes a bit like a shaved ice. I sprinkled some sugar on top. Try it and see if it's good."

"Dad, can you please stop talking so disgustingly?" Mo Xueyao rolled her eyes, picked up the plate, and called to Li Wanyan, who had just washed her hands, "Wanyan! Come and eat some dragon fruit. Dinner won't be for a while yet, this is just an appetizer."

"Mmm." Li Wanyan carefully washed her hands before coming over; her little hands were already red from the cold.

Mo Xueyao then moved the particularly power-consuming "little sun" heater over and placed it directly in front of the two of them.

Li Wanyan moved a small stool and sat down next to her, pressing her body gently against her, as if that would make her warmer.

Sometimes, Mo Xueyao would sit quietly in front of the fruit shop, not thinking about anything, just staring blankly at the passersby.

Sometimes I even feel that ordinary life itself is more exciting than any movie or TV show.

The old man selling roasted sweet potatoes from his cart seemed completely unfazed by the heat, grabbing freshly roasted sweet potatoes with his bare hands, putting them into a plastic bag, and handing them to the little boy who was staring at him expectantly.

"Grandpa, can you help me peel it?"

"Row."

The little boy excitedly took a bite of the sweet roasted sweet potato and skipped home.

But he tripped and fell, and the sweet potato rolled out and fell into the sewer with a big hole.

A group of people were gathered in front of the sewer, busy carrying out emergency repairs.

The little boy's mouth pursed, but he held back his tears.

"Hey, don't cry, don't cry." The old man pulled him up and handed him a slightly smaller one. "Here, take this."

"I...I have no money left..."

"It's nothing, it's a gift for you!"

"Thank you, grandpa!"

"Don't drop it now."

"Uh-huh!"

The little boy wasn't so unlucky as to fall again. This time, he walked carefully and slowly on the way home. The sweet smell of sweet potatoes even reached the fruit shop, making Mo Xueyao's stomach rumble, as if she wanted to eat sweet potatoes too.

I remember when I was a child, there were often sweet potato vendors selling them on the roadside, and I once accidentally dropped a sweet potato on the ground.

Back then, I could be heartbroken all day over a sweet potato that cost just a few cents—I would even squeeze out a few tears when I went to bed at night, thinking about that wasted sweet potato!

That day, her mother asked her if she had been bullied in preschool, but she was too embarrassed to say, which made her mother worry about her for many days.

"It's so delicious, sweet potato." Mo Xueyao said suddenly after taking a bite of dragon fruit.

Li Wanyan glanced at her a few times, then looked at the roasted sweet potato stall in the distance, and as if she understood something, she slightly raised the corners of her mouth.

……

Chapter Seven Final Exam

Aside from holidays, the school is usually quietest around the time of the annual final exams.

Students from all three grades were taking exams. Because the chairs had to be pulled out, there were relatively few students in each exam room, and the exam rooms were quite spread out.

Many students were temporarily placed in the laboratory building.

Mo Xueyao's exam room was 505, and her band classroom was just a few steps away.

People tend to feel calmer when doing things in familiar places.

The exam hadn't started yet, and most students could only wait idly in the exam hall, but Mo Xueyao could sit leisurely in the band room with Mo Zhuyou, drinking tea.

"It feels weird, it doesn't feel like a final exam at all, pfft." Mo Zhuyou covered her mouth and chuckled, "Hmm... it's more like going to a public lecture?"

"More or less...?" Mo Xueyao rubbed her eyes and brought her legs together a little more.

The weather is getting colder and colder. Even when wearing cashmere leggings, you can't help but shiver when the wind blows in.

"No one else gets to enjoy this; they're all in the main teaching building."

"You really know how to comfort yourself..." Mo Xueyao took a sip of the still-hot tea, feeling her body recharge like a battery, and then warm up.

“That’s true—if we were in the main teaching building, how would we get hot tea?” Mo Zhuyou rested her face on her arm and looked at the electric kettle on the table behind her, which was still steaming.

"Let's find some humor in hardship, haha," Mo Xueyao teased with a hint of sarcasm.

Mo Zhuyou replied seriously, "Of course, if we hadn't known how to find joy in hardship before, we probably wouldn't have been able to persevere at all."

"Ah...you were only in junior high back then, right?"

"Yeah, I just started junior high, but I still feel like an elementary school student."

The bright sunlight moved little by little until it fell on the backs of Mo Xueyao and Mo Zhuyou's hands. The warmth made the once cold and painful memories less heavy.

"Actually~" Mo Zhuyou gently swirled the teacup in her other hand, the dark green tea inside sparkling like a gemstone in the sunlight, "At first, I didn't feel too strongly about it, because everything happened so suddenly. And a lot of relatives came, and many familiar adults were around, handling everything, so I didn't feel particularly desperate. Until it was all over, everyone left, leaving only my sister and me. At first, some adults were willing to help us find a place to rent, but later, they lost contact with us..."

"Ring ring—"

Mo Zhuyou's voice and the ringtone overlapped, so much so that Mo Xueyao didn't quite hear it: "It was probably about a month later that I suddenly realized how lonely I was without my parents..."

"Huh? What?"

"Forget it, it's time for the exam!"

"Mmm!" Mo Xueyao's mind immediately returned to normal. Yesterday morning she took the Chinese exam, and in the afternoon she took the English exam. Today she had to finish the combined math and geography/politics/history exams in one morning, which meant school would end at noon.

And this is the last exam of the semester.

No matter how many things I want to do afterward, I have to wait until this exam is over before I can think about them.

The students were whispering at first, but the noise gradually subsided when the teacher came in with the exam papers.

"Alright, let's begin the exam. Please hand in all your textbooks and notes related to 'Geography, Politics, and History' to the podium. Only stationery that cannot be used for cheating is allowed on your desks. If you need extra scratch paper, please raise your hand." Standing on the podium proctoring the exam was none other than Yao Gugu, my chemistry teacher from my first year of high school.

Some students will draft a long paragraph before writing it to avoid making mistakes. Sometimes, when there isn't enough space on the questionnaire, they will need to use draft paper.

Her long, red hair had faded a bit by now—or perhaps new hair had grown in, leaving the roots black.

"Alright, you little rascals, stop causing trouble, especially you boys, those from Class 4 and those two from Class 6. I still remember you. If you dare to cause trouble, I'll make you wear girls' school uniforms and dance in front of the whole class. Got it?"

"Teacher Gu!"

"Call me Teacher Yao!" Yao Gugu glared at the boy, hands on her hips, and asked, "What is it?"

"Can I go to sleep?"

"No way! Did you come to school just to sleep? Write properly, even if you don't know the answers, fill them in!"

"what--"

"Why are you sighing? Who told you not to pay attention in class? Think about it, you're almost a senior in high school, and you're still like this. Do you think you can make a living? You're not handsome, you can't live off a woman, so how do you plan to make a living?"

"Teacher Gu, I make a living based on my personal charm, okay?"

"You? Charisma, my foot! Look at you, all sloppy. Ask any girl if she'd want to kiss you!" Yao Gu coughed a few times, and the topic was dropped.

The test papers were handed out one by one, but when Mo Xueyao received hers, she began to have some doubts.

Because many of the questions clearly required knowledge that had not been learned before, and upon closer inspection, the title prominently displayed the words "Senior Year 3".

Before she could even raise her hand, Yao Gugu realized something was wrong, quickly put the test paper back, and hurriedly ran out of the classroom.

She returned five or six minutes later and redistributed the test papers.

Fortunately, it's just the preparatory bell time now, and I haven't been able to officially start writing yet, so it's not too much of a delay.

Originally, after the test papers were handed out, everyone would have seven or eight minutes to review the questions. Now, however, everyone has to start writing as soon as they are handed out.

Humanities subjects can be mastered through hard work, which is what is known as rote memorization.

But if you want to get good results, you need to integrate and apply your knowledge.

While it's true that humanities subjects can be memorized by rote, such knowledge is often easily forgotten. Only knowledge memorized through techniques and occasionally applied in life will be deeply imprinted in the mind.

History is probably the most interesting of the three, followed by geography. The most boring and 'distant' subject for students is probably politics.

Many people don't understand why students need to study politics; what's the point?

Actually... it is precisely in a relatively fair country that the education bureau requires students to study this subject from elementary school to high school, and even university!

Because it will always come in handy someday.

Moreover, once people enter society, it is actually closely related to their lives.

Mo Xueyao paused slightly before a Marxist philosophy question, then quickly wrote down the answer.

The students were taking their exams below, and Yao Gugu was also writing her own exam paper. However, she was writing a science exam paper for the science class. Mo Xueyao, who was sitting in the front row, could occasionally hear her talking to herself very quietly.

If it were someone else, they might be so distracted that they wouldn't be able to concentrate.

However, Mo Xueyao was different. You see, the area in front of the fruit shop was much busier than the exam hall. There were countless pedestrians coming and going, and customers asking about prices. But she was still able to concentrate and eliminate distractions, completing her homework with high efficiency.

The effect of Yao Gugu's self-talk had absolutely no effect on her.

It doesn't even qualify as background music.

In fact, science students also have exams in politics, history, and geography, but those are taken as minor subjects and are all open-book, unlike humanities students who must take closed-book exams.

Mo Xueyao was so efficient that she always had plenty of time to go back and check for errors after she finished writing.

I remember when my grades were bad, the teacher would always tell the students to go back and check their work. However, back then, I either wrote too slowly to check, or even if I had enough time, I couldn't find the mistakes.

—Since I only have a superficial understanding myself, how could I possibly see so many mistakes?

It's already considered good if you can occasionally find some typos or calculation errors.

Sometimes, they might even change the correct answer to the wrong one.

But Mo Xueyao doesn't have much to worry about these things now. She usually checks everything after she finishes writing, and for humanities subjects, she checks for typos and whether she has misunderstood the question.

Then I would repeatedly think about the topics that I felt needed to consider—and I would even leave some topics blank if I really felt I needed to think them through before writing them.

Of course, it would be a tragedy if you didn't have enough time to go back and write down the earlier questions.

So when Mo Xueyao was taking the exam, she would occasionally take out the small alarm clock she had won in a lottery and glance at it to confirm the approximate time so that she could make a simple plan and arrangement for what to do next.