Chapter 45: The Crossroad in the Maze Part 2
Yu Zhou Zhou felt an elbow prod her hard before she snapped back to reality. She raised her head to find that Teacher Yu was staring at her expressionlessly. As she had been too immersed in her thoughts, she had no idea what had just happened. She bowed her head down as Zhan Yan Fei quietly said beside her, “The teacher just called your name, she didn’t ask anything.”
Lin Yang on the other hand, started laughing and used a tone that Yu Zhou Zhou had never heard before to say to Teacher Yu, “Yu Zhou Zhou must’ve been frozen dumb. She wore the least when she was standing outside the door just then.”
Teacher Yu didn’t seem to care at all about Lin Yang coming to the rescue. She changed to a different tone and coldly said, “Yu Zhou Zhou, ask your mum to come to the school for a visit some time. I gave her a call on the number she gave me but it’s always busy. I don’t know what she’s busy on, no matter how much time she spends on making money, a child’s education should be what’s most important. I have to look after fifty, sixty kids all by myself. It’s exhausting and I’m unable to take care of everyone. All the other parents have come to find me to discuss the issue of transitioning into middle school but your mum doesn’t even have the slightest reaction to it. Your future is your own business and if your parents don’t take it to heart then I am unable to say anything but if you don’t take it to heart then isn’t everything I say just nonsense?”
This long string of words made Lin Yang feel a bit dizzy. He raised his head and saw Yu Zhou Zhou stubbornly stand in the corner with her mouth squeezed shut. Her expression was cold, like a bad student who was unfavored and impervious to reason but there was a calmness on her face that they didn’t have.
Was that Yu Zhou Zhou?
Skipping past the brilliance of last four or five years, he seemed to have returned back to that afternoon in first grade where he saw her clutching an exercise book from afar. She was quietly pleading the seemingly stern higher grade monitor on duty. She seemed so pitiful that it made one feel heartache.
She seemed very similar yet very different. Yu Zhou Zhou had her head bowed as she listened to the teacher complain. The gaze on her face was very cold and no longer contained the pitifulness she had when younger. He didn’t know where her mind had floated to again but the girl in front of him had once again become like the snowman on the horizontal bar, separated from him by mountains and rivers, fully unreachable.
“Zhou Zhou, let’s go home together.” He called out without even thinking about it. Yu Zhou Zhou seemed to finally be pulled out of her own little world. She stared at him with widened eyes. Zhan Yan Fei on the other hand, reacted quickly. She turned and ran off while shouting, “Don’t worry, I’m immediately leaving. I definitely won’t tell anyone!”
Lin Yang swallowed his saliva, thinking that he would go all out today. Although his parents haven’t been picking him up since long ago, but he still had to go home with Jiang Chuan and Lin Xiang Qian every day. He had long picked up that they all didn’t like Yu Zhou Zhou and recently, he had vagule understood the reason so it wasn’t that he was unafraid inside after saying “let’s go together”,
He was scared that it seemed like he was hiding something bad from his parents.
Yu Zhou Zhou tilted her head to look at him with a gaze that he couldn’t understand.
Lin Yang steeled his heart and very seriously and loudly said, “Zhou Zhou, let’s go home together.”
Let’s go home together.
He said it so casually and naturally that it seemed like yesterday, the day before, last year, the year before the last…they had always been going home together and he was just saying it as routine reminder.
Don’t forget to go home together today.
Yu Zhou Zhou bowed her head down and stepped on the snow very seriously, avoiding all the parts where there were already footprints, stepping specifically on the pure and complete snow.
“…Zhou Zhou?”
“Mhm?”
“Just now Teacher Yu talked about your middle school matter…”
“It’s nothing.” Yu Zhou Zhou quickly turned her head and stayed quiet for a few seconds before asking, “Lin Yang, what do you want to do when you grow up?”
Lin Yang was stunned. Yu Zhou Zhou asked the same question she had asked while on the horizontal bar again. Plus only his mum and dad, uncles and aunties and Teacher Zhang would ask these types of questions – and it was only when he was very small.
At that time, he had loudly replied, “I want to become an astronomer!”
Jiang Chuan on the side would sniff his nose and quietly say, “I want to be the Secretary General of the United Nations.”
The Secretary General of the United Nations was the biggest official in the world that Jiang Chuan could think of but they didn’t realize until much later after they grew up that actually, this was the most useless official in the world.
Faced with Yu Zhou Zhou’s question, Lin Yang only shook his head, “I don’t know.” After answering, he embarrassedly added, “But, as long as I keep movin forward then that’s fine.”
“Keep moving forward?”
“Mhm,” He smiled confidently, “My dad said that if I haven’t decided then I just had to keep going forward and work hard to be the best. Enter into the best middle school, learn the most skills, enter the best university, read the most books, study the most knowledge. He said that these were all… resources,” Lin Yang weighed his answer and after confirming that the word resources was used correctly, continued, “Like this, once there is a day I decide what I want to do, then I’ll have enough resources in my hand and I can start working hard towards that direction with no regrets.”
Yu Zhou Zhou raised her eyes to look at Lin Yang. His smile was bring, like a poplar tree in the snow with its verdant branches waving welcomingly in the wind, as if spring had arrived in advance.
“That’s great,” She smiled.
“Zhou Zhou, what about you?”
“Me?” Yu Zhou Zhou didn’t look at him. She lowered her head and stepped on all the fresh snow within a one meter circumference of her before lifting her head up again, “I don’t know either.”
“Then that’s just like me!” Lin Yang happily grabbed the bottom of Yu Zhou Zhou’s bag strap and shook it repeatedly.
Yu Zhou Zhou smiled and shook her head, “No, Lin Yang. We’re not the same.”
Tofubyu 