19: Chapter 19 The Boss Returns

Just as he stepped outside, footsteps came from upstairs.

Not an adult's.

An adult's footsteps were heavy, dragging, with the soles scraping against the steps.

These feet landed lightly, step by step, with an even rhythm, as if walking to a beat.

Jiang Lin paused slightly.

She was coming down.

Her navy blue school uniform revealed a section of a light gray high-necked sweater at the collar. Her hair was tied into a ponytail with a very thin black hair tie wrapped around it three times.

The straps of her schoolbag hung neatly over both shoulders, unlike Sun Ming, who always hung it on just one side.

In her hand, she held an English vocabulary handbook, about the size of a palm, with curled edges on the cover, and her finger tucked at page twenty-three.

Printed in gold foil on the left side of the girl's chest were four characters.

Jiangcheng Middle School.

As the symbol of a provincial key high school, in Jiangcheng City, these four characters were roughly equivalent to a tier-one university admission letter.

The girl's name was Jiang Yao, and she lived right upstairs from Jiang Lin's home.

From kindergarten and elementary school all the way to middle school, the two of them had always been in the same class, and had even been deskmates for two years.

In the words of the adults, this was a proper childhood sweetheart relationship.

Back then, Jiang Lin would pull Jiang Yao's ponytail and snatch her snacks.

But everything came to an abrupt halt in the year of the senior high school entrance examination.

Jiang Yao was admitted into Jiangcheng Middle School with an exceptionally high score, while Jiang Lin performed ordinarily and was diverted to Jiangcheng No. 7 High School, which had a worrisome college entrance rate.

Ever since then, an invisible chasm had split the worlds of the two people into halves.

Facing the huge disparity between a key high school and an ordinary high school, the bond of childhood sweethearts rapidly fermented into a teenager's sensitive inferiority complex.

Over the past two years, although they lived upstairs and downstairs from each other, Jiang Lin would always intentionally or unintentionally avoid her.

In the morning, if he heard the door opening upstairs, he would purposely linger at home for a couple more minutes.

If they happened to run into each other from afar in the residential complex, he would immediately lower his head, take out his phone, pretend not to see her, and hurriedly quicken his pace to walk away.

At this moment, they bumped into each other unexpectedly at the stairway landing.

He didn't think about this action; his body did it on its own.

However, this time, because his memory had a dislocation of nearly ten years, Jiang Lin's reaction was a beat slower.

Their gazes collided.

Jiang Yao was clearly stunned for a moment.

According to her understanding of Jiang Lin over the past two years, this boy, who used to be cheerful and fond of smiling, should now immediately lower his head, stare at the tips of his shoes, and then quickly squeeze past her along the wall, without even greeting her.

Jiang Yao considerately stopped in her tracks to let him go down first.

However, the anticipated dodging did not happen.

Jiang Lin also stopped in his tracks, meeting Jiang Yao's gaze calmly.

From Jiang Yao's perspective, less than half a year had passed since the last time the two spoke.

But in Jiang Lin's subjective timeline, he hadn't seen the girl in front of him for nearly ten years.

Ten years.

It was so distant that he even needed to spend half a second searching for her name in that massive index library inside his brain.

The inferiority complex that once made eighteen-year-old Jiang Lin breathless—her grades being better, her school being better, the confusion about the future—at this moment, in the eyes of Jiang Lin who had survived ten years of life-and-death hardships in the Wasteland, were as childish as dust that could be blown away by a gust of wind.

Being able to see a living, breathing, and astonished old acquaintance on this morning was, to Jiang Lin, a tremendous joy in itself.

The corners of Jiang Lin's mouth slowly curled up, revealing a gentle smile tinged with a bit of emotion.

"Morning, Jiang Yao."

His voice was a bit hoarse, his speaking speed was not fast, and it carried a sense of relaxation precipitated by the passage of long years.

Jiang Yao, who was somewhat surprised, widened her clear eyes for a fraction of a second.

What surprised her wasn't just that Jiang Lin took the initiative to speak, but also his state at this moment.

That Jiang Lin, who usually hunched his shoulders and averted his gaze out of habit when encountering her in the hallway, was gone.

He stood so casually at the bottom of the steps, his calm gaze carrying a hint of the warmth of old friends reuniting.

There was no awkwardness, nor was there any embarrassment.

Wearing the slightly oversized No. 7 High School uniform, he actually exuded an indescribable sense of ease and relaxation.

"Morning." Jiang Yao was stunned for half a second, then naturally returned a smile as well.

Jiang Lin didn't say anything more, nodded, turned around, and walked downstairs.

When they reached the entrance of the apartment building, Jiang Lin reached out and pushed the door open, but instead of walking straight out, he stood naturally by the door, bracing the iron gate with his hand, turned back to glance at Jiang Yao who was following behind, and gestured for her to go first.

This was an ordinary gentlemanly gesture, but in Jiang Yao's memory, the sensitive and inferior Jiang Lin would absolutely never have done it.

Jiang Yao walked out silently and couldn't help turning back to say, "Thank you. You seem a bit different today."

"Is that so?"

Jiang Lin let go of his hand, and the iron gate slowly closed behind him.

Facing Jiangcheng's damp and cold morning wind, he took a deep breath and replied softly.

"Maybe I had a good dream."

Jiang Yao pushed her bicycle away, and Jiang Lin also straddled his old mountain bike and pedaled off in the other direction.

While the two were going their separate ways, the anti-theft door of the apartment building was pushed open once more.

Jiang Yao's mother, Zhou Qin, walked out carrying a light blue eco-friendly bag.

Uncle Li on the first floor was watering several pots of Chinese roses at the doorway with a spray can. Seeing Zhou Qin come out, he smiled and greeted her, "Teacher Zhou, going to buy groceries? I just saw your Yao Yao and old Jiang's boy heading out together. It's been quite a while since the two kids walked together, hasn't it?"

Zhou Qin stopped, tucked her hair that was hanging down to her temples behind her ear, looked at Jiang Lin's figure already blending into the street traffic, and sighed softly.

"We just happened to bump into each other," Zhou Qin smiled, her tone carrying the politeness and realism unique to adults. "We're not heading the same way. Yao Yao is going to middle school, and he's going to No. 7 High School; the directions are completely different."

"That's true," Uncle Li put down the spray can. "However, Jiang Lin seems to be in quite high spirits today. He even knew to hold the door for your Yao Yao when going out. He's becoming sensible."

"Sensible he may be, but it's just a pity."

Zhou Qin's gaze held a bit of an elder's pity, but this pity floated on the surface, beneath which was much more of a sense of relief that her own child was striving and capable.

"Uncle Li, you watched the two of them grow up. How clever was Jiang Lin when he was little? Back in elementary school, he could solve Olympiad math problems even faster than Yao Yao. Who would have thought that after getting playful in middle school, he couldn't even pass the exam for a key high school."

"Boys, you know, they wake up mentally later," Uncle Li smoothed things over.

"This isn't a matter of waking up late," Zhou Qin shook her head, lowering her voice slightly, as if reviewing an unsellable commodity that had already been labeled. "Going to a high school like No. 7 High School is just muddling through days. I ran into his mother yesterday and we chatted casually; she said his grades at No. 7 High School are just so-so, right in the middle. Just think, a mid-tier student from No. 7 High School can at best test into a tier-two university, and if luck is bad, maybe they can only go to a vocational college."

She withdrew her gaze and patted the handle of the eco-friendly bag.

"So I's saying, on this path of life, if you fall behind one step, you fall behind every step. No matter how smart they look when they're little, it's all in vain if they don't walk down the right path. From now on, as for him and our Yao Yao, I'm afraid they won't even be able to have a conversation on the same wavelength."

...

Meanwhile, Jiang Lin was completely unaware of these adults' final verdicts behind his back, and even if he had heard them, he probably would have just brushed it off with a smile.

Riding his bike on the street leading to school, he felt like an alien visiting an aquarium.

The flickering traffic lights at the intersection, the buses with blaring horns, the middle-aged women pushing carts selling breakfast, and the secondary school students walking together in school uniforms.

Noisy, vibrant.

A sight to behold.

The school gate.

The iron gate of Jiangcheng No. 7 High School was half open, the security guard's room was lit, and the duty teacher was standing at the entrance patrolling.

A few students sprinting in the nick of time shouted "Morning, teacher" while bending over and darting inside.

Squares of light shone behind the windows of the teaching building, and the school flag fluttered slightly in the wind.

He stood at the school gate, looking at this iron gate. A piece of paint on the iron gate had chipped off, revealing the rust-red primer underneath.

"Jiang Lin?"

He turned his head.

Sun Ming stood behind him, his round face wearing a look of confusion as to why he was daydreaming here.

His school uniform was worn wide open, revealing a cartoon T-shirt underneath. He was clutching half a bun in his hand, with a bit of oil stained at the corner of his mouth.

Jiang Lin looked at him.

Sun Ming's face was fat and round, his chin and neck blending into one piece, and a pimple had grown on his forehead, red and almost ripe.

His hair definitely hadn't been washed last night, sticking to his scalp in strands.

The bun in his left hand was sour cowpea-stuffed, because the scent drifting from his mouth carried the unique sour aroma of pickled cowpeas.

"Old Jiang, are you possessed?"

Sun Ming reached out and waved his hand in front of his eyes.

Jiang Lin blinked.

"No, let's go."

He pushed his bike and stepped into the school gate.

Sun Ming followed along beside him, chewing the bun in his mouth, mumbling incoherently about the English test paper handed out by the Extinction Nun last Saturday; for the third question of the cloze test, he had chosen A, but the answer key said C, and he still couldn't figure out why it was C.

Wasn't Sun Ming lying flat?

How come it felt like he suddenly sat up?

Although Jiang Lin found his deskmate's change strange, he still asked what question it was.

After knowing what the question was, he answered without hesitation, "The third question tests the subjunctive mood."

"Huh?"

Sun Ming's chewing motion paused for a second.

"For clauses following wish that are contrary to past facts, use had done. What was mentioned before was about yesterday, so option C is chosen."

Sun Ming was stunned for two seconds: "How do you know that?"

Jiang Lin did not answer.

He knew because that question—he had done it in the Wasteland.

It wasn't the exact same question, but the same type of question.

He had done countless subjunctive mood questions, doing them forward, backward, modifying the options, and recreating them himself.

In his mind, the subjunctive mood wasn't a grammar rule; it was a mode of thinking.

How English expresses hypotheses contrary to fact, how to distinguish unreality in the past, present, and future.

He didn't need to know that the third question's answer was C.

When he saw the stem of the question, the answer floated up automatically, just like seeing spots on potato leaves and automatically knowing what fertilizer to apply.

Walking into the classroom of Grade 3 Class 4 at Jiangcheng No. 7 High School, a wave of noise rushed toward his face.