36: Chapter 36 The Second Question That Feels Like a Bite in My Throat

At seven in the morning in Jiangcheng, the sky still retained an incomplete leaden grayness.

Most of the shops along the street were closed, with only a few neighborhood breakfast stalls sending up plumes of white steam, creating a small pocket of warm hustle and bustle in the cold, harsh winter.

Jiang Lin habitually kept his hands behind his back, pacing leisurely step by step like an old man out for a morning stroll.

Inside an eighteen-year-old's vibrant shell, a fifty-eight-year-old soul was greedily and quietly observing it all.

He didn't buy anything, nor was he in a rush.

He simply stopped at the intersection, watching the traffic lights change, watching white exhaust fumes puff from car tailpipes, and watching the breakfast auntie use long chopsticks to lift golden, fluffy deep-fried dough sticks out of the boiling oil.

This was a living city.

Rough, real, and full of unpolished vitality.

Jiang Lin watched for nearly an hour, and only when he felt his hands and feet growing somewhat stiff did he slowly walk back the way he came.

He stepped up the somewhat worn concrete stairs, and as he reached the third-floor landing, he saw Jiang Yao standing at his doorway, raising her hand to knock.

Hearing the footsteps on the stairs, she turned her head to look.

Wearing a rice-white long down jacket and a red cashmere scarf, with her hair tied back and a few loose strands at her forehead, they were probably ruffled by the draft in the stairwell as she came down from the fourth floor just moments ago.

Seeing Jiang Lin walking up from downstairs, Jiang Yao's eyes widened slightly and she froze for a fraction of a second.

She seemed completely unprepared for Jiang Lin to be returning from outside on such a cold second day of the Lunar New Year.

"Happy New Year, were you outside?" she asked instinctively.

Jiang Lin walked up the last step and nodded. "Just went out for a walk. Something the matter?"

Looking at Jiang Lin's calm face, Jiang Yao lowered her hand, which had been suspended in mid-air, and nervously pinched the edge of her down jacket pocket. "Sorry to bother you, but there's a problem I'd like to ask for your help with."

Finishing the sentence in one breath, she let out a long sigh of relief as if unloading a heavy burden, her shoulders sagging slightly.

"It's cold outside, let's talk inside."

Jiang Lin let out an acknowledgement, pulled out his key, unlocked the security door, and motioned for Jiang Yao to come in.

Inside, Zhang Xiufen and Jiang Jianguo were sitting on the sofa watching a rebroadcast of the Spring Festival Gala.

Hearing the door open, Zhang Xiufen turned her head and was visibly stunned to see Jiang Yao from upstairs following right behind her returning son.

Then, she put the melon seeds she hadn't cracked open yet back onto the coffee table and stood up with a face full of smiles.

"Happy New Year, Uncle and Auntie." Jiang Yao quickly took her hands out of her pockets and greeted them obediently. Giving a quick glance at Jiang Lin, she added, "I have a problem I'd like to ask Jiang Lin about."

Hearing that it was about a problem, Zhang Xiufen's smile grew even wider, smoothing out the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes.

If this were a few months ago, had Jiang Yao come downstairs to ask Jiang Lin a question, Zhang Xiufen would probably have thought the young girl was joking.

Her own son used to struggle with his studies on his own; every monthly mock exam, wasn't he always struggling right around the tier-two cutoff line? How could he possibly explain problems to a top student from a municipal key high school like Jiangcheng Middle School?

But things were different now.

The words First in the City in the First Mock Exam acted like a prestigious golden signboard, forcibly replacing the lintel of this old family that used to hold its head low before the neighbors.

Now, walking around the residential compound, who wouldn't respectfully call her Jiang Lin's mom when they saw her?

Consequently, other people's children coming over to ask questions had turned into something that made her both overjoyed and unsure of how to act naturally.

Therefore, Zhang Xiufen's smile became even more radiant as she picked up the fruit platter to stuff snacks into Jiang Yao's hands and went to find good tea leaves to brew.

"Auntie, please don't bother, really, I'm just asking one question and will leave soon."

Jiang Yao, already feeling a bit reserved about coming to knock on doors early in the morning on the second day of the Lunar New Year, was now completely flustered by Zhang Xiufen's VIP-treatment array, waving her hands repeatedly in refusal.

"What trouble is this? Sit down, sit down." Zhang Xiufen's maternal smile grew even more affectionate. "Bringing a problem down on the second day of the Lunar New Year must mean it's a super difficult one. Go to the room and talk slowly; the TV outside is noisy."

Jiang Yao's earlobes uncontrollably began to heat up.

Today was the second day of the Lunar New Year.

Everyone knew this wasn't a time to visit someone to ask questions.

In fact, at six in the morning, before the sky was even quite bright, she had already gone downstairs once.

At that time, the entire residential compound was still fast asleep, and all around was dead silent.

Holding the test paper, she stood at the stair turning between the third and fourth floors for about five minutes, raising her hand, then lowering it.

Taking a step forward, then retreating back.

In the end, reason conquered impulse, and she went back the way she came to the fourth floor.

She had originally thought, forget it.

It's just one problem.

It's not like problem-search apps didn't have steps.

Xiaoyuan Search had a detailed analysis version, Zuoyebang had a completely different train of thought, and late last night someone even forwarded an ultimate analysis dug up from who knows where in the school's class group chat.

Every version had steps.

Every version looked very complete.

But the problem was that there was one step in the middle which, no matter how she looked at it, felt completely fabricated out of thin air, like some god-like maneuver dropped straight from heaven.

Just like that, an algebraic transformation appeared without any warning, and then logically led to the final result.

It practically felt like having a fishbone stuck in her throat.

She had encountered this problem at 11:30 last night.

Stuck on the second question.

At midnight, she gritted her teeth, took out her phone which was normally strictly controlled by her mother, and took a photo to search for the problem.

At 12:20, she finished reading the first version of the analysis, her brows tightly knitted.

At 1:00 AM, she finished reading the second version of the analysis.

At 1:40 AM, she forcibly combined the steps of both analyses and copied them down neatly.

2:00 AM. Everything was dead silent.

Looking at her beautifully copied answer, her heart remained empty, and she still didn't understand why that most crucial step could be transformed in that way.

During New Year's Eve dinner, while relatives clinked glasses and exchanged cups around the dining table, her brain was spinning at high speed with various function graphs.

Throughout the entire day of the first day of the Lunar New Year, she buried her head at her desk.

In fact, for most of this winter vacation, apart from being dragged by her mother to the supermarket once to buy New Year goods, she hadn't stepped a single half-step outside her home.

Jiangcheng Middle School's winter vacation homework piled up on her desk.

The red-covered mathematics finale topics, the blue-covered Physics second-round models, and the daily English reading and cloze check-in charts pressed down so heavily that the edge of the desk was almost invisible.

Posted in front of her desk was a glory board of Jiangcheng Middle School's Gaokao from last year.

In the Tsinghua University and Peking University column, there were only six lonely names.

Every day when she got tired of doing problems and looked up, she would see these six names many times.

Every time she looked, she would silently tell herself in her heart not to overthink, not to aim too high, and to do well what was right in front of her.

Her grades were already considered quite good in a place like Jiangcheng Middle School where academic prodigies were everywhere.

In the top thirty of her grade, her head teacher had patted their chest to guarantee in front of her mother at the parent-teacher conference: "Jiang Yao is a down-to-earth child. As long as she performs normally, there's no problem stably getting into a strong 985 university, and with good luck, striving for the Top 5 universities is also hopeful."

Placed in the vast majority of families, this evaluation was already a source of pride sufficient for them to host a three-day banquet.

But there was always a place in human hearts that wouldn't listen to advice.

That secretive corner would quietly ask itself at midnight when the whole world quieted down:

"What if I could walk just a little further ahead?"

"If I don't just want a safe 985, do I also have the chance to touch the height where those six names reside?"

Thus, she tossed and turned.

Hard put to endure until eight o'clock, she reckoned that even on vacation, Jiang Lin, being first in the city, should have gotten up by now. Only then did she pick up her test paper again, put on her down jacket, and go downstairs.