Leisure

After returning home from his walk, Liu Chang'an discovered a text message on the phone he hadn't taken with him.

The message was from his deskmate, An Nuan.

An Nuan was a tall eighteen-year-old girl. In a southern region like Junsha, it was rare to see a girl over 1.7 meters tall, which made An Nuan quite the head-turner at school, not to mention she was the captain and star player of the school volleyball team.

Unlike the common perception of female athletes having masculine features and muscular builds, An Nuan was known as the Altynbekova Sabina of Xiangnan University High School.

Sabina was a world-renowned volleyball beauty; An Nuan was also a volleyball beauty, just without the international competition experience and the same level of fame. She did, however, have quite a following on social media and was a highly popular volleyball beauty at Xiangnan University High School.

Liu Chang'an and An Nuan had a good relationship. They had been in the same class for three years and deskmates for one, and since An Nuan was indeed very beautiful, even if Liu Chang'an felt that beauty and skeletons were but a thin line apart, such a rare beauty was still a pleasant sight to behold.

"Are you coming to class tomorrow?"

"I am."

Liu Chang'an replied to the text, turned on the television, and watched a variety show for a while, but found it rather boring. After all, he couldn't grasp many of the punchlines that were based on a special sense of identification with the status of a "celebrity."

He switched to the news, which featured the birthday of an old revolutionary. There were few left from that generation.

The news segment was short, but it mentioned all the necessary names, reminding people that these elders were still respected and still held significant influence.

Yet, people are prone to forgetfulness. Aside from their student days, as they gradually enter society, start working, and face the pressures of life, much of the knowledge that doesn't directly benefit their current work or life is forgotten—including history that shouldn't be forgotten, and people who shouldn't be forgotten.

Liu Chang'an laid out paper, picked up a brush, and wrote: "The Immortal strokes my crown, I bind my hair to attain eternal life."

Liu Chang'an was quite satisfied with his calligraphy. He wasn't someone with special talent for it, but calligraphy is the sort of thing where, if you practice enough, the characters won't end up looking bad. If you practice far more than the average person, they naturally end up looking very good.

"Little Liu, come play mahjong."

"Coming."

Someone was calling from outside. In the afternoons or after dinner in Junsha, it was always time to call for mahjong. The streets and alleys were filled with mahjong parlors, and in some older residential complexes, small mahjong dens were clustered together.

The mahjong popular in Junsha was called Zhuanzhuan Mahjong. You could only "pong" tiles; you couldn't "chow" tiles discarded by others. You could win by catching a discard or by self-drawing. Once you won, you stepped down and someone else took your place.

The people playing Zhuanzhuan Mahjong here were all elderly. The stakes were 1 yuan per win, and 2 yuan per person for a self-drawn win—it could be said to be quite small. For the past ten years, this had been the customary, small-scale way of playing here. In the world of the elderly, time seemed to have stagnated, unaffected by the external economy or prices; after all, it was just for entertainment.

"It's Little Liu. Try to win a little less, will you?"

"Don't worry, don't worry. When I was his age, I was much better. I'm still strong for my age now."

"You old geezer, when you were young, you couldn't even afford a pair of pants, let alone play mahjong!"

Liu Chang'an sat down and played at a leisurely pace. The elderly played mahjong slowly, drawing tiles bit by bit, pondering for a while, picking them up, looking hesitantly at the tile the previous player had just discarded, considering it for a moment, putting it back, checking their own hand, looking at the tiles on the table, thinking, then picking the tile back up, looking at it, slowly pulling it in, carefully organizing their hand, checking the state of the table again, holding a tile in hesitation for a long time, picking and choosing, and finally discarding a different tile. They would nervously watch the expressions of the others, and only then, with a hint of trepidation, release their hand. If no one won, they would finally feel at ease, having avoided being the one to deal the winning tile.

Most young people didn't have the patience to play mahjong with the elderly. Only Liu Chang'an could be so steady and calm, as if he were one of them, synchronizing with their movements, slow and composed.

After playing for the whole evening, Liu Chang'an had won twenty yuan, which left one of the old men feeling indignant. He grumbled that Liu Chang'an had won at least fifty yuan from him this year, counting off the games he remembered Liu Chang'an winning, wiping the foam from the corner of his mouth, and then forgetting what he was about to say. In the end, he could only glare at Liu Chang'an with resentment, agreeing to a rematch next time, vowing to win until Liu Chang'an had to pawn his pants.

Who would pawn their pants these days? Pawnshops only accept things that can actually be sold, Liu Chang'an thought with a smile.

Waking up in the morning, the faint light of dawn couldn't even reach Liu Chang'an's room, but he still got up on time and went out for a run.

Passing by the Baolong Center, he saw from a distance that girl named Zhu Juntang, idly looking around while holding a black Rottweiler on a leash. Liu Chang'an mused that he should change his running route in the future.

After returning home and finishing breakfast, Liu Chang'an rolled up the calligraphy he had written the night before, put it in a tube, sent it via courier, and then headed to school.

The school Liu Chang'an attended was Xiangnan University Affiliated High School, a national-level key high school directly under the Xiangnan Province Department of Education. It had a strong faculty, excellent college entrance rates and reputation, and very strict management. It was rare for someone like Liu Chang'an to skip an entire day of school for a two-hundred-yuan job.

His homeroom teacher, Huang Shan, was at the school gate, seemingly waiting just for him.

"You're telling me you skipped class yesterday just to earn two hundred yuan?" Huang Shan looked at Liu Chang'an in disbelief. "Don't you have a sense of priority? Compared to the college entrance exam, which determines your life, what is two hundred yuan worth?"

If it weren't the second semester of his senior year, and if the college entrance exam weren't so close, Huang Shan would have made him copy the school rules ten times over.

His explanation was actually that someone had given him two hundred yuan to do a job? Compared to the college entrance exam that concerned his entire life, what was two hundred yuan?

"Two hundred yuan is not a small amount, and I was reviewing and doing problems at home afterward," Liu Chang'an said apologetically.

Huang Shan knew Liu Chang'an's family situation. Considering that while he had never been particularly well-behaved, he was definitely not a student who lacked discipline, and his grades were quite good, Huang Shan couldn't be bothered to say much more. Nowadays, the school was more concerned with the mental state and physical health of senior students approaching the exam, and they wouldn't be as strict or heavy-handed as they were with freshmen or sophomores, so as not to increase the students' pressure and negative emotions.

Although it was a flagship high school in Xiangnan, several other key high schools in Junsha were on par with them in terms of faculty and college entrance rates, and some were even catching up. The pressure on the school's college entrance exam results this year was quite high.

When all was said and done, only the college entrance exam success rate and the admission rate to prestigious domestic and international universities decided everything. With the exam approaching, Huang Shan didn't intend to haggle too much with a student like Liu Chang'an, who could help stabilize the school's prestigious university admission rate.