Results

Li Qingqing sat in front of her laptop, busily focused on entering all the information from the stack of papers to her left into a spreadsheet.

This had originally been her father's job. After finishing her homework, she had volunteered to help him out.

Her father, whom she had replaced, stood behind her now, stretching his somewhat stiff body as he watched his daughter's earnest back.

His eyes were full of tenderness.

He had originally thought that after his wife passed away, his daughter would be consumed by grief and unable to pull herself out of it. But unexpectedly, he was the one who had sunk into despair, while it was this daughter—whom he had thought was "still too young to understand"—who comforted and encouraged him to emerge from his pain...

It was as though his daughter had grown up overnight on the day his wife died, becoming sensible and mature, even though she had only been ten then.

But if he had a choice, Li Ziqiang would rather his daughter not be so mature. He wished she could still act spoiled with her parents like other girls her age, innocent and untouched by the ways of the world.

What parent would ever want their ten-year-old child to grow up too soon?

Behind every prematurely mature child, there was perhaps a drastic upheaval in life.

Li Qingqing had no idea what her father was thinking as he watched her back. She was intently entering the data, all the while searching for a familiar name.

Hu Lai, Hu Lai, Hu Lai, Hu Lai...

Each time she entered a name, she silently repeated it to herself, seeing whether it matched.

One person after another, she entered the names. Then, at last, that familiar name appeared.

The moment she saw Hu Lai's name, Li Qingqing perked up.

But then she became nervous and uneasy, worried that Hu Lai's results would be too awful to bear...

The first item was the physical fitness test, which had only one event: the 5–25-meter shuttle run.

Along the twenty-five-meter distance from the starting line to the finish line, there was a turnaround line every five meters. Including the finish line, there were five in total. Every time examinees reached a turnaround line, they had to touch the marker on the ground with their hand before turning back. After running back to the starting line, they turned around again and ran back.

They repeated this until reaching the finish line, then made one final turn and ran back to the starting line, for a total running distance of one hundred and fifty meters.

Only then was the entire test complete, and the time for the process was recorded.

This physical test accounted for twenty points out of the total one hundred, meaning a perfect score here was twenty points.

Li Qingqing's job was to enter each participant's individual result into the electronic spreadsheet, then assign a score according to the grading chart. Once all the individual test scores were in, the spreadsheet's automatic sum function would calculate the total score.

That score was the key basis for determining who could join the school team and who was not qualified to do so.

According to the 5–25-meter shuttle run score chart her father had devised, a full score of twenty required a time of thirty-two seconds. In other words, the full one hundred and fifty meters had to be completed in no more than thirty-two seconds to earn full marks.

As far as Li Qingqing knew, this requirement was actually much lower than the standards at the football academy where her father had once worked.

That was surely because this was an ordinary full-time high school, not a professional football school that scouted promising young players from all over the country. They could not apply the same standards, or they might not even recruit ten people from the entire school...

Li Qingqing first glanced at Hu Lai's time: 38.43 seconds.

Since she had already entered enough people's data, Li Qingqing no longer needed to look at the score chart to work out Hu Lai's score.

Seven points.

Thirty-two seconds was full marks, with one point deducted for every half-second. Seven points covered the range from 38.01 to 38.50 seconds.

With a full score of twenty, seven points did not even reach the passing line...

For comparison, Luo Kai, who had been highly regarded all along, had clocked 31.03 seconds—faster than the time required for full marks.

But Li Qingqing was not surprised by this result. Based on what she knew about Hu Lai, she actually felt it was perfectly normal—Hu Lai had never been someone with particularly outstanding athletic ability. Besides, he had at least completed the test. Among those who had signed up, there were even some who could not finish it at all.

The 5–25-meter shuttle run mainly tested a player's explosiveness and endurance. Though the total distance did not look like much—only one hundred and fifty meters—it was incredibly exhausting to run. Without specialized training, someone who went straight into it might find their legs giving out before they could finish the course.

During the test, many participants lay sprawled near the starting line, staring blankly up at the sky as heavy panting rose and fell around them. It was quite a spectacle.

Li Qingqing did not spend too much time on Hu Lai's first test result, lest her father notice anything unusual.

She began entering Hu Lai's results for the skills portion.

The one-minute keepie-uppie total was worth ten points at full marks, requiring at least one hundred and fifty touches.

Hu Lai managed seventy-one, barely earning four points. He had come close to dropping into the three-point bracket.

The second skills test was called fixed-point passing accuracy. As the name suggested, players had to pass the football toward designated fixed points to test the accuracy of their passing.

At distances of twenty, twenty-five, and thirty meters from the starting line stood three sets of concentric circles, each with three rings. The participants kicked the football from the starting line toward the targets, and the score depended on which ring the ball ultimately landed in. For the twenty- and twenty-five-meter targets, the inner ring was worth three points, the middle ring two, and the outer ring one. For the thirty-meter target, the inner ring was worth four points, the middle ring three, and the outer ring one.

Each target was attempted twice, with only the better result counted. The scores from all three targets were then added together for a maximum of ten points.

Hu Lai scored three points—he hit the middle and outer rings of the nearest, twenty-meter target once each, for a cumulative total of three points.

The third individual test was dribbling through poles and shooting, the event Li Qingqing had specifically told Hu Lai to practice before the test.

Although he had practiced it specifically, Hu Lai's result was still far from good. His final score was six points, with a total time of 14.33 seconds.

A perfect score for the dribbling-and-shooting test required a time of ten seconds. In other words, any time under ten seconds earned full marks.

After entering results for so long, Li Qingqing had seen only one person achieve that: Luo Kai, Hu Lai's and her classmate, the sports committee member of Class 2, Year 1. His completion time had been 8.25 seconds.

Her father had said that Luo Kai was the strongest among the newcomers. Judging by this result, he had not been wrong.

But Li Qingqing cared more about Hu Lai's results.

The entire test, including tomorrow's match portion, was worth one hundred points in total. Hu Lai currently had only twenty points...

Although her father had said that selection for the school team would not be based entirely on scores, scores were still bound to be a very important reference.

Judging solely from his current results, it was nearly as hard as reaching the heavens for Hu Lai to join the school team. It was completely impossible.

Li Qingqing had known this outcome all along, but now that it had truly come to pass, she realized that she still felt a little heartbroken for Hu Lai.

Perhaps Hu Lai's seriousness during the special training had affected her, or perhaps the sight of him riding away crookedly on his bicycle that evening had touched her...

She had never considered what meaning there was in Hu Lai joining the school team with his level of ability. She simply wanted him to make the team, because it was Hu Lai's goal—and her wish as well.

After entering all of Hu Lai's results, Li Qingqing paused briefly before continuing with everyone else's scores, silently offering a prayer for Hu Lai in her heart.

Tomorrow's practice match... if a miracle could happen, then let it happen just once.