Saving money by going hungry was no long-term solution.
We could only watch as the high-paying jobs promised before we came failed to materialize.
Every one of us was looking for another way to make a living.
Young people were always full of boundless hope.
We figured that even if Sister Feng couldn't find us high-paying jobs, once we learned the ropes ourselves, we would eventually have a chance to make big money.
After all, we had already paid the first year's tuition before coming. We just had to tough it out for another two or three months, and things would get better once we understood how things worked here.
We clung to that hope and gritted our teeth.
One evening, for once, all of us were together.
The four newcomers sharing our room stayed home whenever we could to save money.
Getting the four of us together wasn't hard.
The rare part was having Sister Feng there, along with her elusive boyfriend.
We had heard that Sister Feng's boyfriend came from a wealthy family, and that they were already talking about marriage.
But ever since we arrived in Singapore, we had hardly seen him. We had no idea what kept him so busy.
On this rare occasion, everyone was there, sitting in the living room and chatting.
Du Le and the others had just graduated. They had little experience of the world and were too embarrassed to bring up how our current jobs, paying only a few hundred dollars, fell far short of what had been promised.
I was a tongue-tied bookworm. If they wouldn't say anything, I certainly wouldn't either.
As everyone traded empty small talk, I quietly observed them.
Sister Feng's boyfriend had a full forehead and a broad, square chin, features that did indeed suggest someone likely to benefit from his ancestors' good fortune.
But he had triangular eyes.
People with triangular eyes were stubborn.
Combined with his protruding cheekbones and the cross-shaped lines at his temples, that did not bode well.
Those features indicated a malicious heart, a violent temper, and a strong tendency toward domestic abuse.
I remembered the lines beneath Sister Feng's eyes when I first met her and silently sighed for her.
Uncle Feng and his family had always thought they had landed themselves a rich heir, and bragged about it everywhere.
Yet who could know what thorns lay hidden beneath that facade of prosperity?
They went on chatting about this and that.
But all I could think about was how to cover next month's living expenses. I really wasn't in the mood to exchange insincere pleasantries with them.
Our situation seemed to have reached a dead end.
An idea struck me. I suddenly wanted to examine the others' fortunes, to see how they would get out of this predicament and whether I could learn anything from them.
Without letting it show, I mentally cast a divination for Sun Qirui and Du Le using Plum Blossom Numerology.
The results startled me. You really couldn't judge people by appearances.
Both of them would actually earn their way out of this predicament by selling their physical labor.
The difference was that Sun Qirui would sell the pleasures of his body.
Du Le, on the other hand, would rely on genuine hard labor.
I wasn't sure exactly what they would do, but neither approach was one I could follow.
Bored, I stood up and returned to the bedroom, unwilling to listen to any more of their endless blather.
People on different paths had no common ground.
Classes were about to begin. The school was on Geylang Lane 20.
When I had gone there to complete the enrollment paperwork, I had wondered why a national university was so small. It didn't even have a sports field.
Then I had reassured myself. Singapore wasn't even one ten-thousandth the size of China, so it was only natural for its schools to be small.
Only when classes officially began did I realize:
This wasn't a national university!
I wasn't enrolled in a postgraduate program!
My major wasn't even the one I had originally studied!
The year's tuition they had collected before we came hadn't been paid in full either. They had paid for only four months!
In other words, on top of worrying about food and rent, I now had to come up with tuition for a few months down the road!!!!!
The wrong school!
The wrong major!
The wrong qualification!
The wrong tuition payment!
The wrong job!
More importantly, only then did I learn from the other students that our school was private!
And Singaporean law allowed only students at government schools to work part-time!
For private-school students, working part-time was illegal! If we were caught, we would be deported!
That meant the few hundred dollars we earned slaving away washing dishes weren't even legal. We were risking deportation at any moment!
Oh, for fuck's sake. If the government wouldn't let us work, there was no point thinking about ways to get by.
Before coming, I had planned to send whatever was left of my monthly earnings home to help my family.
Now, not only could I not send money home, I had to rely on my family to transfer living expenses over in sums of ten thousand at a time.
We all came from working families. I couldn't make mine spend years living in debt just so I could attend this lousy private school.
They hadn't left us a single way to survive!
The glorious future I had once imagined shattered completely at that moment.
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