Chapter 18

Chapter 19: A walk in the park

Chinese was in the afternoon. Su Can breezed through the paper all the way to the essay, tackling phonetic notation and error correction. The reading comprehension passage on the 1998 high school entrance exam was Zhu Ziqing's "Spring," with its themes of "longing for spring," "bidding spring farewell," and "depicting spring." Su Can actually found himself enjoying the reading, though the questions were exceedingly simple and took no effort to answer.

The essay prompt was rather unusual: "Give me one day." The mere six hundred character boxes gave Su Can the impression that this was some sort of joke. Compared with the meticulously reasoned reports of thousands or even tens of thousands of characters he would routinely have to write in later years, the required length of this essay barely tickled.

Su Can thought his writing might be considerably more mature than that of his current peers, but what should he write on a subject like this? Accustomed to writing at great length in later years, he honestly found it somewhat difficult to distill something essential into six hundred characters.

An idea flashed through Su Can's mind, and he retrieved numerous fragments and images from his memory. He raised his pen, only to hesitate again. If he wrote it this way, what effect would it have on the present course of events? But there seemed to be no other choice now. In the end, Su Can picked up his fountain pen and began writing across the exam paper with a steady scratching sound.

This time, Su Can handed in his paper much later, waiting until nearly an hour and forty minutes had passed, right as the bell rang to signal the final twenty minutes. The invigilator, Xiao Rihua, could not help giving him a second look. Judging from his performance in the morning's math exam, this kid had been pretty quick to hand in his paper, coming right after Lingshan. But more students had handed theirs in afterward, so Xiao Rihua had not had a chance to spread out Su Can's paper and see how well he had answered. Still, judging by his performance in Chinese today, squeezing out a six-hundred-character essay had been like struggling to take a dump. He was probably no standout in moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, or practical development.

When Su Can left the exam room, he naturally knew nothing of Xiao Rihua's thoughts. He was still wavering over his essay. Had writing it that way been right or wrong?

The first day of exams soon passed. Everyone stuck to the principle of not comparing answers or reviewing questions. Once home, Su Can switched on Xinwen Lianbo and even watched Xiahai City's local news. The focus of the local news that day was their high school entrance exam, with footage of parents waiting eagerly outside the school's iron gates. It was quite a sight.

Neither of his parents disturbed Su Can as he quietly watched the news. To them, his recent behavior had been astonishing. The way he watched Xinwen Lianbo with such intent eyes bore no resemblance to their son, who used to be so interested in Hong Kong and Taiwanese martial arts shows. This unfamiliar feeling left his parents somewhat dazed, yet brought them an indescribable sense of gratification.

Inside, however, Su Can was in turmoil. In 1998, natural causes had triggered flooding along the Yangtze River, the republic's largest river, and the regions along it had been struck by catastrophic floods. This was the second flood disaster since the founding of the People's Republic, more than forty years after the previous one, yet the resulting property losses had been even more severe.

As he remembered it, Xiahai City had not been seriously affected because it was not in the Yangtze River region. Still, continuous heavy rain and breaches in upstream riverbanks had left the lower parts of the city under as much as half a meter of water, causing some property losses for Xiahai's residents. Ground-floor shops in some commercial districts had been flooded, along with an equipment room, and the entire city's telecommunications network had probably been cut off for three days at the time.

None of this had affected Su Can much back then. His clearest memory was of passing through that district one evening on his way home with his parents, when the water had reached halfway up his waist and abdomen. That was why the flood had remained so vivid in his memory. By his reckoning, it had happened in the second half of 1998.

Now Xinwen Lianbo was reporting widespread June rainfall across the Yangtze River basin, and some experts had already expressed concern. Experts in this era were rather different from those in his future. Most experts of this time had genuine knowledge and skill, and dressed quite plainly when appearing on television. One look told you they were academics, fundamentally different from the sham experts and so-called professors of the future. Thus, the heavy rainfall beginning in June had already attracted some experts' attention.

Su Can naturally did not know exactly when the floods would break out, but at least there had been no reports of a disaster so far, confirming that none of it had happened yet. What he could do was certainly not wave a banner and shout that an enormous disaster was coming. That would only make countless people think he was crazy.

Whether the disaster could now be prevented depended on whether his essay received recognition.

On the second day, English was in the morning, followed by a combined physics and chemistry exam in the afternoon.

The English recording featured heavily conversational speech, which might have been fairly difficult for the room as a whole. For Su Can, however, it was almost instantly comprehensible. It was not that his English was particularly good; even in the future, he had failed to pass the College English Test Band 4 at his third-rate university. But his Band 3 level presented no obstacle when it came to ordinary greetings and everyday exchanges about taking a bus somewhere.

Neither the reading comprehension nor even the English essay, which asked them to write a letter welcoming a foreign friend to visit Xiahai, posed any obstacle.

As he worked through the paper, Su Can grew increasingly comfortable. The girl with glasses beside him rose, revealing her shapely figure, and left without looking to either side, just as before. Su Can handed in his paper right after her. When he stepped out of the exam room, the entire square was noticeably quieter. Anyone who dared hand in their paper and leave at this point was formidable.

The afternoon brought the combined science exam.

For Su Can, who could handle even the internal practice questions with ease, the many traps in these questions did not prevent him from checking for gaps and correcting oversights. By the time the bell rang at the half-hour mark to permit submissions, he was already working on the final question.

Three minutes later, he finished answering, then filled in the machine-readable answer sheet and gave everything a quick check. That settled it.

Exactly forty minutes had passed since the exam began.

No one had handed in a paper.

Bored out of his mind, Su Can had no desire to sit there for another forty minutes or so. He put away his pencil and plug, packed his stationery into its bag, and abruptly stood.

The girl with glasses beside him, who was tackling the chemistry questions, turned to look.

Xiao Rihua, who had been growing drowsy in the stifling atmosphere, looked blankly at Su Can.

Several of the top-performing First Middle School students in the room could not help staring at Su Can in astonishment. This paper was fairly difficult, though it was generally within their abilities. But surely there was no need to be so freakishly good that he finished the whole thing in forty minutes?!

When he walked out of the exam room, Su Can finally understood what utter stillness felt like.

Every classroom was packed with examinees, yet everyone was writing furiously, battling for their futures. On the surface, the atmosphere was stifling; beneath it, the struggle was extraordinarily perilous.

Yet all of it seemed to have nothing to do with him. Su Can walked down the corridor toward the stairs, then left. As he passed one exam room, two people inside showed expressions of disbelief. One was Dong Qingyun, the deputy class monitor from Third Middle School. He could not understand why Su Can had handed in his paper and left so early. Had he given up?

The other was Tang Wu. Watching Su Can pass along the corridor outside the classroom and disappear beyond the windows, she had roughly the same thought as Dong Qingyun. Somewhat disappointed, she lowered her head and continued writing.

The final half-day brought the combined humanities exam in history and politics, which were also Su Can's weak subjects.

When he entered the exam room, everyone looked at him with a peculiar expression. Yesterday, it had taken another twenty minutes after he handed in his paper for the next person to submit theirs, and that person was the highest-performing First Middle School student in this room. In Xiao Rihua's eyes, Su Can was probably nothing more than a poor student who had given up on himself. After all, not even the handful of top students bound for Tsinghua and Peking University would dare be so presumptuous.

Sure enough, Su Can was among the first to hand in his politics and history paper too. This time, Xiao Rihua could not resist looking at his answers. They were uneven and sparse, and on many of the reading questions, his writing was nowhere near as densely packed as that of some top students. Xiao Rihua could not help giving a quiet snort, all the more convinced of his guess. This was all Third Middle School amounted to.