Chapter 33

Chapter 34: An unpredictable life

"Hey, what took you two so long? Didn't I call half an hour ago? Hurry and bring the display cabinets in. We'll eat here at noon. I ordered noodles." His mother seemed impatient. The workers delivering the glass had only just arrived, and the boxes of merchandise were stacked up, waiting to be inventoried and put on the shelves one by one. None of that could be done without his father's help.

It was midday in summer. Light filtered through the canopy of camphor trees covering the street outside, piercing the white fluff drifting through the air and falling in alluring, faintly rosy rays. Patches of light covered the ground. The large shop behind him, over eighty square meters in size, was their family's store. A refreshing scent drifted through the air, born of the clean air of eleven years ago and the fragrance of camphor trees.

He had heard that shortly after his mother decided on the larger storefront, his second brother-in-law Jia Zheng and Mei Lan had settled on the smaller shop nearby. That was the shop his mother had rented later in his previous life. On his days off during high school, Su Can would often take an armful of books rented from a nearby book rental shop and lean against a tree in a sunny spot, reading for most of the afternoon.

Those slow summer hours, filled with the scent of books and the faint sweat of sitting too long, had once truly flowed past.

The great awakening of a fleeting life was no more than waking from a dream.

Before this, Su Can had been just another ordinary white-collar worker approaching thirty, one of countless people desperately scrambling to make a living in big cities, not even daring to speak of dreams. He had endured countless setbacks and hardships and experienced the warmth and coldness of human relations, showing signs of aging before his time. Yet now, everything in his past seemed like a bizarre, kaleidoscopic dream, before supernatural forces dragged him back to the small city where he had lived at sixteen.

The great wheel of fate had paused, reversed, then started again, slowly grinding forward.

This was where his fate began anew. He had never thought of becoming some high-ranking official after returning to the past, or making waves in international finance. He was only an ordinary, insignificant person, without that sort of courage or ambition. Even with foreknowledge, if he were naive enough to think he could pit his schemes and methods against the world's sharpest minds, he reckoned he might well die without even knowing how it had happened.

His dream was simple and practical: not to live as pathetically as he had before his rebirth. Even if his fate improved just a little, his standard of living rose a little, his parents no longer worried about him, and he found a beautiful woman to marry, he would be satisfied.

The family of three ate their takeout noodles in the shop. Then his father began setting the glass panels onto the shelves one by one, while his mother counted the newly purchased stock and discussed things with him. "Now that we have our own shop, you'll need to come down and help out often. It's only a block from home anyway. I can't always manage everything here alone, and there are times when I need to use the bathroom, too. We both need to put some effort into this. Su Can will be starting high school soon, and after three years, he'll be going to university. We've put all our savings into this. Over these three years, we'll have to find a way to save up some money for his university education."

His father nodded, making plans of his own. Whenever he could get away from the company, he would try to come down and help in the shop. Everything was only just beginning, and they really could not leave the store unattended.

"Mom, why not consider hiring someone? That way, you'll have more energy for other things, like buying stock and doing the accounts. You won't have to handle every little thing yourselves. Wouldn't that be better?" Su Can could not bear it. In his previous life, his parents had stayed in their little shop, handling everything themselves. Over time, they had gradually grown haggard, and his mother had even developed swollen, painful joints and an aching lower back because of it.

Thinking about it, years of overwork had also contributed to his father's cervical spine problems. Looking at his parents, still in the prime of middle age, Su Can felt a faint ache in his heart.

"You're already thinking about hiring someone? Where would the money come from? The rent alone is fifteen hundred a month. Add utilities and taxes, and we'll probably have to put in twenty-five hundred every month. If we hire someone, we'd have to pay at least five hundred a month, wouldn't we? That brings the costs to three thousand. This shop would have to make at least three thousand a month just to break even. Rather than give that money to someone else, we might as well earn it ourselves!"

Su Can smiled. His parents always clung to a set of old-fashioned ideas. They always felt that if they could do something themselves, why not do it themselves? Hiring help was simply handing money to someone else.

In fact, their original intention in opening this shop was only to make a living. They had none of Mei Lan and Jia Zheng's ambition to expand and strengthen the business, so it had never occurred to them to hire someone to manage the little shop while they handled only the money and business contacts, or even developed other chain stores.

That was why, even after many years in business, the shop would remain the same, with the risk of even going backward. Their age was also a factor: they sought stability more than anything and did not dare take risks.

Su Can understood that his parents' thinking could not be changed overnight. If he truly wanted them to lead a different life, the most important thing was to change their outlook. Of course, that could not be accomplished in a day, much less by offering a few lofty arguments and persuading them to act.

The most important thing right now was for this shop to make money and prove what it could do. Without concrete support, all those so-called dreams and plans were empty talk.

The second thing was to increase his influence over his parents.

After making his parents pay extra fees for his schooling all along and disappointing them time after time, Su Can had next to no personal influence over them. They regarded everything he said as impractical and unworthy of consideration. He could not really blame anyone else for that, only himself for failing to give his parents more confidence in him.

So if he wanted to change their outlook, his first priority was to increase his influence and let them see his abilities. The high school entrance exam had only been a small test of his skills. There was a much broader world ahead in which to develop.

"Besides, I'm still a little worried about choosing this place. It's just a single street, and it isn't in a good commercial location. We shouldn't have decided so quickly. What would a child like you know, anyway?"

His mother frowned. The more she thought about the future, the more uneasy she felt. After all, the family's entire savings had gone into this. Although she had been full of enthusiasm and confidence at first, once she worked through the figures carefully, the shop needed to bring in at least twenty-five hundred a month in profit.

Although the profit margins on these little stationery items were decent, their selling prices were very low. A pen sold for one yuan, and some for fifty cents. Even a better eraser cost only one yuan fifty. Only fountain pens might fetch a little more. How many of these odds and ends would they have to sell each month just to avoid losing money, let alone support the family?

Su Can was not sure either. Although his family had worked in this line of business before, any conclusion drawn before something reached its final outcome was premature. Perhaps the business was still slow to take off at this point, and his parents might see no results when they first started, fail to make money, or even lose money! It was possible that their confidence would suffer a blow.

He could not confidently tell them now that this would definitely make money in the future. In everyone else's eyes, that would probably look like sheer arrogance!

Only then did Su Can realize that reality was nowhere near as simple as he had imagined. The joy of rebirth had gone to his head, and he had overlooked the fact that this was not a novel, much less a movie. Fate was far more elusive and harder to grasp than he had imagined.

When would he truly be able to hold it firmly in his hands?

Life was calm and uneventful. No beautiful woman appeared out of nowhere to disturb it, nor did any sudden, blood-stirring incident break up the routine. The uneventful month of July passed just like that, and August brought admissions announcements from the various schools in Xiahai City.

The cutoff scores had been posted.

The cutoff for Xiahai City's Third Middle School was 490, neither particularly high nor low, and in line with previous years. Second Middle School's cutoff was 535. Many students hovering around the threshold breathed a sigh of relief, including Su Can's close friend Liu Rui, who had been worrying about his score every day lately. He had scored 543, which meant he had narrowly made it in. Other, less prominent schools naturally could not compare, and their cutoffs were even lower.

What everyone eagerly awaited was First Middle School's cutoff announcement. For Xiahai City as a whole, the admission score of First Middle School, the leading authority in local education, reflected one aspect of the city's highest educational standards and the heights its best students could reach.

Xiahai City's posted cutoff lived up to expectations by remaining high. The 610-point threshold deterred countless people and eliminated quite a few students from No. 1 High School's own junior division whose grades had hovered near the borderline.

But students who had attended First Middle School could be so proud that they would never consider going anywhere else. Moreover, No. 1 High School had a preferential policy for its own students paying extra for admission: their enrollment fees were halved. Its admissions season therefore reached a peak.

Just as admissions at No. 1 High School were in full swing, a problem arose for Su Can. School preferences had been submitted before the exam, before his rebirth. Back then, he naturally could never have imagined scoring a remarkable 645, so he had taken it for granted that City No. 3 Middle School should be his first choice.

Thus, Su Can's 645 points were enough to put First Middle School beneath his feet, looking up at him, yet his next step was about to take him through the gates of No. 3 High School.