Chapter 54: Fighting for a comeback
In July 2001, the Gaokao examination rooms were unbearably hot. Outside No. 27 Middle School in Rongcheng, parents seeing their children off packed the entrance. The school took the initiative to put up sun umbrellas and set up drinking-water stations outside. Some parents suffered heatstroke, while others wept uncontrollably for the students entering the examination rooms. In this season of scorching heat across the country, all the students stepped onto a battlefield that would decide where they would fight for their futures.
By then, Su Can's admission recommendation had already been approved, so he could stay out of it. Although his closest friends firmly insisted that he not see them off, he still made his way around several examination sites to look at the places where his friends were fighting, a faint ache in his heart.
Graduation. At the gatherings, many people streamed with tears, while others smiled as they said goodbye. Those who made the admission lists either rejoiced over or showed off their universities and majors. Some who failed went out into the world to make their way; some found a private university at random to scrape together a diploma; others decided to stay and repeat the year, staking another year of their youth on a bright future. During those days, a few people returned to wander around the school. The green grass did not fly.
Watching everything unfold before him, Su Can felt that many things had changed, while many others were gone.
In October 2001, at his own university, Su Can finally felt that what had changed several months earlier was a magnificent life. Quantitative changes had finally become a qualitative transformation, and the power it brought made him feel the existence of a kind of freedom: freedom from his