Chapter 14: Secret weapon
Everyone changed in different ways at each stage of life. As children, they could wear split-crotch pants and build forts and play in the sand with their best friends. In secondary school, they walked home with their arms around their friends' shoulders after evening study, pooled money for cigarettes, bought water after PE, and even chipped in for outings. University life had a little less passion. Even meals out were split equally, everyone guarding their own wallet. Few people would wave a hand and generously announce that they were treating everyone who could come. Anyone who did would probably spend the next month or two cadging meals after being cleaned out by that pack of hungry wolves.
Many people might have wanted to relive high school, to experience that simple happiness again.
University was different. After graduation, many people missed their university days and the buddy in the bunk above them. Yet when they gathered years later to reminisce about their youth, most were unwilling to go back and put themselves through university all over again.
Ultimately, perhaps it was because entering university already meant taking a step halfway into society. Their entire lives were like freshly melted candle wax, about to cool and set in the next instant. It was like knowing that one foot had already stepped forward without knowing whether it would land in a fire pit or on level ground. No one wanted to endure that roasting over and over. Yet on the road through university, life's bow was already drawn, its arrow nocked, and their luggage packed and ready. The road ahead, however, was like a world buried beneath a vast snowfall, a boundless blur.
Every person, every arrow, shot out of that final ivory tower with a whistle, not knowing