Chapter 40: Partners
Su Can felt more like Susanna from "LOVELY_BONES," like a cold-water salmon swimming upriver to spawn, arriving briefly but unable to leave as briefly.
Fortunately, he was not observing and interpreting this world as a soul. He had been reborn with the ability to profoundly affect the people around him. The future he worried about had not happened yet, and he could still make up for his present regrets with his own hands.
Sometimes Su Can questioned the lines of time. If a linear world truly existed, had his future self already died, while his soul began an entirely new life here?
Perhaps heaven did not come after death. Perhaps his current state was heaven.
November 1998, the beginning of winter.
Five months after Su Can's rebirth, the first-semester midterm results at Xiahai City First Middle School were announced.
Along the corridors, students from every class in the year were quietly discussing their midterm report cards. Most conversations revolved around the same subject. Xiao Rihua entered Class Five of the first year of senior high. The day the results were announced also marked the first battle since the new semester began. Its outcome was about to be revealed.
Some said senior high was a watershed that sent different people's destinies in two completely different directions. In 1998, with exam-oriented education as the premise, the eyes in that classroom were still filled with bewilderment. In this era when grades determined one's circumstances, many were waiting to see the future written on that sheet of paper.
"Zhang Datao, 570." "Guo Dan, 478. Wait, take this slip with you too. What's the rush?" "Li Lumei, 604."
Every time Xiao Rihua read out a name, someone went up to collect a report card. Li Lumei took hers and found she ranked