Chapter Two: Brother Yang?

Li Dongfeng was notorious for his loud voice, and he just said it casually. Yet the whole class heard him loud and clear. But it was indeed the truth. In this small world of County No. 1 High School, liking Xia Wei was not something to be ashamed of. Xia Wei was beautiful and did well academically. It was said her father was a leader at the Procuratorate, and her family background was top-notch. She was the dream girl in the hearts of countless boys. However, Zhou Ziyang seriously told Li Dongfeng, “I don’t like her.”

“Hehe, I get it, I get it!” Li Dongfeng winked and teased, acting shy—it was only natural.

Zhou Ziyang didn’t want to waste time on such a trivial matter and just asked why Li Dongfeng had come to see him. But Li Dongfeng looked unhappy.

“You really forgot!” he said. “I was afraid you’d forget, so I came specifically to remind you again! Old Zhou, if you don’t come to see me off tonight, that’s the end of our friendship!”

“See you off?” Zhou Ziyang, newly reborn, didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah! I’m leaving for work in the south tomorrow. Everything’s settled!” Li Dongfeng said, his voice deliberately louder, as if bragging. “Listen, Old Zhou, this job I found is awesome! Eight thousand yuan a month! They even sent me pictures of the factory and the dorms. The two-person dorm has air conditioning, plus a recreation room with computers, TVs, and gaming consoles! I bet it’s way more fun than college!”

No one paid much attention to his boasting. During lunch break, some students rested with their eyes closed, others practiced exam papers to improve their weak subjects, and some secretly sent messages on their phones. Although they all attended County No. 1 High School, the classes were very different. Zhou Ziyang’s class was an advanced class, where even someone like him, with mediocre grades, had a chance to aim for a second-tier university. Li Dongfeng’s class, however, was the bottom tier at the school—students there often got in through connections or lottery draws. After three years of tracking, even though they belonged to the same high school, the teaching environments were vastly different.

In theory, Li Dongfeng shouldn’t have been wandering into other classes. But since he was leaving school to work the next day, he had no qualms about it.

Thinking about it, Zhou Ziyang recalled that Li Dongfeng had indeed taken a special college entrance exam in April and had been pre-admitted to a vocational college in Jinling. So he’d been idle for the past five months.

Li Dongfeng came from a poor rural family. His parents died early, and he lived with his older sister. When their village was collectively relocated, Li Dongfeng and his sister moved to town. His sister, six years older, had found a factory job after high school to support his schooling. She planned to sacrifice everything to send him to university. But Li Dongfeng was never cut out for academics. Hearing that he could take a special exam in senior year and get an early pass, he signed up without hesitation. As he put it, “Reading all those years is the same anyway. Might as well start working early and earn some money!”

Zhou Ziyang remembered not attending Li Dongfeng’s farewell dinner last time. In his mind, he never really thought he had friends. He didn’t particularly like Li Dongfeng either—who was somewhat rough, sloppy, and lacked boundaries.

In his youth, Zhou Ziyang had his own burdens. When he was young, his mother told him that his father had abandoned them, seduced by a femme fatale, spending every day in dance halls chasing after women.

“Therefore, you must study hard,” she said. “You have to stand out! Make him regret abandoning us! Make him come crawling back on his knees!”

His mother told him many stories like that of Chen Shimei—the scoundrel who abandons his wife, only to be begged for forgiveness eighteen years later when his son becomes a top scholar. Zhou Ziyang was inspired, vowing then and there to get into Tsinghua or Peking University and make his father regret everything.

But as he grew older, that dream seemed more and more distant. Especially in high school, despite his efforts, others scored higher. The same questions others could solve easily baffled him no matter how hard he tried. High school was painful for Zhou Ziyang.

His limited perspective made his future seem bleak. Every morning he woke at 6:30, brushed his teeth and washed his face, and by 7:10 was in class for morning reading. The homeroom teacher tapped the podium with a pointer, urging everyone awake. From 7 a.m. till 9:30 p.m., they had twelve classes a day. Every forty minutes, a new teacher took over, speaking with fervor and passion, explaining exam papers or conducting tests. Senior year was just endless exam papers and lectures.

The ideological lessons boiled down to one message: if you fail, your life is ruined. If you get into college, your life will shine. Fail to get admitted, and you’ll be fixing roofs by the roadside tomorrow. Work hard for a hundred days, enjoy happiness for a lifetime. Score one more point and surpass ten thousand others.

In such an environment, Zhou Ziyang felt hopeless. No matter how hard he tried, the best he could hope for was a mediocre second-tier university. Thinking back to his past boasts about Tsinghua and Peking University, he now felt that it was a miracle if his absent father wasn’t secretly laughing at him.

Zhou Ziyang was naturally indifferent in social matters and certainly wouldn’t waste time on someone like Li Dongfeng, with whom he couldn’t get along. Though he had promised to attend Li Dongfeng’s farewell dinner last time, he eventually declined, citing strict supervision and inability to get leave from evening study.

Li Dongfeng, as foolish as he was, clearly understood Zhou Ziyang’s meaning, and they lost contact from then on.

They met again years later. By then, Zhou Ziyang had graduated from university and, with the help of his unworthy father, secured a respectable job and bought a house in the county seat. Dressed in a white shirt, black trousers, and leather shoes, he looked the part of a professional office worker. While discussing the renovation of his new home with the foreman, a worker in a worn red T-shirt lingered in the corner, watching him cautiously.

After the foreman left, the worker limped over slowly and carefully called out, “Zi... Ziyang... bro...”