Chapter Thirty-Eight: A New Life

As soon as Lin Nan stepped into the classroom, he noticed that most of his classmates had already arrived, but the teacher was nowhere to be seen. At the same time, quite a few people were staring at him. It wasn’t that Lin Nan was particularly handsome, but his haircut was undeniably attention-grabbing. To make playing basketball more convenient, he’d had his hair cropped into a neat crew cut before school started—making it much easier to wash after sweating. Except on the basketball court, he drew curious glances everywhere he went, but by now, Lin Nan was used to it.

Quick-witted as ever, Lin Nan immediately spotted the seating chart drawn on the blackboard and found his own spot: third group, second row from the back, by the window. He walked toward his desk, puzzled as to why the boys around his seat were watching him with such envy. The answer became clear the moment he reached his destination: his deskmate was strikingly beautiful.

She wore her long hair loose, with wispy bangs and no makeup, save for a small green hairclip. At that moment, she sat upright at her desk, reading an extracurricular book, completely absorbed and seemingly unaffected by the classroom’s boisterous noise.

Lin Nan glanced at the seating chart on the blackboard. Her name was Si Dong.

He paused—he’d never met anyone with the surname Si before. In all his years, this was the first time he’d encountered it. But he didn’t dwell on it, because he realized he needed to get to the seat by the wall. The spaces between rows in the classroom weren’t very wide, and Si Dong hadn’t noticed his arrival at all.

Back in middle school, Lin Nan had sat in similar seats, but his seatmate then was a boy. Each time, Lin Nan would nudge the chair forward and slip in easily, thanks to his slender build. But now, his seatmate was a girl!

There was no way Lin Nan could be so “rough” with her. He’d never interacted much with girls—perhaps he hadn’t even spoken more than ten sentences to any of them, and only when called upon to answer in class. In primary school, he was lively and only played with the boys; in middle school, he became obsessed with gaming, his mind filled with images from online worlds. Only later, under his father’s guidance, did he discover his true passion—basketball.

So, at this point, Lin Nan was still a rather naive boy when it came to girls.

But now he had to get to his seat—the teacher would arrive any minute. With no other choice, Lin Nan softly called her name: “Si Dong.”

Yet, inexplicably, what came out was: “Dong Dong.”

Immersed in her book, Si Dong was pulled back to reality by this gentle, familiar call. She looked up, following the voice, and saw Lin Nan standing at the side of the aisle, gazing at her with a pure expression.

Clever as she was, she instantly realized he must be her new deskmate, and understood why he was standing there. She immediately moved her hands off her book and shifted her chair forward. Lin Nan tiptoed past and sat down.

Then, both, feeling the space between them filled more with air than presence, suddenly realized: what was with that “Dong Dong” just now?

They slowly turned, met each other’s gaze for an instant, and then looked away, cheeks flushed. Amidst the clamor of the classroom, no one seemed to notice the two blushing youths.

“Ding ding ding… ding ding ding…”

With the chime of the school bell, the noisy freshman building finally quieted down. Soon after, Class 8 of Grade 10 welcomed their mathematics teacher and homeroom teacher: Yu Xianglin.

At the sight of Yu Xianglin, whose forehead was growing ever more bald—receding toward a Mediterranean look—Lin Nan immediately guessed this teacher must be very experienced. After all, his favorite math teacher from middle school had been heading in the same direction.

While Lin Nan was observing Yu Xianglin, the teacher was also glancing through the class’s grade records, pausing at Lin Nan’s entry:

Lin Nan: Chinese 103, Math 120, English 70, Physics 70, Chemistry 49, Politics & History 38, PE 30. Total: 480. Class rank: 30th. Year rank: 400th.

Looking at these results, Yu Xianglin was momentarily at a loss for words. In over twenty years of teaching, he’d never seen a student so extremely unbalanced in his subjects. Perfect scores in math and science, with chemistry just one point shy, yet English fell well below passing.

Yu Xianglin wished he could say to Lin Nan: “You excel in science and math—if only you put a bit of effort into English, your English wouldn’t be like this.” But was it really that simple? How do you make a teenager focus on something they dislike? Preach to them? Offer stern advice?

Would someone this age truly understand?

If he was honest, wasn’t he the same at that age? It’s the nature of youth, not an exception. That’s why, he thought, the best thing parents and teachers can do is help children find their dreams, guiding them to move step by step toward those dreams as they learn.

After reviewing every student’s grades, Yu Xianglin had a general impression of the class. He temporarily appointed the class officers—monitor, vice-monitor, sports representative, and so on—mostly based on their entrance exam scores. Lin Nan was named the math class representative.

It was a familiar feeling for Lin Nan; in his elementary school in the town, he’d always been the math representative, though he hadn’t held the position since transferring to the county middle school. Si Dong was named the Chinese class representative, thanks to her dazzling Chinese exam score of 118, which left her classmates amazed. It was the first time anyone had seen such a high score in Chinese; everyone secretly speculated that she’d only lost two points on the essay.

With the appointments done, Yu Xianglin handed out forms from the front row, passing them back for everyone to fill in their height and weight, so they could be fitted with the right size for military training uniforms, avoiding any ill-fitting clothes later.

This was one of the rare opportunities to record everyone’s actual height and weight, and many girls, who’d spent the summer at home eating chips in the air conditioning, hesitated to write down those heavy three-digit numbers.

By coincidence, when the form reached Lin Nan’s row, it came to Si Dong first. Lin Nan, naturally, caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye: 163 cm, 90 jin.

He then wrote his own: 178 cm, 120 jin.

That was rather thin for his height, and Lin Lang had told him so more than once—if Lin Nan wanted to keep getting stronger at basketball, he’d have to put on weight. But he’d simply never been able to gain weight, no matter how much he ate.

Staring at the numbers, Lin Nan silently resolved: starting today, he’d eat two bowls of rice every meal—for basketball!

He had to admit, the homeroom teacher was efficient.

Once the forms were done, Yu Xianglin called a few tall boys from the front to help carry several large boxes of military training uniforms into the classroom.

Everyone excitedly tried on the green camouflage shirts. Since the sizes were chosen according to height and weight, almost everyone found theirs fit perfectly. If anyone’s was too big or too small, it must have been because they’d fudged the numbers.

For everyone in the room, this was their first time participating in military training. The boys, surrounded by the jungle-green camouflage, recalled images of soldiers from TV and couldn’t help but look forward to the coming days—a secret dream of being a soldier lived in most of their hearts.

The girls glanced at the blazing sun outside the windows and suddenly felt a sense of foreboding. Only Si Dong didn’t show the same fear of the sun as the other girls—not because she wasn’t afraid of tanning, or didn’t care about her looks, but because she truly loved to read—all kinds of novels.

Whenever she read, she felt completely immersed, as if she’d entered the wondrous world within the pages and become the protagonist herself. Wearing the camouflage uniform now, she couldn’t help but think of “The Glory of the Sniper,” a book she’d read before. Through that book, she understood that the peace of the country was protected by the soldiers. History books only recorded two world wars, but in reality, conflicts never ceased behind the scenes.

From the author’s words, she’d sensed the harshness and exhaustion of sniper training. The author, supposedly a retired soldier, couldn’t reveal many secrets, yet what he did write already left Si Dong deeply shaken.

Now, dressed in her camouflage uniform, she felt a deep respect for the military welling up inside.

Yet, glancing around at her classmates laughing and joking, including herself, she couldn’t sense any solemnity or reverence in these clothes. Perhaps it was because they’d all grown up in peaceful times, well-fed and carefree, unable to imagine the suffering of war.

But then, as Si Dong let her gaze fall on her deskmate—the boy who’d made her blush just moments ago—she froze.

Lin Nan’s upright posture filled out the camouflage perfectly. His neat crew cut and resolute eyes gave off a faint aura of a soldier. It was subtle, hard to describe, but completely distinct from every other student in the classroom.

At that moment, Lin Nan seemed to sense something too. He glanced over, and their eyes met once more. Again, both their cheeks flushed.

In truth, Lin Nan could understand the sense of solemnity Si Dong had experienced in her reading. When he’d first put on the military training uniform, he’d thought of many things as well.

Unlike Si Dong, who learned about soldiers through novels, Lin Nan had learned from television. From a young age, his father had watched war dramas with him: “Drawing the Sword,” “Snow Leopard,” “Black Fox,” “Soldiers Sortie,” “My Chief, My Regiment,” “My Brother is Shun Liu”… Lin Nan had watched them all countless times. At first, it was just because his father was watching and he had nothing else to do at home, nor could he change the channel, so he just watched along.

Eventually, he came to love those war dramas himself—the stirring and sorrowful music, the scenes of raging battles, and the vivid, living characters.

Especially just a few days ago, after basketball practice, he’d come home, collapsed on the sofa, and watched another drama…