[Exclusive Memory]
I have two exams today, Mao Zedong Thought in the morning and Law in the afternoon.
I had painstakingly consulted the teachers for answers to all the questions in the review materials, copied them out, and sent them to be printed. I used scissors to cut them into the shape of dried tofu, and then sent them to be printed. I went back and forth for a whole day, and I worked harder than those who cram for the exam at midnight.
When I saw the test questions when the test papers were distributed, I suddenly cried for joy. Hard work pays off. I actually wrote down the general idea of those knowledge points when I was copying the answers yesterday.
My mood suddenly improved. Just as I was about to put the note away, I felt a flattering and hot gaze falling on me.
"Xue Tong, lend it to me." Zhong Qiang, who was sitting next to me across the aisle, said flatteringly, "Saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda."
I looked at him, then at the thing in my hand, gritted my teeth and handed it to him: "Remember to return it to me."
Twenty minutes into the exam, the invigilator, Mr. Luo, picked up a blank Mao Zedong Thought paper and began to ponder. His eyes became vague, and it was obvious that Mr. Luo was lost in thought. Thus, the exam room entered a golden cheating period. The students gradually became bolder and showed off their skills.
Bai Lin, who was sitting behind me, came to the classroom early this morning and wrote the answers on the table with a pencil. He is now writing furiously.
Zhong Qiang looked at Teacher Luo on the podium, then fumbled in his pocket. After a long rustling, he finally took out the two life-saving notes.
I stopped looking at his stupid look, held a pen in my mouth, frowned, and began to seriously think about the essence of Chairman Mao's thoughts.
After a while, I heard Zhong Qiang coughing, and he kept coughing. When I looked up, I saw him winking at me. I followed his gaze and lowered my head—the note asking him to save my life was blown to the foot of the table on my side by the wind, lying in the spacious corridor.
A piece of paper was densely printed with words smaller than ants. For convenience, I printed the answers to today's two subjects on it. The front side was Mao Zedong Thought and the back side was Law. It was about half the size of a CD.
Now, I looked at the paper and felt a little distressed. I looked up and glared at Zhong Qiang, who couldn't even copy an answer and dropped it on the ground.
I bent down angrily to pick it up, but failed. When I tried to pick it up the second time with a larger angle, my foot stepped on it.
I clutched a corner of the paper lovingly and whispered in a low voice, "Classmate, you stepped on my things." This guy was really tactless. He should have handed in the paper if he wanted to, and left if he wanted to. He almost ruined my good deed.
But the foot never moved away.
I said again, "Classmate." After saying that, I wanted to look up and glare at the other person, but the angle was too big and I could only lift my neck halfway. I could only see above his knees and couldn't look up any further.
If there wasn't a teacher sitting on the podium, I can't guarantee that I wouldn't bite him under normal circumstances.
Zhong Qiang next to him coughed again and again.
"Hello." I was anxious.
This person can’t just keep stepping on my things just because he has long legs.
Bai Lin started coughing as well.
Now I was puzzled. There was no flu epidemic in school, so why did one or two of them get cough at the same time? Did they want me to be discovered by old man Luo
At this moment, the other party finally raised his feet, and I pulled my thing out. Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, I didn't expect that the owner of the legs actually bent down and squatted.
Then, a young man's face slowly came into my sight.
I looked at the facial features that suddenly enlarged in front of me, and my mind was still unable to react.
The man smiled brightly, pointed at what I was holding, and asked kindly, "Classmate, what are you holding in your hand?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the work ID card hanging on his chest began to swing down, with three bold words printed on it that instantly frightened me - Inspector.
When Zhong Qiang saw this sign, he quickly stood up, handed in his paper, and then disappeared from the examination room at a rapid speed.
I looked at him, then at Zhong Qiang's disappearing back, and then at the thing tightly held in my hand. I opened my mouth but it was in vain. I was caught by the other party and there was no way I could defend myself.
I was frightened at first, then ashamed, then began to face the bleakness of life, and finally became righteous and willing to sacrifice my life for justice.
If something had fallen to the ground, no one around would have admitted it, and we could have just let it go. But he chose the perfect time to catch me red-handed, and I was even more wronged than Dou E.
"Are you still not convinced?" The invigilator asked with a smile in the office.
"A little bit." I sneered.
"This thing is not yours?"
“…Yes.” I wrote it, I printed it, I cut it.
"You didn't bring it into the examination room?"
"… yes."
"Then don't tell me that you originally wanted to cheat, but before the test you suddenly felt guilty and decided to turn over a new leaf, and then you kindly lent it to a classmate, and then this classmate accidentally dropped the thing at your feet, and then I came..." The man raised his eyebrows, "Classmate, this line has not been popular in our school for many years."
My face turned from purple to blue-black. This person said everything I could and wanted to say in one breath.
I took a deep breath. How could there be such a teacher in the world
When I saw that he was still acting relaxed and complacent, I became even more furious and had the urge to pounce on him and strangle him to death immediately.
When I was leaving, I turned back viciously: "Teacher!" I was ready to die.
"Hmm. Anything else?"
"Please give me back my things."
"What?" the man asked casually.
"I'll need it for my legal foundation exam this afternoon," I replied.
I heard a click at the door. It must be Bai Lin, who was guarding the corridor, fell down.
Unexpectedly, the man was not angry at all. Instead, he smiled slightly, pointed at the evidence on the table with his chin and said, "Take it. However, classmate, if you want to cheat this afternoon, you have to choose a better method. Slipping a note is the dumbest way."
I:"… "
Bai Lin: “…”
Day after day passed, until all the exams were finished, I was still not summoned by the counselor, nor did I receive any news from the department regarding any action taken against me.
I am naturally more simple-minded than others, so I gradually stopped taking the matter to heart. When I got home, I just focused on eating and drinking well, gaining weight, and enthusiastically welcoming the new life of my junior year.
Under the guidance of the Ministry of Education's enrollment plan, University A has been expanding its enrollment year by year, and the old campus has long been overcrowded. Therefore, the school arranged freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in the newly built West Campus, and only returned to the main campus in their senior year or graduate school.
The West District is located in a small town several dozen kilometers away from downtown A, and most of the surrounding area is still farmland. Therefore, it is difficult to find any entertainment, let alone shopping.
There are only four of us in our dormitory: me, Bai Lin, Song Qiqi and Zhao Xiaotang, and we are all in the same class.
Every weekend when I was bored after dinner, I would go to the movies outside the school with Song Qiqi. The so-called movie theater actually only had one screening room, and it only showed pirated movies, not genuine ones. So if you wanted to watch a newly released movie, you had to go many days later than in the city. A ticket only cost RMB 8, and if you deposited RMB 100 in advance, you could get a membership card, which could be discounted to RMB 5. This price was very attractive.
But Song Qiqi and I didn’t have cards, but we felt bad about spending the extra three dollars.
"I want to buy two tickets for 7 o'clock." Song Qiqi handed over twenty yuan.
"Do you have a card?" the aunt asked.
"Yes, yes." Song Qiqi turned around and winked at me, "Xiaotong, where is your card?"
"Oh." I opened my purse and pretended to look through my wallet.
"Hurry up, have you brought it?" Song Qiqi asked.
"Oh, I seem to have forgotten to bring it." I exclaimed.
"Oh, what should I do?" Song Qiqi lamented, and then took back the twenty yuan.
"I'll just give up watching it," I said.
"Oh..." Song Qiqi sighed.
"Auntie," I walked up to her and called her sweetly, "Auntie, we have a membership card, but we forgot to bring it today. Please sell us two membership tickets."
The aunt was skeptical: "Really?"
"Really, I forgot to bring it today." I nodded hurriedly, looking at the other person pitifully, "If I go back to get it, it will be too late for the show. This is the only time we have time in a week. The other nights are for self-study. I only have ten yuan a day for living expenses. If I can save three yuan with this ticket, I can buy an extra portion of meat."
I spoke with tears in my eyes.
The aunt looked at me and said, "You are such a skinny kid. Okay, remember to bring it next time."
I turned around with the ticket and secretly made a victory gesture to Song Qiqi.
We used this method many times and it worked every time. Later, whenever the kind lady saw me, she would not even check my card, but would just say to the person next to her, "Hey, I know this kid, he's an old member."
In the season when cicadas are still lingering on the trees, I entered my junior year. This semester there is a compulsory elective course that we have been looking forward to for a long time - Second Foreign Language.
The Foreign Languages College of University A has five majors: English, Japanese, German, Russian, and French, so our second foreign language is also chosen from Japanese, German, Russian, and French. In recent years, Japanese and French are in short supply, resulting in a large number of students taking Japanese and French electives in the English Department. Sometimes one class cannot accommodate them, and we have to add more classes.
One of the students from the Japanese department who lived on the right side of our dormitory was from the same hometown as Song Qiqi. Every day when he came to visit us, he would tell us how promising one of their seniors was after learning Japanese and how carefree his life was after working in a Japanese-funded company.
"Well, actually, I think you shouldn't have learned English in the first place." Little Japanese began to lament again.
"Why?" Song Qiqi asked back.
"Anyone who has received an education knows this. What's the point of learning it?" The little Japanese sneered with a cold face, completely disregarding other people's feelings.
Song Qiqi has a good temper and just laughs it off.
"One of our senior sisters who graduated last year helped people translate Japanese anime after graduation and made a lot of money. Later, people thought she had a good voice, so they sent her to Japan for training and wanted her to dub in Chinese."
I couldn't stand it anymore and rolled down from the upper bunk, sneering: "Yeah, that's great, I don't even need a translator to watch a romantic action movie."
Little Japanese didn't say anything.
I combed my hair in front of the mirror and said, "What kind of voice did your senior sister use for the Japanese? Did she keep saying 'Yamei Daddy' and 'Kemochi'?"
The little Japanese's face twitched.
She used to show off in front of Song Qiqi, but because Song Qiqi was gentle and never refuted her, she became even more aggressive. Now that she saw me mocking her, she probably felt embarrassed.
"I'm going to eat. It's so 'hacikasi'!" Then, I took the lunch box, shyly covered my face and went out.
Originally, I had been determined to learn Japanese as a second foreign language with the dream of promoting the above-mentioned films, but the repeated appearance of Little Japanese shattered this idea.
Just when I was confused, Bai Lin brought me a piece of news.
"I want to choose Russian!" Bai Lin shouted in the dormitory.
"Russian?" I swallowed a mouthful of rice. "You want to be an Eskimo?"
"Xiaotong!" Bai Lin glanced at me and said, "Your directionality has worsened. You can confuse Russians and Eskimos."
"Aren't they all the same people? Aren't they all in the Arctic?" I argued.
Song Qiqi interrupted and asked, "Why do you suddenly want to learn Russian? Didn't you say you would choose French some time ago?"
Bai Lin said with a smile: "The teacher assigned to teach us Russian this year is super handsome. He is the teacher from the Youth League Committee. When he appeared in the cafeteria today, we were all conquered."
Thanks to Bai Lin's inflammatory words, I was also forced to choose Russian.
Russian classes are held twice a week, on Monday evenings.
Unexpectedly, so many people chose Russian this year, which was completely beyond the department's expectations. We had to move to a larger classroom. The trend was that the language was catching up with French and surpassing Japanese and German.
Before the first class started, the old director of the Russian Department came over to encourage everyone to study hard. Looking at the students who were eager to learn, he said with tears in his eyes: "Students, when our Foreign Languages College was still called the Foreign Languages Department, there was only one major, Russian. At that time, the whole country was fascinated by the Russian language. If you didn't know Russian, you would be illiterate. Later, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the decline of Russia's strength, some people even predicted that our Russian language had come to an end. Today, when I see you, I know that the second spring of Russian has come again!"
"Mr. Fu was very excited," I said. "He was almost moved to tears."
"Yes. If he knew the truth, he would cry even harder." Bai Lin said.
The teacher's name is Chen Ting. He studied in Moscow before returning to China and started teaching last year. There are few male students in the Foreign Languages College, and even fewer male teachers, especially young male teachers. Therefore, male teachers who are slightly younger and unmarried are rare animals. If they are good-looking, they are superstar-level public idols.
Chen Ting is one of them. He is tall, wears a pair of glasses and is said to have a refined look.
However, when I saw him in my first Russian class, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed: “You call this handsome.”
I was deceived and regret not checking it myself first.
Bai Lin's eyes sparkled as he said, "If that's not handsome, then show me someone handsome."
I took out my wallet, pulled out the photo inside and said, "This guy is the most handsome guy in the world."
Bai Lin took it with great interest. The photo was a photo of two people. Next to me was a middle-aged man. He was fat and white with a beer belly and a festive look on his face like Maitreya Buddha.
"Stop using your dad's heroic image to humiliate us." Bai Lin said unhappily, "I don't know if it's because dad's image is too great, or if there's something wrong with your entire outlook on life, values, and aesthetics."
"You have a problem with your values." I have always thought that a man who looks like my dad is handsome.
At this moment, Chen Ting was heard saying on the podium: "I am a person who doesn't take attendance. I have always thought that using a roll call to maintain the number of students in class is actually a very sad thing."
Some boys in the audience were secretly clapping.
"Sometimes you think my class is boring, or you have something urgent to do and you don't have to ask me for leave, but..." Chen Ting smiled, "If you come, you have to be 100% serious."
Originally, this kind of second foreign language course was the same as those compulsory public courses, which felt a bit useless. However, Chen Ting was a very patient person and was very responsible at work.
They started with the 33 letters of the Russian language and began a mixed life of English and Russian.
After self-study, Bai Lin and I carried thermoses to the water room to get some water. On the way, we suddenly met Zhong Qiang, the guy from the next class who made me take the blame.
I gave him a look of ice.
"Xiaotong, that matter was resolved in the end, so please forgive me." Zhong Qiang said.
"Bah! You called me Xiaotong, too?" Bai Lin spit on him. "This kind of man is irresponsible. Ignore him." After saying that, he pulled me up and left.
Halfway through, Bai Lin said to me, "The teacher who arrested you last time was pretty good. He never did anything to you again. But how come we never see him in school?"
"It's not certain whether he is a teacher or not. He looks like a gangster. He might be a fake who stole a work ID."
Although it's been more than two months, I still get angry when I mention him.
Chen Ting's class was interesting, and he was also interesting. But the teacher's charm was ultimately weaker than the glamorous world outside and the ups and downs of life in online games. After a month, when the whole class found out that he really didn't show up, they started skipping classes.
But one day, at 7:01, Chen Ting had not arrived yet.
At 7:05, Chen Ting still hadn't arrived.
People in the classroom began to whisper.
"You won't forget it, will you?" someone asked.
"How could that be? Teacher Chen is always on time." someone said.
Just as the buzzing noise was getting louder, a man came in.
The man walked to the podium with a book under his arm, and then smiled faintly at the audience: "Teacher Chen couldn't come because of something, so I took his place. I didn't expect the classroom to be so hard to find."
All the girls in the class gasped in shock at his appearance, except me!