In the next two weeks, when it was the end of autumn, the scorching heat once again swept across Zhushan.
It hadn't rained for a week, and the sycamore leaves outside the studio were dried out and curled up, looking listless.
My grandmother called and said she had bought a thick cotton quilt at the market, and asked my second uncle to help send it to school after school started.
The onions and garlic in the vegetable garden have been harvested several times, and the radish seedlings have also been planted. Grandma is busy every day.
Similarly, Gu Jianian's life in Zhushan is also very fulfilling and busy.
She would go to the library during the week and on weekend nights, and read the books on the Chinese Department for the first semester of her freshman year without sleep or food. The main reason was that the courses would be very busy after the start of the school year, and she had to work part-time, so she could only seize the time to prepare before the start of the school year.
On weekends, I go to work with Chi Yan.
The work in the library was much busier than she had imagined. During the day, she mainly did waiter work, registering cash, serving coffee, and clearing tables, chairs, and plates; in the evening, before leaving get off work, she had to spend an hour putting all the books back in place.
And once a week, you need to take inventory of the list of books to be purchased for the next week.
This is Gu Jianian’s favorite job.
In order to compile a list of books to purchase, Gu Jianian's knowledge of texts and books has broadened significantly.
In addition to the literary novels she loved to read, she began to be forced to understand a variety of different types of books, and also learned which books were aimed at which age groups and which books were the best-selling ones.
These were previously blind spots in her knowledge, but after working for a few days, she realized that literary novels do not account for a large proportion of books, and the diversity of texts and their forms of expression far exceeded her imagination.
In short, these tasks together took up most of her working time. However, occasionally when there were not many customers, Gu Jianian would have some free time, and at this time she would read in the store.
She spent her spare time over two weekends rereading Cheng Yushang's book "The Wasteland".
—These days, the scenes from this book always appear in her dreams from time to time, causing her to wake up from nightmares several times in the middle of the night. The culprit was probably the horrifying ending that Chi Yan made up last time.
It had been several years since Gu Jianian last watched "Into the Badlands". Apart from the general direction and tone of the story, he could no longer remember some details.
This time I watched it again with a few years more experience, but I found that the more I watched it, the weirder it seemed.
—Not only is the tone of the ending a bit out of harmony with the entire book, but after every twist and turn in the novel, Tao Yu's change of mentality gives her a very strange sense of positivity.
It's like some cheerful and bright notes are mixed into a sad and heavy piece of music, which sounds particularly harsh if you listen carefully.
The further she read on, the stronger this feeling became. Occasionally, she almost felt that the ending Chi Yan described was the original direction of the story.
The day before school started was Sunday, and Gu Jianian worked part-time in the bookstore as usual.
After putting all the books back in place, there was still an hour before the end of get off work, and she finally found time to finish reading the ending of "The Waste Land".
The warm light of dusk shone through the gaps in the bookshelf onto the pages of the book. She sat against the wall, quietly put the book on her chest, and puffed out her cheeks.