Healing His Paranoia

chapter 07 : examination

The Exam A winding path quietly connects the Daybreak Village with the outside world.

The county town is far from the village, a full hour and a half's journey.

Wang Jun yawned widely, bored with his wooden stool in his arms.

She stared at Ating for a long time, and when she saw that Ating didn't have any abnormal reactions, her guarded nerves gradually relaxed.

Her hands and feet also began to itch.

Unable to resist, she tapped Ating with her toe and asked harshly, “Hey, what will you do if you don't pass the high school entrance exam?”

Ating replied, “I won't fail.”

Wang Jun looked at her serious expression and pounded the table, laughing heartily, “Your grades are even worse than mine, and you still want to go to high school?”

After thinking for a moment, Ating still believed that she could pass the exam, and she had to do well, otherwise she wouldn't be able to make her family proud.

“Hahaha.”

Wang Jun almost rolled on the ground, “With your grades, if you can get into the top high school in the county, I'll give you the position of the leader of the Tiger Gang!”

What is the Tiger Gang?

What does it mean to be the leader of the Tiger Gang?

Ating was confused, while Wang Jun leaned out of the body, reaching into the grass on the surface of the lake and plucking a piece of dogtail grass to chew on.

Opening a book and covering it with her face, she curled up her legs and went to sleep, with a more relaxed and carefree posture than a boy.

It seemed that she wouldn't explain anything more to her.

Ating thought about the Tiger Gang again, but couldn't figure it out, so she quietly looked at her Chinese textbook.

The wind blew, rustling the pages of the book, and her fine hair floated around.

Ating annoyingly tucked her hair behind her ear, unaware that she had arrived in the county.

Wang Jun got off the car quickly to take the exams at County No.

1 Middle School, waved goodbye to Song Yuqiu, and before leaving, she threw a sentence at Ating, “Don't forget our bet, if you lose, you'll be my little brother.”

After two days of psychological preparation, and a brief interaction this morning, Wang Jun had already categorized the new Ating as someone who “cooks well, but is a bit slow in the head”.

She wasn't afraid of her anymore, on the contrary, she found her quite pleasing and possessed the quietness and beauty that her little brother pile didn't have.

The prerequisite was that she didn't stare at her with those crystal-clear eyes.

Ah Ting's examination site was at Sanzhong County.

She was left under the shade of a tree two hundred meters away.

“Wait for me here at noon.”

Song Yuqiu instructed her in a low, husky voice.

He didn't ask about her progress or demand any promises, he just made a U-turn on the road, pedaled his bicycle hard and quickly sped away.

Be careful on the road.

Ah Ting watched her father's receding figure for a while, took out her exam permit, and walked into the bustling school.

The examination began promptly at eight o'clock, starting with mathematics.

Ah Ting located her classroom and promptly started her last round of revisions.

She silently memorized one formula after another, unaffected by any distraction around her.

She wasn't inherently bright, but her concentration was commendable.

Unaware that she was the hot topic of conversation.

“Look at her skirt.”

Regardless of the era, innovative and good-looking clothes possess an inherent attraction to girls.

Especially in an area where both men and women, young and old, predominantly dress in tough and dirt-resistant dark blue-gray colors.

An unexpected splash of tender yellow is especially eye-catching.

The girls from the county town had much better family situations than those from the rural areas.

They don't have to do farm work and have pocket money to spend on their appearances.

They promptly launched into discussions:

“I haven't seen a skirt in this color before, I don't think the department stores have them either.”

“Was it from BeiTong?”

“I doubt it—!”

The infamous BeiTong, where curly big-wave hairstyles and bell-bottom pants originated, and other fancy goods like snowflake cream and expensive perfumes came from.

Everyone in the county had their BeiTong dream, except for the elderly who were nostalgic about their hometown.

“That must be expensive, right?”

“Is she from our school?

Why don't I know her?”

After asking around, no one knows where she comes from, as if she suddenly dropped from the sky.

She is delicate and serene everywhere, more exquisite than the dolls in the display window.

“Let me wear that dress, it looks so good.”

Someone snorted.

Her friend laughed at her, “She looks good naturally.”

The person tilted her chin and said, “If I had skin that fair, I would look good too.”

“If I wore a dress like that, I would definitely look ten times better than her.”

“Alright, alright, you look good, you look good.”

The two buildings stood facing each other, and on the second floor opposite to Ating, Song Tingting was pulled and asked, “Look at the yellow dress over there.”

“What dress?”

Song Tingting glanced indifferently and then withdrew her gaze, “What's so special about it?

I have plenty of dresses.”

She had been to Beitong twice and had seen the world, so she wasn't moved by just one dress.

“But there's no dress in this color.”

Her friend sighed, “But even if you give me this dress, I wouldn't wear it.

It would make me look even darker.”

Song Tingting lowered her head and looked at her slightly yellowish arm, feeling a little uneasy.

“What's the use of being fair-skinned anyway?”

Looking down from above, the face of that girl is unclear, but her arms and legs are as thin as tree branches.

Her mother said that with such an incomplete body shape, she will never be as charming as her.

Song Tingting smirked a bit arrogantly:

“Even if I don't study well, I will still get tanned in the future.”

The era of knowledge has quickly arrived, and for women with only a middle school diploma, besides working in the fields, they either do sewing work or physical labor.

The scorching sun will naturally destroy her fair skin, rough soap will damage her skin, and day after day of labor will ultimately make her appearance mediocre.

But Song Tingting will never be trapped by this small county town.

This is Ating's first time taking the exam.

While staring at the test paper, she couldn't help but think back to her previous life.

Due to congenital heart disease, she couldn't run or jump, couldn't be anxious or in a hurry, so she never went to school.

Grandpa was afraid that Ating would be idle and bored, and that her condition would worsen if she was in a bad mood, so he invited various teachers.

Teaching her subjects, teaching her piano, teaching her calligraphy and painting.

Looking back on the past 15 years, Ating didn't have much contact with many people, but she didn't feel lonely.

The older sister of the neighbor's family often came to talk to her, and stray animals on the street visited her from time to time.

When Grandpa had free time, he would teach her how to diagnose and treat patients, how to distinguish various herbs in the world, and how to use them for food and medicine to cure all diseases...

Oh right.

Can herbal medicine for promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis cure the blood congestion in the back of the head?

It seems like she's thinking too far.

Ating tapped her forehead and tried to recall the high school entrance exam in the novel.

She vaguely remembered that Song Tingting had good grades.

With her scores from the mid-term exam and high school entrance exam combined, she became the first student in the village to be admitted to the county's key high school.

According to the customs of her hometown, the Song family prepared four tables of food and drink for her, and her uncle escorted her into the city.

For a while, she was full of glory.

September school starts, Song Tingting returned to the village, and little cannon fodder Ating had already married the old cripple from the neighboring village and never returned to Rimo Village.

Ating didn't like this ending and wanted to change it.

She couldn't rely on her grandfather in the sky, and she couldn't rely on anyone else.

No one in this world can protect her forever, and no one should rely on others for their whole life.

After making up her mind, she lowered her head and wrote her new name, Song Qianxia, neatly in the name field.

In the morning, she took the math and English exams, and time flew by.

Ating packed her bag and heard many people discussing that this exam was difficult, especially the English reading comprehension and essay.

It seemed like very few people understood them.

Maybe the difficulty level was different in different eras, but Ating didn't think it was difficult.

However, she understood that she had benefited from transmigration, and there was a slight suspicion of cheating.

She quietly apologized in her heart and saw Song Yuqiu under the shade of a tree.

“Dad,” Ating quickly walked over, and when the girls behind her saw her, they exchanged glances and laughed simultaneously:

her dad dressed so shabbily, even his cloth shoes were nearly worn white.

They thought she was a girl from a wealthy family, but she turned out to be a little bumpkin from the countryside.

The clothes she was wearing, who knows where she stole them from.

They pointed and whispered, just as they were getting into it, Song Yuqiu opened his eyes wide.

His pitch-black eyes were like cold fire, burning straight through them.

Somehow, in the eyes of this grown man, they gradually felt suffocated and a growing fear.

They scrambled and ran away in a panic.

Song Yuqiu handed the lunchbox to Ating.

Two liang of plain white rice, four pieces of tofu soaked in meat soup, and two stalks of green vegetables.

Ating looked at this meager and tasteless lunchbox and didn't take it, only looked at Song Yuqiu and asked, “Have you eaten?”

“This boxed lunch is not made by my mother's hands, and father and daughter both know it.

All the money and tickets in the house are controlled by Lin Xuechun.

When she left this morning, she gave two yuan to Song Yuqiu, asking him and their daughter to go to a small restaurant to have lunch.

Song Yuqiu brought back boxed lunch from the construction site, which is also his usual lunch, only for the money left for lunch.

But come to think of it, their own daughter has always been spoiled.

In terms of food and clothing, she is not much worse than the girls in the county.

How could she be willing to eat something like this?

The price of goods in the county has skyrocketed after the new year.

It is uncertain whether two yuan is enough for a decent restaurant.

But their daughter is in the final sprint for the entrance exam, so it seems that the money still needs to be spent.

Song Yuqiu silently closed the iron lid and asked her what she wanted to eat.

Atin looked around and happened to see the busy business of carrying dumplings under the camphor tree across the street.

Surprisingly, his daughter didn't choose to eat at the restaurant.

Song Yuqiu handed the two yuan to her small palm in astonishment, and watched her run over with a clatter.

In a moment, she ran back with only a bag of dumplings in her hand.

“It cost seventy cents,” Atin spread out her palm and gave Song Yuqiu the small change, chopsticks, and iron bowl.

She earnestly instructed, “Dad, finish the dumplings and return the bowl and chopsticks to the uncle across the street, don't forget.”

Saying that, she took out two pieces of old newspapers and spread them on the ground, and went to get the iron lunch box herself.

The dumplings couldn't hide the taste of meat, and Song Yuqiu suddenly couldn't understand his daughter.

When did she learn to be considerate of her parents?

When did she learn to cook, and when did she have the kindness to stand up for others?

He stared at her inexplicably, and Atin, protecting the lunch box, turned around, blinked her long eyelashes, and smiled warmly at him.

This is a smile of “You eat your wontons, I eat my rice, no one is allowed to snatch from each other”, clear to the extreme, childish to the extreme.

“Eat quickly.”

Song Yuqiu lowered his gaze, and there was a momentary softening at the corner of his lips.