7. LonelyWalk

The latest update of Hello, Old Times!

That night, dinner at home became Tina Young's one-woman show. Tina Young had become the arts committee member of her class. "Our class monitor is Andrew Lane, the vice monitor is Charlotte Lee, the study committee member is Michael Zack, the life committee member is Judy Xavier, the sports committee member is..." She rattled off the names, swallowed the green beans in her mouth, and continued, "The arts committee member is me! Hmm, there are also some group leaders and such, but I can't remember them all."

Grassroots cadres really don't get much attention. However, Zoe Young was even worse off than Tina Young—she only remembered one "Little Swallow." "Mr. Zack said, starting tomorrow we'll learn how to hold a pen and how to sit properly, but I already learned all that in kindergarten." "Mr. Zack said, our Class One is the best class in the whole grade." "Mr. Zack said, first graders aren't allowed to go downstairs to the snack shop alone to buy food." "Mr. Zack said, running and making noise in the hallway will get you caught by the student on duty, and the class will lose points and get criticized."

"Mr. Zack said..." At that moment, Joel Young, who was eating at grandma's house because their father was on duty and couldn't cook, suddenly put down his chopsticks and burst out laughing.

Tina Young was suddenly interrupted, her eyes wide with anger, but both she and Lily Young were afraid of the sarcastic Brother Joe, so the usually sharp-tongued girl could only press her lips together stubbornly and say nothing.

"I'm telling you, teachers, those people..." Joel Young was laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath. "Joel Young! Shut up!" The eldest uncle gave him a smack on the head. Joel Young clutched his head and stared at the clock on the wall: "Dad, you should go, or you'll be late." "If I leave, you'll just start spouting nonsense, right?" "Even when you're here, I still spout nonsense, don't I? The thing is, you think that as long as I open my mouth, it's all nonsense." "You little brat—" Zoe Young lowered her head and giggled into her bowl, then heard grandma clear her throat softly, and the table fell quiet again, with only the crisp sound of chopsticks tapping plates.

"Zoe, how was your day? ...Besides scraping your leg." After grandma spoke, Joel Young made a funny face at her.

"Mm, it was fine." She nodded and picked up a piece of braised beef with her chopsticks. "...Everything... was fine." Tina Young raised her eyebrows and said with a half-smile, "I know how you fell, you didn't tell grandma the truth. You didn't eat lunch, did you? Because you hit our class monitor with your lunchbox!" Zoe Young was startled. She had only told grandma that she hurt her leg playing on the playground, and hadn't mentioned anything about Andrew Lane. As she was feeling uneasy, she suddenly heard Joel Young exclaim, "I knew I wasn't wrong about you, you're truly my successor! I wasn't even as brave as you on my first day of school, hitting the class monitor?

Awesome! Are you going to rebel against the rich and start a revolution? As your senior, I can teach you from experience!" Zoe Young glared fiercely at Joel Young, who was busy fanning the flames, and shoveled a few mouthfuls of rice into her mouth without saying a word. Grandma put down her chopsticks: "What happened? Did you hurt someone?" Before Zoe Young could shake her head, she heard Tina Young's indignant voice: "That's right, she hit him dead on!

I didn't see it myself, but according to classmates, she hit our class monitor so hard he had to go home to see a doctor and missed the flag-raising ceremony! Our class monitor..."

"If he isn't worried, why are you?" Zoe Young's offhand remark was like stuffing a whole steamed bun into Tina Young's mouth. She stood there with her mouth open for a long time, not knowing how to continue after being interrupted, so she could only turn to look at grandma. "Is it really nothing? Do we need to talk to your teacher?" Grandma kept her eyes down as she ate, her voice completely even.

"It's nothing," Zoe Young said calmly, imitating the actors on TV, "it's all in the past."

At eight o'clock that night, Zoe Young was sitting on her little bed flipping through the new Chinese textbook when she heard the doorbell ring.

Mom had been coming home late a lot recently. As a sales agent, she always told Zoe Young she had business dinners in the evening and couldn't come home for dinner. Zoe Young didn't understand why adults always took so long to eat a meal, but she knew her mom worked very, very hard.

"Zoe, how was your day? What happened to your hand? Your knee is scraped too? Did you fall?" Zoe Young decided to come clean: "Mm, I hit Tina Young's class monitor." Her tone was as calm as saying, "I didn't get any homework today." So what if she hit Andrew Lane? Why did everyone, including her mom, get so flustered when they heard about it? It's not like she hit Andrew Lane so hard he became stupid—he was already stupid to begin with. After a brief chat, her mom finally relaxed, frowning as she scolded her to be steadier in the future and not always run around in a panic. Zoe Young happily took out a stack of new books and handed them to her mom: "Mom, the teacher said we have to cover all of these, and we can't use colorful paper, it has to be white!"

Elementary school teachers always come up with all sorts of strange rules. Mom sighed, smiled, and said, "Alright, let's cover them now." In the warm orange light of the little room, Zoe Young stood by the table, watching her mom measure and mark the math textbook on the back of a sheet of white calendar paper, make simple marks with a pencil, then cut the paper and press out the creases... When her mom lowered her head, a few loose strands of hair fell down, and her profile, revealed behind the hair, was soft and beautiful. She pursed her lips slightly, her makeup was delicate, her features like a painting, and Zoe Young was entranced as she watched.

Her mom was so beautiful. In that moment, Zoe Young fell in love with the activity of covering books. Even when she was in high school, long after no one required students to use white covers, and even when the stationery stores sold all kinds of colorful anime plastic covers, she would still carefully do it herself, just like her mom, measuring and creasing calendar paper, kraft paper, or drawing paper, and would place a mirror beside her, letting her hair fall over her forehead, tilting her head from time to time to see if she had her mom's grace.

Back then, she learned many ways to remember. This was just one of them.

And so, Zoe Young's elementary school life began. Every morning, all the students would line up on the playground by class, then enter the school in rows. On Mondays there was a flag-raising ceremony, and on the other four days, the "Red Scarf" radio station's regular campus broadcast would start at 7:20. Classes officially began at eight, each period lasted forty-five minutes, with a ten-minute break in between. Four periods in the morning, four in the afternoon, and school ended at 4:15 p.m. Except for the students on duty, everyone else would line up again on the back playground, and under the guidance of the sports committee member and the homeroom teacher, walk to the school gate and dismiss on the spot.

Of course, things weren't that simple. Elementary school life was really dull and monotonous, so to avoid this monotony, the teachers reached a consensus to find ways to have fun.

Just like the palace nannies from a hundred years ago, their favorite thing was to set rules. For example, when lining up in the morning, the little class monitors would patrol up and down the line—not only was talking forbidden, but even if you reached up to scratch an itchy ear, you'd get scolded. Sometimes, the class monitor would even pull you out of the line and drag you to the back—this was what Zoe Young and the other ordinary students feared most, because those singled out would be reported to the teacher, with no hope of escape.

To make entering the school look neat, the classes were arranged in a snake-like pattern, so Zoe Young's Class Seven just happened to be next to Class One, where Andrew Lane and Tina Young were. Every day, she could see Andrew Lane strutting around their class line with a smug look that begged for a beating—Zoe Young didn't dare turn her head to look, so she could only catch glimpses of him out of the corner of her eye as he strutted back and forth in front of her, not knowing that Andrew Lane's whole act was actually put on just for her.

Class One and Class Seven also had their two weekly PE classes at the same time. By now, Zoe Young was already fairly familiar with the kids in her class. They jumped rubber bands together, played "Two-Sided City" and "True or False Landmines," ran wild on the playground, and sometimes bumped into upperclassmen, got hit by their soccer balls, or fell and scraped their knees. But what puzzled Zoe Young most was that even though Andrew Lane was having a great time playing with his friends—those boys wielding plastic swords and showing off all sorts of weird finishing moves—whenever Zoe Young made a fool of herself—got caught in "True or False Landmines," messed up the steps in jump rope, or ran the wrong way in "Two-Sided City"—she would always hear Andrew Lane's laughter from not far away.

Sometimes Zoe Young would see Tina Young, but she never paid any attention to Zoe Young; the two of them acted as if they didn't know each other at all.