For a whole year, life was nothing but a blank expanse for her. It was as if she had shut down all her senses. If not for Alan Carter persistently calling her every day, sending her messages, chatting with her, and asking her to tell him about her life just like before—would she have turned into another Rei Ayanami?

How could she possibly go back? She stared at Andrew Lane’s face until her vision blurred, reached up to touch her face, and realized she was crying.

She couldn’t see the reaction of the person across from her, so she simply turned and walked away.

Charlotte Lee stood quietly at the entrance of Class One, holding “Sternstunden der Menschheit,” waiting. She was in a good mood, her smile peaceful, and it was hard for passing students not to glance at her more than once.

Thomas Chase came out, looking a bit drowsy.

“Just woke up?”

“Yeah,” he rubbed the sleep-creased marks on his face a little apologetically, “Did you finish reading it?”

“I finished, thank you.” She handed it back to him.

“By the way, congratulations, I heard you got first place. Not that it’s a surprise, but still, congratulations.”

Charlotte Lee felt as if a flower had bloomed in her heart.

“If that’s the case, how many times should I congratulate you? Congratulations are boring. When will you mess up for once, so us ordinary folks can have a laugh? I’ll definitely come and tease you then.”

“Mess up? Sure, hopefully just in time for the college entrance exam, so you can have a really good laugh.”

Charlotte Lee’s expression changed slightly.

Was he angry?

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.”

“Hm?” Thomas Chase was confused by her sudden, anxious denial. After Charlotte Lee calmed down, she couldn’t help but laugh at herself for being silly.

“I… I’m heading back.” Charlotte Lee stared at her toes.

“Alright, if there’s anything else you want to read, just ask me.”

She smiled a little bitterly, watching Thomas Chase’s figure quickly disappear at the entrance of Class One.

Alright, goodbye, Mr. Library.

Living for an obsession, that is for all beings

------------

2. My Pride Is Incurable

For the fastest updates on Hello, Old Times, read the latest chapters!

On Christmas Eve, Zoe Young stood alone at the platform waiting for the bus.

Since the midterm exams, Ray Cindy no longer wanted to waste over half an hour standing at the platform daydreaming. She always stayed in the classroom for an extra hour of self-study before leaving school.

Zoe Young gently shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying to ease her feet that were so cold they were going numb.

She exchanged Christmas cards with a few classmates in her class. Michael and Ian gladly accepted them—one joked about her crooked handwriting, while the other apologized at least ten times, just to explain why he hadn’t bought a card to give back to Zoe Young.

Zoe Young smiled. Ever since she was little, she always seemed to have warm-hearted desk mates or classmates sitting behind her.

Ian finally collapsed in front of his thick stack of notes. He lay on the desk, and Zoe Young suddenly had the illusion that he was so tired he couldn’t get up again.

Ian’s midterm results weren’t good. With each subject’s score, his face grew a shade paler.

Once, during PE class when Zoe Young had her period, she stayed in the classroom and found that Ian also didn’t go out for PE.

That’s when she realized Ian never went out for PE. There were few boys in the liberal arts class, and the teacher didn’t care much, so Ian always used PE class as extra study time.

Zoe Young lay on her desk with a bitter face and suddenly asked, “Ian, why do you work so hard?”

Ian looked at Zoe Young warily. “I’m not like you, I can’t just…”

“Then why do you have to get good grades?”

“Because… I want to get into a good university.”

“And why is that?”

“Get into a good university, go to grad school, then find a good job.” Faced with Zoe Young’s indifferent attitude, Ian gradually relaxed.

“Make money, marry a good wife?”

“…Yeah.” Why does she make it sound so easy… Ian glanced at the casually speaking Zoe Young, a little embarrassed.

“A warm home with a wife and kids,” Zoe Young laughed, “So, successful people from good universities just have prettier wives, healthier sons, and warmer homes.”

“…” Ian already wanted to bang his head against the wall.

“But,” Zoe Young went on, “maybe your son won’t be smart, or if he is, maybe he won’t work hard, or even if he does, maybe he won’t get into a good high school, and even if he does…”

She stopped, turned back, and looked at Ian with bright eyes: “So he’ll just become you, right now.”

Ian suddenly felt a sense of powerlessness. He tried hard to push Zoe Young’s words out of his mind, just lowered his head, almost hypnotizing himself: “I don’t understand your logic. I just know I can’t waste my parents’ money.

My family isn’t rich, but to let me study at Zhenhua, they pulled strings and spent fifty or sixty thousand. I don’t have time to think about all that.”

“I wasn’t trying to reason with you,” Zoe Young smiled. “Ian, do you have a dream?”

Ian fixed his gaze on the math paper, not wanting to respond, but still muttered, “A warm home with a wife and kids.”

Zoe Young burst out laughing, and Ian seemed to snap out of it, rubbing his nose in embarrassment.

“Actually…” Ian paused, “I learned to draw when I was little. For a long time, more than five years, I think.

My teacher said I was really good at sketching, a bit weak with colors, but my compositions were excellent. But my parents said that wasn’t a proper way to make a living, so I stopped after the second year of middle school.”

“So?”

“So… I really want to be a manga artist. I want to go to Tokyo, work as an assistant in some manga artist’s studio, then come back after I’ve learned…” As he spoke, he got a little excited, then paused, and went back to his analytic geometry, ignoring Zoe Young.

Zoe Young rested her chin in her hand, gazing at the blue sky in the distance.

A dream very similar to Ray Cindy’s.

No wonder, Mia Waters would say: “Tokyo is far away.”

The English foreign teacher for Class Three was an old man from Australia, thin and always looking as if a gust of wind would blow him over. Charlotte Lee sometimes envied those foreigners, as if they lived without any burdens, going wherever they wanted.

Europe, North America, Brazil, India, China, Japan, Mongolia… this old man had traveled all over the world.

He was quite helpless about Chinese students doing homework in his class, but there was nothing he could do. After all, during the college entrance exam, the oral English test was just a formality, time was tight, and no one wanted to chat about trivial things in class.

The days of timidly asking the foreign teacher, “What do you like about China, do you like Chinese food?” were long gone.

What surprised Charlotte Lee was that, in the lifeless classroom, Ray Cindy was actually one of the few active participants.

Her impression of Ray Cindy, this gloomy girl, had always been “If it’s not on the college entrance exam, I won’t study it.” At this moment, her enthusiastic participation puzzled Charlotte Lee.

Ray Cindy’s spoken English wasn’t very good, with a heavy Chinese accent, probably from lack of practice with foreigners. She was fairly fluent, and communication wasn’t a problem, but she was far from outstanding.

Charlotte Lee listened to the class absentmindedly, when suddenly she heard the old man ask if anyone had ever encountered a pickpocket on the bus.

She didn’t like raising her hand. The old man had said before that he hoped students would just stand up and speak whenever they had something to say, and even encouraged everyone: “Once you stand up the first time, the second time will be much easier and more natural. You’ll love the feeling of bravely standing up and speaking your mind. I promise.”

So, on a whim, Charlotte Lee stood up without thinking, and began to recount her experience with a thief on the bus, using the American accent she’d developed from years of Disney English, Xu Guozhang English, and Cambridge Young Learners English. As she spoke, she noticed the old man’s expression was a bit odd, and some classmates had stopped writing, glancing at her, then behind her.

Charlotte Lee stopped, turned around, and saw Ray Cindy was also standing.