Chapter 556 - My Name [2 in 1] (1/2)
Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97
Combustion from alcohol and gas would have a quiet flame. Only when the fuel was of wooden material that it would have this crackling and popping sound.
“Hello? How can I help you?” Ten seconds later, Chen Ge realized that there was still no one speaking, so he tossed out this question as a probe. A bottle fell to the ground, and it sounded like its content splashed out and caused the fire to burn even stronger.
“Hello! Is anyone there?” The phone was answered, so this meant that someone had to be near the phone. “Is this a fire? Are you okay? Please tell me your location immediately!”
Chen Ge was getting nervous, and he screamed loudly. The fire was still burning, and then a different voice cut through the roaring flame.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” The man’s voice was nice but rather hoarse.
“Sure, since I have nothing to do at the moment anyway.” Chen Ge had been afraid that the other party would refuse to communicate. As long as there was communication, he could get useful information. “Then what do you want to talk about?”
After a long time, his reply came. “I don’t know.”
The person spoke slowly like he was constantly thinking. Chen Ge could hear the tremor in the person’s voice. He was unstable. Chen Ge did not dare to randomly run his mouth lest he provoked the man.
“Shall we talk about something happy?”
“There are many happy things. Everyone is happy, and I know I should be happy, but for some reason, I am unable to be happy.”
“Just relax, then how about we share some of our best memories?”
“Memories?” The man went silent again, but the sound of fire burning became clearer and clearer. “When I was young, my parents kept arguing for the sake of living.”
When he heard that, Chen Ge knew that something was wrong. This was not a happy memory—he wanted to interrupt the man, but the man on the other end of the phone did not appear like he was going to stop.
“My mother was very strict with me because she wanted the best for her son. I’ve always been an obedient child. A bit shy and didn’t like to talk. When I was at primary school, I was quite good at my studies, but unfortunately, throughout the six years, I only got three good student award.
“During secondary school, my English was very bad, and my result was average. During the third year, my mother found me an English tutor for one-on-one tuition. I had to attend classes after school until 9.30 pm. When I reached home, it would be around 10 pm.
“The tutor was a very good teacher. I got ninety-five marks on my English, but I did not get similarly good results for Math and Chinese, the subjects that I was supposed to be good at. However, overall my result was still at the front of the class. If I remember correctly, the total mark was about 560 marks or so. With that result, I could apply for all the high school other than Si Yi High.
“Actually, I really don’t understand why we need to label children. Si Yi High was the best high school, and I was missing the mark by twenty plus marks. If I wanted to enter Si Yi High, I had to fork out tuition, which was 18,000 RMB.
“The monthly salary of my parents was four thousand RMB. To give me a better head start, they scrounged up this money to send me to Si Yi High.
“Should I be thankful?
“I don’t know. Perhaps it was the sense of guilt, but I worked so hard for the first three months I entered the school. I was afraid of being exposed, afraid of other people finding out that I didn’t get in there with my own results but because of money.
“Actually, other people might not even have cared about that, but perhaps I’m just someone who is naturally prideful or perhaps I don’t want to be the same as them. For the first exam, my results were higher than average, and I was happy. I worked even harder. But for my middle year exam, my result slid down to lower average.
“I couldn’t find the reason. Perhaps it was my method of studying or perhaps I just wasn’t putting in enough effort. What else could I do but push forward?
“When the result for the last exam came out, my result dropped even further to the bottom of the class. A good student became the worst student—the identity had changed, but the mind needed a time to get used to the situation. When my mind also adapted to this change, then I’d change from a normal student to a bad student.
“I’m a strange fella, the type that has a strong sense of pride and arrogance. When we were called to pick the stream that we wanted to focus on, I had a crush. It was something that is difficult to explain, but I felt happy whenever I saw her.
“She was the good student type and also very hardworking. She would show up for class early in the morning. The key to our classroom was with the monitor, so I woke up early every morning just so I could arrive at school before the monitor and jumped into the room through the classroom window to help her open the door.
“There were many similar things. When she went to the canteen to buy lunch in the afternoon, I would take my English textbook and study it while leaning against the corridor. I wanted to see her, to see her walk back from the canteen to the classroom.
“Actually, it’s quite embarrassing because even though I studied the textbook for the whole semester, in the English exam, I only scored in the thirties. The exam results became worse and worse. I was constantly one of the worst ten students in the class. During the third year, when all the students gave it their all and fought like there was no return, my interest was reading and writing.
“I read all type of books, not related to school. Web novels, magazines, sci-fi novels, and thrillers both locally and overseas. After reading so much, a world would be constructed in my mind, a world that was my own. That was also the first time that I opened a writer’s account for myself online and started to try to write some things.
“There was still over one hundred days to the high school exam, but even the friends that stayed at the internet café started to retreat to focus on their study. However, all that I focused on was my story and my writing.
“During one of the school assemblies, the headmaster was standing on stage. I stared at him and thought about the books that I liked, the authors that I admired. I wanted to be like them, to construct a world that many people would appreciate.
“The exam was over, and there were two ways to understand this.
“One was exam was over, and the other was my life was over.
“I scored just enough for vocational school. Compared to those who wanted to give the exam another go, I decided to grasp this last chance to confess my love. But until today, I did not say it because that day I saw the girl whom I liked got together with the monitor.
“I went to cut my hair until I was bald. As the only student from Si Yi High to go to a vocational school, I had to have my own style, walk my own path. I planned to cut myself off from my former classmates, probably because the greater the pride, the more one dislikes pity from others.
“Even if I was a bad student, I was a bad student with a dream. After I got to the school, writing became my life. I planned to write an epic that combined all the elements of the great writing that had come before me. I had read many books, so I knew a bit of everything. I put the manuscript that I wrote on the internet.
“That was when I received my first contract. My work was more than 300,000 words, but no one was reading it. Then, I tried to give them my other stories, but they were all rejected. During the latter half of the third year, some of the students started to focus on moving to actual university or studying to become teachers. I went to someplace far away from home to start my internship.
“The factory where my father worked closed down. The old CEO was sent into jail for ten years due to illegal activities, so only my mother’s salary was keeping the family afloat. She earned less than two thousand a month.
“For the internship, I chose the place furthest from home because the salary was the highest, and it was close to the ocean. About thirty-three people from our school chose to have their internship at this company. Since it was a frontline worker and it was factory work, there was constant interaction with gas and copper sludge. One month later, only sixteen people remained.