Chapter 181: Rural Absurd Past Events Chapter 181: Wang Erhai's College Entrance Exam

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

In the blink of an eye it was June, and Wang Erhai took the college entrance exam.

After he finished the exam, he went home and slept for a full day and night.

Li Xiulan knew he was too exhausted, so she didn't have the heart to wake him; she just let him sleep like that.

Not until the next afternoon, when he woke up, did she ask how he had done.

Wang Erhai's face showed some impatience as he answered, "I don't know either."

Actually, in his heart he did know.

He left many math problems undone, guessed on most of the English multiple-choice questions, and botched the comprehensive science section — physics alone had more than half undone because he simply ran out of time.

He knew he probably wouldn't test into university.

Not getting in was only to be expected; getting in would have been the anomaly — so why did he feel an inexplicable sense of loss?

Could it be that cramming for the past two months had made him arrogant?

Wang Erhai was very annoyed.

Especially when his parents looked at him with expectant eyes, he didn't know what they had to expect.

So he badly wanted to leave this home and go outside to find a summer job.

Thus, without waiting for the scores to come out, he went to Dongguan to work a summer job together with his classmates.

Wang Zhanggen and Li Xiulan didn't say anything about it; if he wanted to go work a summer job, let him go — the child was grown now, and being able to go out and earn some money was a good thing.

Still, before he left, Li Xiulan didn't forget to admonish him:

"When the scores come out, you must tell Mom."

Wang Erhai felt a pang in his heart:

"Okay, Mom. As soon as the scores are out, I'll tell you right away."

He knew his mother still held expectations for him.

But that was normal — which mother doesn't have expectations for her own child?

No matter how poor or hopeless the child, she would still have expectations — expect him to grow into an adult, to stand tall, to support a life of his own.

What's more, Wang Erhai wasn't actually that bad; he was just like most rural children — simply lacking the aptitude for study, nothing more.

Perhaps he would never achieve anything, perhaps he would end up just another dispensable cog at the very bottom of society, but that didn't stop Li Xiulan, as a mother, from having expectations and love for him.

Wang Erhai stayed at home for a few short days, then went out to work a summer job, and the house fell quiet again.

That evening Li Xiulan sat alone in the Living Room; Wang Zhanggen had gone to the Village Committee Office to settle the New Rural Construction accounts with Zhang Zhongtian and the others. She sat by herself on the old hardwood Sofa, dazed, her eyes somewhat desolate.

The quiet air made her a little melancholy.

The children's laughter and chatter from the past seemed to suddenly emerge from the quiet air, striking straight at the depths of her soul, making her involuntarily lose focus for a moment.

The days of the past were still vivid in memory, yet now they were already long gone.

Before, she felt the children were still small — too noisy, too bothersome — and she longed day and night for them to grow up quickly so she could enjoy a peaceful life.

But now the children had all gradually grown up; Dashan had already established himself in society, Erhai was about to leave the old home nest to make a living outside, and Xiao Hua was struggling in her studies at School — she heard that once students entered the Special Elite Class in their second year of high school, they had to take supplementary classes, and might only be able to come home once a month from then on.

By that time, the three children would come home even less.

Whenever Li Xiulan thought of this, she couldn't help feeling melancholy.

Her heart felt empty.

Wang Erhai, together with his classmate Yang Xiaoxiong, arrived at a shoe factory in Dalingshan, Dongguan; they had entered the factory through an intermediary.

This shoe factory was huge, with at least several thousand people.

The workshop ran twenty-four hours a day without stopping.

Many students doing summer jobs had come.

They were from all over Yue Province.

Wang Erhai even ran into several students from his own School here.

The shoe factory work was very busy — from eight o'clock in the morning, they had to work straight through to six in the evening, with only one hour for lunch; sometimes overtime was required, pushing it to ten o'clock at night.

Wang Erhai and Yang Xiaoxiong shared a Dormitory.

The factory Dormitory was far more chaotic than the School Dormitory.

The other roommates — some smoked, some had smelly feet, some snored.

Wang Erhai found it unbearable.

He would rather go to an Internet Cafe outside the factory with Yang Xiaoxiong than return to the Dormitory.

The Internet Cafe was also crowded.

Sometimes you even had to queue for a computer.

Wang Erhai got a machine, sat down at the Computer, and the first thing he did was open Qianqian Jingting, then start playing QQ Speed; sometimes he would also play Dungeon Fighter and CF, playing until late at night, until he was too exhausted to continue, only then returning to the Dormitory to sleep.

Factory work life was very boring.

The position Wang Erhai was assigned to was responsible for tying shoelaces.

After others finished making the shoes, he had to tie the laces according to the prescribed steps.

These were knee-high boots, the kind with many eyelets; threading the laces didn't require much physical effort, but it was monotonous, repetitive work.

Doing a few pairs a day was nothing, but doing several hundred pairs a day was a real problem.

Wang Erhai couldn't help wild thoughts — would his future life really be just like this from now on?

Day after day he did repetitive, boring work, just to scrape together three meals a day.

If that was the case, it was too terrifying.

This made him pray in his heart, hoping that when his college entrance exam score came out, his score would be a little higher, hoping he could force himself to attend a university.

This university didn't need to be very good, as long as he could go.

Anyway, as long as he didn't work in a factory.

He didn't want to live his life like a machine without emotion, only doing repetitive and meaningless work day after day.

Time flew by and it was the day the college entrance exam scores came out.

That evening Wang Erhai had just finished work, didn't even go eat a meal, and went straight with Yang Xiaoxiong to the internet cafe outside the shoe factory; he opened a machine, immediately opened the score-checking website, his hand trembling slightly as he entered his admission ticket number and ID card number.

The moment the score popped up, he fainted.

Only to see his total score was only 389 points!

Not even four hundred points!

"It's over!"

Wang Erhai's throat trembled out a voice of despair.

This score clearly made it impossible to attend a public university; even a public 2B school would be hard to get into!

To attend, he could only go to a private junior college!

That school cost at least ten thousand or twenty thousand yuan a year!

Wang Erhai originally knew he probably hadn't done well, but when the score actually came out, he still couldn't help being struck.

Only because after experiencing factory life, he realized society was not easy.

It was a pity he woke up too late.

He knew that his life afterward would very likely be like his current summer job, repeating simple and boring work day after day...