Lin Wanxing said nothing more but handed Lin Lu the second draft paper.

For the students, continuing to eliminate options was expected, but the process was becoming increasingly difficult.

Chen Jianghe still wanted to watch a football match at San Siro, Fu Xinshu hadn’t deleted his wish to attend a prestigious university, and Qin Ao finally gave up on Jay Chou but insisted on getting a big house for his family.

They had so many things they wanted to do, people they wanted to meet, possessions they dreamed of having, and aspirations they hoped to achieve. Continuously crossing these things off was a painful journey.

The more painful it became, the more difficult and slow the process.

Qi Liang still kept “eat, wait, and die” at the top of his list, like it was the last position he must defend.

Finally, despite their reluctance, the boys put down their pens again, indicating they had completed the task.

A gust of wind blew across the rooftop, causing papers to flutter wildly.

Lin Wanxing — “Now, please delete three more items…”

“Why?”

“How can we delete more?”

“What’s the point of this?”

They had already been holding back for a long time. Hearing this, some even doubted their ears.

“This is endless!”

Someone jumped up from the ground, throwing down his pen with a clatter. Another person pounded on the wooden frame of the rooftop.

For a moment, the previously quiet rooftop erupted with chaotic voices of protest.

“Let’s make this thought experiment more concrete,” Lin Wanxing said calmly, seeing the students like little frustrated fire dragons. “Let’s assume there are many parallel universes in this world.” She glanced at Lin Lu and continued, “Yes, like traveling through time and space. You can now travel to another parallel universe where there’s another ‘you.’ They look exactly like you and have the same experiences as you, but they’re not you—they’re separate, independent individuals.”

“And then?”

“Then, of course, they also have a piece of paper in front of them with only five items left. You need to help them make choices and cross off two more items.”

“Teacher, this is…” Yu Ming hesitated.

“Aren’t you cheating?” Chen Weidong blurted out.

“But this will make it easier for you to make choices, won’t it?” Lin Wanxing said. “Through some little tricks, you can be more careful and think again.”

The boys stopped protesting, seemingly temporarily convinced.

Yet when they fully immersed themselves in making life decisions for their “parallel universe” selves, it was still difficult.

For Chen Jianghe, how could he choose between “spending more time with mom” and “playing football abroad”?

If he couldn’t choose now, he would first cross off “watching the Milan derby at San Siro”—it wasn’t that important at the moment.

This was indeed painful, and even more frightening than giving up was making the wrong choice.

“Teacher, how do I choose? You might as well kill me!” Yu Ming had messed up his hair as badly as Qi Liang’s from frustration but still couldn’t decide.

“My advice is to choose randomly,” Lin Wanxing walked over and found his five options were:

Find a beautiful wife

Earn lots and lots of money

Get good college entrance exam results, be able to attend university

Have a good job in the future

Win a championship

Lin Wanxing crouched down, bringing her eyes level with the boy’s.

Yu Ming looked up at her — “I can’t delete any of these, teacher. I want them all.”

Lin Wanxing — “Remember, it’s ‘him,’ not you. You’re helping the person in the parallel world make choices.”

“What if I choose wrong for him?” nearby, Fu Xinshu asked, troubled and conflicted.

“Take a deep breath, and then trust your intuition,” said Lin Wanxing.

“You’re talking all mystically! What the hell is intuition?”

“Intuition…” Lin Wanxing patted Yu Ming’s stomach and said, “Psychologists have found that the basal ganglia in your brain, though mostly responsible for motor regulation, also takes on the task of summarizing emotional decisions for you.”

“I don’t understand,” Yu Ming said frankly.

“The basal ganglia only connect with the limbic system and your gastrointestinal system. In other words, it gives you a ‘feeling of information’ to help you make decisions. When you do the ‘right’ thing, you feel good. We call this ‘intuition.'”

“What if I choose wrong?” Yu Ming asked.

“Your stomach will feel uncomfortable,” Lin Wanxing said with a smile.

Yu Ming immediately looked down at his stomach, stared at it for a while, then swallowed — “But teacher, I just ate too much. When you patted me, I felt a bit like throwing up…”

Lin Wanxing laughed again. She stood up and comforted the students. She said she hoped they would make decisions based on intuition, that this was just a parallel universe experiment that wouldn’t affect reality, so they should relax.

But in fact, these were just useless consolations.

Lin Wanxing knew this.

Even if they were making decisions for themselves in a parallel universe, even if this had nothing to do with real life, when humans peer deeper into their hearts, panic, and pain follow.

The boys’ thoughts were quite simple.

What remained were nothing more than money, prospects, family, dreams, university, and similar things.

As the options were narrowed down, each deletion became a struggle. Each of them was suppressing the pain, bitterness, and reluctance in their hearts.

The rooftop of the old village was extremely quiet at night, yet it seemed filled with countless voices.

Each voice was speaking—human thoughts, struggles, self-persuasion, or complete “giving up.”

The night had grown very deep, the city’s neon lights gradually dimmed, unnecessary landscape lights were turned off, and finally all household lights went out.

True darkness fell.

A strong wind blew across the rooftop, knocking several empty bowls off the table.

Lin Wanxing’s eyes were blinded by sand. When she opened them again, a draft paper had blown to her feet.

She bent down to pick it up and realized it was the one she had placed on the armrest of Wang Fa’s lounge chair.

Opening it, she found it empty.

Wang Fa was still napping in the rooftop lounge chair, his hat covering his face, watercolor pens fell at a distance, and this blank draft paper had been blown away for who knows how long.

Lin Wanxing held the paper and walked to the railing of the rooftop, leaning against it.

Another night wind swept across the sky, making people’s clothes flutter wildly.

Chen Jianghe was the first who couldn’t bear it anymore. He threw away his ballpoint pen and shouted — “This is so annoying! Why do we have to listen to you? Why must we choose?”

“We’ve crossed things off, then what?” Zheng Feiyang also questioned. “We have two items left, then we choose between them, right?”

“Why can’t we have both? Does life only have one path? Why must we make choices?”

“You just have to make us feel so terrible!”

Finally, Qin Ao angrily shouted the thought from the depths of his heart.

Lin Wanxing looked up at the students.

Chen Jianghe’s forehead had a red mark from contact with the cement ground, and Qin Ao’s clothes had soil from the grass field.

Before her were children who had finally exploded because they could no longer make choices, behind her were the vast playground and countless stars.

She held the draft paper, cut off a section, folded it, and folded it again, her hand movements unchanged.

Lin Wanxing — “If this were a class to help you find your life goals, we would help you identify those parts that belong to life goals, and then discuss them. I would do different thought experiments with you, encourage you to listen to different people’s original stories, and finally try it out.”

Lin Wanxing painted a beautiful vision for the students and said, “But unfortunately, this isn’t it. This is just a cruel choice.”

“Why!”

“Yes, why…”

Lin Wanxing continued folding the empty draft paper in her hand, also pondering — “Maybe because I feel that real life indeed has that many options. You have countless wishes and infinite dreams. You can go to concerts and buy your favorite Gundam models, have the opportunity to attend good universities, or become great football players. All dreams are precious and beautiful, aren’t they?”

The boys stood in the wind, some nodding, others still standing stiffly, but none of them spoke.

The rooftop was vast and desolate. Lin Wanxing also heard her voice floating up — “But similarly, because this world has too many beautiful things. Today you might like the flowers by the roadside, tomorrow you love the grass on the street. You want to study hard and get into a good university but also feel that even if you go to work in a factory now, it might not be the best choice to comfort your days and accompany your parents. There are too many ideal things, so no one knows, among your thousands upon thousands of beautiful aspirations for this world, what you want most at this very moment.”

Lin Wanxing paused, looking at her students who showed confused expressions, and said — “Except, yourselves.”

In her hands, the folded paper gradually took shape.

The students’ protests followed one after another.

“But what’s the use of knowing?”

“What the hell, you said you’d give us freedom, why force us?”

“But it’s also painful not being able to do it. Why make ourselves suffer so much by forcing ourselves to think?”

“Fantasizing about gaining is happiness, fantasizing about losing is pain.”

Lin Wanxing couldn’t help but feel emotional, her pace of speech becoming lighter and slower, “So I think you should keep this paper well, cherish every beautiful dream you wrote down seriously at 18. Similarly, you should also endure the pain of giving up again and again. In the process of continuously digging into your heart, see what that thing buried deep in your heart is—the thing you’d be willing to give up everything else for—see what it is.”

Not giving the students another chance to retort, Lin Wanxing took the folded draft paper and walked toward Wang Fa.

“Next comes the choice between the final two. Whether to make the last stroke or not, you decide.”

She placed the refolded draft paperback on the armrest of Wang Fa’s lounge chair.

The young man opened his eyes, his gaze calm and serene.

It was a paper frog, with the light blue lines of the draft paper on its body.

Lin Wanxing gently pressed on the folded paper’s bottom, and with a “plop,” it jumped onto Wang Fa’s chest.

The sky was clear, the moonlight just right.

“In the rare opportunities of life, don’t you even have the courage to take a look?” Lin Wanxing asked.