Qing Ye ran to the boarding gate before finally finding a quiet corner. Her eyes were still red. She knew she must look disheveled and embarrassed, but when Xing Wu told her not to come back, her heart felt like it was being torn apart by countless knives, bleeding raw with pain.

She didn’t know what fate had in store for them after she boarded the plane. Even someone as confident as she felt afraid and lost for the first time when faced with all those uncertainties about the future.

It wasn’t until a bottle of water appeared before her that she slowly looked up. The woman standing there wore a sleek black suit dress and high heels, quietly watching her. “I saw you and Wu Zi outside. You seemed to be talking, so I didn’t interrupt.”

Qing Ye looked at Shu Han, somewhat startled as she accepted the water. “You?”

Shu Han sat down beside her, removing her sunglasses and placing them on top of her head. “Yesterday, Quan Ya mentioned you were back. Leaving so soon?”

Qing Ye lowered her eyes and hummed in agreement. “What about you? Where are you headed?”

Shu Han let out a long breath, her gaze distant. “I left Old Jiang. Planning to try my luck in Shenzhen.”

Qing Ye turned to stare at her. Shu Han gave a self-deprecating smile, her voice languid. “Can’t keep finding excuses to waste away. Got to look forward.”

She turned to smile at Qing Ye, who lowered her head and gave a faint smile in return.

“Will you come back?” Shu Han asked.

Qing Ye’s eyes unconsciously grew moist again, but she remained silent.

The airport announcement declared the Shenzhen flight was boarding. Shu Han glanced up at the large screen and said to Qing Ye, “I can’t remember which year it was. We were only around ten years old when we went to the county town to play ring toss. Quan Ya had his eye on an MP3 player, and Wu Zi wanted a game controller. The prizes were really good, so there were lots of people playing. The owner had tampered with the packaging boxes, so we didn’t win anything and spent all our money. We cursed the whole way home.

“For a long time after that, Wu Zi would go watch people play ring toss every day. Then one day, he came back with both the game controller and the MP3 player Quan Ya wanted. To this day, I still don’t know how he managed to win them.

“But that’s just how Wu Zi is. When he wants something, he’s always very persistent.”

Qing Ye’s eyelashes fluttered slightly. Shu Han had already stood up, putting her sunglasses back on as she said, “I’m off.”

Qing Ye raised her eyes to watch Shu Han’s retreating figure, suddenly realizing that the flowers hadn’t yet withered, time hadn’t aged, and life was still blooming. This wasn’t an ending, but rather a true beginning.

…

After the long summer vacation, everyone’s life entered another phase.

Fang Lei’s college entrance exam score was higher than she expected – 473 points. In the end, she didn’t choose to go to Xiamen but instead went to the provincial capital to study broadcasting and hosting. She thought it would be better to stay closer to home, making it easier to visit.

She stopped contacting Wei Dong afterward but heard that he had underperformed in the college entrance exam and missed his chance at Xiamen University. He ended up at a university in the South instead. After that, Fang Lei stopped inquiring about him.

However, because of her major, Fang Lei maintained frequent contact with Pang Hu after starting university. They partnered to run a social media account, with Fang Lei as the host regularly broadcasting to introduce Qing Gu’s products, and Pang Hu handling operations. They made the account quite successful, gaining a steady following within a few months and earning some pocket money along the way.

Shi Min’s college entrance exam score was 6 points lower than Fang Lei’s. When choosing schools, her goal was clear – unlike Fang Lei, she wanted to go far from home and study hotel management.

So she thoroughly researched every second-tier college offering tourism management that she could qualify for and finally chose Beijing.

She wasn’t sure why she made this decision, but knowing that Qing Ye would be in Beijing made her want to be closer. Just like before, no matter how thorny the situation, having Qing Ye sit beside her always made everything feel more manageable.

For Shi Min, leaving her familiar hometown for the first time to go to a strange place, she subconsciously yearned for the city where Qing Ye was. Though the living costs would be higher, she thought challenges and opportunities coexisted – taking such a brave step while young might not be a bad choice.

Pang Hu did surprisingly well in the college entrance exam. His original goal was just to get into a vocational college, but after the final sprint, he actually scored 498 points, just two points shy of 500, even making it onto the school’s top 50 honor roll, which delighted him to no end.

But after the initial joy came worried. People are often greedy like this – when they could only score around 300 points before, they’d be content with getting into a vocational college. Later, reaching 400 made them hope for a second-tier university. Now approaching 500 points, his ambitious thoughts became even more uncontrollable.

Finally, after three days of internal struggle, he sat down with his family for a heart-to-heart talk that lasted all night.

The next morning at just past five, he ran to Xing Wu’s house. The same scene, the same two people, one inside the door, one outside – only this time it was Pang Hu saying to Xing Wu: “I’ll, I’ll repeat the year with you.”

And so, to everyone’s shock, Xing Wu and Pang Hu returned to An Zhong High School to repeat their final year. Among the shocked crowd, besides the gang from Zha Zha Pavilion, the most incredulous were the teachers at An Zhong.

After all, they had finally managed to graduate these troublesome students after three years of endurance. Thinking the incoming freshmen weren’t showing many signs of being problematic yet, the school leaders were looking forward to having it easier for the next few years, but then… these two came back.

The disciplinary director, Director Gu, personally invited these two for tea, earnestly trying to persuade Pang Hu – with such good exam results, why repeat the year?

Under the scrutiny of many teachers, Pang Hu somewhat embarrassedly explained that he mainly wanted to use this year to try correcting his stutter while improving his academic performance. If he could overcome his speech impediment, he planned to apply to the Central Academy of Drama next year. The office full of teachers laughed when they heard this, but when they saw Pang Hu’s serious expression, they suddenly felt admiration for the chubby boy.

Then Director Gu turned to ask Xing Wu why he wanted to repeat the year. After all, Fan Tong was at least a class monitor, and though not always well-behaved, he wasn’t completely hopeless. But Xing Wu, a pure slacker, suddenly came back demanding to repeat the year – not a single teacher could understand it.

Xing Wu simply responded with four words: “For my dream.”

If Director Gu hadn’t been mindful of his position as disciplinary director, he would have replied with four words: “Complete nonsense.”

In any case, the two of them repeating the year became a sensation that rocked all of An Zhong.

Although Qing Ye didn’t stay at An Zhong to take the college entrance exam and become the provincial top scorer everyone had hoped for, the batch of students from her tutoring class produced several scores above 600 points and many above 500. The first-tier university acceptance rate directly surpassed Jin Zhong, becoming the most brilliant graduating class in An Zhong’s history.

The school hung a large red character announcement at the gate, and Yellow Hair and the others especially came back to An Zhong to admire this face-showing announcement, finding Fan Tong’s name and showing off, each taking out their phones to snap photos frantically.

After taking pictures, Yellow Hair stood in front of the announcement and said, “If Qing Ye hadn’t left, she’d be in that top position.”

Although Qing Ye didn’t stay for the college entrance exam, her confidence, her beliefs, and her determined smile unconsciously influenced many people. Like a brilliant sun, as long as she appeared before everyone each day, her radiance could illuminate more people.

Perhaps even until the moment she left, she hadn’t realized that because of her appearance, many confused children at An Zhong gradually found their goals and developed a determination to strive for them.

So Yellow Hair suddenly felt emotional and said, “Qing Ye is a living Bodhisattva.”

Yellow Hair’s original intention was to be poetic, but due to his limited education and knowing few poems, he couldn’t express it properly. Therefore, when the words left his mouth, everyone around was thunderstruck, all turning to ask if he had borrowed money from Qing Ye.

Speaking of Yellow Hair, after high school graduation, his grades were too terrible to get into any school. Someone suggested he go to Lan Xiang to learn how to operate excavators, saying those machines were big and impressive to drive around.

But Yellow Hair didn’t want to leave Zha Zha Pavilion. When he heard Xing Wu and Pang Hu were repeating the year, he was quite happy, thinking he could still hang out with them every day like in high school. Little did he know that later, Xing Wu and Pang Hu would find him too noisy and worry about him affecting their studies, completely excluding him from their circle.

This left the bored Yellow Hair with no choice but to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a cargo driver.

He struggled through the first half year, with hardships that went without saying – when busy, he had to be both driver and porter, getting tanned and rough.

Yellow Hair remained responsible for transporting Qing Gu’s goods. Later, as Qing Gu expanded production and transport volume increased, Yellow Hair took the money his father had saved for his marriage and started his own small transport company, properly organizing a transport team. Through Xing Wu’s facilitation, they established long-term business relationships not only with Qing Gu but also with the target factory, though that’s a story for another time.

As for Xing Wu, he actually scored 401 points on the college entrance exam, shocking Old Yang, Zhu Wu, and their group. After all, throughout three years of high school, they had never seen him seriously attend a single class, yet he could still score 401 points – it seemed miraculous. If the college entrance exam system hadn’t been so strict, they might have suspected he had threatened other students to help him cheat.

But in reality, he had just written the essay seriously.

Everyone said that with his intelligence if he put in more effort this year, he could score over 500 points next year and get into a 211 university without a problem. But he knew clearly that his goal wasn’t just a hundred more points.

Only Pang Hu could probably guess where he planned to go, but even this guess seemed too distant – he dared only to speculate, not confirm.

Many things are like this – they seem unattainable, but only when you truly decide to do it and plunge forward can you finally know whether you can achieve it or not.

So after that summer vacation, everyone went their separate ways but dove into new lives.

Everyone living in this world keeps flowing forward without ceasing, and Qing Ye was no exception. Actually, after her exam, she calculated her score to be around 712 points. Before the scores were officially released, she had already received calls from both Q University and B University, which surprised her. Since she leaned toward science, she chose Q University’s School of Economics and Management.

Her final college entrance exam score was one point lower than her estimate – 711, making her the second-highest science student in the city that year. Qing Ye especially noted the top science scorer – a girl named Xie Qian Qian from a public school, who scored 713 points, two points higher than her.

On registration day, everyone was accompanied by their parents. Qing Hong Zhi even brought a female assistant to help Qing Ye settle in. Q University’s modern student apartments were famous nationwide, and only upon entering the dormitory did it feel worth the years of high school struggle to live in such accommodations.

The rooms were bright and clean, with independent balconies, bathrooms, and shower rooms. Even the colors of the desks and beds were harmoniously comfortable.

Qing Ye arrived relatively late. When she got there, two roommates had already settled in. One who had just bid farewell to her parents was called Sun Wan Jing, wearing glasses and a ponytail – quite a scholarly girl. The other was named Qu Bing, whose parents were both present and exchanged business cards with Qing Hong Zhi. They were also in business but not local, having come specially from Shaanxi.

When Qing Ye introduced herself, both girls looked up at her. Though no one said anything, they had heard about Qing Ye’s college entrance exam score.

However, the School of Economics and Management was Q University’s premier college, and everyone admitted was a top student from their respective provinces. After their initial surprise, the two went back to their own business.

After Qing Hong Zhi left, the three of them discussed whether they should first explore various places around campus.

Just then, the dormitory door suddenly opened, and a fresh-faced girl with short hair burst in, wearing a tank top and shorts, carrying a not-so-large backpack. She didn’t look like someone coming to register, more like someone passing by to rest briefly.

Soon the three realized that this sweet-looking short-haired girl was their fourth dormmate, who had come alone without parents, traveling light.

She put down her bag and turned to look at everyone, saying, “Hello, I’m Xie Qian Qian.”

At this, all three girls raised their heads and stared at her in amazement.