The boys looked at each other in confusion, unable to understand immediately, so they didn’t take action right away.

“I don’t understand.”

“I wrote these with so much effort, and now you want us to cross them out.”

“If you believe they’re completely unachievable, what’s the point of writing them down?” Lin Wanxing asked in return.

The students were shocked, “This… this…”

“It doesn’t sound like something you would say, Teacher.”

“What should I say?”

“You should say that anything can be achieved as long as you want to do it!” Lin Lu exclaimed.

“Well, I think your ‘I want to go back to the past’ is not very achievable in a realistic sense,” Lin Wanxing began pointing out.

“You never know, what if science develops further?”

“I can pretty much guarantee that Earth science won’t develop to that point in your lifetime—unless aliens descend with their technology, forget I said that,” Lin Wanxing said.

“Oh,” Lin Lu nodded, accepting her explanation, and crossed out the “time travel” item.

After someone took the lead in asking questions, the students seemed to understand something and began making bold strokes across their draft papers.

Lin Wanxing walked around and pointed to a line that Zheng Feiyang had crossed out, asking, “Why can’t ‘wanting to maintain world peace’ be possible?”

“Huh?”

Yu Ming was also puzzled, “I can’t be Superman.”

“Is maintaining world peace only something Superman does? Don’t city management officials do that too?” Lin Wanxing curiously asked in return.

“How can you compare those?!”

“But Superman is in comics, while city management uncles and aunties help maintain order outside our school gates every day, preventing illegal street vendors. This happens in reality every day.”

The students stared with wide eyes as if they hadn’t expected her to say this. Their mouths gaped open, but in the end, they couldn’t refute her.

“What if I’ve already deleted it?”

“Circle it and bring it back,” Lin Wanxing said lightly. “Or you could write it in more detail—how do you want to maintain world peace? For example, ‘join peacekeeping forces to maintain world peace,’ like that…”

Lin Wanxing made a round among the students who were sitting, lying, or sprawled across the terrace.

“I think you should still cross it out,” suddenly, Qi Liang’s leisurely voice sounded. He had somehow made his way to Feng Suo’s side and offered his advice.

“Don’t interfere with others,” Lin Wanxing immediately caught him.

“He asked me,” Qi Liang poked his messy hair with his pen and yawned.

“Asked you what?”

“He asked~ whether he should cross out ‘I want to pursue Bao Xiaotian from Class 5.'”

Lin Wanxing immediately became interested, “Who is Bao Xiaotian? Male or female? Pretty?”

“Of course female!” Feng Suo said proudly.

“She’s the school beauty, how could she not be pretty~,” Qin Ao said.

“Do you have a photo? Let me see,” Lin Wanxing asked expectantly.

Feng Suo took out his phone, opened his photo album, and found a picture.

Lin Wanxing held the phone, looked at it for a while, and then observed Feng Suo for a moment.

Lin Wanxing, “I think…”

“What?” Feng Suo looked at her.

“You should probably cross this one out.”

Lin Wanxing received a long howl of “Aooow!” from Feng Suo, and she could only ruffle the boy’s hair and laugh, “I’m joking, you can keep this one.”

The students began to discuss with each other, chatting and dealing with those things that were truly impossible to achieve in reality, while keeping those that seemed incredible but were not completely unattainable.

Lin Wanxing observed the students.

They joked with each other, helped each other, and analyzed seriously with their companions.

Chen Jianghe prevented Fu Xinshu from crossing out “I want to get into a 985 university.”

And Zheng Feiyang pointed out to Qin Ao that “I want Jay Chou to release a new song” was not something he could control.

When the terrace gradually quieted down again, Lin Wanxing leaned back against the railing.

Fu Xinshu, “Teacher, according to what you said, there aren’t 10 things that we absolutely cannot do.”

“Have you all finished crossing them out?” Lin Wanxing asked.

“Yeah.”

“More or less,” the students nodded from various places on the terrace.

“So now you don’t have 10 items yet,” Lin Wanxing looked at them and said, “Now, please cross out those things that you don’t want to do so much right now.”

Hearing this, the students’ first reaction was to lower their heads and start doing as she said. But soon, they felt something was off.

“We have to cross out more?”

“Yes,” Lin Wanxing said seriously.

“Then why did you make us write all these things with such effort?” Qin Ao asked dissatisfied.

“Yeah, we put in so much work!”

The boys were somewhat dissatisfied—anyone would be reluctant to casually discard things they had thought of with great effort.

“It’s just to make up 10 items, you’ve already crossed out quite a few before.”

Her voice was gentle, and the boys felt that although it was a bit annoying, it didn’t seem that difficult at present.

Lin Lu crossed out “I want to eat Nanxiang xiaolongbao.”

Yu Ming believed that “buying two packs of Zhonghua cigarettes, smoking one and playing with lighting the other” wasn’t so important at the moment.

…

A minute or two passed, and most people successfully gathered 10 items.

When everyone raised their heads and looked back at her, Lin Wanxing said, “Now, please cross out another ten things from here.”

The explosion after the silence was expected—the entire terrace suddenly became noisy.

“What for?”

“Cross out more?”

“Teacher, do you know how hard it was for us to write these?”

“And what’s the point of crossing them out?”

“I feel like you’re just torturing us!”

The boys’ voices were loud, but Lin Wanxing’s soft and steady voice now overpowered theirs, “You can consider everything we’re doing today as a thought experiment.”

She held up the incomplete notebook in her hand and said, “You will feel reluctant in what follows, but please believe that the things being crossed out now don’t mean you will never be able to achieve or obtain them in your future lives. It’s just that in this experiment, they’re not so important to you right now, so they need to leave for a while.”

The students were still somewhat confused, but the initial persuasion was simple.

They thought about it and felt it made some sense. After all, on that draft paper, many things could be temporarily deleted without issue.

Like “want to eat at a Michelin restaurant” or “want to go to the school broadcasting room and sing ‘Skateboard’ to the whole school”—these rather nonsensical things.

Lin Lu was the quickest to complete the deletion of the next ten items. After all, he had written too much content about “eating.” So rather than agonizing over what to eat, it was better not to eat anything at all.

Next to be deleted were the parts that were relatively simple to achieve.

For example, “I want to go swimming” or “I want to learn to drive.” Some were things that could be done tomorrow if desired; others were things they didn’t particularly want to do but felt they should because everyone else was doing them.

Lin Wanxing would sometimes walk around among the students, but more often, she stood alone at some distance from them.

Gradually, more and more people completed this second round of deletions.

When the students gradually put down their pens and the night became quiet again, Lin Wanxing said, “Next…”

“We have to delete another ten items, right?” A student had learned to anticipate.

“Yes,” Lin Wanxing said.

The boys all fell silent, having already said many words of protest. Now, in the quiet of the night, even the smell of hotpot had been blown away from the terrace, and the lights that had been shining in the city had also dimmed somewhat.

No one spoke. They lowered their heads, looking at the remaining answers on their papers, and began to think hard.

But not so quickly, Lin Wanxing knew clearly.

The things the students had to deal with next represented some dreams.

Chen Jianghe was torn between “going to Wimbledon” and “going to San Siro to watch the Milan derby,” ultimately crossing out the former.

Qin Ao still insisted on “wanting to see Jay Chou’s concert,” giving up “buying an authentic Bandai Gundam model” for it.

They began categorizing—certain things they wanted to do could actually be grouped together, then they selected the most important one in each category and deleted the others.

Although there were many methods, as the range became smaller, the students’ speed in crossing out items also became slower.

Their breathing became longer, and everyone began to make their decisions with difficulty.

Cross out, or keep it a little longer.

Many had already moved from their original seats, unconsciously sitting on the cement floor of the terrace, as if full contact with the ground could give them support and a sense of reality.

The process of thinking and deciding was lengthy, and they no longer communicated with each other.

Until a certain moment, the students put down their pens and raised their heads.

They had gone through a period of thinking and self-selection, abandoning some things, with hesitation, confusion, and also pain in their eyes.

At this moment, students were sitting all over the terrace, yet no one was willing to speak first.

“Let’s continue.”

Lin Wanxing heard her voice floating in the night and also heard the rustling of draft papers in the students’ hands as they were blown by the wind.

The draft papers in their hands had become wrinkled from being written on and drawn over. But most of their papers hadn’t been filled with 100 items—60 at most, with some having 30 or 40…

“Just tell us directly, how many items should be left in the end?” Qin Ao asked straightforwardly.

Lin Wanxing thought for a moment and said, “Now, please each of you keep 5 options.”

“Why 5?” Chen Jianghe asked.

“Because psychologists say that people can only process no more than 5-7 choices simultaneously. Any more than that, and a phenomenon we call ‘choice overload’ occurs.”

“Five?”

“Well…”

The boys lowered their heads, either sitting or lying down, looking at what they had written on their papers.

After experiencing some decisions to give up, everyone was feeling a bit low, and they were also very clear that the choices ahead would be even harder.

“Teacher, can you give me another piece of paper?” Lin Lu suddenly raised his hand and asked from the cement floor by the dining table.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Wanxing asked him.

The young man’s voice was soft and gentle, with a hint of embarrassment, “I can’t bear to part with all of them, I want to copy them down.”

“Couldn’t you just cross them out lightly?” Lin Wanxing smiled and asked in return.

Lin Lu, “That’s not the same.”