Evanescent Dreams

21. The hug, the hate

Since he was young, Weng Bai loved learning about the Maths and Sciences. He found solving problems and understanding the laws of the world around him enlightening, so he grew up spending his free time absorbed in learning new knowledges. 

Then, 4 years ago, Weng Bai's parents asked him to enter a Maths competition to showcase his knowledge and have fun in solving some challenging problems. 

Fervent and ambitious, he studied for months and ended up winning a gold medal in the regional maths competition. He became the pride of his family, friends, teachers. Among them, his childhood friend Huang Li confessed to him and became  his greatest admirer. He was the well-known "god of Maths" , the new "star" in X High that burst with the potential in going to top universities and climbing to the top of the pyramid. 

Everyone not only encouraged him, but expected him to achieve nothing but more success.

"Ah, Weng Bai, you are a genius! Tell us when you get accepted into MIT!"

"Weng Bai doesn't have to worry at all, he's already at the top."

"What are your recent achievements you got, Bai?"

"Let me worship the god of maths before I take my maths test!"

These were the words Weng Bai heard every day, everywhere he went. His parents and friends enjoyed the surrounding fame, and pushed the wave of expectations by boasting about Weng Bai's talents. At some point, Weng Bai also started wanting more from himself. 

Once others' expectations of him grew, his own reference point changed, and everything changed.

More competitions and opportunities naturally came, and so did the signing up of academies, and study camps. 

Staying up late drinking coffee and working through booklets of problems, flipping through textbooks one after another at every possible moment of break, and rejecting any recreational activities eventually turned from temporary cramming to the norm.  

Although he had always been studying as a child, this time it was different. His mindset had changed. Before, he learned according to his own tastes, his own pacing, for his own happiness.

 Now, instead of spending a whole afternoon preoccupied in solving one challenging maths question that interested him, and gaining a sense of accomplishment after finally having solved it, he would flip to the answer section whenever he was stuck on a question and move on to the next question. 

Now, instead of gaping and pondering at the amazing new concepts he read from textbooks, he would skim through them as fast as possible, highlighting the "will be tested" formulas and taking a few notes if necessary.

He grew tired of learning the subjects he had once loved throughout his childhood.

 Maths lost its liveliness, and became bland like the yellowing pieces of paper within his workbooks. He could not connect Science with the world, or anything, except diagrams and questions that meant nothing but "if you see this question type then solve it with these certain rigid steps". He too, became a lifeless robot that saw nothing but winning competitions or doing projects that were deemed "useful" to proceeding the path of success that everyone and him supposedly wanted. 

In his sophomore year, just when the whole world continued to suck his worn out soul into the never ending hole of ambition and achievement, a thin string appeared.

It tied itself onto the top of his pinky and was using all of its little might to pull him somewhere else. He didn't know if it was a golden thread, or a wicked spell, but he felt it anyway. He felt it, and the string tightened its hold. It grew thick into a rope, into a mold that fought against the hole that suck his soul.