Fleeting Midsummer • LK Adaptation

Chapter 1: Earnest Instructions before Admission to School

Chapter 1: Earnest Instructions before Admission to School

When my mom sent me off at the train station, she sighed and said, “Lisa, look at how lucky you are! You can even get into Peking University! After you get to college, your first mission is to make sure you aren’t kicked out of school, your second mission is to lose weight, and your third mission is to find an excellent college boyfriend, so that even if you don’t have this kind of luck in the next generation, you can still lean on our genetic inheritance and allow your future generations to go to a great college.”

Why did my mom only send me to the train station, and not accompany me to my new school? It was all because my mom had seen the top student of our town on television. The person who had tested into the exact same college as I had was a boy- a pretty boy, to be more precise. My mom loved pretty boys, her old idol being Won Bin. She went through numerous contacts to get that person’s number and then she called him herself.

“Hello? Is this fellow student Jeon Jungkook ? Hi. I am Manoban Lisa’s mom. It’s like this: didn’t my Lisa test into the same college you did……Oh, you’re not familiar with the area…... No problem, no problem. After you go around a bit you’ll be familiar with it. As for my Lisa, this is her first time going to a far away place, but her dad and I just happened to join a tourist group. Thus, could you do me a favor and keep an eye on my Lisa for awhile? Please. If there’s time you can come to auntie’s house.”

I sat next to her, feeling bashful. I had no impressions of a tourist group. If she was willing to pay money to go traveling, the sun might as well come up from the western side.

And then there was Jeon Jungkook - even though we were classmates, our rotten school emphasized the importance of the sciences. Their sciences building practically resembled a palace, while the liberal arts students, including me, were put in a lonely corner, with about the same amount of land as where the palace maids would have lived. Even though we were classmates for three years, I had never met him face to face, and could only spot him from afar when the school awards were given out. I only knew that he had been named the most excellent boy on campus by our school girls, and that he was our principal’s grandson. He, of course, never lost the principal’s face. He didn't even have to move and he would receive some first place award. The glass display window in our school always posted an inchlong photo of him on it, and next to that was written his birthday, 7/18/1984, which year he had been named one of the top three students of the year, and on which month he had received an award, etc.

I used to make fun of it with my friend, Minnie, “Look at that photo- it looks so much like a first generation ID card. With those remarks, it all resembles an obituary. It’s fortunate that our little town doesn’t have a recommended-for-admission quota, or else this kind of person wouldn’t even need to take the Gao Kao [1], and would immediately go to Tsinghua University or Peking University. I heard that when the Gao Kao grades were posted, Peking University called him and let him choose his major. Going with this person to university increases the pressure on me; plus he'll definitely despise someone like me. Alas, after I go to Peking University people everyone will be like him. I feel my head hurt whenever I think about it. As the saying goes, I would rather be a chicken’s head than a phoenix’s tail [2], so what’s the point of registering for Peking University for the honor of my ancestors only to do wrong to myself?”

Speaking of this, before the Gao Kao, my grades went along a wavy line. Sometimes it would be twice the amount of my valleys. I had even drawn a line chart for every time I tested. According to the direction of the line chart, my Gao Kao grade should have dipped into a valley. I didn’t think that my Gao Kao grade would exceed my daily trend, and rush to the top of Mount Everest, so when I received my Gao Kao grade via a short text, and saw the number of zeros and the two digit number, I kept feeling that the text could have made a mistake.