Healing Sunshine

Chapter 4.1 - An Old Friend Has Returned

Two years after, Lalisa and Somi passed the examination for an attached high school at the same time.

She was placed in the only experimental science stream classroom. Somi's parents also used some contacts so that they once again became classmates. Jennie's mother sought out so many contacts, to no avail, and ended up reaching out to Somi's mother, and paid forty thousand yuan, before she could enroll.

Forty thousand yuan's worth of money, yet only a normal classroom.

That year, tuition fees for higher education were completely harmonized. There was no longer to be any free universities.

However, the tuition fee for four years of college still would not add up to so much a sum. This forty thousand yuan was merely sponsorship money for enrolling into an attached high school. Jennie started to love to study more and more, yet the more she paid attention, the less she could understand. The pressure of an attached high school was so much that, after studying for only half a semester, she had gotten a big round thinner.

Lalisa had never been able to describe such a feeling.

When she was young, in Beijing, fresh vegetables were scarce in winter. Every household all ate white cabbages and tomatoes that had been pickled in the summer. There were no computers, no mobile phones, no brand name cars. There were dragonflies and house geckoes; there were children gathering together to play with fire, roasting potatoes, roasting sweet potatoes, even building up a fire. Children who grew up during the years of uniform poverty would all long for those kinds of lives...

Back then, most people were happy.

Even if there were any troubles, it was not that all of them were caused by money.

Upon entering high school, Lalisa chose to board at the school.

However, when winter came, she started to feel regrets. The school had organized for them the boarding students this morning run "welfare" program, while day students such as Somi and Jennie were much more fortunate and did not have to endure such a torture.

That day, she woke up late again. When she finally ran out with Park Chaeyoung who slept on the bunk bed above her, they had been left far behind by the large running crowd.

"Lalisa, what are you doing?" Chaeyoung unzipped her down jacket. It was so hot that she stuck out her tongue.

Lalisa was standing by the city moat. With her hand resting on the wall that had been built from layers of bricks and cement, she quietly said: "I am thinking of walking on the ice to the other side." She felt that morning run in the winter was the scariest thing that could take away half of life.

"The ice can't be solid..." Chaeyoung shook with trepidation, leaning on the short wall and looking at the surface of the river.

There were several uncles wearing skates wandering about on the surface.

From the look of it, it should be quite safe?

Lalisa was torn between "keep running" and "walk over the ice to the other side" for a moment, then resolutely chose the latter. Chaeyoung was an obedient child. Though thoroughly jealous, only shouted "You be careful. I will wait for you at the stamping spot" as she ran off.

There were no stairs, just a steep slope. In the summer, it was filled with green grass; come winter, all had become withered.

Lalisa jumped here and there, dodging the dirty piles of snow and broken ice, and ran up to the river bank. She stretched out her feet, feeling the frozen surface. After ascertaining its safety, she quickly ran to the other side. The uncles who were skating behind her kept calling out little lady run a little more slowly. She turned back, made funny faces, and did not forget to warn one of the uncles who almost slipped: "Uncle, you also be careful."