Healing Sunshine

Chapter 14.2 - A Song of Brief Parting

In the middle of June, it was time to begin filling in their post-secondary choices.

Everyone around her was talking about this. To avoid competition within their year, the teachers were also responsible for coordinating everyone and holding parent-teacher conferences. For instance, if too many people wanted to apply to Capital Normal University, the teachers would need to provide appropriate counsel to parents to change the selection to another school, such as Beijing International Studies University. Lalisa's university pick was actually very simple; she had only one school and one field of study that she was applying to.

When everyone was filling in the machine-readable cards, the teacher truly could not keep up with checking all of them and asked Lalisa to help her schoolmates check their cards.

Each densely-packed list of post-secondary choices—from programs that allowed early enrollment, to first-level undergraduate programs, to second-level undergraduate programs, to diploma programs—was always a carefully-considered decision that had come about after a meeting of a student's entire family. She was not certain how many people she had ended up erasing an incorrectly-filled machine-readable card for, or how many people she had picked up a pencil for and helped to carefully re-fill in school codes and field-of-study codes.

When Lalisa stepped over to where Jennie was, the latter unexpectedly covered her machine-readable card with her hands.

Lalisa found this a little strange but did not probe into it.

It was not until July 10, when she and Somi were celebrating the satisfactory ending of their National College Entrance Examinations, that Somi gave her an interpretation of this puzzling action.

"I heard my housekeeper mention that for both sets of mock exams, Jennie's score was less than three hundred. I'm guessing she's probably got no hope of getting into any school. That's why her mom went to find that b*stard dad of hers and is hoping she can get into the program for military dependents in Nanjing's military academy."

No wonder Jennie had covered up her post-secondary selection form. It was probably similar to her own, where not many school choices had been filled in.

The grievance and bitterness that Jennie's mother felt in regards to being discarded and abandoned by Jennie's father was very deep-rooted, but for Jennie's future, she could set aside her pride. Nibbling on the plastic straw that was in her drinking glass, Lalisa thought, the love that most parents have for their children truly has no principles. When placed before your own child's future, all that pride becomes unworthy of even mentioning.

They were sitting in the rbt Tea Cafe next to Oriental Plaza, taking sip after sip of their iced water. If you looked out through the glass wall, there was an old building in the hutong across the street, and inside it was where Yoon-hwan lived with his parents. Since this restaurant was the closest to Yoon-hwan's home, it had practically become Somi's cafeteria, and the several servers all recognized her.

"When we're married, you can't eat like this. Be good and go to the market to learn how to buy beef and green peppers, and then bring them home to cook yourself. A few strips of beef tenderloin and some green peppers, plus some black pepper and rice, are not worth that much money at all." He was mocking Somi for wanting to eat this stuff that was neither delicious nor economical, but all the while, he was pulling out his wallet and paying the bill.

With a silver fork, Somi ate her rice while at the same time complaining in a voice muffled by food, "This is already considered fast-food. If it weren't for the fact that you insist on paying every time, I would definitely bring you to eat something tasty."

Yoon-hwan grinned. "Make my wifey pay? That's not something I can make myself do."

After the girls had finished lunch and, following Yoon-hwan, had crossed the road, they wound their way into the hutong. The old stairwell had no door, and in the corner on its walls, there were little flyers, all ads for things such as "Renovations" or "Drain Unblocking."