Font Size:
After finishing dinner at the restaurant, it was already past seven in the evening.
The streetlights were all on. At People’s Square, the cheerful melody of “Little Apple” rang out loudly, while the elderly men and women happily danced their square dance.
Xu Ye’s home was in a residential community not far from No. 1 High School. It was considered a school district property, though the community was somewhat old and looked a bit worn down.
“When will your college entrance exam results be out, Xiao Ye?” Zhang Hong asked casually while taking out the keys to open the door.
As soon as the door opened, Xu Ye hurried inside to change his shoes. Although the apartment wasn’t large, it gave him a warm and cozy feeling.
“Probably around the 23rd or 24th,” he replied.
Eagerly, Xu Ye ran to the balcony, collected two clean sets of clothes, then dashed into the bathroom.
He stripped off all his clothes and took a cold shower. Before dressing, Xu Ye stood in front of the vanity mirror, staring blankly at his eighteen-year-old self.
His twenty-eight-year-old self always looked exhausted and worn out, but his eighteen-year-old self was brimming with youthful energy — bright eyes, full of spirit, and a body untouched by the draining effects of indulgence.
He put on his clothes and roughly dried his hair with a towel.
In the mirror, Xu Ye’s appearance was quite good. Standing at one meter seventy-eight, weighing one hundred and thirty jin (about 65 kg), his individual features were nothing striking alone, but together, they formed a harmonious whole.
Gu Mengyao, the class beauty in high school, surely had more admirers than just Xu Ye. But she rejected most of their confessions outright. From this, it was clear that Gu Mengyao had very high standards—she was a true appearance-focused girl.
It was precisely because Xu Ye’s looks were decent that Gu Mengyao hadn’t firmly rejected him over these three years. Yet, she never accepted him either.
Whenever Xu Ye tried to confess to her, she would quickly change the subject or come up with an excuse to leave.
Xu Ye had once thought Gu Mengyao was simply afraid that an early romance would affect her studies, but now he had realized the truth—Gu Mengyao had been stringing him along all along!
At this moment, in her eyes, he was nothing more than a backup option!
Xu Ye returned to his room. Like most senior year students, his room wasn’t much different—posters of NBA stars plastered the walls, and his desk was covered with all sorts of college entrance exam review materials.
He glanced around the room and finally walked to his desk, pulling open a drawer. Inside lay a phone that felt very old-fashioned to Xu Ye.
It was a Lenovo phone, but Xu Ye had long forgotten the exact model.
At that time, Apple and Samsung phones were becoming popular, but most people couldn’t afford them. The majority were still using HTC, Lenovo, Xiaomi, or various lesser-known brands.
Because phone memory was limited, there weren’t many apps. WeChat hadn’t yet become popular among young people, so QQ remained the primary social platform.
Opening QQ, the main interface showed only two groups.
The first group: ﹏My World
The second group: ﹏Only You Exist
The “My World” group contained all kinds of friends and classmates. Generally, family members weren’t added here unless they were cousins of a similar age.
Back then, the posts on QQ Space were very private, even embarrassing.
For example, Qin Zhiwei had posted two messages just yesterday:
“Memories are too beautiful, the past too warm, reality too cold, truth too ugly.”
“My shadow scatters all over the ground, but no stars respond anymore.”
Xu Ye could tell immediately these were lines he found online.
Seeing these words ten years later gave Xu Ye goosebumps all over.
The second group contained only one person—Gu Mengyao. Her screen name was “Rose Girl,” and Xu Ye’s contact note for her was: baby.
Xu Ye felt a chill crawl across his scalp, so he quickly deleted the note, removed her from his favorites, and even deleted the group.
Just as Xu Ye hesitated over whether to delete her entirely, Gu Mengyao surprisingly sent him a message first.
Rose Girl: “Why didn’t you come to find me today???”
Before replying, Xu Ye first changed his screen name from “Sunshine Youth” to a single character: “Xu.”
Xu: “No time.”
Rose Girl: “If you’re like this, I won’t talk to you anymore.”
Xu Ye typed several lines but ended up deleting them all. Finally, he simply typed two words and sent them.
Xu: “Okay.”
On the other side,
Gu Mengyao, who had just returned home, saw Xu Ye’s message and angrily tossed her phone aside. She hadn’t expected him to reply like that. Before, it was always him reaching out first, but now that she tried to contact him, Xu Ye’s response was so dismissive.
Seeing that Gu Mengyao didn’t reply, Xu Ye couldn’t help but smile.
Scrolling up through their chat history, it was almost always him initiating conversations, while her replies were brief and indifferent: “Mm, oh, okay, I’m going to eat, I’m going to shower, I’m going to sleep…” In this way, he realized he had used magic to defeat magic.
The college entrance exam was finally over.
At this point in life, Xu Ye stood at a crossroads.
Every choice from here on would shape the rest of his life.
He was certain he wouldn’t walk the old paths again. For him now, there were actually many options laid out before him.
If he remembered the English answers correctly, scoring sixty or seventy points shouldn’t be a problem. As long as he passed the cutoff for the first-tier universities, there would be plenty of universities to choose from.
But that wasn’t the main point.
Back in the 1970s, if someone from his grandfather’s generation could get into a vocational school, it would be a sensation throughout the entire county.
In the 1990s, if his father’s generation got into a junior college, the principal would personally deliver the acceptance letter.
But now it was 2014. Even if you got into a first-tier university, turning your life around from nothing was far from easy.
“If only I had known earlier, I could have memorized some lottery numbers,” Xu Ye sighed.
He racked his brains, recalling the big trends over the years—e-commerce, micro-businesses, live streaming, the sharing economy, short videos, live commerce…
None of these offered him any room to operate.
2014…
“Oh, right! Stocks! That’s it, that’s it! From early 2014 to mid-2015 was a bull market phase—the last bull market for the A-share market. The main index apparently surged from around 2,000 points all the way up to 5,000! Anyone could make money trading stocks during that period, let alone someone like me who knows the outlook of many industries!”
Xu Ye suddenly grew excited. He stood up enthusiastically, setting his short-term goal.
“First, make money! Then open a bank account! I’ll earn my first pot of gold in the shortest time possible!”
He opened the door and walked into the living room, where Zhang Hong was still sitting on the sofa watching TV. Xu Ye cheerfully approached, hooking his arm around her with a flattering smile.
“Mom, can we talk about something?”
“Spit it out quickly.”
“The college entrance exam is over. Can you give me some money to spend?”
“How much do you want?”
“The more, the better.”
“Just five hundred. Go get it from my purse yourself.”
“Only five hundred~”
“Isn’t five hundred enough?” Seeing his son’s pitiful expression, Zhang Hong snorted and added, “If you get into a first-tier university, I’ll give you five thousand right away.”
“Five thousand is only enough to buy a new phone and a new computer.”
“Then what else do you want?”
“I…”
Xu Ye’s eyes suddenly lit up, and he quickly said, “The summer vacation is three months long. I want to get my driver’s license first. If I really get into a first-tier university, Grandpa, Grandma, and my maternal grandparents will definitely give me money. There will also be an enrollment banquet. I want to…”
Before he could finish, his ear was grabbed: “Alright, just finished the college entrance exam and already thinking about the money in your maternal grandparents’ hands.”
“Mom, just tell me whether you’ll give it or not.”
“If you really get into a first-tier university, I’ll give you all that money. But the condition is… you have to get in!”
Xu Ye, caught up in the moment, kissed his mother on the cheek and said excitedly, “It’s a deal!”
Zhang Hong wiped her face with a look of mock disgust and teased, “You little rascal.”