With You Ch 3

Chapter 3: The Other Foot

No.13

I said, Oh, I’m that Geng Geng.

In retrospect, how many times in this life do you get the opportunity to say the sentence “I’m that XX” to someone else?

His mouth dropped open. Afterward, he finally laughed a little and said, I’m Yu Huai.

This boy was… he didn’t really leave an impression. Wheat skin, small eyes, but their squint when he smiled was quite cute; white t-shirt, jeans, very clean. With one glance, you could tell he was a good kid.

I nodded and said, From now on we’ll be classmates.

He said, Right, from now on we’ll be classmates.

I said, Today’s really so hot.

He said, Yes, it’s pretty hot.

I opened my mouth again and didn’t know what else to say. He also opened his mouth, probably because he felt a little sorry that I was the one who kept starting the conversation each time.

After, we both just laughed. On the other side of the sports field was the brilliant scenery of noisy lines; on this side was the lonely row of red boards and two awkward new classmates.

No.14

Each class had a list of boys and a list of girls. Looking at the lengths, they were unexpectedly very balanced.

Women can hold up half of the sky;¹ who says that girls aren’t as good as boys?

Everyone was carefully sizing up their new classmates; behind all that was the big, dark, mass of parents. The entire sports field was just like a Japanese beef pot in an anime: the ingredients were all arranged neat and tidy row by row, but there were still murmurs from the bubbles steaming up.

We spent too long lined up, during which I didn’t know what the hell was happening up on the platform. China is just like this— the audience below the stage never knows what the person up there is doing; but if everyone else claps, you should just clap randomly along with them.

I accidentally yawned— the extremely big type of yawn.

Yu Huai asked, You didn’t sleep well last night?

I laughed. The people around glanced at me, so I quickly shut my mouth.

“Congratulations, you finally found the words to talk to me.”

Yu Huai rolled his eyes. That was what I guessed it was, since at any rate his eyes were too small and I couldn’t see it clearly. 

“I didn’t sleep that well last night,” he said.

“That’s normal, when I was in elementary school I couldn’t sleep at all the night before sports events. As long as there was something big going on the next day, I’d have insomnia. Basically, it’s just proof of a bad psychological condition.”

He didn’t speak.

But he was watching me.

I pretended to be calm, yet not even one minute passed before I broke. I just said, my psychological condition isn’t good.

“What, fell in love?!”² I lowered my voice to make fun of him.

His mouth dropped open in surprise. “F***, how did you know what I wanted to say? I was just thinking, you really talk like my little aunt.”

I glared at him.

He stuttered. “Ex, expression is also alike.”

No.15

It was just at this time that the vice principal up on the platform started to test the microphone, “hello hello hello,” unending hellos.

Whatever the principal said, I didn’t listen to it at all; I was still occupied with his little aunt.

In the end, taking advantage of the pause from the big breath of air the principal took after every three sentences, I reluctantly asked, “Do I look that old?”

He shook his head repeatedly, still pretty tactful.

After that, he said, “I didn’t say that you look like her. My little aunt looks a lot better than you.”

The most infuriating thing was not this sentence, it was his tone.

Serious, innocent, sincere.

“My little aunt is also at Zhenhua.” He continued the struggle.

This part shocked me. “How old is your little aunt?”

“The same age as us.” He stopped. “Are you a rabbit or a dragon?”

I sent my regards to his eighteen generations of ancestors³ along with his little aunt within my heart. “I’m… a tiger.”⁴

“Oh, an elder.” He bowed slightly.

F***.

“The tiger’s tail,” I emphasized. “End of the year.”

He shook his head. “You’re the tiger’s butt, that’s still a tiger.”

Speechless, I could only pull the topic back to his little aunt.

“Then your little aunt’s also a freshman? Which class?”

He tipped his head back blankly for half a day before sighing lightly. “Class 1.”

“F***.” I completely no longer cared about his disrespect toward me just now. In a flash, I thought it would really be a great honor if I could be like his little aunt. “Your little aunt is a genius!”

“Yep.” He looked at the sky, thinking about who knew what. Probably, tangled up in the problem of the top classes again.

“Hold on, you’re the same age. How come you call her little aunt?”

He stuck out his fingers and began to count. “Just after we took the entrance exam, my grandpa hit his sixtieth birthday. Actually, my great-grandfather is her grandfather’s older brother, so her mom is my great-aunt… that’s not right, uh… my dad calls her mom ‘aunt’… so…”

The neurons in my brain were already smashed up into paste.

“So, you just call her aunt?”

“That’s what the adults said.”

“Then what does she call you?” I grinned. “Guo’er?”⁵

No.16

After that, he turned his back and ignored me. The topic of his little aunt could not be continued.

The platform started to become chaotic. Family representatives from the various classes went up to draw lots for their homeroom teacher. I dipped my head to play with my camera, bored to death.

I got to the photo of the uncle and Yu Huai and couldn’t help but laugh. I turned to look at the Yu Huai next to me, whose face was ugly.

Maybe his side profile made up for the disadvantage of his small eyes. His straight nose bridge and deep, three-dimensional bone structure looked far better from the side than straight on. I didn’t even think about it and grabbed my camera to take a picture. At that moment, sunlight poured down from the crown of his head. The timing was exceptional.

But the sound of the click attracted the attention of everybody around us, including Yu Huai.

I maintained the direction and posture of photographing, unsure how I could explain this behavior.

“You…” Yu Huai looked embarrassed.

“I…” I suddenly calmed down. “Classmate, move, you’re blocking my lens.”

…

His calm eyes laid all of my disguises bare.

Yu Huai narrowed his eyes at me sarcastically and moved to the side. The large sun that his head had been blocking then blinded my poor eyes with its brilliant golden light through the viewfinder.

No.17

Our class’s homeroom teacher was a physics teacher who had just graduated college, called Zhang Ping.

During the process of lining up to go into the classroom, I heard many family members complaining in dissatisfaction.

“That woman in the linen dress who demanded to draw the lot for us went up on the platform without asking for advice. Whose parent was that, it’s awful.”

“Drawing a newly-assigned young teacher like this, and a man, too, will he manage the class well? It’s his first time teaching. He doesn’t know anything about the standards.”

“You can’t help the students while looking like that. If the class falls into chaos, then what can he do?”

I was suddenly very curious.

In thirty years, would I also become this type of woman who blindly worried about their children the whole day, a completely illogical and unrestrained auntie?

Or, would I be full of logic, full of restraint, but not worry at all about my children, just like my dad and mom?

I suddenly turned my head to see Yu Huai. The classroom seating wasn’t assigned, so everyone all sat wherever. Very naturally, he had also sat next to me. In that moment, a ridiculous question popped up in my head. If this boy became a dad, what would he be like with his son?

Each kid in this classroom who used indifference to cover up their expectations and excitement, each outstanding leader who self-righteously thought they were standing on a much higher platform than their peers, each future champion who was full of all sorts of hopes and targets and aspirations; in thirty years, what would they be like?

When I saw various relatives over vacation, the adults patted me on the head and complimented me, saying, “Aiyo, Zhenhua, isn’t entering Zhenhua basically having one foot in Peking, Tsinghua?”

I laughed.

That year, Shen Shen, in my heart, had also basically had one foot in Zhenhua. But, what truly determines fate is the other foot.

I sighed softly.

Yu Huai turned. “What’s up with you?”

My brain short-circuited. I blurted out, “Hey, what would you be like if you were a dad?”

His entire face flushed. So did mine.

What’s this? I discovered that ever since I tested into Zhenhua, my IQ didn’t move at all, but my EQ started approaching the top students’ by declining steadily.

After a long time, Zhang Ping stood in front of the podium, sorting out various materials to be distributed. The new classmates in the class whispered their introductions to each other. But the two of us sat like ancient stone carvings in the corner of the last row.

It was when I awkwardly turned my head to watch the family members through the window bustling around underneath the sun, that he suddenly said very seriously, “By my conservative estimate, that should depend on what kind of person the kid’s mom is.”

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Footnotes:

^{1 A well-known Communist-era saying during the agricultural boom of the 50s. Many men did not approve of women going out to work, which meant that women earned less from the labor points system. In 1955, the Guizhou Democratic Women’s Association released an article titled “Equal Pay for Men and Women in Collectives.” After reading it, Mao Zedong personally approved of it and put forth this slogan.
2 Geng Geng asks if he’s looking at his 小姑, whose meanings include your father’s younger sister (your aunt) or an unmarried maiden
3 A popular Chinese insult is to “*** your ancestors to the eighteenth generation”
4 This puts Geng Geng as born near the beginning of 1987
5 Yang Guo from the famous Chinese wuxia novel Return of the Condor Heroes. Calls his mentor and lover, Xiaolongnv, “Aunt”}

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tl note: the group that was previously translating this novel hasn’t updated it for the past 2 years, so I think they’ve dropped it. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know!