"What kind of identity?" Cen Yemeng asked, intrigued.
"She was the wife of an interstellar tycoon," Jiang Ye replied. "That tycoon was also staying at the hotel. After he fell asleep, the woman came out to tend the fireplace and warm herself."
"And then?" Cen Yemeng inquired. "How far did your son get with her?"
"They didn't get very far; my son left that city later," Jiang Ye said. "On the last night before he left, my son told her he was going. The woman cried and then said that although they hadn't known each other long, the forest would always hold a special place in her heart. If she were ten years younger, or if the forest were ten years older, she would have considered eloping."
Cen Yemeng breathed a sigh of relief. "The outside world is truly dangerous. It's not easy for our son to venture out there."
"He had bodyguards protecting him secretly," Jiang Ye assured her. "He was very safe."
Cen Yemeng smiled and said nothing.
For the next few days, the couple stayed home, enjoying their vacation.
Most of the time, they were curled up in bed, sleeping. Even when awake, they would lie in bed, not moving, playing on their phones or chatting. Sometimes they did nothing at all, just gazing at each other, their eyes locked for an hour.
Jiang Ye felt like a lazy seal, or a patient recovering from a serious injury. If the holiday were longer, he might have developed bedsores.
After being so busy for years, suddenly relaxing and lying around like a piece of driftwood from morning till night felt quite peculiar.
On the fourth day of their vacation, Cen Yemeng finally grew tired of lying in bed doing nothing.
She pulled her husband out, found a lawn, spread out a silk quilt, and lay down.
"Is there any difference from lying at home?" Jiang Ye reached out, touched the grass beside him, picked a dandelion, and handed it to his wife.
"Yes, the air is good, and we can see the blue sky," Cen Yemeng said, squinting. "Lying here so quietly, darling, don't you feel like a plant, growing steadily under the sun? Doesn't it feel like a proper vacation, relaxing?"
"Plants stand, we're lying down," Jiang Ye said. "We feel more like two overturned dung beetles."
Cen Yemeng's face fell. "What a terrible comparison! Are you allergic to poetry, darling?"
Jiang Ye smiled and said nothing, raising his arms and legs in a gesture of a dung beetle struggling.
"Let's play a memory game," Cen Yemeng nudged her husband.
"Okay."
Memory games were a long-standing pastime for the couple. Cen Yemeng was a modern person, and Jiang Ye was from ancient times. Their life experiences were vastly different, and they were both curious about each other's past. The game involved one person sharing a memory, and the other sharing a corresponding memory for comparison.
"I'll start," Cen Yemeng thought for a moment. "How about our favorite snacks as children?"
"Spicy strips first," Jiang Ye mused. "Soda, mint candies... I didn't eat many snacks; I mostly ate food from street vendors."
"We also sold spicy strips at our school," Cen Yemeng said. "There was a stall in the cafeteria that fried spicy strips on the spot. They'd put them in paper bags for five yuan, and you could choose the sweetness and spiciness. One of our female teachers loved spicy strips; she'd bring a bag to every class. While we were doing problems, she'd be munching away."
"If we ate spicy strips during class, we'd definitely be made to stand," Jiang Ye clicked his tongue in amazement. "You guys had it so easy."
"It wasn't easy. The teacher could eat them, but we students couldn't. If we did, we'd get our hands hit."
"Hit your hands?"
"With a wooden ruler that had grooves, hit the hands hard, so hard that capillaries could break," Cen Yemeng said. "I was hit once, and I cried so hard at the time."
"Holy cow, your school actually hit students?" Jiang Ye was astonished. "We weren't allowed to physically punish students back then. Teachers would be reported and lose their jobs."
"Schools now allow students to be hit. Most planets have regulations for rulers, specifying the material, weight, and even high-tech rulers that require fingerprint verification. The teacher's finger would be placed on it, and the ruler would harden; otherwise, it would be soft like a plastic bag," Cen Yemeng explained. "There were specific usage requirements. Whenever a ruler was used, it had to be done publicly in front of the other students. Afterward, both the teacher and the student had to write a report explaining why the ruler was used and whether it was reasonable. This report would then be filed with the school."
"What if the student felt it was unreasonable?" Jiang Ye asked.
"If the student wrote in the report that they felt it was unreasonable, the school would launch an investigation," Cen Yemeng said. "The investigation would be very thorough, involving reviewing surveillance footage, examining the student's hands, retrieving the ruler's force records, interrogating the teacher, and questioning other students in the class. If the school investigation concluded that the punishment was indeed unwarranted or too severe, the teacher would be penalized, and the student would be allowed to hit the teacher back with the ruler. For example, if the teacher hit the student twenty times, and the school deemed five times sufficient, the student could hit back fifteen times."
"Holy cow!" Jiang Ye was stunned. "It could be like that?"
"That's how it was on Jiedian Star," Cen Yemeng said. "The universe is vast, and every planet is different. Jiang Ye Star and Birong Star have banned rulers now. But schools on Liuxing Star can use them; it was approved by an act of Isabel."
Jiang Ye nodded thoughtfully.
"Let me think about the second memory topic..." Cen Yemeng blinked. "How about our winter and summer breaks in junior high?"
"Okay," Jiang Ye nodded. "In our junior high, the winter break was one month, and the summer break was two months. Before the holidays, we'd be given two books: one called 'Winter Holiday Life' and another called 'Summer Holiday Life,' filled with exercises for each subject. In addition to that, teachers from each subject would assign extra homework. For Chinese, it was usually writing ten essays and practicing calligraphy by tracing characters on thin paper."
"Generally, we'd go wild playing after going home," Jiang Ye smiled. "Very few top students would quickly finish their homework in the first few days of the holiday. Most students would cram it in right before school started again. However, after school resumed, teachers would tacitly forget to collect the homework."
"How thick were those two books?" Cen Yemeng asked.
"About two hundred pages, quite thin actually."
"Then you were truly happy," Cen Yemeng said.
"Why? Was your homework very heavy?" Jiang Ye was taken aback.
"We learned online," Cen Yemeng said. "Before the winter and summer breaks, we were given a large book, as thick as a dictionary. The book specified what we needed to learn each day, marked by date. It covered all subjects, including reading classic literature, and sometimes we were required to read one or even two books a day. I remember my first summer break in junior high, the books I finished according to the requirements filled a large cardboard box."
"Then, at six o'clock in the evening, we had to go online for an exam." Cen Yemeng said.