The holidays for high school seniors always felt short. Sitting amidst a pile of colorful down jackets in the classroom, Liu Chen couldn't help but steal a smile as she recalled the scene of them sitting quietly together under the sunset that day.
Lai Jielun, who had just turned around to speak, saw Liu Chen's smile. He couldn't help but rub goosebumps on his arm over his black down jacket, and said with a wry grin:
"I say, Sister Chen, can you be more normal? Stop smiling so creepily?"
Liu Chen looked at Lai Jielun with a smile and said nothing. Mi Zhuzhu, his deskmate, gently pinched the arm Lai Jielun had just rubbed.
"Damn it! Mi Zhuzhu, are you trying to murder me? You're pinching so hard! You're too cruel! What if my delicate skin gets bruised? How will I get on TV or the big screen in the future?"
Seeing them about to start bickering again, Liu Chen quickly intervened, "Okay, okay, Lai Jielun, you just turned around, what were you going to say? If you don't say it soon, class will start."
When Liu Chen asked, Lai Jielun's expression finally became a little more serious. His playful smile disappeared, leaving only a hint of nervousness:
"The day after tomorrow, my grandparents are taking me to Beijing for an exam. It's my first time flying, and it's just to Beijing. Sister Chen, I remember you posted photos of your summer trip to Beijing on your QQ space before. Is the cost of living high in Beijing?"
Hearing that it was about this, Mi Zhuzhu stopped causing trouble. She turned around, propped her elbows on her desk, supported her chin with her palms, and blinked at Liu Chen, looking ready to listen attentively.
"Accommodation and food are about the same as in our C City. As long as you don't stay in a particularly expensive hotel, two to three hundred yuan should be enough. Food is about ten percent more expensive than in our C City. Is that okay?"
Lai Jielun nodded,
"My mom has already booked our hotel. I've never traveled before, and my mom, Mrs. Lai, said that most people in Beijing take the subway. I'm a bit nervous about it. How do you take the subway?"
Seeing the rarely flustered Lai Jielun, Liu Chen also recalled her own awkwardness the first time she took the subway. Back then, she took it alone and was too embarrassed to ask staff for help, so she could only follow the people around her. As a result, she reached the ticket gate only to be told she needed to buy a card to enter.
Blinking, she came back to her senses and looked at Lai Jielun and Mi Zhuzhu, who were waiting for her to share her experience, and Ren Mo, who was listening curiously from the side.
Liu Chen thought for a moment, organized her thoughts, and said:
"After you find the subway entrance from the ground and take the escalator down, there will be a large subway map. Look for where you want to go and what stations are nearby. Then go to the ticket window and queue up to buy a ticket. Tell the person at the window which station you're going to, and they'll tell you the price. Pay the money, and they'll give you a card.
With this card, queue up for a baggage check machine. Put your belongings on it, and they'll be automatically transported to the front. Just walk forward.
After picking up your luggage, first find the line you need to take. Follow the signs on the ground to get there. Once you reach the correct line, pay attention to the direction of the line.
Generally, after you go down following the signs, there will be subway entrances for the left and right directions of a line. The direction indicated by the arrows is where the subway will be going."
Lai Jielun nodded in understanding and didn't forget to confirm with Liu Chen:
"Right, about that Beijing Film Academy down jacket you mentioned, I found a senior on the forum who said he'd take me to buy one. What sizes do you guys want? Send them to me on QQ so I don't mix them up."
Perhaps due to the nervousness of traveling for the first time and having to take care of two elderly people, Lai Jielun frequently turned to ask Liu Chen about Beijing during these two days.
He even made Liu Chen have the illusion that despite her short stay in Beijing last time, she seemed to understand the city profoundly!
...
The plane flew over the campus of the Normal University Affiliated High School. Liu Chen watched the airplane's shadow gradually recede and finally disappear, then silently lowered her head to work on the various practice tests that Ren Yu had found for her.
She would write down any problems she couldn't solve and ask Ren Yu to explain them to her via QQ video call that evening when she got home.
...
Mi Zhuzhu once again lost her deskmate, but this time she was quite used to it. Of course, it was mainly because she was too busy. As the countdown to the college entrance examination began, she wasn't a pervert like Chen Chen, who could finish a comprehensive science paper in half an hour.
She still had time to work on bizarre practice papers she'd found somewhere. She couldn't even answer the multiple-choice questions on them!
Because she kept doing practice papers, by the time Mi Zhuzhu remembered to upload the magic reveal video, it was already the end of the month.
And during this nearly week-long period, Liu Qian's magic had unexpectedly gone viral online. Netizens everywhere were asking—how was the magic performed?
After Mi Zhuzhu uploaded the video to her QQ space, she didn't pay any further attention to it. After all, in Mi Zhuzhu's opinion, it was just a video, and at most, it would make her old classmates from School No. 12 envious.
However, Jiang Gao, who had received a wave of praise for his post on the Hupu forum last time, was the first to discover the video of Liu Chen uploaded to Mi Zhuzhu's QQ space.
Jiang Gao didn't even have time to watch it before he directly reposted the video link to Hupu, updating his post to—
'Turns out the Academic Queen has such a video!'
More than two months later, the passers-by who had been tricked into clicking before were once again fooled by this familiar posting style.
They even put on their headphones specifically before finding a secluded spot to secretly click the video link.
Then, a slightly blurry video popped up. It showed a beautiful woman sitting in what looked like a luxurious living room, explaining Liu Qian's rubber band magic trick from the Spring Festival Gala.
???
Three question marks filled Jiang Gao's post. The huge number of replies immediately pushed his post to the front rows, increasing its exposure.
Netizens saw the post had such a high reply count, so it must have something interesting. They excitedly clicked in to take a look.
Although the magic explanation was also interesting, some people still left comments under the post with a sense of injustice:
???
Some users with good memory immediately recognized Jiang Gao's unique posting style, and thus...
Liu Fang noticed that she had thought after the Spring Festival would be a slow season, but why were there actually more people coming to check in recently?
So, without Liu Chen knowing why, the daily lottery tickets remained at fifty and didn't decline.
Meanwhile, Penguin Farm, in which Liu Chen held an 8% stake, became a sensation. On computers everywhere, you could occasionally see people opening the Penguin Farm interface and harvesting crops, with everyone talking about, "What level is your farm?"