บท 10: She's Really Back To The Past
Earth. Summer of 2010.
A kite flying high in the air slowly descended upon being pulled by a pair of small, feeble hands belonging to a child aged 5-6. The wind blew and slightly increased the air resistance, resulting in an annoyed mumbling to come from the child's mouth.
"Teacher! Teacher! The kite is hard to pull down!" The kid pouted and loudly yelled. Several yards from him, a lady dressed in a white long-sleeve blouse and pencil skirt smiled and approached him.
"Hmm. Wait a minute, I'm coming over." A pleasant voice rang and in just a few seconds, the kite the boy wanted to bring down descended on the playground of the school.
Laughter resounded not far away from them. There were many kids in the place, all of them having fun and playing with each other while their teachers stood guard next to them.
It was a place brimming with children and adults bearing smiles on their faces. And actually, the aura of happiness was not only restricted to that place where young children congregated.
Since ancient times children were a symbol of purity and happiness, and even though a whole school was a place for learning, the nature of the youthful students did not let it be without laughter and beautiful memories. Of course, bad things that could render the entire place bleak and serious still happened now and then, like exams… but that was a different matter altogether.
It was a sunny afternoon, with the heat a bit above average as it was still summer.
Fifty meters from the kindergarten playground, in one of the classrooms in the high school block on the first floor of a three-story building.
A girl just opened her eyes, blinking to adapt to the sudden changes in her surroundings. A desk chair again. The familiar smell of paper, wood, and somehow, chalk. The rhythmic sounds of the ceiling fan. Her small hands. Greeted by these seemingly insignificant details, her heart began to race.
"I-it's real!" She could not help but exclaim.
The tiny voice she let out was trembling from disbelief and fear, yet at the end of her statement, there was an unmistakable hint of excitement. Her hands involuntarily trembled as she placed them on her chest to feel her heartbeat.
"I, I have truly come back…" A moved, almost crying expression emerged on her face as seemed to have confirmed her of something very important.
The girl was none other than Zhang Mei Xing who had finally returned to her past, once again alive, in the truest sense, unlike the fakeness that the trial world offered her.
This was her official first day as a reincarnator or time-traveler, whichever applied to her. When she roamed her eyes, she saw her classmates chatting and having fun with each other as if the teacher and class officers didn't exist, and none of them gave her the feeling that they were not real. She was truly back to that same classroom full of noisy students. Apparent from their PE uniforms that this was a different day from the one in the 'test'.
'So which date and year did I come back to?' Once past the extreme exhilaration that overwhelmed her, questions began to pop up in her mind.
Of course, with limited information in her eyes, it was hard to not be confused.
"Zhang Mei Xing!"
A boy at the back of the classroom laughingly called the name of the girl seated two columns in front.
As lightheaded as she was from suddenly regaining a body, her head turned towards their direction.
Uhh, she couldn't remember the boy's name… But why was her name called?
"Hey, Li Qiang, stop! Stop!" Another guy, shorter, but better looking than the one he called raised his voice to veil the embarrassment that he was feeling.
Zhang Mei Xing held her slightly aching forehead as she knitted her brows at the two. A girl seated by her right also turned her head and asked, "Hmm… What's the problem of that one?"
Zhang Mei Xing was clueless so she instinctively shrugged her shoulders. She was more inclined to look for a calendar in the room with the absence of a cellphone.
'At least the uniform gave me hints that I'm currently a high school student.'
This was a period when most students possessed cellular phones. Unfortunately, schools all over the country were still strict about letting their students bring them into their classrooms. If her guess was correct, her own mobile phone was in her drawer at home, and since her family was still not as stable financially, it should be the cheap, black and white screen model.
'March 2010?' On the other side of the wall where their room's bulletin board could be found, the calendar she wanted to see was there.
Subconsciously, she tried to recall if there was any important event around this time.
The girl seated on Zhang Mei Xing's right spoke again. "Hmm. They're looking this way."
"Probably kidding around, teasing girls. Just boys being boys," said An Qi, the friend Zhang Mei Xing met just a few hours ago, the one she thought she would never see again. Her tone was quite disdainful.
While the girls near her were exchanging words, the boy called Li Qiang escaped from the headlock and laughed again. The teacher was not Miss Liu, but the stern teacher of music and arts who was currently outside talking with a school council officer.
The guy gave the angry-looking friend a provoking look.
"Ignore them. Here," said her other seatmate, Mu Chunhua.
The girl passed her a neatly stack up pieces of paper which Zhang Mei Xing recognized as quiz papers. She looked down at her own armchair and picked up her own paper before passing it to the one in front of her.
She was about to sort out her thoughts and inspect herself again when the familiar teasing voice echoed again. "Hey!"
'Hmm?'
Her curious eyes peered at the boy and then to the person next to him. Towards the latter, her face froze for a while as she finally remembered him.
In her memories, the boy became very popular and many girls' hearts got stolen by him in the latter half of their second year even though he was not the most charming and handsome. It was because he showed superb performance as a basketball player in the sports fest. However, the PE uniform they were all wearing was the one issued in their first year. Green, a color reserved for freshmen.
So, if her hunch was correct…
"Zhang Mei Xing! Wang Lei said you're his crush! He likes you!"
Now she had confirmed. Yet even though she had predicted it, the girl could not help but be dumbfounded. "Huh?"
"Hey. That's not it! You, Li Qiang. I'm telling you, shut up! Shut up!"
One boy was blushing from unease and shame while his friends kept laughing at him teasingly.
So this was the day she learned that a boy actually fell for her boring and immature sixteen years old self...
The embarrassment that came with this realization made her blush with her eyes swimming around.
Alright. That did not happen.
Zhang Mei Xing was only surprised and dumbstruck for a second. But given her mentality, her real mental age per se, the real shame would be if she would not be able to collect her calm easily.
'Wait. Even if I am a twenty-four-year-old lady mentally, in everyone else's eyes I'm still just a sixteen years old brat. I should not behave like an auntie shrugging off the admiration of a kid like a joke.'
She wondered for a moment. How should a girl her age react to stuff like this? Helplessness was actually engulfing her as all the options that came to mind were so embarrassing to even think of doing.
However, it only took her a couple of seconds to realize that there was a more important thing she should do, to confirm her current situation and examine her memories to see how much she could remember.
She could finally resolve through the precious second chance given to her.
What were the small and big regrets in her past life? Had she truly returned to the past? Or was it a parallel world where something or someone was actually not existing?
Zhang Mei Xing momentarily glanced at the laughing boys at the back and Wang Lei also came into her view. The question about how she should respond to the teasing also flashed across her mind too.
'Well... perhaps, it will be a good excuse to just escape to the bathroom,' she laughingly thought while shaking her head.
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