She went downstairs, brought out a small stool, and sat facing the clock. It was 1:25 PM—five minutes left.
Waiting is the longest process, filled with the fear that this might be a dream, or conversely, that it might be real.
If it were a dream, she would wake up and make a video call to her mom and dad. Although they had video-called just the day before, she missed them dearly. In the dream, Dad Fu and Mom Fu looked so vividly youthful, bearing a sharp contrast to the heavy marks that time would leave thirteen years later. She hadn't become their pride, yet they remained her anchor.
If it were reality, she would definitely have to study hard to get into college and become her parents' pride. Even if she couldn't provide them with a very wealthy life, she could at least make sure they wouldn't worry about her. Then she would save up diligently and take them to see the capital!
Lost in these chaotic thoughts, she looked up again. The minute hand was about to point to the 30-minute mark.
Ten, nine, eight... two, one.
It was half-past two. The dream hadn't broken; she hadn't moved. Her heart was beating, and the second hand was still ticking.
It was true. She had been reborn.
Still finding it hard to believe, Fu Ying pinched her arm. It hurt quite a bit, and her skin was loose and soft. Ah, she hadn't been affected by hormone issues yet, so she wasn't terribly overweight. Compared to her peers, she was considered chubby right now, but set beside the weight she would carry in later years, her current figure and weight were practically standard. She was probably around a hundred pounds right now, whereas in her late twenties, her weight had almost caught up with her height.
Now the question was: if she had truly been reborn, what year was it?
She entered vocational school in 2011—she remembered it very clearly because her class name was literally "11 Tourism Class 1." The carbon monoxide poisoning had happened a month or two before the senior high school entrance examination, which meant it was the exact same year.
So, had she returned to 2011?
Was there anything special about this year, apart from her taking the high school entrance exams and the birth of her eldest sister's third child—was it a year completely devoid of major events? No, there was one more thing. In September, Mom Fu would return home to start adding a second floor to their self-built house, and she would accidentally fall from the upper level, injuring her waist. She would be hospitalized for a month, leaving behind a chronic ache, though fortunately, it wouldn't impact her daily life too drastically.
In truth, Dad Fu's burn injury had also happened this year, but that had occurred at the very beginning of the year.
Then what was the point of her coming back?
If it was to save her family from suffering harm, Dad Fu was already hurt, and it was too late for that.
There was another issue as well: given this year's entrance exams, there was a high probability she would still end up in a vocational school. Both she and her family actually wanted to avoid vocational school and attend a regular high school to prepare for college. Fu Ying had told her parents that regular high schools didn't accept out-of-province students—only one or two schools did, and their admission scores were extremely high. Her score fell far too short, leaving her with no choice but to attend vocational school or return to her hometown to repeat the third year of junior high.
And the reality was much the same. After entering the workforce, Fu Ying had re-examined the admission policies for both the middle and high school entrance exams, as well as the enrollment criteria for various schools. At this point in time, the "Policy for Children Accomompanying Migrant Workers" had not yet been fully implemented, and attending a regular high school basically required both household registration (hukou) and student status to be local.
Fu Ying's student status had been local for all three years of junior high, but her household registration was not. Leaving aside whether the Fu Family could afford to buy local property to secure residency, Fu Ying knew how strongly Dad Fu and Mom Fu believed in the idea of "fallen leaves returning to their roots"—they would never transfer their household registration to Guangdong Province.
There were a few private schools that accepted students without local household registration, but those schools were practically elite institutions with exorbitant tuition and living expenses. Attending school there meant studying as a guest student, which required paying an additional hefty guest-student fee—something the Fu Family could not afford. If her grades were exceptionally stellar, the schools might have been willing to provide a scholarship, but Fu Ying's grades were not that good!
The junior high school Fu Ying was currently attending was also a private school, ranking almost dead last in the district. The school wasn't great, and Fu Ying wasn't the type to push herself hard either. Lacking any extraordinary intelligence, her academic performance was naturally mediocre. She remembered that in the second year of junior high, her physics teacher was replaced three or four times in a single semester. Although she already struggled to understand physics, changing teachers made it even harder to follow, and her grades plummeted. On the graduation exam, she scored a 46 in physics, purely by guessing, which earned her a C or D rating.
Fu Ying remembered her final high school entrance exam score seemed to be only 510, while the private school admission cutoff was 570, which was almost on par with key high schools. East District Experimental Middle School seemed to require at least 575. And that was not even considering Fu Ying with her twenty-eight-year-old soul, who had forgotten most of what she learned—she wasn't even sure if she could manage 400 points on the entrance exam now.
It would be best if she could return to her hometown to repeat the third year of junior high. Coincidentally, the town had newly built a high school not far from her home. They had even requisitioned several plots of land belonging to the Fu Family, though the compensation wasn't high. The newly opened high school wasn't as strict with student admissions, so getting in to study shouldn't be too difficult.