He Yang asked again: “By the way, there’s a short vacation coming up. What are your plans? My parents want to go traveling, but in this weather, traveling just means being crowded with people.”
Lin Zhexia and Chi Yao spoke almost simultaneously—
Lin Zhexia: “Study at home.”
Chi Yao: “Have a competition.”
“You have a competition?” Lin Zhexia turned to look at him. “What competition? How come I don’t know about it?”
“Physics competition.”
Chi Yao simply said, “Going to Haicheng City, three days and two nights, Old Liu is leading the team.”
Lin Zhexia made an “Oh” sound: “That’s quite far.”
After returning home, Lin He and Wei Ping were also discussing the short vacation.
“Xiaxia,” hearing her open the door, Lin He’s voice immediately came from the living room, “Your Uncle Wei and I are planning to travel during the short vacation. What do you think?”
Lin Zhexia’s thoughts were the same as He Yang’s: “I think it’s too hot. You two go ahead, I’ll stay home and do homework.”
Wei Ping: “It’s a rare holiday, don’t you want to go out?”
Lin Zhexia: “If I have to go out, I’d rather do an extra set of test papers.”
Wei Ping wanted to say something more.
Lin Zhexia quickly said, “You rarely have a chance to leave me at home and enjoy time together. I advise you to cherish this opportunity.”
Seeing her firm attitude, Lin He and Wei Ping didn’t insist further.
As they were talking, Lin Zhexia moved from the entrance to the living room, appearing before the two. Lin He was surprised and asked: “What happened to your knee, and… where did that jacket come from?”
“I accidentally fell while running, but it’s nothing serious.”
Lin Zhexia explained the first part, but didn’t immediately react to the second question.
Following Lin He’s gaze, she looked down and saw the oversized black sun-protection jacket she was wearing.
“Oh, it’s Chi Yao’s,” she realized she hadn’t returned the jacket to Chi Yao yet and explained, “We were sitting in the open-air stands, it was too sunny, so I borrowed it to block the sun.”
Hearing it was Chi Yao’s jacket, Lin He didn’t say more, only adding: “You’re so careless… be careful when taking a bath later, don’t soak in water for too long.”
Mentioning Chi Yao, Lin He asked an additional question: “Does Chi Yao have any plans for the holiday? If not, you two could do homework together. Your Uncle Wei and I would feel more at ease after we leave.”
“He’s going to participate in a physics competition during the holiday.”
Lin Zhexia added, “Don’t worry, I’m not a three-year-old child anymore. Staying home alone for a few days is no problem.”
“Is that so?” Lin He said, “I remember he always liked physics. When he was little, I think he even said he wanted to be a physicist.”
Lin Zhexia remembered too.
That was during the second year after they met.
At that time, they were assigned a weekend essay titled “My Dream.”
Lin Zhexia had scratched her head in frustration. She was too young then and didn’t understand what a dream was.
After pulling at her hair for a long time, she finally reluctantly wrote on her essay paper: My dream is to protect the environment.
She chose this angle not because she was particularly idealistic, but because it was easier to elaborate on. She denounced the phenomenon of littering on the streets.
Chi Yao wrote his essay faster than she did. She originally wanted to reference his, sneakily grabbed it for a peek, and saw two words: Physics.
“Your dream is so strange. Why do you like this?”
Chi Yao at that time said, “Because it’s interesting.”
Lin Zhexia couldn’t understand what was interesting about it.
But she wasn’t very satisfied with her essay that had just started, and wanted to rewrite it. So she laid on the desk and began to daydream.
She held her pen, doodling on the draft paper, when suddenly a thought lit up in her mind: “If I don’t have a dream yet, does protecting someone else’s dream count as a dream?”
…
That night, as Lin Zhexia lay in bed scrolling through her phone, she came across Teacher Xu’s social media post.
Teacher Xu had shared an article from the school’s official account. The article was titled: Our School Sends Competition Team to Participate in the Third High School Physics Competition in Lianyun City.
Lin Zhexia clicked on it. The article was richly illustrated with text and images.
In it, she saw the names of many key schools, including Lianyun No. 1 High School.
After reading, she discovered that the scale of this competition was much larger than she had imagined. The team that won first place in the previous competition had even made it to the newspaper. On the day of the competition, many media outlets would be filming and reporting, making the event very formal.
After reading the article, she exited and sent a message to Chi Yao-
When are you leaving?
Chi-dog: Day after tomorrow
Lin Zhexia: What time is the day after tomorrow?
Chi Yao seemed to sense something in her words-?-
Just say what you want