Chapter 48

“The young lady has such a nice figure,”

“Is she on the swimming team? She's so fast, is she using special effects?”

“Love it.”

“I want to go learn how to swim too.”

“Where is this swimming pool? It looks kind of familiar, I want to go stake it out.”

“Does anyone else think the tutor is getting prettier and prettier?? Is it just me who thinks this?”

“The beautifying effects here are too much, too fake.”

“That figure ratio, tsk tsk.”

“TikTok beauty, ugly in real life, no explanation...”

“Like.”

“Like +1”

“Like +10086”

When Liang Huaying got off work and returned home, she saw her daughter lying on the sofa playing on her phone again, not even taking an afternoon nap, totally absorbed in it.

“How was lunch, did Xiao Qi like it?”

She asked as she took off her shoes.

“Xiao Qi quite liked it, but she paid.” Liang Jiajia said.

Liang Huaying was speechless, and reached out to poke her daughter’s head.

Liang Jiajia nimbly avoided the first poke, but got hit by the second one.

Seeing the TikTok video in her daughter's hand, Liang Huaying wanted nothing more than to snatch the phone away. She had set parental controls on her daughter’s phone, allowing only an hour of TikTok per day, but her clever daughter somehow figured out the password and reset it. In any case, she was always on that phone scrolling through TikTok.

“If you keep playing like that all day, you'll ruin your eyesight, and I’ll get you a big ugly pair of glasses to hang on your face.”

“Mom, I’m doing serious stuff here, look.”

Liang Jiajia handed her phone to her mom.

Liang Huaying saw that it was a complete video. In it, an athlete was swimming very skillfully. After watching for a good while, she finally recognized that the girl in the swimsuit was her daughter’s tutor, Xiao Qi.

“Xiao Qi? She looks so much prettier and thinner. People say TikTok beautifies people in videos, but does it really have that great of an effect?”

“No, I didn’t use any beauty filters, that’s just how she naturally looks. I wanted to show you how well the teacher swims. She swims great, right?”

Liang Huaying also knew how to swim, though not professionally, but she could appreciate beauty. She felt that the girl swimming in the water was truly too wonderful, with an indescribable beauty and grace. No wonder kids these days like scrolling TikTok – if she came across a video like this, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from watching it a few times and liking it.

“I filmed this myself, it was pretty troublesome to edit into a video. Look how many likes it has, over 20,000 already. Do you know how hard it is to get over 20,000 likes?” Liang Jiajia pulled her mom over to the sofa and earnestly explained to her.

Liang Huaying didn’t know how difficult 20,000 likes was, but in trying to relate to her daughter’s interests, she had played around with TikTok herself. Scrolling it felt like such a waste of time, and she gained nothing from it, so she stopped. Occasionally she would try posting something herself, but would only get likes in the single digits – clearly no one was seeing it.

She hadn’t realized her daughter was skilled enough at this to create videos that did so well on her own.

Liang Huaying doted on her daughter, but was also open-minded about parenting. She earnestly chatted with her daughter for a bit more, and encouraged her: “Since you started this, see it through seriously. Don’t quit halfway. If you need more allowance money, tell mom.”

Liang Jiajia was quite cocky about it.

Liang Huaying had thought to have her daughter bring a swimsuit to her teacher as thanks, but the latter took her daughter out for another meal somewhere rather expensive. She admired that country girl even more – who would have thought someone from such a rural background could be so outstanding and excellent in many ways.

Xiao Qi didn’t know any of this. Still in a daze, she returned to her aunt’s dorm, flopped into bed, and slept for an hour. After getting up to wash her face, she didn't go to the library but started off practicing her penmanship for an hour first. Then, hugging her New Concept English book 4, she went out to the courtyard to read.

The passages in Book 4 were rather dull. She had to read each article multiple times to memorize it.

She only had two days left of the memory buff. She was a little worried that after it disappeared, her memory would turn much poorer. But upon reflection, her memory hadn’t been that bad originally either. Just not as incredible as these past few days – previously, if she put in focused effort to memorize something, she could retain it. It would just take reading and writing it more times.

In any case, she was still young. She felt that it wasn’t too late for her to start working hard now.

She read in the courtyard for two hours while also writing as she read, keeping rough track of time before putting away her things and returning to her room.

Putting on headphones with authentic-accented English, she went for a run around the neighboring school.

Her afternoon plan was to practice calligraphy, study English, and go running. Then come back and cook.

Lunch had been pretty good, leaving her feeling rather spirited.

Engrossed in listening to English while running, she hadn’t noticed that there were often people craning their necks out of the upstairs windows watching her study English downstairs.

There were long-term inpatients as well as newly admitted ones.

Hospital stays aren’t generally pleasant experiences, filled with despair, regret, remorse. Lying in a hospital bed often makes one realize that health is the most important thing, and they would give up everything just to have a healthy body again.

Seeing that studying girl downstairs through the window brought envy, but also injected their moods with something indescribable.

Liu Anquan, who had lost both legs, watched the longest. Facing the problem of getting prosthetic legs, which were very expensive, he only had his elderly mother left in his family. His wife of so many years had left, taking all their savings.

The hospital had subsidized part of his surgeries, and he borrowed money from relatives too, but everyone felt that money spent on his lost legs was money down the drain with no chance of repayment. Even the over 20,000 RMB raised online barely covered his surgical and hospital fees. There definitely wouldn’t be enough left for prostheses. These days, he kept wondering if he could try standing up and walking a few steps, but he had lost too much blood during the surgeries and was too weak to even sit up, at most propping up his hospital bed to gaze out the window.

As he watched that girl diligently studying below, all sorts of ideas turned in his mind about what he could still do.

He knew car repair, a job that often required squirming under vehicles, which could still be done with shorter legs. Glancing at his bare feet, he decided that once he recovered, he would wrap cloth around the stumps and fit rubber tires underneath to relearn walking. He could still repair cars.

Eyes shining, he stared fixedly out the window with a smile and tears in his eyes.

After Xiao Qi finished her stretches, she started running – 30,000 steps daily that she couldn’t waste. She also enjoyed the feeling. By the time she finished, drenched in sweat that seemed a bit excessive, she did feel somewhat faint and drained. But at the start of today’s run, her legs had felt a little sore and hard to lift at first. Yet the more she ran, the more loose and relaxed they became, until by the end sailing around the entire school track, she unexpectedly still felt quite free and easy.

Furthermore, engrossed in listening to English while running, she felt that even without the language sense buff now, she could already speak much better English than before. Language mastery isn’t about rote memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary lists. What matters most is daring to speak up, constantly listening and familiarizing oneself until expressions flow out naturally. Reciting textbook phrases day after day without daring to say them aloud or enunciate clearly means one can never truly learn a language. This was her deepest realization from this period. Speaking unabashedly, unafraid of mistakes which native speakers are sure to forgive, while feeling delighted over every successful exchange, is key to language learning. Unfortunately Xiao Qi hadn’t grasped this before taking the gaokao and clammed up during English exams, anxious about making errors and fixated on accuracy rather than daring to speak at all.

Seeing her step count nearing 30,000, she slowed to a walk for a bit before doing some post-run stretches and leaving campus to buy vegetables from a food stand outside the school gates for dinner. She cooked very simply: stir-fried green peppers with meat, garlic sautéed broccoli, a mushroom soup, and steamed rice.

Her homemade dishes weren’t greasy, instead quite healthy she felt, with decent flavor. But her aunt wolfed it down excitedly.

After swiftly finishing her food, her aunt said, “Xiao Qi, you do the washing up today. I’m meeting your coach for swimming practice.”

Xiao Qi was quite happy to agree to her aunt’s enthusiastic initiative. Her aunt hurried off, practically galloping down the hallway.