Chapter 10: Chapter 4: The Invisible River and the Numbness on the Tip of the Tongue
November, 1999.
Winter arrived suddenly in the south.
Just the day before, it had been sunny enough to run around in a single layer of clothing. But after a night of northerly winds, the entire city was shrouded in a damp, cold fog.
The classroom for Class 3, Grade 4 of Yu Hong Primary School was on the third floor of the academic building.
For seven-year-old Chen Zhuo, lugging a schoolbag nearly half his size up to the third floor every morning was the first challenge of his day.
There was no heating in the classroom.
Over forty children, all around ten years old, were squeezed together. The warmth of their breath condensed into a thick layer of condensation on the windowpanes.
The air was filled with a unique mixture of smells: the scent of rain, scallion pancakes, and ink.
Chen Zhuo sat right in the middle of the front row.
It was a special seat arranged by his homeroom teacher, located directly in front of the teacher’s desk, right under her nose.
This spot was usually reserved for the class’s most mischievous troublemaker, making it easy for the teacher to toss a piece of chalk at them at any moment.
But now, it belonged to the youngest student in the fourth grade.
Seven-year-old Chen Zhuo.
"Class is starting!"
"All rise!"
"Good morning, teacher—"
At the class monitor’s command, all the students shot to their feet with a RUSTLE of movement.
Chen Zhuo stood up as well.
But even when standing, he wasn’t as tall as the students sitting in the back row.
The height difference made him look like a dwarf who had wandered into a land of giants.
This was Chen Zhuo’s second month after skipping a grade.
After the initial novelty wore off, he faced a form of isolation even more profound than what he’d experienced in the first grade.
It wasn’t bullying; no one picked on him.
Ten-year-olds could be mischievous, but they weren’t malicious enough to bully a seven-year-old kid, especially one who received special attention from the teachers.
On the contrary, they were curious about him, looking at him as if he were a rare animal.
But this kindness was a form of detached alienation, as if they were from different species.
As soon as the bell rang for recess, the boys would gather to talk about *Digimon*, whether "Kin Superba" or "Auldey Double Diamond" motors were better for their mini 4WD cars, which girl in the next class was pretty, and the end of the world with the Great King of Terror.
The girls, meanwhile, would huddle together folding paper lucky stars and whispering about the little secrets they wrote on scented stationery.
And Chen Zhuo would sit at his desk, reading a somewhat tattered copy of a first-year middle school biology textbook.
He couldn’t fit in.
He couldn’t force himself to get excited about non-existent "DigiDestined," nor could he understand how writing someone’s name inside a paper star was supposed to make a wish come true.
His soul was too old, as old as a weathered stone.
And his body was too young, as small as a newly sprouted bean.
"Hey, genius."
A hand from the seat behind him poked Chen Zhuo in the back.
It was Zhang Qiang, the class’s sports representative. He had already shot up to a meter and a half tall, and his voice, in the midst of puberty, sounded like a drake’s quack.
Chen Zhuo turned around, pushing up the non-prescription glasses he wore just for show.
"What is it?"
"Let me copy this problem."
Zhang Qiang handed over a wrinkled math workbook, a sheepish yet shameless grin on his face.
"I was up late watching TV last night and forgot to do it."
It was a word problem about distance, speed, and time.
For fourth graders, this was a newly taught, difficult concept.
Chen Zhuo glanced at the problem without even picking up a pen.
"Car A is going 60, Car B is 45. They’ll meet in three hours."
"Holy crap, you don’t even need to calculate it?" Zhang Qiang was stunned.
"I did it in my head."
Chen Zhuo turned back around and continued drawing his circles.
"Dude’s a freak..." Zhang Qiang muttered to his deskmate as he scribbled furiously. "How’s a kid’s brain even work like that? Can his tiny little head even fit it all in?"
Chen Zhuo heard the muttering.
He didn’t get angry, just gave a wry smile to himself.
’Can it fit it all in?’
’It’s actually about to overflow.’
Lately, he had been feeling an unprecedented sense of exhaustion.
As he delved into increasingly advanced knowledge, he found that his seven-year-old body was starting to sound alarms.
It was like an overclocked CPU with insufficient cooling and an unstable voltage.
Every time he engaged in intense thought for more than an hour, his temples would throb, his vision would go black, and he would even get a nosebleed.
It was the agony of hardware failing to keep up with the software.
This agony was magnified infinitely during the third period: PE class.
If mental fatigue could be overcome with willpower, then the physical gap was an insurmountable chasm.
The wind was strong that day, kicking up clouds of dust from the cinder track on the sports field.
The PE teacher was a burly man in a dark blue tracksuit with a whistle hanging around his neck. He frowned as he looked at the group of kids before him, all dressed in colorful sweaters.
"Today, we’re testing the standing long jump!"
The teacher’s booming voice echoed in the cold wind. "Passing mark for boys is one-point-five meters, one-point-three for girls! Anyone who fails has to run three laps around the track!"
A collective groan went through the line of students.
Chen Zhuo stood at the very end of the line, his neck shrunk down and his hands tucked into his sleeves.
He hated PE class the most.
It wasn’t because he was lazy, but because it was the only subject where he couldn’t cheat using logic.
In math class, he could use his adult mind to utterly outclass his peers. In language arts, he could mimic an adult’s writing style to produce profound essays.
But in PE class, gravity was fair.
Newton’s Second Law was useless here.
Because his muscle strength was too low, and while his body mass was light, he had no explosive power.
"Next up, Chen Zhuo!"
The PE teacher called his name.
Dozens of pairs of eyes turned to look at him in unison.
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