Meng Yan's Transformation

The July wind blew into the classroom of Class 1, Grade 1 of a regular high school through the window, but instead of bringing any coolness, it stirred up the anxiety at the edges of the exam papers.

"The results are coming out soon." Class monitor Liu Ziqi's voice was like a pebble thrown into boiling water. Liu Mingjun in the front row suddenly looked up, sweat beads on the back of his neck leaving dark stains on his blue shirt. Last night he dreamed that the function graph on the math test paper turned into a ferocious monster. At this moment, his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. Xu Xiaqing cut the eraser into small pieces, then kneaded them back into their original shape one by one. His eyelashes cast uneasy shadows under his eyes. Dong Hanmei's fingernails unconsciously slid back and forth in the marks on the desk—the tally marks left last year were already blurred, but the new marks were getting deeper and deeper.

The lights of the evening self-study session resembled a frozen lake. Zhan Mengyan sat in the back row of the classroom, her pen tracing unintentional lines on the paper.

The chirping of crickets outside the window came in waves, and the day the final exam results would be released hung like a Damocles' sword over her head. Zhan Mengyan stared at the last big question on her math test, but the formulas and symbols twisted into the strange gaze of a photo studio photographer—a few weeks ago, when she and her sister were taking pictures together, the photographer had secretly taken many photos of them, leaving her with an IOU for the photo studio. She was determined to pay off the debt as soon as possible.

"Teacher, I need to ask for leave from tomorrow's evening self-study session." Zhan Mengyan clutched the leave slip as she walked toward the office, her nails digging into her palms.

The homeroom teacher looked Zhan Mengyan up and down from above her glasses: "Going to work part-time at the cannery again?"

As Zhan Mengyan nodded, she heard her own voice tremble: "I have some debts to deal with before summer vacation, and I must pay them off."

"Zhan Mengyan, I hope you can make the most of your summer vacation by doing part-time jobs. You'll be a sophomore next semester. Some classes in our school are on a two-year program, meaning students can take the college entrance exam in their sophomore year. The workload will be very heavy. If you skip evening self-study every day to do part-time jobs, your body won't be able to handle it. You won't have the energy to study, how will you get good grades? How will you take the college entrance exam? If your college entrance exam results are poor, it will be a huge loss for you. You'll have wasted your high school years. I'm giving you leave today, so think carefully about what you should do for your future college entrance exams..."

As Zhan Mengyan walked into the office, the earnest words of her homeroom teacher still echoed in her ears.

When Zhan Mengyan arrived at the cannery, she took a deep breath the moment the iron gate closed, locking her homeroom teacher's advice and her anxiety about her grades into the locker.

The night shift at the cannery starts at 8:00 PM. The assembly line conveyor belt never stops. Zhan Mengyan's rubber gloves are soaked with sugar syrup as she hurriedly labels the canned yellow peaches. Steam blurs her goggles as she counts the cans: when she finishes labeling the thirty-eighth can, she thinks of trigonometric functions; when she gets to the eighty-sixth can, she silently recites English words...

During a shift change at 2:00 AM, she curled up in a corner of the break room. She remembered the notice on the school bulletin board: report cards would be released tomorrow. "When the final grades are released, summer vacation will start, and I'll have plenty of time to do part-time jobs," Zhan Mengyan thought excitedly, before quickly extinguishing her excitement.

The herbal tea her coworkers offered burned her throat, and she suddenly laughed out loud: "What if I fail the exam? The teacher won't give me any more leave, and Dad and Mom will make me drop out of school again. I'll feel so bad for Yingying, who's working far away and cares about me..."

In the darkest hour before dawn, Zhan Mengyan dragged her leaden legs out of the factory area. The neon sign of the photo studio loomed faintly in the morning mist, like a gentle threat. In her swaying dream on the factory bus, she saw herself in front of the honor roll, then saw the young photographer tearing up an IOU, then saw her parents secretly discussing making her drop out of school…

As the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds, Zhan Mengyan counted her sweat-soaked wages three times, feeling that she was still a little short of that amount.