Mu Qingxi
Her name was Mu Qingxi. She was seventeen that year, a high school student about to graduate.
She was a dreamer with a vivid imagination, a philosopher lamenting the sorrows of life. Yet her friends insisted she was an utterly ignorant person, indifferent to joy and sorrow, and a supremely vulgar realist. Mu Qingxi always felt this was slander, saying it was their petty revenge for old grievances.
As for herself, Mu Qingxi did not think she was wooden, nor did she believe she was emotionless or vulgar. At the very least, she could be deeply moved or greatly elated. She would cry her heart out reading tragic novels, and laugh aloud at joyful plots. She wished her life could be as colorful as those stories.
Why did they say she was oblivious to joy and sorrow?
It was because her mood never fluctuated with her grades. She could score first in her entire grade in mathematics and receive praise from teachers and students alike, yet she automatically ignored all envy, jealousy, and resentment directed at her.
In fact, her English was also top of the grade, but it never earned her any compliments. The teachers only gazed at her with disappointment, as if wishing she could do better, while the students either smirked or sneered. She paid no mind to any of it, unsure what feelings she should have.
Should she be excited? Sad? Thrilled? In pain?
As for being a vulgar realist, it was because whenever her friends indulged in shameless fantasies, she would pour cold water over their dreams and bring them back to reality. Afterwards, they always tried to catch the imaginative Mu Qingxi and return the favor, but no matter how hard they looked, they never found her lost in her own flights of fancy.
In truth, Mu Qingxi was always buried in novels, and they never realized that she was soaring through her imagination at that very moment.
Thus, her friends, petty and vengeful, labeled her a “vulgar realist.”
Mu Qingxi stood at the podium, her thoughts drifting wildly, when a loud shout snapped her back to reality: “Mu Qingxi, what’s going on? English is at the bottom again!”
She rolled her eyes inwardly and replied meekly, “Mr. Jin, it really isn’t my fault—they don’t know me.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Honestly, I don’t know them either.”
Mr. Jin was an excellent teacher, very responsible with his students. Each time he lectured her, Mu Qingxi would readily admit the problem was her own, but deep down she always thought, “It’s really not my fault—how can I write flawless math solutions, yet English remains out of reach?”
This time, the placement test was a failure.
Her parents, hoping to improve her English, sought out numerous tutoring programs and let her choose one. She ended up selecting a well-reputed teacher, and spent two hours every afternoon studying English, until fifty days before the college entrance exam, when the tutoring finally ended.
“Mu Qingxi, what exactly have you learned? You’ve squandered three years—do you want to waste your whole life?” Her mother, Shen Yali, scolded her in disappointment as she looked at the placement test scores.
Sometimes, things are not as perfect as people imagine—just like now.
In her three years of high school, Mu Qingxi never deliberately focused on mathematics. She let all subjects develop freely, though math was always ahead. As for English, even when she studied it, the results were never satisfactory, and this was not what she wanted.
Balanced development, whether good or bad, was her preference. She was never passionate about grades.
Her best friend Lu once said to her, and also to herself, “Right now, we have confidence, but what we lack is ability.” Her words were blunt but true—confidence alone, without strength. She smiled and added, “For you, confidence and ability are equal.”
Yes, for Mu Qingxi, when she was prepared, she had confidence. When she was not, she would not rely on it. Excessive confidence was arrogance, and Mu Qingxi believed herself to be neither confident nor arrogant.