After wasting several years of college, Huang Jiayi was spurred on by her half-brother. She worked herself to the bone, determined to get into a graduate program at a prestigious university in Z Province. After more than a year of hard study, she finally received her admission letter.
Her mother, Huang Jingxiu, who had always spoiled her daughter, announced to everyone that her daughter had finally seen the light. She'd never been unwilling to learn, she just hadn't tried. The Huang family had good genes, after all.
Huang Jiayi understood why her mother wanted to show off. Their relatives on the Zhou side, her birth father's family, had always looked down on them. Now they could finally hold their heads high. Her little brother hadn't even gotten into grad school yet.
But before Huang Jiayi could shove her admission letter in her father's and brother's faces and tell them to look closely, she worked herself so hard that she didn't get enough rest and suddenly died.
When she opened her eyes, she was back in middle school, not long after her parents' divorce. She hadn't changed her name yet and was still called Huang Mary. That good-for-nothing so-called little brother was always showing off his grades in front of her. Looking at her own test paper, marked just 60 points, Huang Mary thought, It's only studying. It's not like I've never done it. I've been through grad school entrance exams. There's no way I can't handle little old middle school!
Everyone was baffled by the change in Huang Mary. She used to be the laziest of them all, so why was she still clutching her books even during breaks?
A semester later, her grades had shot up, leaving her classmates dumbfounded. Huang Jingxiu worried that her daughter would study herself silly and kept telling her to take a break. Even Mr. Zhou Jianren, who had never paid much attention to his eldest daughter, couldn't help asking after her.
Huang Mary declared, "Out of my way! Nobody's stopping me from studying!"
Theme: Knowledge is the ladder of human progress.
