Light Against Time

When he was seventeen, Lin Wanzhao's world became quiet. The sudden death of his younger brother took away the last warmth from the family, leaving only cold ashes. My mother was ups and downs in depression, my father collapsed in silence, and in that summer when the cicadas were chirping hoarsely, the countdown to the college entrance examination was still decreasing day by day in the upper right corner of the blackboard. Everyone said that this child was too calm, as if he had just lost a loved one. Only Lin Wanzhao knew that she was standing on the edge of the cliff. At my feet is an abyss called "what if" - if I didn't go to the exam that night, if I was sent to the doctor three hours earlier, if fate was willing to show a little mercy. But she didn't fall. She grasped a math problem. Then there are ten paths, one hundred paths, and one thousand paths. In the world of absolutely rational formulas, every question has an answer and every step of derivation has logic. She signed up for the national mathematics competition with a score in the top ten of her grade. Her opponent was Zhou Zimo, who always ranked first in the exam. In the notebook he handed over, in addition to the perfect solution, there was also a note with "I'm here" written on it. From middle school to university, from youth to middle age, Lin Wanzhao carried the shackles of being a "survivor" and staggered forward in the ashes. She thought she would live in the shadow of "what if" her whole life, until many years later, in the ruins of another life, she finally understood the tiny line of words on the back of the note: "Deep in the ashes, there is still a glimmer of light. And the glimmer of light will illuminate the glimmer of light."