You Said You Liked Me, Didn’t You? - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

“Canglang, Canglang, wake up.”

In her grogginess, someone seemed to be calling her name. Li Canglang opened her eyes wearily, her thoughts sluggish, still unable to quite distinguish her situation.

Who was in her house?

“Canglang, if you don’t get up now, you’re going to be late!”

Someone pushed her shoulder. Li Canglang looked toward the source of the voice in confusion. Her vision gradually cleared, and a young face appeared before her.

Very familiar—it seemed to be her high school roommate.

It was Jiang Lan. Why was she here? And she looked so much younger.

Li Canglang stared at her blankly, searching her memory for a moment. Suddenly reacting, she felt a jolt and sat up abruptly.

An excessively low ceiling appeared above her head, so close it seemed she could touch it with a reaching hand. Li Canglang looked around in a daze. The bunk bed, the blue-and-white checkered sheets and quilt, the mottled stone-patterned floor—everything was both familiar and strange.

“Why are you sleeping so deeply today? Hurry up, we’re heading to the cafeteria first. No one should be monitoring morning self-study. Just head straight to the examination room in a bit.”

Seeing that she was awake, Jiang Lan gave her a quick reminder and, without saying more, slung her bag over her shoulder and hurried out of the dormitory door.

Only she was left in the dorm. Li Canglang rubbed her face in a daze, wondering if she was still asleep.

Her sleep quality was poor, and she dreamed often. Sometimes she encountered dreams within dreams, thinking she had woken up when she was actually still dreaming.

She had already recognized that this was her high school dormitory. The period she dreamed of most often was her time in high school.

Judging by the bed assignment, it should be her senior year. There weren’t many four-person rooms with beds over desks, the school only assigned them to senior students.

At this moment, the quilts on the other berths had already been folded neatly.

Li Canglang remembered that the No. 1 High School dormitories had strict internal management. The principal believed that ‘if one cannot sweep a room, how can one sweep the world?’ Even for seniors, the cultivation of daily habits could not be neglected.

Li Canglang instinctively got up and began folding her quilt. Halfway through, she suddenly realized: she was in a dream, so why was she still folding a quilt in a dream?

However, the tactile sensation was far too vivid. The soft quilt even carried a trace of residual body heat, and the scent of laundry detergent was faintly discernible.

Was it really a dream? How could a dream be this real? She instinctively pinched her arm; it hurt a little.

An unbelievable guess sprouted in Li Canglang’s heart. She quickly finished folding the quilt and climbed down from the bed.

Beneath the bed was her desk. Two exercise books happened to be lying on the desk. Li Canglang flipped through a few problems and found that her logical thinking was incredibly clear, not at all like the muddled state of a dream.

This was real. She had truly returned to her senior year of high school?

Or was the last decade just a long nightmare?

Li Canglang stared blankly at the exercise books, unable to believe such a stroke of luck would fall upon her. She was afraid this was merely a dream bubble that would pop with a single poke.

Raising her head, the mirror on the desk reflected her green and youthful face. At eighteen, her frame was thin, she still wore her hair in a short bob, and her long, straight eyebrows were habitually knit slightly. Her lips were pursed, giving off an excessively sharp impression.

It was like looking at a photo from her high school days. Li Canglang smoothed her brow and slightly lifted the corners of her mouth; her aura softened significantly at once.

She walked to the washstand outside and turned on the faucet. The running water slid over her hands, bringing a hint of coolness. The August sun bared its fangs and claws, spilling recklessly over her body. Every sensation was so real.

An unspeakable joy filled her chest, swelling as if it would explode. “Flowers do not bloom twice, man is never young again.” With so many regrets in life, who hadn’t fantasized about time turning back and yesterday reappearing?

She was no exception. Many times, she had thought that if life could start over, she might work harder and do a little better.

A brand new, unpainted life…

Right, which day had she returned to? What was the date?

Li Canglang suddenly remembered Jiang Lan’s words from earlier.

Wait? Examination room, exams!

She instantly fell into a state of paralysis.

Inside Examination Room No. 5, amidst the silence, there was only the prompting voice of the proctor.

“Do not start answering yet. Fill in your exam number, class, and name, and wait for the bell.”

The brand-new exam papers still gave off the familiar scent of ink. Li Canglang sat in a window seat, her brow furrowed as she looked at the questions on the paper.

She recognized them, but they didn’t recognize her.

Memory always fades the bad and beautifies the good. Many people miss their senior year because they miss the simple, beautiful, hard-working campus life—not because they want to experience the mountain of books and sea of problems all over again.

Furthermore, sitting in an examination room again after a ten-year absence was a true nightmare.

Forget textbook knowledge—Li Canglang didn’t even know her examination room number. She had to go back to her own classroom and check the posted list to find out where she was supposed to be.

After a month of make-up classes during the summer break, a routine diagnostic test was taking place before the official start of the senior year.

Fortunately, Chinese and Mathematics had already been tested yesterday. Li Canglang only had to face the Comprehensive Arts (Politics, History, Geography) and the foreign language exam.

She could only bite the bullet and go for it. History was her future major, and she could more or less make something up for Politics. Geography was a bigger headache, she couldn’t remember much of the knowledge clearly.

She estimated that after finishing, her combined score should barely reach the passing line. But compared to her usual grades, it would be a significant drop—the kind that might prompt her homeroom teacher to have a chat with her.

More importantly, after this exam, the class would rearrange seats based on grades: first place with second place, third place with fourth place, and so on.

She and Nan Yang had become desk-mates after this very exam, gradually becoming close.

In the second semester of their freshman year, the classes had been split between liberal arts and sciences. Both of them had been assigned to Class 11, the liberal arts class. But for over a year, they hadn’t had much interaction—they were just ordinary classmates, at most greeting each other when they met.

If not for the coincidence of this exam, they might not have had the chance to become friends, let alone everything that followed.

The problem was, her grades definitely wouldn’t replicate her past performance now. How was she going to become Nan Yang’s desk-mate?

Thinking of this, Li Canglang’s thoughts drifted. With a complicated mood, she stopped her pen and couldn’t help but let out a long sigh.

Returning to the past, everything that used to be ordinary was now filled with nostalgia. Eating in the cafeteria at noon, the students queued in line after line, lively and noisy.

Li Canglang hadn’t experienced this kind of scene in a long time. Two meat dishes and one vegetable dish for five yuan—the cafeteria food didn’t seem as bad as she remembered.

Several roommates sat with her. She had only started boarding at the school in her senior year; since it had been less than a month, everyone’s relationship wasn’t actually that deep yet.

But that wasn’t the point. The few of them chatted while they ate, the topic inevitably revolving around the exam that had just ended.

“And that wind direction question, what did you choose?”

“I chose C, southwest.”

“Ah, I think I chose southeast. I looked at the latitude and longitude; it should be the eastern coast of our country, so it should be a sea breeze.”

“No, look at the terrain on the map…”

Yes, high school girls didn’t need friendship; they only had eyes for studying.

The two roommates discussed for a while, each having their own reasoning, without reaching a conclusion. Suddenly they turned their heads and asked, “Canglang, what did you choose?”

Raising her head to face two pairs of eyes filled with a thirst for knowledge, Li Canglang only wanted to say: don’t ask me. She had chosen blindly and knew nothing.

She silently shoveled a mouthful of rice, pretending to be knowledgeable, and said calmly, “I chose C. Of course, it’s not necessarily right.”

If it was right, it was a lucky guess.

Zheng Jie, who chose C, gave her a knowing smile, while Jiang Mengmeng, who chose B, sighed in frustration. “Another one wrong.”

Li Canglang offered a very guilty consolation, “Not necessarily. Let’s wait until the grades come out.”

Class 11 was an honors class. Among all the good students, Li Canglang’s grades were severely uneven. Comprehensive Arts was her strength, she often ranked first in her grade. Out of the twelve multiple-choice questions, she would miss one at most.

Unfortunately, having returned to square one, her answers this time might not be very accurate.

A new life couldn’t possibly start with a failure in the Gaokao. As Li Canglang thought about it, she wanted to sigh again.

For the foreign language exam in the afternoon, Li Canglang wasn’t worried, her pen moved as if inspired by the gods.

Her foreign language skills had always been her weak point. During her most rebellious phase, she had scored 62 on a 150-point paper. In her senior year, she forced herself to memorize vocabulary, and only then did she barely pass 100 points in the Gaokao.

Later, for the CET-4, CET-6, and postgraduate entrance exams, she had no choice but to catch up properly under Nan Yang’s supervision.

Given her current level, she would be thanking the heavens if she could score 80 points. So, by taking it casually, she could only do better, not worse.

Of course, she still had to exercise some control to prevent the teacher from thinking she was cheating.

At 5:00 PM, all exams ended. The classroom was filled with the buzzing of discussion. Everywhere, top students could be heard debating with each other, along with a bit of discordant Versailles-style humility.

As for the academic slackers, they didn’t go back to the classroom at all. During the two days of monthly exams, supervision wasn’t too strict. Before the newspaper-reading session at 6:20 PM, they could still hang out outside the school for a while.

Li Canglang stood at the classroom door and realized with great embarrassment that she had forgotten where her seat was.

She walked between the seats, identifying things based on personal belongings for quite a while before confirming her spot through a familiar pencil case. She flipped open a book; it was her name.

Li Canglang breathed a sigh of relief and sat down. She raised her eyes to look around and suddenly froze.

In the brief moment just now, Nan Yang had entered the classroom. She was organizing her papers, saying something with a smile to the student next to her.

In one’s student days, there is always that one girl. She wears a white school uniform with blue trim, her hair tied in a high ponytail—simple and refreshing, needing no further adornment. She is like a budding sunflower in the early morning, vibrant and bathing in the dawn, with dew still clinging to her leaves and branches, attracting all eyes.

Li Canglang watched in silence. Clearly, the last time they met was only yesterday, yet she felt as though this scene belonged to a time long past.

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