Chapter 12
The city library opened at 8 o'clock.
Getting a reader's card was very convenient, just needing an ID card and a 50 yuan deposit.
Seeing the money skyrocket to over 6,000 yuan, Su Xiaoqi took out 50 yuan without even frowning once.
After getting the card, she could go to any reading room. She could only borrow two books at a time, limited to one month.
To renew the lending period, she would need to swipe the card again.
Su Xiaoqi had never been to the city library before. She hadn't even finished the books at her school library.
But now during the break, she had graduated high school, so of course she couldn't go to the school library anymore.
She had a 10-day memory buff, and today was already the third day, so she had to take advantage of it.
Recently when reading books she felt especially smooth. Although not quite photographic memory, she found it easier to concentrate, and by reading carefully two or three times, she could remember it very firmly.
Since she still had to go tutor English in the afternoon, she went to the foreign language section to pick out some books to read.
She chose two relatively simple foreign language originals.
After finding a seat, putting her backpack on the floor, and placing her filled water bottle on the table, she started reading.
The two books were 'The Little Prince' and 'Robinson Crusoe'. 'The Little Prince' was a book she really liked, but she had only read the Chinese translated version before.
Today she wanted to try reading the English translation. 'The Little Prince' was written in 1942 by the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
So the original should have been in French.
But the bilingual versions in China defaulted to Chinese and English. Xiaoqi really admired French. If she could understand the French version someday, that would be wonderful.
Although The Little Prince was classified as children's literature, for the 17-year-old Xiaoqi, it was already a book she could read hundreds of times without getting tired of it.
The words in it always felt amazing, profound yet concise.
The English version was quite exquisite. It was still relatively easy to understand because the library's English version had English and Chinese side by side.
Reading while comparing, it gave her a different feeling. Different people's translations were also different.
The Little Prince was very short, a thin book, but she still spent nearly an hour to finish it.
The moment she closed the book after reading, Xiaoqi still felt that no matter how many times she read this book in the future, she would never get tired of it. She had brought paper and pen. The teacher always said in class that good memory is not as good as bad handwriting. Writing it down would help reinforce the memory.
She decided to copy it out silently.
The notebook was not fancy, just ordinary A4 paper, plain white, but she wrote very neatly on it.
The pen was a fountain pen her dad had bought for her.
Dad's generation felt it was cool to write with a fountain pen and have one clipped in a shirt pocket as an accessory.
Xiaoqi's dad Su had a middle school education which was considered very high in Gulimu Village. It was because of a major illness that left his legs unable to walk, so he did not continue schooling.
Therefore, although Dad Su was lame and disabled and had only one daughter, he did not favor sons over daughters. He had always been very supportive of his daughter studying.
Using a fountain pen was a sentimental thing, and ink was also more economical.
When ink fell from the pen tip onto the paper...
"We are introduced to the narrator, a pilot, and his ideas about grown-ups......"
The world became quiet.
There was no traffic outside the window.
No flies on the glass.
No people walking around in the library.
No whispering from the table opposite.
What appeared before Xiaoqi was another world.
It was a pilot's world. The pilot then took Xiaoqi into yet another world. When his plane crashed in the desert, it began a whole new life journey.
Sunlight outside slowly crawled in.
It crawled over the leaves of the green ivy on the windowsill, crawled over rows and rows of bookshelves, crawled over desk after desk.
The sunlight had now been divided into beams, some wide, some long.
One long beam of sunlight finally fell on the focused girl Xiaoqi.
It inched closer and closer.
It crawled onto the clean paper, crawled onto the neat beautiful English words, crawled onto her hands.
Those were a pair of fair slender hands without calluses from labor, but with calluses from writing.
At the spot where she held the pen, the balls of her thumbs and index fingers and the sides of the middle finger joints all had calluses. As did the entire pinky finger.
From kindergarten to high school graduation, she had written so, so many words. She couldn't remember how many pencils, how many ballpoint pens, how many rollerball pens, how many bottles of ink she had used.
She wasn't the hope for the whole village. The villagers didn't have any particular expectations of her, at most just something to chat about.
She was the hope for the whole family, her parents' hope.
Like a scholar in ancient times, with the entire family's effort to support her studies, hoping she could make something of herself and live a better life.
The sunlight just crawled to her hand and didn't move forward anymore.
Maybe blocked by the curtains, or bookshelves, or something else.
But the girl Xiaoqi, now used to the light, did not pause. She kept on writing.
Her handwriting was very nice, much prettier than most people's.
Ever since she got the fountain pen from Dad, she had taken care to practice diligently, persisting all along. The sound of the pen tip touching the paper, the smoothness of the ink, was probably one of the best sounds in the world.
Time seemed to have stopped.
Or time was still flowing, just more slowly. An hour outside, but enough for Xiaoqi to linger a lifetime in the world of the Little Prince.
Reading was wonderful.
Writing was wonderful.
This was probably the most fundamental reason people should read books. Topping the imperial exam and living in riches, fame and beauty were just extra gains.
When writing, the posture had to be upright, the pen grip also upright, otherwise it would be hard to keep writing for long periods and would cause fatigue and hunching.
The girl in the corner of the library, in this moment, had become the library's best scenery.
At her feet was a backpack.
On the table were two books, a glass water bottle.
She had short hair, the bangs tied up in a little clump.
A gray T-shirt, the T-shirt had a pink puppy pattern, khaki shorts, white shoes, seventeen years old.
English words and sentences poured smoothly onto the A4 paper.
No pause, no hesitation. Her side profile was a little chubby, very clean.
Someone casually recorded a short video and posted it on TikTok.
"Seriously writing girl, didn't dare disturb."
After finishing writing, Xiaoqi stood up and twisted her neck around.
Seeing that she had actually filled most of the notebook, she was shocked.
She didn't realize she had written so much.
"Host wrote happily and earnestly, adding positive energy to society. Awarded calligraphy skill diamond card. This card can be upgraded as host persists. Host will advance to next level after accumulating 100 hours of daily 1-hour writing sessions. Host's current calligraphy level is beginner."