Chapter 25

Right after New Year’s Eve, Du Ruo returned to school.
Dinner at the Jing family was more than enough; she definitely didn’t have the nerve to tag along visiting relatives for the rest of the holiday.
She tucked herself away in the lab, reading papers and running experiments, the first days flew by. On the third day of the new year, Xia Nan invited her out for a hang: they ate snacks, watched a movie, and wandered around town.
After that, her winter tutoring job started back up, and work resumed.
Break still had a while left, but campus was nearly empty. She was used to that by now.
The festive buzz had faded. That homesick loneliness from before the holiday was gone, too. Now she could actually enjoy a few days of peaceful, near-private time on campus. Not bad at all.
A few days later, she unexpectedly bumped into Li Qinghe in the lab building, and realized he’d come back to school early too.
He was part of the Orbit research team, working on an automatic braking system project with his fellow grad students like Yi Kun.
Du Ruo had heard all about Orbit’s fame.
As the country’s top science and engineering university, their school prided itself on the best talent pool anywhere. For students like them, college life was more than just textbooks. Every department encouraged teams to take on research, win awards, and even launch their own startups.
And Orbit was one of the most impressive teams in the whole department.
Du Ruo’s curiosity was piqued. She could still vividly recall touring Jing Ming’s lab last year, though, unfortunately, after that…
So when Li Qinghe asked if she wanted to come help out, Du Ruo agreed instantly.
This kind of chance to learn was like a windfall straight from the sky.
She went, utterly delighted.
Yet, while she was earnestly touring the lab, on the other side, Orbit’s vice-captain, Wu Zhengbo, was shooting down Li Qinghe’s request: “A random freshman joining us? You’re kidding, right?”
“She’s not joining, just helping out, like an assistant. She’s eager to learn, can’t we give her a shot?” Li Qinghe pressed.
“This isn’t a classroom; we don’t let just anyone come by for a lesson.” Wu Zhengbo rolled his eyes and glanced at the captain, Yi Kun. “Right?”
But Yi Kun was already looking Du Ruo’s way, eyebrows drawn together. “What’s she doing over there?”
A few steps away, Du Ruo was at the lab’s scrap table, tools in hand, focused on repairing a broken corner sensor.
The three men shared a look.
After a bit, she snapped everything back together and set the fixed part up on the shelf above.
Yi Kun strode over, picked up the sensor for a closer look, then glanced back at her. “How’d you manage this?”
To Du Ruo, it had hardly been a challenge. She blinked, a bit confused. “I just tweaked the circuitry a little…”
Yi Kun said nothing else, turning away with a tossed-off line: “She can stay.”
Just like that, Du Ruo became the lab’s new assistant. She couldn’t touch the top-secret projects, of course, but she was welcome to help on the foundational ones.
It was during this stint in the lab that she fully understood: there’s always another mountain, always someone more skilled.
This time, though, it wasn’t just about technical prowess.
Truth be told, she’d started self-studying professional materials outside her textbooks since last semester. She’d dug through foreign journals, university archives, whatever she could get her hands on. Her technical skills had exploded as a result.
But what shook her this time was a matter of spirit, something deeper.
On campus, there were folks content to make steady, small progress like her, and others, like her upperclassmen, like Jing Ming, Li Wei, Wan Zi’ang, who always had their eyes on something bigger.
So many of them.
She’d spent days trying to figure herself out.
She didn’t have some lofty dream, no grand ambition. She’d never sworn to leave her mark on history.
But soon she realized: if her role was to be a little screw in a big machine, then so be it. If she does research, then do it well; if she ends up working at a company, focus all in on the tech.
That’s not being lesser, it’s just going with the flow.
Your vision usually grows with your skills.
And if, one day, she really did have the chops to do something huge, nothing would stop her from giving it a shot.
If the day came when her abilities could revolutionize tech or make genuine contributions to her country, she’d step right up.
The road ahead was long. She just needed to build her own boat for now, her destination would get clearer as she went.
With that, she let all her tangled thoughts go.
She didn’t realize it at the time, but that whole process, fretting, doubting, self-reflecting, and pushing through, is what made people grow up fast.
By the time her tutoring gig wrapped up, winter break was over too.
Du Ruo got her hard-earned paycheck, and that very day, she transferred half to her mom’s bank card and kept the rest for herself.
All the hardship of winter vacation had a sweet payoff.
No more need to touch the Jing family’s card. If she asked her uncle and aunt to take it back now, they’d surely refuse, so she stashed that card away to return another time when the moment felt right.
The campus snapped back to life as classes resumed, and even the wind through the treetops seemed to lose its chill.
All three of her roommates came back a little rounder than before.
As for Du Ruo, she’d gotten even slimmer over break, her baby cheeks finally disappeared.
That day, He Huanhuan had just finished her shower and was bemoaning her new belly chub in front of the mirror when Du Ruo, hair damp and water bucket in hand, walked in.
He Huanhuan stared for a full minute, then hollered, “One winter break and our little scruffy duck got pretty again! Look at her face, it used to be round and tanned, now she’s pale and tiny! Why do you keep getting prettier behind our backs?”
Du Ruo tilted her head for a closer look at the mirror, failing to see any difference. “I think the shower steamed your brain,” she deadpanned.
Qiu Yuchen stamped her approval: “She really did glow up. Meanwhile, I went to Phuket and just got sunburned.”
Du Ruo had no idea what they were fussing over and quickly forgot all about it.
Life after the new term was just as hectic: classes, the lab, library, tutoring, debate club, outdoor sports, she kept on top of it all.
The previous semester’s grades came out, all above 90, first in the class again.
She barely registered it anymore, no more of last semester’s surprise.
The days spun by in a blur; before she knew it, more than a month of the new term had already flown past.
The bitter winter slipped away quietly, and across the city, new green sprouted before anyone realized.
After Qingming Festival, spring finally creeped into the north.
The first weekend of April, the outdoor club’s upperclassmen planned a mountain motorcycle ride and asked if Du Ruo wanted in.
She’d joined them for some rural road rides before, motorbikes were a hundred times more thrilling than bicycles. This was trail riding, too; nothing like a shot of adrenaline to shake off the cobwebs.
Saturday morning, Du Ruo and the upperclassmen picked up their dirt bikes, strapped on helmets and gear, and hit the road as a boisterous crew.
She brought up the rear, riding through Beijing’s early spring, ducking down narrow alleys and wide avenues, weaving through rivers of people and endless traffic, the city slipping farther and farther behind her.
Eventually, there was barely a soul in sight.
On the roadside in the suburbs, some trees were throwing out tender green shoots, others still knobby-limbed and bare, reaching into the blue sky, stark and striking.
The fields were an expanse of brown, crops long harvested, the soil just waiting for the warmth of spring to sow once more. In the greenhouses, canola blossoms blazed gold, yellow spilling through every seam in the plastic.
The whole world opened up, sky vast, earth endless.
Du Ruo cut through the chilly air, pushed up her speed, racing the road with wild abandon.
Past the fields, into winding mountain roads: gray leafless woods, emerald evergreens, white pear and cherry blossoms splashing the ridges like a painting come to life against the sky.
Du Ruo felt exhilarated, couldn’t help yelling gleefully into the wind, “Woooooo!”
On the rough patches, she eased back the throttle, bouncing hard enough for her butt to ache. Suddenly, a blaring horn exploded behind her, startling her so much she nearly flew off the bike.
She glanced back, a souped-up SUV was right on her tail, as if ticked she was in the way.
The driver was hidden behind a baseball cap and sunglasses. In the front and back seats lounged a pack of slick, sunglasses-wearing boys, clearly finding the whole situation hilarious.
What the hell?
Du Ruo rolled her eyes but had zero interest in getting into it with their type.
She adjusted her helmet, about to move over and let them pass, when the SUV, growing impatient, blasted its horn again.
The screechy note grated right down her spine.
Enough of that, she wasn’t moving!
She coolly slid back to the middle of the road, taking her sweet time.
“Oh, seriously? She trying to make trouble?” The front seat passenger craned his neck for a look, but the biker up ahead was helmeted and masked, features hidden. Still, the slim figure and red jacket made it clear: definitely a girl.
She answered by making a show of shoving her earphones in.
“Dude, look at this one, ”
This time, the guy behind the wheel gave up on the horn. Suddenly, he swung the SUV around her, gunned the engine, and sped up to pass.
Except, just as he did, the motorbike roared to life, shot past, and cut in front, blocking the SUV’s path by half a length.
“No way, she wanna race us?” The boy in the passenger seat was hyped, egging the others on, “Wooo!”
“Ran into a tough one. What’s the move, Young Master Jing?” Someone in the back loved the chaos, more excited than bothered.
Jing Ming’s lips curled in a smirk. He shifted gears, spun the wheel, then floored it, leaving the dirt bike in his dust, glancing in the rearview just long enough to sneer before focusing ahead.
Except, a heartbeat later, the girl in the helmet shot forward again, catching up in no time.
This time, Jing Ming gripped the wheel, kicked the speed up, blocked her out, only for her to shadow him relentlessly, matching every twist, refusing to yield an inch.
“Ohhhhh yeah!!” The boys in the SUV were hooting now, whistling, hyped up by the standoff.
“Mountain racing! This rocks!”
The SUV and the dirt bike tore up the mountain road in lockstep, sending stones flying as the tension mounted.
And then, a sudden, sharp switchback loomed ahead.
“Careful!” someone in the car shouted, panicked.
Jing Ming downshifted, released the gas, cranked the wheel, pulled off a drift, a classic maneuver to ditch her. He was certain he’d lost her on the turn. But she went for broke: the motorcycle went airborne, leaping from the upper track to the lower, overtaking the SUV in a breathtaking swoop.
The boys in the back broke out in cold sweat, expecting her to mess up and crash, but she landed perfectly, then leaned back and gunned the bike straight up the next ridge.
She braked hard, one foot down, balanced at the peak, untouchable.
The SUV was stalled in a dip, unable to move.
Jing Ming said nothing, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, gaze locked on the girl in red on the hillside. The helmet and mask kept her face hidden.
Then,
The girl popped off her helmet and mask, shook out her hair, glanced back with a toss of her head, and flicked them a disdainful little smirk.
"…" Jing Ming's expression shifted the moment he saw that face.
All the boys: "…"
She wiped her sweaty face and neck with her sleeve, slid her helmet back on, visor down, and strode off without a backward glance.
Before she left, she shot them an epic eye-roll. Please. She grew up on craggy border mountains, way steeper than the baby hills on the outskirts of Beijing. When she was tearing up mountain roads on a motorbike with a few hundred pounds of fertilizer on the back, these little brats were probably wobbling around on training wheels somewhere.
Pfft!
The dirt bike roared off, flinging a rooster-tail of pebbles that gradually settled to silence.
Inside the car, the boys stared, thunderstruck, for a good long while. Finally, the guy in the passenger seat spoke up:
"Damn, that chick’s got some attitude, huh, Young Master Jing?"
The boy in the driver’s seat pressed his lips tight. His face said “kicked by a donkey.”