Chapter 81 Mid-Autumn Festival Extra: Past Events

Chapter 81 Mid-Autumn Extra: Things of the Past

[——] He often recalls his short life, especially in the dead of night when everything is quiet. He ruminates on the past from his not-so-rich experiences and tastes some flavors that he could not notice when he was just passing the day.

Since he was a child, he has been a "mediocre good student". His grades are better than those of ordinary students, but not good enough; he is willing to listen to the teacher, but not completely obedient; he is sometimes self-disciplined, but it is difficult for him to last.

Like most people who are floating in the middle, it is difficult to reach the top, and his meager talent makes him unwilling to be content with the status quo. He wastes time with intermittent efforts, and occasionally has the illusion of getting rid of embarrassing situations.

Of course, it is no surprise that he performed below average in the exam that determines his life, and walked to the crossroads of choosing the future in a muddle.

Then, as expected, an unexpected event occurred. Among the numerous choices, a medical school with a formal name appeared. It met his score line incomprehensibly, and even had a lot of room. The graduation destination stated that he would directly join a company less than five minutes away from home.

With his family's blind recognition of the medical profession and his own yearning for literary creation, this school that he had never heard of before was pulled up to the top priority.

Looking back, [——] still can't figure out why he put several obviously better options behind and chose it without hesitation.

When this question first surfaced from the depths of his mind, he was already sitting in the back seat of the car on the way to register, leaning against the rolled bedding, and in the file bag was the admission notice sent two months ago.

To be honest, his first impression of this school came from the creepers all over the wall. Outside the school gate, he could see the entire green of the square building. The intertwined wide leaves covered the exterior wall of unknown style, making it even more difficult to judge the construction age of this place.

It looks like the old-style teaching building that was popular at the end of the last century, but the side facing the square with lush flowers and trees is designed with a bold geometric modern structure and a row of large glass sliding doors.

[——] Walking around the huge stone with the school motto inscribed in running script, I enjoyed the shadow cast by the building along the edge of the square. It seems that because of the large number of plants, I can still feel the coolness in the hot months.

The stone steps in front of the building have been repaired with visible repairs and polished with cement. Later, they cracked and broke again during long-term use, and new cement was promptly filled. Because the color was different from the original, it looked a little abrupt and unsightly.

After staying in the school for a long time, he saw in the official information that lacked a sense of existence that the school history that could be checked was nearly a hundred years, and there was no way to trace it back.

In the black and white or simply colored photos, people with unclear faces and different clothes stood in front of the school gate with changing plaques, and the scene inside the school could not be seen in the background. No one could tell him whether these buildings were demolished and rebuilt over a long period of time, or whether the repeated application of cement and dense climbing plants concealed their original appearance.

As far as first impressions are concerned, this place gives [——] a very good feeling.

Ivy is his favorite plant, especially large vines of ivy, which hang upside down from the high eaves, with many thin new leaves, full like green stalactites growing on the building.

Great, he thought, I want to come here. [——] was fascinated by these green buildings and missed the fountain in the square that only opened for half a day every year during the welcome ceremony. After a few years, he didn't have the chance to see it again.

Perhaps out of some love for the house and the dog's mentality, he burst out with an amazing enthusiasm for learning professional courses, running between different building floors day and night to the classroom of the elective course.

Even though he later heard that these courses were actually useless except for collecting credits, he still had a special notebook to copy and record some drowsy content.

The busy days made him quickly familiar with this school, and this familiarity certainly included those buildings whose age could not be judged.

They are actually a square mouth shape, with a small open-air garden in the middle, and wooden benches with moss and fungi growing on them were ignored. The four sides were fully and effectively utilized, with offices, teaching and experiments all running in parallel in buildings with the same appearance.

Two adjacent buildings were named after the word "real" and each got one character. For the convenience of distinguishing between them, they were usually called A and B. Compared with Building B, which had no course arrangement, Building A, which offered elective courses, was more familiar.

Building A was also the location of the offices of the teaching groups such as anatomy, pathology, internal medicine and surgery, and the rest was reserved for large classrooms and teaching laboratories. As a freshman, a few experimental classes and weekly evening classes were held here.

After each evening class, his high enthusiasm for learning made him never miss the opportunity to communicate with the teacher, and the young teacher was happy to answer him. He benefited a lot from the highly inspiring teaching, and sometimes he forgot the time and didn't notice that all other students had left, leaving the empty large classroom on the second floor.

Thanks to this action, when he was alone to summarize his lecture notes, he unknowingly reached nine o'clock. The alarm clock that reminded him that the library was about to close rang, but the lights in the large classroom were still on.

"Oh?" [——] raised his wrist and looked at the watch. This place was too remote, and the closing bell that could ring throughout the entire square could not reach him. His classmates and teachers had already left for class a long time ago, so he spent a rare quiet time.

No need to go to the library to grab tables with pairs of "self-study" people, nor do you have to go back to the dormitory to discuss volume issues with roommates who prefer audio to headphones. It is more comfortable than squeezing into a room with rats in the animal room. It is not closed after nine o'clock.

He found that he might have discovered a school bug, a perfect self-study classroom that is not turned off at night and only known by one person.

This idea made [——] excited. In the next few days, the night study position was completely transferred here, and the alarm clock was pushed back at least two hours.

Every night after everyone left, he turned off the extra lights in the large classroom and left only one. Enjoy this paradise alone in the empty building.

Under the last light in the classroom, sometimes he felt that he was on an isolated island in the sea, away from the whole world, and no one could disturb him from wandering in the professional knowledge he was willing to invest his life in.

The coolness of the night gave him a clear mind, and his thinking efficiency was greatly improved. He turned page after page of "Systematic Anatomy", and those obscure nouns and the positional relationships described by the text were engraved in his mind, as firm as the motto carved on the school motto stone.

He experienced the joy of answering tricky questions without thinking, and the joy of getting top grades. But more, unprecedented, because of the joy of acquiring knowledge itself.

Under the solitary lamp, the time he stayed increased day by day, and the accumulated pages increased synchronously. There were times when his eyes moved away from the long paragraphs of text, and his mind was running by inertia, still reading something silently.

Overall, everything was good, except for the slight trouble caused by a small problem that appeared recently.

This piece of pure land was actually not as quiet as he imagined. Everything was quiet, if he stopped writing and closed his eyes to take a rest, his breathing was so light that it was inaudible, and the "noise" covered by the hustle and bustle during the day became obvious.

Although it was so small that it could be drowned out by the sound of a pen scratching on a notebook, its intermittent appearance was still noticeable and became irritating in the quiet night.

At first, he thought it was tinnitus or auditory hallucination caused by being in a silent environment for too long, and tried to get rid of it by reciting softly.

However, after attracting attention, the noise could no longer be ignored, and [——] would subconsciously look for its existence and distinguish the location of the sound source. After a few days, he had become quite sensitive to it and vaguely felt that it was the sound of hard objects rubbing against each other coming from downstairs.

This location on the first floor was not a large classroom, but a room with a large iron door. He must have heard someone say that it was the territory of a certain teacher. There were too many teachers in this building, and he really couldn't remember which class it was in the end.

He often saw animals taken out of the animal house on the other side of the playground being sent to the first floor. In addition to being sent to the teaching laboratory for students to practice, it was also possible that they were used for teachers' projects.

Anyone who has been to the animal house knows how noisy mice can be. Those noises could be cute little things chewing on small cylindrical feeds. Considering that they don't have much time to make trouble, it's ridiculous to bother with some dying rodents. It's not because he is the "illegal occupant" here and feels guilty.

After getting used to it, it's no big deal. The noise has become his companion during self-study. In the intervals between writing every night, he imagines that there are a group of small animals downstairs to accompany him to stay up late.

The more irritable mice and the relatively docile rats. Just knowing the existence of other creatures relieves the loneliness, so much so that he has to listen to the sound every night when he goes home.

After realizing its existence, the large room on the first floor, which used to have little presence, gradually came into view. He took a long detour and went out from the other side of the corridor to observe along the way.

Unlike other classrooms or laboratories, this room has fewer windows and more exhaust fans. The design of the room seems to be independent from the building and self-contained.

Recalling the months of going in and out of this building, it seems that I have never seen the big iron door opened, nor have I seen people coming in and out.

This question remained in his mind, and [——] continued to enjoy his evening self-study with very little noise, occasionally wondering why it was intermittent. Could it be that experimental animals would also make intermittent noises?

When the final exam was over, he had not thought about these things clearly, nor had he met the teacher who managed the room.

The day before the holiday, [——] went to find a familiar instructor to fill out an application for staying in school. The printer malfunctioned and forced the two to go downstairs to find the printing room. They happened to pass by the first floor. He thought of this and raised the question that had troubled him for most of the semester, and talked about the tiny noises at night.

"So which teacher does this room belong to?"

The instructor looked at the room with an expression that was more puzzled than his, "You can also say it's a teacher..."

In the end, [——] failed to approve the application form for staying in school, and did not get an answer. After a five-minute phone call, the instructor warned him not to waste electricity in the future and to go home quickly.

As for finding out who the teacher in the room was, it was later when he took the "Local Anatomy" experiment class.

He would rather believe that it was the intermittent muffled noise made by the malfunctioning exhaust fan blades, which, after passing through the heavy obstruction of the walls, sounded like teeth grinding on a hard object.