One-Sentence Summary: What’s sweeter than the scent of painting in love!
Theme: Pursue dreams and change fate with knowledge.
In the deep of the night.
In the dimly lit cabin, only a pool of milky white light shone upon the desk.
Well past midnight, 28-year-old Hua Jie was still bent over her desk, painting.
Her shadow cast by the light behind her resembled a small creature trapped in water, struggling feebly to escape.
She pushed up her thick glasses, pondered briefly, and then continued to brush stroke after stroke on her digital drawing tablet.
This was already her third revision. The client could always find something dissatisfactory in her paintings, constantly challenging her limits.
Though she had gained some popularity in the art community and was often called a “master” by many fans, she still had to endure the capricious demands of her “client daddy” for the sake of money.
She was extremely tired and weary, not knowing how long she had been painting, until she finally took off her cumbersome glasses and slumped down onto the drawing tablet.
…
In a haze, it seemed as if she regained some consciousness, her chest heavy, struggling for breath.
Was she dying?
She felt terrible.
Her hand struggled, trying to grasp at something; she was not ready to give up.
Scenes from her life flashed before her, showing her the drabness of her not-so-long existence.
As a child, while others moved into high-rise buildings, she still lived in a bungalow, having never even seen a flushing toilet.
Her classmates often mocked her as a country bumpkin, as if she had crawled out of an ancient tomb, shedding dust as she walked.
In school, her grades were mediocre, her painting skills average. After entering university, she felt like she was drowning in the crowd, realizing she was nothing special.
She painted diligently, honing her skills, until she felt she was competent. After a few years of social work, she remained an artist whipped by clients, even gradually beginning to despise painting.
Because she thought her father was domineering and tyrannical, she seldom called home.
Her career was not going well, love was nonexistent, and drifting in the big city, she always felt a sense of failure, as if everyone looked down on her.
Even when her mother took the initiative to call, she was too despondent to speak.
Approaching thirty, aside from her art, she had nothing to show for, unable even to prove she had existed in this world.
The darkness engulfing her was perhaps not just the light, but also her life.
….
….
Hua Jie abruptly opened her eyes, somewhat dazed and confused.
It felt like only a moment had passed, yet also as if she had slept for a long time.
The drafting table of her rental was gone. Now, she sat on a small stool with an easel before her.
It was just past noon, when the sun’s rays were at their fiercest, recklessly splashing bright red light everywhere, making everything dazzle in its brilliance.
Hua Jie struggled to adjust to the blinding light, raising her arm to shield her brows and eyes.
Beneath the large poplar tree, insects buzzed and birds chirped. The classroom was noisy; the teacher stood in the center, explaining the day’s painting assignment.
It was a classroom that felt antiquated, with green-painted iron window grates showing patches of rust, and under each window, there were peeling radiators, their pipes unattractively coiled along the walls.
Over thirty students were divided into six small groups in the spacious studio, each group gathered around still lifes1“Still life” refers to a genre of art primarily depicting inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (like food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (like drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). In still life paintings, these objects are arranged in a specific way to create a composition that is aesthetically pleasing or meaningful. of varying difficulties.
After a brief explanation, while her classmates were already sizing up their still lifes, making faces at each other, Hua Jie was still daydreaming.
“Why aren’t you painting yet?” The teacher approached from behind, gently tapping the top of her head with a 2B pencil.
Hua Jie squinted one eye, clutching her pencil as she compared proportions with the still life before beginning to sketch on the drawing paper, establishing proportions, drawing auxiliary lines, and outlining shapes.
Painting had become her instinct, integrated into her very marrow, almost effortlessly coordinating her eyes, brain, and hand.
As she painted, Hua Jie’s cognitive abilities gradually returned.
She noticed her hands had become smaller, her fingers slender and pale, with nails that were rosy and glossy, girlishly charming.
Her wrists were slim, the fine hairs gilded by the sunlight, her skin almost translucent…
Drawing simple geometric still lifes came naturally to her. While her peers were still struggling with each stroke, erasing and framing, she was already applying the first layer of light and shade, the second layer of tonal values, and deepening the details…
Her thoughts continued, and during the nearly half an hour, she even pinched herself… Suddenly, Hua Jie stood up, catching her blurred reflection in the window glass.
An oval face with a touch of baby fat, large round eyes, and neatly cut bob just touching her ears.
No thick glasses, no swollen eyes from wearing them, and no dark circles from staying up late…
A fresh, youthful appearance, her most beautiful visage from her youth.
The teacher frowned at her, just about to tell her to sit down when he saw the girl sweep away her bewildered look, a wild joy spreading across her face as she suddenly dropped her pencil and dashed towards the door.
“Hua Jie! What are you doing—” the teacher hadn’t finished speaking when the girl had already run out the door, not looking back.
Zhang Xiangyang had been running art classes at the city’s Youth Center2In China, a “Youth Center” refers to a community facility that offers educational and recreational programs for children and teenagers. These institutions are typically funded and run by the government. Youth Centers provide a wide range of activities, including art classes, music lessons, sports, science and technology workshops, and other cultural and educational initiatives. The primary aim is to enrich the extracurricular lives of young people, fostering their development in various skills and hobbies outside of the standard school curriculum. for five years, and Hua Jie had only joined this summer vacation. She was usually a well-behaved student, but today, why was she acting as if her pants were on fire?
He approached the door and peered into the corridor but saw no one.
Turning to the window, he then spotted a young girl sprinting out of the courtyard, running and laughing along the road, occasionally bouncing and skipping. She transformed into a vigorous streak of the late summer, disappearing around the corner.
“Focus on your painting.” Turning around to see many students looking around, Zhang Xiangyang sternly reprimanded them.
He strolled back to Hua Jie’s seat and glanced casually at the sketch on the drawing board.
With just that one look, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
While other students in the group were still drawing basic shapes, Hua Jie’s drawing was already 60% complete.
The speed was too fast, her hand too steady!
Each stroke was laid down with such sure and swift confidence, and without a single correction from start to finish, how could it not be?
Even if one’s hand could move at that speed, could the mind keep up?
Deciding where to place each stroke, how much force to use, how long to make each line… didn’t these require thought?
Moreover, whether it was the accuracy of the shapes or the mastery of light and shadow, everything was just right.
From just this 60% completion, it was enough to deduce and foresee that the finished piece would be a masterfully high-scoring painting.
Zhang Xiangyang pulled out the drawing and stared at it for a long time, slightly stunned.
Even as a teacher, he might not be able to draw so quickly and… so precisely.
…
…
Realizing it was her first few hours since being reborn, Hua Jie woke up startled in her sleep.
She stared at the dim ceiling of her room, as the dawn light seeped through the gaps in the curtains, filling the room with a dim, liquid-like light.
Turning her head slowly to look around, the sparse furniture, the plain white walls, a square bedside table, a square desk with a few books, and a very ordinary wooden chair with a large backpack hanging on it.
The dim environment prevented her from seeing the details of the objects clearly, but the blurry scene exuded a strange yet familiar aura.
This was the first house her family bought in 2000 when she started high school, a small flat on the Beishan of Jinsong City.
Flustered, she sat up from the bed, her vision darkening due to low blood sugar.
She steadied herself by holding onto the edge of the single bed and, unable to wait, dashed barefoot out of her room straight to her parents’ bedroom.
Pushing the door open, she heard her father’s snoring and, her eyes brimming with tears, she dove into the darkened bed like a brave soldier going to battle.
Quickly and accurately, she pressed down upon her mother, startling her.
“What are you doing…” Her mother had just been jolted awake from a dream, her voice muffled and hoarse, struggling to breathe under the pressure, frantically pushing at her daughter’s shoulders:
“Having a nightmare?”
In her previous life during her rebellious teenage years around fourteen or fifteen, Hua Jie always felt sensitive, constantly criticizing her parents for this and that.
Before being reborn, at the age of 15, she was still upset and depressed during the summer vacation because her parents hadn’t bought her a new pencil case or clothes, thinking maybe they didn’t care about her.
But now, looking back on those years as an adult, she understood that human effort sometimes reaches its limits, and her parents did indeed love her.
Holding her mother’s arm, she snuggled into the warm crook of her mom’s arm and wouldn’t let go.
Even though she had warmed up to her mom when she ran back in the afternoon, the intense emotions of being back with her parents hadn’t faded in the slightest in her midnight dreams.
Her mother didn’t push her daughter away. Annoyed, she reached out to slap her daughter’s back but felt the tank top her daughter had worn when she ran out, worried she might catch a cold, she opened up the blankets and pulled Hua Jie onto the bed.
“You’re in high school now, acting like a little child, isn’t that embarrassing?”
Hua Jie did not resist being hit or dragged; she just soaked up the warmth from her mother, burying her head into her mom’s chest.
It was wonderful; she really had been reborn.
In the days since her return, she had been like a frightened bird, fearing it was all just a beautiful dream, and she would wake up to still be the 28-year-old her, alone in Shanghai, continuing to make revisions to clients’ drawings.
Thankfully, thankfully, she really had returned to being 15 years old. It wasn’t a dream!
“What time is it?” A muffled voice came from the other side of the bed.
Stretching her arm out, her mother checked the watch in the faint morning light, “It’s just after five.”
“…” Her father muttered something and then turned over to go back to sleep.
The air was filled with her mother’s scent—fragrant, warm, deeply comforting, and satisfying.
Hua Jie didn’t say a word, just leaned into her mother’s embrace, greedily breathing in.
Everything was too real—the warmth, the scent, and her mother’s gentle pats on her back as if she had had a nightmare… aaaah, it was too wonderful!
For Hua Jie, who had always been single, painting was not only her job but also her husband.
Her life was nothing but endlessly cradling the drawing board and staring at the screen to paint and paint.
Whenever she was tormented by clients to the point of misery, she always yearned to be reborn.
She simply couldn’t take it anymore, so she burst into tears, furiously cursing the client for not being human, cursing myself for choosing the wrong career.
“Mom, I’m not studying art anymore!” she suddenly exclaimed, her tone unusually excited.
“What are you talking about? It’s still early, go back to sleep for a bit…” Her mother tucked her in and muttered something before quickly falling back asleep.
But Hua Jie was wide awake, without a hint of sleepiness.
She had decided she wasn’t going to study painting anymore.
Enough was enough!
She was fed up with all the suffering!
Now reborn, she was determined to strive for greatness.
Me—
I’m going to apply to Tsinghua University!
Why not just do something simple that makes money and live a carefree, happy life?
She remembered the dry twenty-plus years of her life, where even in high school there were small rainbows—
She had a crush on the most sensational and handsome school tyrant!
Shen Mo, a boldly unrestrained young man, as passionate as the sun, was the aspiration of her timid and slow self, the sharp edge she yearned for in her youthful audacity.
Her diary was filled with illustrations of a beautiful young girl chasing that sharp silhouette.
Even if she didn’t mention the school tyrant who transferred to their class on the third day of school, whether it was the neighbor boys who were either cute, dominant, wild, or sweet…
To enjoy a youthful romance, even if it was a passionate and unrequited crush like idolizing a star!
Isn’t that delightful???
Why dedicate one’s youth and life entirely to painting?
Such nonsense dreams!
She made her statement clear!
Anyway—
She wasn’t going to paint anymore!!!