“Someone should take those slices of cheesecake home, or they’ll go to waste,” the ‘boss dy said, pointing at the leftover small cakes in the transparent counter, a common occurrence.
“I’m on a diet,” Albus raised his hand, extinguishing his cigarette, and turned to prepare to pull down the iron gate.
So, I happily packed the fresh cheesecake into a box, pnning to take it home as a te-night snack for my tired parents. They would surely be happy, thinking how lucky they were to have a daughter who was so considerate, working at a café.
On my way home, I rode my bike and stopped at the traffic light right in front of Tsinghua University.
The traffic light in front of the Tsinghua night market is well-known because students, graduate students, and even professors and lecturers treat the pedestrian bridge hanging high above Guangfu Road like it's invisible, using the traffic police's signals and whistle blows as mere suggestions for running red lights. Everyone weaves through the traffic, crossing the busy street at every opportunity.
I wonder if, once I get into college, I'll forget all about traffic safety rules too.
That being said, every day, going to work and coming home, I watch those brave college students throw caution to the wind as they cross the street. Their carefree, ughing expressions are something you rarely see in the studious, rigid atmosphere of a cram school.
Going to university must be some kind of almost magical life process that transforms a lifeless high school student into someone new.
A sunshine girl like me will have the power to decide whether or not to wear a skirt to school, and boys will no longer just be the ones who py basketball or video games.
Just one street away, there are 331 days left, and then university life will begin.
I long for it, and I can’t wait.
So, even though I report to the café almost every day, preparing for independence and life experiences, I still study my textbooks and do exercises from reference books until after two in the morning.
Four hours ter, I wake up at 6:50 AM, groggy, stumbling to the Zhu Nu School to take the countless morning quizzes, finishing the papers like a wandering soul. But my grades and the university that are just one street away with 331 days to go clearly still have some distance to bridge with more effort.
The light is green.
I practiced my English essay in my head as I rode home, tonight′s topic being “If I were a president.” I absentmindedly thought about how I would transform Taiwan as I pedaled along.
The bike wobbled over the bumpy road, and I carefully kept my bance, trying to avoid dropping the slices of cheesecake in the pstic bag hanging from the handlebars.
Hsinchu, also known as the “Wind City,” was especially windy that night.
Some sections of Guangfu Road are slightly downhill, and the night wind hit me head-on. My legs started to feel a bit strained, almost as if I were riding backward. The brain that was once full of English idioms gradually struggled to think, so I decided to hum Jacky Cheung′s “Want to Go with You and Feel the Wind” to match the moment.
I pedaled with all my might, the old bike crawling over one intersection after another. By the time I reached home near the city center roundabout, it was already 11 PM, and I was drenched in sweat.
I thought to myself that soon I would develop a pair of strong, resilient legs like carrots.
I pushed open the half-drawn iron gate, and the air inside the house was filled with a faint sandalwood scent.
On the small living room TV, the chaotic talk show was pying, the kind of political soap opera that my parents, at their age, love to watch.
“Dad, the Boss Lady treated us again today!” I said, pcing the cake down.
“Your brother's in the shower! Go study first, and when he's done, he'll come call you!” Dad shouted from the stairs.
Dad has spent his whole life driving.
When he was young, my dad operated excavators, cranes, and bulldozers. After getting married and saving up some money, he bought a Yulon-Mini Suli and started driving a taxi.
A few years after I was born, that Mini Suli was hit by a speeding truck, leaving a huge dent. Having narrowly escaped death, my dad decided to sell the nearly totaled taxi and switched to driving Route 1 and Route 2 buses instead.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone getting hit while driving a bus,” he expined, and continued for many more years.
“Ugh, you′re so annoying! Taking a shower so te!” I purposely shouted as I passed by outside the bathroom.
I hate studying when I'm all sweaty; it makes it hard to focus.
The bathroom door cracked open slightly, and through the gap, a wet, dripping head appeared.
“Stinks so bad! What′s blocking the door and smelling so awful?” Then he shrank back inside.
I really wanted to kick that big head.
I only have one older brother—no sisters or younger brothers.
I've heard that older brothers are supposed to be good at taking care of and protecting their younger sisters, but that's just an unrealistic rumor.
This 20-year-old idiot brother of mine only knows how to bully me—fighting for the bathroom, fighting for the toilet, making ghostly sounds outside the door while I'm in the shower to scare me, and even sharing half of my room for 17 years.
This twenty-year-old with the mental age of someone much younger is named Li Fengming. He′s currently a third-year architecture student at Chung Hua University, aspiring to become an architect. But judging by how much effort he puts into studying, factoring in the length of the comics stacked on his bookshelf and multiplying it by his weak intelligence, I estimate that this ambitious young man named Li Fengming will most likely end up as a bor foreman or something simir.
(T/N: Chung Hua University (CHU, 中華大學) is a private university also located in Hsinchu. Offers programs in engineering, business, architecture, and humanities. Not as prestigious as NTHU but still a well-regarded institution.)
