Volume One: Helpless Heaven, What Can Be Done

Chapter One: I Open the Door and It’s the Day Before Yesterday

Before writing this story, I have asked myself countless times: in the vast universe, are we truly the only possessors of wisdom?

Looking up at the starry sky, is there someone out there also gazing at us?

The answer is obvious: we cannot be the only intelligent beings.

Whether from the perspective of probability, or from our own instinctive fear of loneliness, we cannot possibly be solitary individuals.

With the development of modern science and the emergence of various measuring instruments, within our visible range, we have not discovered any other life—not even the slightest possibility has been detected.

This leaves us so disappointed!

The lonely Earth continues to circle the sun in the solar system, round and round, with no beginning and no end.

We keep walking the same path, like a donkey turning a mill, blindfolded, making the longest journey in utter darkness.

There will always be donkeys unwilling to be blindfolded; they want to walk in a straight line, so the reins break, and the mill collapses.

Or, are there other possibilities?

A Door on the Playground

Henry Clark didn’t sleep a wink last night—not because he didn’t want to, he desperately wanted to, but the thought of those thirteen kids in the experimental class left him wide awake. Only heaven knows why he agreed to the old principal’s request: instead of teaching normal kids, he had to take on these handpicked young masters and ladies.

Grace Carter, I know your father is a senior programmer, but did you really have to encrypt the file you sent me just for a math problem? And then tell the teacher that the key is the answer to the problem? What’s the use of knowing the key if the whole screen is just 0s and 1s? How am I supposed to grade that?

That’s not how you make a first impression. Back in my day, I just hung a plastic bag of ice water on the door. Even though I got my ear pulled and was scolded by the female teacher for half an hour, I was still admired as a hero by my buddies for half a semester.

Henry Clark swore that, no matter how outrageous he got, he never wrote his thesis defense in English. After passing the College English Test Band 6 in university, he never had a chance to use it again.

But kid, this line “A fierce tiger in the heart, sniffing the rose gently”—the teacher knows that one. It’s a famous quote from Sassoon. I told your future teacher’s wife about it back in college. Brian Cooper, your tail is showing, so don’t try to hide it. I’ll deal with you tomorrow.

Such a big sheet of paper, such beautiful wild cursive—it could rival Zhang Xu’s drunken calligraphy. I’m not giving it back; the teacher’s study just happens to need a calligraphy piece, and this will do, even if the meaning isn’t great. What’s with “Lying on the beach for three and a half years, when the big wave comes I’ll turn over”?

Trying to fool the teacher with your chicken scratch? If you can’t draw a hundred turtles in an hour tomorrow, I’ll draw turtles on your little face, Emma Grant, just you wait...

After finishing his own tasks, Henry Clark realized there was no point in trying to sleep anymore. He turned his head to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table, just waiting for it to suddenly ring so he could start a new day.

Henry Clark was very satisfied with his alarm clock—it always rang exactly at seven o’clock.

Normally, there’s nothing much to say about this, but for two days in a row, only the alarm clock worked as expected; nothing else went smoothly.

While brushing his teeth, he wondered: if he hadn’t chosen to be a teacher, would his life be more comfortable now? Is it a bit pathetic to still be living in the school dormitory at twenty-seven?

That familiar number on the phone hadn’t appeared for over a month. He called twice, but both times it was out of service. Well, so be it—alone and unburdened, he could live freely.

No sooner had he sworn to the heavens than a thunderclap exploded above his head, making Henry Clark’s hair stand on end. How could there be thunder so early in the morning? Seeing that a heavy rain was about to pour, he threw his backpack over his head and dashed out.

He leapt over the waist-high elm hedge, vaulted the waist-high railing with a hand, and just as he was feeling proud, a strong gust of wind blew in his face, carrying sand and dirt. After rubbing his eyes for a while, he suddenly heard the “swish swish” sound of sweeping ahead. Who would be sweeping the ground in such a wind? Through teary eyes, he finally saw the fool sweeping against the wind.

Seeing that kid in a school uniform, Henry Clark was left speechless. Others sweep to keep things clean, but this guy sweeps for the thousand yuan he gets every month.