Meng Yan's Transformation

Chapter 640 Sending Dumplings to My Two Older Brothers

Zhan Mengyan lost her job at Hualian Canned Food Factory and now only has a part-time job at Xinyue Canned Food Factory, which makes her feel much more relaxed. However, most of the work at Xinyue Canned Food Factory is from the afternoon until the early hours of the morning. The working hours aren't ideal, but Zhan Mengyan has enough time to get some sleep, and her sleep has improved.

The day before the college entrance examination, the Crescent Cannery changed its working hours. As night fell, the roar of the cannery's assembly line finally stopped. Zhan Mengyan took off her rubber gloves, which still smelled of fish, and hurriedly wiped the sweat from her forehead in front of the mirror in the changing room. She then changed out of her faded work clothes and back into her clean clothes.

Tomorrow is the college entrance examination, and at this moment, the coolness of the metal still lingers on Zhan Mengyan's fingertips. She carefully holds the lunchbox in her arms, as if protecting a tiny flame—it contains two lunchboxes of dumplings that she bought with her part-time wages. She tiptoes through the school corridor and stops outside the glass window of the classroom of Class 3, Grade 11, where Zhan Zixun and Zhang Xincheng are located. She takes out a folded piece of paper from her pocket, on which are the verses she wrote during her lunch break: "The pen is a sword, the ink is a shield, you are already armored warriors, I await your triumphant return!" "You are the mountain, and I am the stream at the foot of the mountain, I only wish to reflect your climbing figures."

Inside, the lights shone brightly, like a still lake. Zhan Zixun was hunched over his desk, writing furiously, his pen scratching across the scrap paper, his brow furrowed like sculpted peaks. Zhang Xincheng, meanwhile, repeatedly flipped through his English vocabulary book, his lips moving silently, as if chewing on each syllable. Their shadows, stretched long by the lamplight, fell on the desk piled high with reference books, like trees stubbornly growing in the wind and rain. Zhan Mengyan's fingertips touched the cold glass, almost as if she were about to knock a greeting—the steaming pork and cabbage dumplings in her lunchbox exuded a fragrant aroma. But the tense atmosphere inside made her withdraw her hand. Zhang Xincheng's eraser was grinding forcefully over the wrong answers. She remembered the night before her final exams, when Zhang Xincheng came to see her, his eyes bloodshot, and his words, "Mengyan, don't be distracted by us. Your life deserves your full effort too. You must do well on your final exams."

When Zhan Zixun suddenly looked up, his gaze piercing the window like a sharp blade, Zhan Mengyan hurriedly squatted down, stuffing the letter back into her pocket. Her fingertips touched the "lucky coin" she had made from a can lid—a coin she had painstakingly crafted from scraps she had collected over a week. She had intended to secretly slip it into their pencil case, but now the sharp edges of the coin were digging into her palm, a painful reminder of the bitterness she had kept hidden in her heart for over a year: the panic of being dragged from under her door by Zhang Xincheng before dawn, her back riddled with splinters, as she fled to school; the hardship of moving and finding shelter like a homeless person; the pain of her fingers being cut by sheet metal while distracted on the assembly line as she memorized formulas…

The silence at this moment was heavier than any words. Zhan Mengyan feared that her appearance would be like a pebble thrown into a lake, disrupting their design process. She stood there, hearing her heart pounding like a drum, and seeing the old locust tree at the end of the corridor casting dappled sunlight like scattered silver.

So Zhan Mengyan gently stepped back and stuffed the lunchbox into the guard room: "Uncle Zhao! Please give these two boxes of dumplings to Zhan Zixun and Zhang Xincheng in the second year of high school (3). I am their younger sister, a first-year high school student. I am currently working part-time at a cannery near the school. I don't want them to know that I am working part-time, and I don't want them to worry about me and affect their college entrance examination. Please tell them that I asked you to buy dumplings for them today before the summer vacation."

Zhan Mengyan thanked the guards at the gatehouse and turned to leave.

The evening breeze ruffled the stray hairs on her forehead, and the moonlight faded inch by inch at her feet, spilling over the stairs. She walked silently towards her dormitory, her heart churning with unspoken emotions. She silently recited the image of the spinning gears on the cannery machinery: May her brothers mesh with destiny like precise gears; may all the dormant nights finally burst forth with golden sparks at dawn; may your pens blossom in tomorrow's college entrance exams; may destiny pave the red carpet for you tomorrow; may all the days and nights spent studying transform into shining names on the honor roll. At this moment, Zhan Mengyan only wished to be the silent moonlight behind them, not disturbing them, but forever illuminating their path.