Lost

The morning passed in the blink of an eye, and this next period was supposed to be club time. However, a quick glance around the room revealed plenty of other "clubless nomads" like us, staying behind in the classroom to do homework instead of heading to activity rooms. During the Chinese class just before, the teacher had handed out several op-eds regarding aging and the digital divide, asking us to read them, outline their structure, and gather material. I was busy marking paragraphs and underlining central sentences when Ling Quan nudged her chair over and sat next to me. Since Ye Zihan had already left, the seat was empty anyway.

"I really dislike the word 'elderly care.' 'Care'—as if they are already decayed but still insist on being treated like something precious."

"Everyone grows old eventually. Population aging will be our country's basic national condition for a long time to come, so making intelligent technology harmonize and adapt to an aging society is the best way to reflect the warmth of policy..." I recited a passage from the material as my reply.

"I’m not saying I oppose that. If others want to be 'cared for,' let them be, but... I could never endure becoming like that myself."

"Is that so... Ling Quan, have you ever thought about what it’s like to be old?"

"I only just thought about it during class. After all, it was hard enough to go from 'wanting to die' to 'wanting to live,' and I haven't reached the point of 'wanting to live a long time' yet," she whispered.

"...Ling Quan, why did natural selection make us age?"

"Do you want immortality? Such perfect things don’t exist in nature. Have you heard that joke? Henry Ford was touring a warehouse full of discarded Model T cars and asked, 'Is there any part in these old cars that never breaks down?' His aides replied, 'Yes, the kingpin never fails.' Ford turned to his chief engineer and said, 'Then redesign it. If it never fails, we must be spending too much on it.' We are just about the same—a 'good enough' compromise meant to maximize net profit."

"I don't want immortality either... because if there were no aging, there wouldn't be space left for the new generation, right?"

"No, that’s not quite it... Natural selection doesn’t work that way."

"Then how does it work—Teacher Ling, hurry up and tell me."

"Well... there was a man named Williams who proposed that aging might be the result of antagonistic pleiotropy—genes that exhibit different effects at different ages, such as those that are beneficial early in life but increase mortality in old age."

"Why? Isn't the value of life equal at every stage?"

"Exactly." Ling Quan drew a diagram. "The solid line is the distribution of reproductive capacity at each age, and the dashed line is 'reproductive potential'—the remaining reproductive capacity after that age. Assuming no aging, an individual will always die due to various accidents; the further along you go, the lower the probability of survival and the less the reproductive potential."

"For example, he hypothesized a gene that promotes calcium deposition in bones during development to make them stronger, but eventually causes arterial sclerosis, increasing mortality later in life. But as long as it increases vitality and fertility during youth, increasing the number of offspring left behind at that time, its fitness increases, and it gets selected."

"The book *Why We Get Sick* says that aging is the price of youth. Natural selection doesn’t choose longevity, joy, or happiness... it only chooses successful reproduction. In nature, there are even more extreme examples than humans: a few species of marsupials where the males die immediately after a short breeding season due to hormonal imbalance and immune system collapse—'suicidal reproduction.' This is the consequence of them mating as much as possible during the breeding period to win the 'sperm war' and produce more offspring."

"Also—the average age of human ancestors was only twenty, so genes that only show disadvantages at fifty basically never had a chance to be selected out. Natural selection fails in old age, like a piano that is no longer tuned, able only to play a slowly drifting, out-of-tune melody."

"'Heaven and earth are not benevolent'...?" I recalled something she had once said.

Ever since we started distributing homework and calculating test averages in small groups, I had gradually gotten to know the classmates around me as their group leader.

"Group leader, what’s the homework today—"

"Group leader, I’m not turning it in today, don't tell the teacher."

"Even if I don't say anything, it's pretty obvious when one person is missing from a group of six," I retorted.

"Group leader, our group had the highest average this time, is there a reward?"

"Group leader, can you draw my wife on the blackboard next time?" After self-study ended, Ye Zihan handed me a card printed with a girl with scallion-green twin tails.

"..." The homeroom teacher would absolutely never agree to that.

"You have so many friends," Ling Quan said with a touch of loneliness as we walked down the stairs together.

"No... we're just classmates and group members," I said, scratching my head helplessly.

"I’m your friend too, right?" Ling Quan’s tone sounded a bit jealous.

"You—you are different from all of them!"

"How are we different?"

"For example—"

I took Ling Quan’s right hand and held her fingertips tightly.

At the end of October, the math competition results came out. Ling Quan got a provincial first prize, but her ranking was low, and she didn't make the provincial team. The only person in the school who made the provincial team was in Class One next door. I managed a provincial third prize, barely enough to add a few points to my comprehensive evaluation.

"Ling Quan—how are you so strong—" The day the results came out, I hugged Ling Quan and wailed.

"Just lucky."

"Eh?"

"I’ve pretty much fulfilled their expectations... Getting a provincial first prize should be enough to meet the difficulty requirements for future university entrance tests. I’ve studied for two years, and this is as far as it goes. Studying for another year doesn't guarantee a spot on the provincial team." She muttered in a flat, emotionless voice.

Had she started studying in junior high? So the gap between people really didn't just appear overnight...

"So... is it time to get busy with the college entrance exam?" I asked.

"Probably. Although I’m not sure if I can survive until the college entrance exam." She fell silent for a moment. "But before the exam... there is still something I want to fight for. Maybe I..."

She shook her head, then pulled *Principles of Biochemistry* and *Cell Biology* out from under her desk, holding them up with a smile as bright and simple as a child's.

For a moment, I remembered the promise we made on that summer night in May: "Let's come back and participate again this time next year."

That would be wonderful.

A few days later, the school’s bulletin board posted the happy news, and the homeroom teacher praised Ling Quan several times in class as a positive role model who managed both academics and competitions.

The news was printed on bright red paper, visible on the way back from the cafeteria.

"Ling Quan—how are you so strong—" I hugged her and wailed again (though I think I just wanted to hug her).

Ling Quan stood in front of the announcement for a while.

"Luck. And... competitiveness, I suppose. Only this way can I get praise and admiration, and... I want to confirm that I have talent, as if that would grant me the qualification to live."

"Eh?"

"If I don't have those, if I can't achieve that... then what is the point of my existence?"

"Of course there is a point! Because, because there are people who love you..." I said it very softly, but she still heard.

"Who?"

"Like, teachers, classmates..." I wanted to say parents, but I kept my mouth shut.

"That kind of thing doesn't count as loving 'me.'—I want to ask you, does unconditional love really exist in this world?"

"What... do you mean by 'unconditional love'?"

"Gu Zhixuan, your parents love you very much, right?"

I nodded.

"Then—if you ranked last in your midterms, would they still love you?"

I thought for a while. "They might not be very happy, but... they should still love me."

"If you started smoking, drinking, fighting... broke the law and got arrested... or went crazy and were sent to the mental hospital..." She was practically interrogating me.

"I... I don't know." At that point, they might feel ashamed to have me as a daughter. But... would they still love me? I couldn't be sure.

"Even with a coefficient of relatedness of one-half as the strongest boost to love, you still can't be sure—that basically means unconditional love doesn't exist."

"It does. For example... me." I took a deep breath. "If you don't even believe me... then there is still you, yourself."

"I... I can't do that. Gu Heqing, you definitely can, but I... I can't. I can't even do this simplest of things." She lowered her head, helpless.

"If we go by your standards, wouldn't that mean that out of 1.3 billion people, nearly 1.3 billion have no meaning to their lives?" I countered.

She remained silent.

Back home that night, the question lingered in my ears: Does unconditional love really exist?

"Mom." I sat at the table drinking warm milk and asked quietly, "If I... for example, suddenly ranked last in an exam, or suddenly became a delinquent, or did a bunch of incomprehensible things..."

"Why the sudden 'what ifs'?" Mom interrupted before I could finish. "Isn't everything going well for you? Your grades are good, you won an award, and you're a group leader—there aren't that many 'what ifs,' dear."

"Do you still love me?" I let the rest of the sentence out.

"Did something happen at school?" Mom stood up and touched my forehead. "Hey, you don't have a fever..."

I lowered my head, finished the milk in one gulp, and stood up to go to my room. "Nothing."

Actually, what I really wanted to ask was... if I became the kind of "abnormal freak" she described, would she still love me? But she said there "weren't that many 'what ifs'."

Ling Quan registered a Zhinxin account with her own phone number. She stopped going to the cafeteria for dinner, opting for bread from the snack shop instead; she spent all her spare time in the self-study room watching knowledge point videos. (Zhinxin, pay up!)

I followed her lead, buying food at the small supermarket when I got to school for lunch, and spending dinner time in the self-study room with her, eating and studying until it was almost time for evening reading.

My bookshelf slowly filled with biology competition textbooks: botany, zoology, cell biology, physiology...

As I put them away, I pulled out the math competition booklet I had placed there last year and flipped through it. The pages and the scratch paper tucked inside were covered in dense, intricate problem-solving processes. Perhaps behind Ling Quan’s provincial first prize, whether it was talent or effort, lay depths I couldn't even imagine.

"Pfft, I was working on plane geometry this time last year. Brings back memories..." Ling Quan suddenly popped up from in front of the screen, giving me a huge scare.

"Ling Quan, are you really not doing math competitions anymore... Maybe you could make the team next year?"

"Ah... I do like math, but now I’ve realized that compared to math, biology is something more important to me, something I cannot lose no matter what... And there's only one year left."

"Eh?"

"The next biology league. Getting a silver medal and being recommended to a biology major—this is the only chance in high school. In this one year, I’ve decided... I want to put my heart and soul into pushing the thing I love and value most to the extreme. It’s either one hundred percent or zero; there is no other choice!" Ling Quan’s tone erupted with unprecedented firmness. It was a resolve like fighting a desperate battle with one's back to the river.

"While I can still study like this."

In my heart, I silently cheered for her, and for us both.