My One And Only Love/ Exclusive Memory (Somewhere Only We Know) — 独家记忆 Chapter 4 Part 1

 Greetings, hello my dear readers!  

Hi, everyone! Long longggg time no see ヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ

I finally made time to work on MOAOL again, yay!! Announcement: the site where I usually get MOAOL's raw suddenly either got shut down or simply gone, so I found another one with a different chapter patterning but I will still post them as per usual ^^. I'll try to finish as many chapters as possible before I get busier. Enjoy this chapter!♡

Chapter 4 Part 1: Left-handed VS Right-handed
Translated&edited by Fei斐

    As soon as the freshmen entered the school, our counselor warned us that learning foreign languages ​​might be more depressing compared to other liberal arts subjects. Although the freshmen and sophomores didn't have the first class every morning, we must proceed to the classroom to study early at 07:30. Whenever the sky was still bright, you could see foreign language students walking on the campus boulevard with soy milk in their hands while wearing earphones, listening to the radio.

    On the way from the dormitory to the fourth class, there was an Osmanthus forest. It was golden autumn when we entered as freshmen, so we walked through the sweet-scented Osmanthus forest in the early morning with a vision for a new university life and hope for the future. At that time, I really felt it was a very enjoyable thing.

    I used to be such an aspiring youth. As young people turned into old fritters, though, they gradually slacked off. Sometimes, I felt that the four of us were lazy and some people do share the same fits. If there were no classes on weekends or Monday and Tuesday mornings, and everyone at the dorms wasn't so pleased to go out but were very hungry, we would send someone to the cafeteria to buy breakfast by playing rock-paper-scissors. What if no one wants to go out until noon? There goes the rock-paper-scissors again, then...

    We were the closest to the third canteen, so we usually get our meals (activities) done there. Near the entrance of the cafeteria, where the soy milk was sold, a big bucket was piled up. A person clocked in and the other scooped the soy milk. The person who scooped the soy milk was very strange. If you had brought your own cup, no matter how big the capacity was, he would give you two-thirds of the cup—unwavering. As a result, we used a 1.5-liter cup which can be made into four servings.

    As the weather gets colder and colder, it recently had become that everyone was lying in their dormitories reading novels, watching TV, playing computer, and memorizing vocabularies. They didn't even bother to play (outside) at lunch. How to make it work then? Continue with the rock-paper-scissors.

    Under normal circumstances, Bai Lin was the most unlucky.

    Today, it was her again.

    She grabbed me and said pitifully, "Xiao Tong, accompany me please."

    I saw her holding four lunch boxes alone, which was quite bleak of a sight, so I accompanied her.

    She and I each took two lunch boxes and stood behind two lines waiting for lunch at the third canteen.

    Fortunately, it was not twelve o'clock, so the queue was not particularly long. When it was my turn, I looked at the cafeteria cook and bent over, scooped a large spoonful of rice, and shook my hand holding the spoon when he (the cook) looked at it looking dissatisfied. So, I shook (to put some of the rice down) it again, and when the rice was nearly gone, I put it in my lunch box at last.

    I swiped the card again and handed a lunch box over. The master (cook) repeated the old tricks, and this time he pretended to me less than before.

    I glanced at my left hand, then at my right hand, and said with a weeping face, "Master, you see that I have become so thin that I can only give me such a meal. Can you bear it?"

    The master glanced at me, reluctantly added a few more grains of rice, then waved his hand, and said loudly behind me: "Hurry up, next." Then he muttered in his mouth, "How much do you want for a forty cents of rice?"

    Hearing a boy at the back of the row laughing, I immediately looked back at him.

    However, it was just after I walked like this that I lost Bai Lin's meal card. I anxiously tried to recall it, remembering that when I was retrieving the food, the first time I swiped was with my card, the second was swiped with Bai Lin's card, and then I never saw the card again. Bai Lin saved a lot of money in it, and I couldn't afford to pay it all back.

    Bai Lin said indifferently, "Never mind, if it's lost then it's lost."

    I still hurriedly took her to the logistics office to report the loss.

    The teacher in charge said, "Bai Lin, English department's junior, someone came to check just now, saying that he had found your card. After checking your information, he was going to send it back to you."

    We both looked at each other, how great, we actually run into Lei Feng.

    In the evening, it was Mu Chenghe's Russian class.

    The heating in the classroom was on, many people were present too, and the doors and windows were shut tightly as well. After speaking for a while, he probably felt hot so he rolled up his sleeves as a relieve. After doing this, he was ready to continue picking up the chalk and writing the words on the blackboard.

    Unexpectedly, he actually used his left hand.

    He turned his back to us. Right after he wrote a word, maybe only then he realized the unusuality (of the left and right problem), so he shifted for a moment and resumed writing after a few seconds of pause.

    I understood, if he were to change hands (grip) right now, it would only attract everyone's attention instead.

    After he finished writing the sentence, he turned to face the classroom, and then shifted the chalk onto his right hand. Everyone was burying their heads in taking notes, only a few people were sitting still, and I was one of them.

    Almost no one noticed the subtle situation just now. I wouldn't notice it either if I hadn't known about his habit beforehand.

    In fact, I didn't think Mu Cheng needed to be like this. Let the students know and hereafter, it would be nothing more than people's small talks, and then it would be another point of his charm in everyone's eyes.

    The more special the teacher was, the more likely it was to arouse students' curiosity.

    Mu Chenghe seemed to notice that I was staring at him, so he smiled at me.

    I was taken aback for a moment, so I buried my head and hurriedly took a pen to write notes, but unluckily, I began to wander about as I wrote. I recalled the math problem that Mu Chenghe did: 3999×6888=?

    When I was a child, I memorized the nine-nine multiplication table (T/N: the most basic one, which counts up to 9×9, hence it's also known as the 九九表 jiu'jiu biao or the nine-nine table/set). Later, I was a little bit older and memorized the square table, which made me familiar to reciting the multiplications of 11×11, 12×12, 13×13,... and likewise multiplications in a single breath. It was an additional requirement made by our former math teacher in order to heighten our mental arithmetic capability.*

(*T/N: this was a pretty complex sentence for me to translate as a non-Chinese speaker, so I translated the paragraph according to my personal understanding. If anyone have a better understanding of it, please let me know. The confusing part was 后来大一点又背平方表，类似于一口气说出11×11，12×12，13×13……之类的乘法，那纯粹是我们以前的数学老师为了提高我们的心算能力而做出的额外要求。)

    "Is there anyone who specifically memorize the answer to a multiplication?" While Mu Chenghe was writing an example on the blackboard, I lowered my head and asked Bai Lin secretly.

    "Nine-Nine table?" Bai Lin asked rhetorically.

    "No, it's the how-many-thousands-times-how-many-thousand type." I said.

    "What are you memorizing it for?"

    "Uh‒ play, a brain exercise kind of game." Didn't some teachers often say that the brain would rust if it was left unused for a long period time.

    Bai Lin gave me a white look (to be frightened), "Brain exercise? Has your brain been injured?"

    Uh...it really doesn't quite conform to the laws of nature.

♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡

Please leave Feifei some comments if you wish to have another update early next week q(≧▽≦q)

Hopefully, I can see you again weekly at least until the end of this month!

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