thefictionvixens Chapter 7: The Swan Song
Chapter 7: The Swan Song
During the exam period, Liu Yu didn't meet any future stars at the Beijing Film Academy.
Actually, he had paid special attention; his eyes were constantly scanning as he went in and out.
It wasn't about chasing stars; he just wanted to see what the legendary "star class" actually looked like. This year's performance department supposedly admitted several students who later became quite famous, but he walked around the campus three times and still didn't run into a single one.
Later, he thought about it and realized it made sense.
The performing arts department and the management department don't take exams in the same building, and their meal times in the cafeteria are also staggered.
In addition, he is face-blind, so even if he did run into someone, he wouldn't recognize them before they became famous; and in his previous life, he wasn't a fan of celebrities, although he had seen many stars.
"There aren't that many chance encounters in life," Liu Yu muttered to himself as he ate noodles with soybean paste at a small noodle shop downstairs from the hotel. "If it were that easy to run into someone, what would be the point of paparazzi staking out locations?"
The shopkeeper, thinking he was being spoken to, leaned out and asked, "What did you say, young man?"
"It's nothing, boss, your noodles are really delicious, I'll have another bowl."
……
After finishing the exam, Liu Yu didn't rush back to Changsha.
He waited in Beijing for three days, staying at the hotel next to the Beijing Film Academy, and didn't go anywhere else.
He spent the last two days exploring Beijing, not for tourism, but to "scout out" the city.
He went to Wangfujing, Xidan, and Zhongguancun to see what Beijing looked like in 2002 and compared it with his memory of Beijing ten years later.
The area in front of the Hailong Building in Zhongguancun was packed with people, and vendors selling DVDs were shouting at the top of their lungs: "DVD blockbusters, ten yuan apiece!"
When Liu Yu passed by, he glanced at the CDs and saw that the covers of those CDs were printed with "Harry Potter", "Pearl Harbor" and "My Sassy Girl", and they were all pirated.
On the afternoon of the third day, he was watching TV in his hotel room when his phone rang.
It was Zhang Yan calling.
"Liu Yu, your Uncle Zhang just called me and said the department has made the decision; you've been accepted."
Liu Yu held his phone and remained silent for two seconds.
"Mom, are you sure?"
"Confirmed. The list is out. For the undergraduate program in Management, a total of forty-four people were admitted this year, seventeen males and twenty-seven females."
Zhang Yan's voice sounded calm, and Liu Yu could tell she was trying hard to control her emotions. "Your Uncle Zhang said your interview score was in the top ten, so if your academic scores are above the passing mark, you'll be fine."
"Oh," Liu Yu said.
"Just 'Oh'?"
"What else? Mom, I knew I'd pass the exam." Liu Yu leaned against the headboard, a smirk playing on his lips. "When has your son ever disappointed you?"
There was a three-second silence on the other end of the phone.
"You disappointed me when you climbed onto the roof and removed the tiles. You disappointed me when you stuffed firecrackers into Grandpa Zhang's bicycle tires. You disappointed me when you drew a map out of Aunt Li's bedsheets hanging out to dry..."
"Mom, Mom, stop!" Liu Yu quickly interrupted.
"Stop what?"
"I mean, that's all in the past. I'm now a mature and stable veteran and a prospective college student."
Zhang Yan laughed on the other end of the phone: "Okay, you're mature and steady. So when are you coming back?"
"I'll go back tomorrow. Oh, Mom, please tell Teacher Chen that I passed the exam. She's been teaching me for over half a year, so I need to give her an explanation."
……
The next morning, Liu Yu packed his luggage and prepared to go to the airport.
As he checked out, the young woman at the front desk glanced at him and asked, "Are you here for the Beijing Film Academy exam?"
"right."
"Did you get accepted?"
"I passed the exam."
The little girl's eyes lit up: "Wow, will you be a big director or a big star when you grow up?"
"No, that's not it," Liu Yu handed her the room key. "I'm in charge of the money."
The little girl paused for a moment, not quite understanding, but still smiled and said, "That's amazing! Congratulations!"
Liu Yu dragged his suitcase out of the hotel and glanced back at the gate of Beijing Film Academy in the distance.
The early spring sun shone on the stone tablet, making the six characters "Beijing Film Academy" shine brightly.
……
Back in Changsha, Zhang Yan and Liu Jianhui's attitude was surprisingly indifferent.
There was no "congratulations," no celebration, and not even a proper dinner was arranged.
When Liu Yu arrived home, Zhang Yan was cooking in the kitchen, and Liu Jianhui was reading the newspaper on the sofa. Neither of them looked up when they saw him come in.
"You're back?" Zhang Yan's voice drifted from the kitchen.
"I'm back."
"Wash your hands before eating."
"oh."
Liu Yu put down his luggage, washed his hands, and sat down at the dining table.
Three dishes and a soup: braised pork ribs, stir-fried seasonal vegetables, stir-fried pork with chili peppers, and seaweed and egg drop soup—it couldn't be more homely.
"Dad, Mom," Liu Yu picked up a piece of pork rib, "I got accepted."
"I know." Liu Jianhui turned a page of the newspaper. "Your mother told me."
And then? Liu Yu thought to himself, aren't you going to do anything?
But Zhang Yan's next words made him realize that it wasn't that he didn't care, but that he cared too much and didn't know how to express it.
"Your dad couldn't sleep for the past few nights," Zhang Yan said, bringing the soup to the table. "He even got up at three in the morning to smoke on the balcony. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, 'My son is going to college.'"
Liu Jianhui glared at Zhang Yan: "Why are you saying all this?"
"Why can't I say it?" Zhang Yan retorted confidently. "What did you say back then? 'If this kid gets into university, I'll twist my head off and use it as a football.' And now?"
Liu Jianhui's face flushed red. "I said 'Tsinghua and Peking Universities'! I didn't say Beijing Film Academy!"
Liu Yu lowered his head and ate his rice, his mouth stretching almost to his ears in a wide grin.
That's just his personality; he never admits defeat verbally, but he's happier than anyone else inside.
……
In the days that followed, Liu Yu devoted all his energy to his academic studies.
With less than four months until the college entrance examination, his mock exam scores have gradually climbed from the middle to the top of the class.
Chen Meizhen had a special talk with him, saying that if he could maintain his current rate of progress, getting into a top-tier university would be no problem.
"But," Chen Meizhen pushed up her glasses, "you can't relax. Your grades are like a rollercoaster right now, going up and down, very unstable. Especially math, you got 85 last time, 110 this time, what if you drop back to 90 next time? You need to solidify your foundation, you can't rely on luck."
"Don't worry, Teacher Chen, I don't rely on luck."
Chen Meizhen glanced at him, wanting to say, "You always guessed your exam results by luck," but she swallowed the words back.
This student has indeed changed; not just become more obedient, but he has gained direction. A teacher can tell whether there's light in a person's eyes.
Time flies, and it's already the end of April.
Spring comes late and goes quickly in Changsha; it's already getting hot by the end of April. Pedestrians on the street have switched to short sleeves, people are starting to swim in the Xiangjiang River, and crayfish are beginning to appear at night food stalls.
But this April, the whole of China was talking about one thing: the World Cup.
China won the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.
This is the first and only time in the history of the Chinese men's football team to qualify for the World Cup.
The whole country went crazy. The media reported on it everywhere. Shopping malls were full of national flags. Even the old man selling watermelons was talking about Milutinovic's "happy football".
As Liu Yu walked down the street, he could hear discussions about the World Cup everywhere he went.
"Will the Chinese team make it to the round of 16 this time?"
"What's the point of making it to the round of 16? Scoring even one goal would be a miracle."
"Don't look down on it, what if? The ball is round!"
Liu Yu felt a mix of emotions as he listened to these words.
He knew the outcome.
No, it's not just knowing; he saw it with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears, and experienced it firsthand. In the 2002 World Cup, the Chinese team lost all three matches without scoring a single goal, conceding a total of nine goals.
This was the Chinese men's football team's debut on the world stage, and also their swan song.
For more than two decades after that, the Chinese team never qualified for the World Cup again.
Even after the World Cup expanded to 48 teams and the number of Asian teams increased from four to eight, the Chinese team still struggled in the qualifiers.
2006年、2010年、2014年、2018年、2022年，一届又一届，球迷的心被扎了一次又一次。
Those who are excitedly discussing the round of 16 are unaware that they are witnessing the pinnacle of Chinese football.
From then on, it was all downhill.
……
The World Cup reminded Liu Yu of a way to make quick money.
He walked around the street and found a sports lottery shop.
The walls of the lottery shop were covered with posters, such as "Top 16 Competition", "Top 8 Prediction", and "Top 4 Prediction", all colorful and dazzling.
The shop owner, a fat man in his forties, was lounging with his legs crossed, reading a newspaper. Seeing Liu Yu enter, he lazily asked, "What do you want to buy?"
"Boss, how do you play the World Cup lottery?"
The boss put down his newspaper, perked up, and pointed to the poster on the wall to explain to him:
"The round of 16 is about to begin. Just guess the top 16 teams. The maximum bet is two million."
"The betting odds for the winner, the quarterfinals, and the semifinals are capped at five million."
"There's also a championship prediction contest; the odds vary depending on who you bet on to win."
Liu Yu nodded, already calculating the costs in his mind.
In his previous life, he was a seasoned but fake football fan. He was seasoned because he had watched football for twenty years, but fake because he only watched the World Cup and the Champions League and didn't pay attention to anything else.
But he has a habit of watching "recaps" and "memorable moments" on Douyin after each World Cup, and he has watched them countless times.
He had seen the 2002 World Cup countless times on Douyin.
It's not that he's particularly passionate about football, but rather that this World Cup has generated just too much buzz.
The South Korean team's "biased refereeing scandal" is one of the biggest controversies in football history. A simple search on Douyin will yield hundreds of videos, such as "Italy was unfairly eliminated", "Spain's goal was disallowed", and "Referee Moreno was later arrested for drug trafficking"... He has watched them too many times.
Therefore, he remembers the results of this World Cup very clearly.
Champion: Brazil.
Runner-up: Germany.
The four finalists are Brazil, Germany, Türkiye, and South Korea.
The quarterfinalists are: Brazil, Germany, Türkiye, South Korea, England, USA, Senegal, and Spain.
The round of 16... that's too many, but he vaguely remembered which teams were in it; besides the eight mentioned above, there were Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, Paraguay, Ireland, Italy, and Mexico.
The key is the South Korean team.
Given their normal strength, the South Korean team wouldn't even make it to the semi-finals.
In this tournament, relying on home advantage and the "protection" of the referees, they swept aside Portugal, Italy, and Spain, achieving the best result ever for an Asian team in the World Cup.
This incident was repeatedly scrutinized by countless media outlets and fans, becoming one of the biggest scandals in football history.
But for Liu Yu, this is the information gap.
He knew the South Korean team would make it to the semi-finals, and that alone was enough for him to make money. Before the tournament, who would have thought the South Korean team would make it to the semi-finals? The odds must have been ridiculously high.
But he also knew he couldn't be too greedy.
If he bets on all the results at once, winning tens or hundreds of millions in prize money, he will definitely be targeted.
"I need to buy them in smaller quantities," Liu Yu thought to himself, "mixing the good ones with the bad ones so that no one can tell."
Ultimately, he devised a strategy:
Everyone knows that Brazil is the champion, and the odds are low, so it doesn't matter how much you bet.
The top four teams to bet on are Brazil, Germany, Turkey, and South Korea. Many people don't know how to bet on South Korea because the odds are high, but you shouldn't bet too much on it.
In the quarterfinals and round of 16, he deliberately got two or three wrong, keeping his accuracy rate around 50%, making him look like a lucky fake fan.
Then he began his "errand-running operation".
He visited several districts in Changsha, one by one. He only went into each district's lottery shop once, buying between several hundred and a thousand yuan each time, keeping his total bets under ten thousand yuan.