My hometown is far away in Moscow.

025 Fail

The three men entered Lu Tao's room and found him sitting upright on the bed, while several Chinese students stood beside him, sighing and indignant. Yan Zhiwen paced back and forth in the room, hands on his hips, muttering curses against the skinheads.

Peng Song stood with his head down outside the crowd until most of the others had left, then timidly moved to Lu Tao's side and whispered in a voice barely above a whisper, "Brother Tao, are you...are you alright? Are you okay?"

Hu Yi retorted angrily, "What do you mean 'nothing'?! Are you blind?! How can you call this 'nothing'?"

Lu Tao reached out to stop Hu Yi and said to Peng Song, "I'm fine, don't worry."

Peng Song, too intimidated by Hu Yi's outburst, dared not raise his head and stammered, "Brother Tao, I... I was wrong. I shouldn't have left you all behind. I... I was really wrong."

Lu Tao slowly turned to his side and leaned against the headboard, forcing a smile despite the pain in his wounds. He waved his hand lightly and said, "It's okay, don't think too much about it. How can this be your fault? Besides, you would have been beaten anyway if you had gone. It's good that you escaped."

Peng Song gave a soft "hmm" before raising his eyelids to look at Lu Tao. He saw that Lu Tao's arm was covered in bruises; his usually neat short hair had been cut in half to treat the wounds, making it look messy; and his originally delicate face was slightly swollen with several bandages on it.

Peng Song felt deeply ashamed, and his nose tingled with tears. He lowered his head and stared at the top of his feet, saying, "I'm sorry, Brother Tao, I... I promise I won't think only of myself anymore."

Lu Tao smiled and nodded, then didn't reply. He chatted with Hu Yi and Li Baoqing for a few more minutes, then waved wearily and said, "Don't worry, I'm fine. I'll be alright after a good night's sleep. You can all go back now."

Peng Song followed Li Baoqing back to room 1302, head down, and sheepishly pushed open his door. Hu Yi barked, "Stop!" and pulled him in front of him. "Brother Tao won't hold it against you, but I'm going to settle accounts with you. You're a real jerk!"

Peng Song looked at Hu Yi, trembling, and said, "Brother Yi, I was wrong. I promise I won't do it again!"

"Next time?! Look at Baoqing's face! Look at the injuries on Brother Tao's body! It's all your fault!" Hu Yi got angrier and angrier as he spoke, and couldn't help but raise his hand to slap him.

Li Baoqing quickly stopped him: "Forget it, we can't blame him for this. Anyway, we're both back safely. We're compatriots and classmates, after all. There's no need to ruin our relationship over something like this." Then he winked at Peng Song: "Go somewhere cool and stay there. Just looking at you makes me angry."

Peng Song glanced timidly at Hu Yi, and seeing that he didn't intend to slap him, he turned around and slipped into his room.

Hu Yi was still unwilling to give up, but Li Baoqing forcibly dragged him back to the bedroom and pressed him into a chair: "Alright, Lao Hu, if you think about it carefully, even if he hadn't abandoned us back then, we wouldn't have been able to escape in that situation. In the end, wasn't it all caused by the skinheads? There's no need to put up with him."

Hu Yi, seething with anger, pointed at Li Baoqing and berated him without any rhyme or reason: "You! All that strength you have is wasted! You got taken down in no time, without even a chance to fight back. You're such a coward, I'm so angry for you!"

"That's easy for you to say when you're not in my shoes. I didn't even have time to react in that situation. The skinhead thug just swung his stick without saying a word, and I couldn't dodge it." Li Baoqing gave a bitter smile and said in a low voice with lingering fear, "That guy was really ruthless. He knocked me to the ground and I couldn't get up in one go. He even tried to hit me on the head with the stick. Luckily, Brother Tao rushed over and saved me, otherwise... sigh..."

Hu Yi remained silent for a long while, then gritted his teeth and said hatefully, "Damn it, if I run into these bastards, I'll fight them to the death! Even if I die, I'll take one of them down with me!"

"Alright, alright, you're reckless, you're amazing." Li Baoqing smiled and gently pressed the gauze on his face: "Bragging is one thing, but these skinheads are really too fierce. They fight to the death without saying a word. It's completely different from the fights we had back in middle school. If we ever run into them in the future, we should run as fast as we can."

After their fellow countrymen experienced such an incident, Chinese students became much more cautious about going out. With final exams approaching, everyone usually stayed indoors studying.

However, Hu Yi was well aware of his own abilities; there were some subjects he simply couldn't understand even after repeated review. Unsurprisingly, a few days later, he once again tasted the familiar bitterness of failing his final exams.

Russian university exams typically combine oral and written tests, using a five-point scale, with three, four, and five points corresponding to passing, good, and excellent, respectively. Preparatory exams place even greater emphasis on oral components, so Hu Yi's plan to get Yu Feifei's help fell through. Ultimately, he only scored four points in Russian, while the rest of his subjects either received three points or failed.

Li Baoqing's Russian was not as good as Hu Yi's, but he received special treatment because of his bruises. Almost every teacher would ask him about the cause of his injury, and as long as Li Baoqing said the word "skinheads," he would immediately win a lot of sympathy.

The more lenient teachers turned a blind eye and gave him a passing grade during the exam, but the Russian teacher, Lyudmila, showed no mercy: "Oh, Baoqing, dear, you are my worst student, the worst. Considering your injury, I have prepared some simple questions for you. If you can answer one correctly, I will give you three points."

She then asked five questions, and Li Baoqing stammered for a long time, unable to answer any of them properly, so he could only clutch his wound and pretend to be in pain. Lyudmila wrote "Fail" on his report card without hesitation, and sighed softly, "Go back and take good care of your injury, study hard, and do well on your make-up exam."

Yu Feifei's grades were excellent among the preparatory students; she got five points in all subjects except one (three points). However, she was quite dissatisfied with herself, sitting in her chair and nervously rubbing her hands between her legs: "Three points... is equivalent to sixty points. I've never gotten a sixty in my entire life."

Hu Yi blushed slightly, a rare occurrence for him, and said with a sense of shame, "Well, it's been several years since I scored above 60 on a test."

Although both are "failed to score above 60", the meanings they represent are quite different. Hu Yi is now particularly sensitive to his grades. He never cared about failing all his exams in high school, but this time failing a few subjects has made him anxious and worried about the second half of the semester.

Li Baoqing was initially gloomy about being beaten, but his unexpected joy at only failing one subject quickly overshadowed his mood. He smugly muttered "a blessing in disguise" while triumphantly consoling Hu Yi: "Hey Lao Hu, it's just failing a few exams, don't take it to heart. Look, I failed one too, didn't I?"

Hu Yi raised an eyebrow, indignantly saying, "Damn, you're just incredibly lucky. I think we should go out and get beaten up by the skinheads before the exams next semester, maybe then we can graduate smoothly."

Li Baoqing chuckled awkwardly: "Hehe, crooked ways are no good, no good at all—anyway, it's winter vacation now, so let's just wait until school starts to worry about these troublesome things. Let's think about how to spend the Spring Festival first."

Hu Yi sighed deeply, lit a cigarette, and pondered, "Spring Festival? How can we celebrate it in this godforsaken place? We can't set off firecrackers, and we can't watch the Spring Festival Gala. Why don't we invite everyone over for a New Year's Eve dinner to make it more lively? On New Year's Eve, we'll go grocery shopping. You and Feifei will be the chefs, and I'll help out."

"No problem!" Li Baoqing touched his newly removed stitches and jumped out of bed. "I'll go call them over, we'll discuss the menu for New Year's Eve!"