Chapter 48: The Tiktok Effect

Chapter 48

“The young lady has such a nice figure,”

“Is she on the swimming team? She's so fast, is she using special effects?”

“Love it.”

“I want to go learn how to swim too.”

“Where is this swimming pool? It looks kind of familiar, I want to go stake it out.”

“Does anyone else think the tutor is getting prettier and prettier?? Is it just me who thinks this?”

“The beautifying effects here are too much, too fake.”

“That figure ratio, tsk tsk.”

“TikTok beauty, ugly in real life, no explanation...”

“Like.”

“Like +1”

“Like +10086” Upstodatee from n(0)/ve/lbIn/.(co/m

When Liang Huaying got off work and returned home, she saw her daughter lying on the sofa playing on her phone again, not even taking an afternoon nap, totally absorbed in it.

“How was lunch, did Xiao Qi like it?”

She asked as she took off her shoes.

“Xiao Qi quite liked it, but she paid.” Liang Jiajia said.

Liang Huaying was speechless, and reached out to poke her daughter’s head.

Liang Jiajia nimbly avoided the first poke, but got hit by the second one.

Putting on headphones with authentic-accented English, she went for a run around the neighboring school.

Her afternoon plan was to practice calligraphy, study English, and go running. Then come back and cook.

Lunch had been pretty good, leaving her feeling rather spirited.

Engrossed in listening to English while running, she hadn’t noticed that there were often people craning their necks out of the upstairs windows watching her study English downstairs.

There were long-term inpatients as well as newly admitted ones.

Hospital stays aren’t generally pleasant experiences, filled with despair, regret, remorse. Lying in a hospital bed often makes one realize that health is the most important thing, and they would give up everything just to have a healthy body again.

Seeing that studying girl downstairs through the window brought envy, but also injected their moods with something indescribable.

Liu Anquan, who had lost both legs, watched the longest. Facing the problem of getting prosthetic legs, which were very expensive, he only had his elderly mother left in his family. His wife of so many years had left, taking all their savings.

The hospital had subsidized part of his surgeries, and he borrowed money from relatives too, but everyone felt that money spent on his lost legs was money down the drain with no chance of repayment. Even the over 20,000 RMB raised online barely covered his surgical and hospital fees. There definitely wouldn’t be enough left for prostheses. These days, he kept wondering if he could try standing up and walking a few steps, but he had lost too much blood during the surgeries and was too weak to even sit up, at most propping up his hospital bed to gaze out the window.

As he watched that girl diligently studying below, all sorts of ideas turned in his mind about what he could still do.

He knew car repair, a job that often required squirming under vehicles, which could still be done with shorter legs. Glancing at his bare feet, he decided that once he recovered, he would wrap cloth around the stumps and fit rubber tires underneath to relearn walking. He could still repair cars.

Eyes shining, he stared fixedly out the window with a smile and tears in his eyes.

After Xiao Qi finished her stretches, she started running: 30,000 steps daily that she couldn’t waste. She also enjoyed the feeling. By the time she finished, drenched in sweat that seemed a bit excessive, she did feel somewhat faint and drained. But at the start of today’s run, her legs had felt a little sore and hard to lift at first. Yet the more she ran, the more loose and relaxed they became, until by the end sailing around the entire school track, she unexpectedly still felt quite free and easy.

Furthermore, engrossed in listening to English while running, she felt that even without the language sense buff now, she could already speak much better English than before. Language mastery isn’t about rote memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary lists. What matters most is daring to speak up, constantly listening and familiarizing oneself until expressions flow out naturally. Reciting textbook phrases day after day without daring to say them aloud or enunciate clearly means one can never truly learn a language. This was her deepest realization from this period. Speaking unabashedly, unafraid of mistakes which native speakers are sure to forgive, while feeling delighted over every successful exchange, is key to language learning. Unfortunately Xiao Qi hadn’t grasped this before taking the gaokao and clammed up during English exams, anxious about making errors and fixated on accuracy rather than daring to speak at all.

Seeing her step count nearing 30,000, she slowed to a walk for a bit before doing some post-run stretches and leaving campus to buy vegetables from a food stand outside the school gates for dinner. She cooked very simply: stir-fried green peppers with meat, garlic sautéed broccoli, a mushroom soup, and steamed rice.

Her homemade dishes weren’t greasy, instead quite healthy she felt, with decent flavor. But her aunt wolfed it down excitedly.

After swiftly finishing her food, her aunt said, “Xiao Qi, you do the washing up today. I’m meeting your coach for swimming practice.”

Xiao Qi was quite happy to agree to her aunt’s enthusiastic initiative. Her aunt hurried off, practically galloping down the hallway.