That year, Shao Xue’s college established a partnership with a university in Italy, sending a group of students to their School of Language and Translation. She was well aware of her family’s financial situation. While she didn’t have to worry about food and necessities, studying abroad felt like a heavy burden.
At that time, the tuition reduction from the Italian university and the subsidies from her home institution became invaluable.
Her senior classmates were anxious about their futures, but Shao Xue was determined not to let go of such a good opportunity.
Little did she know, it was just the beginning of another difficult life.
In addition to mastering Italian, her translation program required proficiency in other languages, so she hadn’t neglected her English. During school breaks, she worked as an on-site translator for film crews. The time she fell into a river had been an accident during one such trip to a remote village with a film crew.
Most of the time, she lived a frugal life.
Shao Xue remembered a period when her favorite pastime was counting money. She did all kinds of work—tour guiding, translating, interpreting. She would lay out a newspaper on her bed and start counting: wages in one pile, tips in another, and translation fees in yet another…
She found great satisfaction in counting money, even making it one of her few entertainment activities.
She lived about twenty minutes away from the university, and when she and her roommate walked there, they would pass by Neptune Square. One of her roommates, a German guy who was a car enthusiast, would list all the luxury cars produced in that region:
Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini…
Shao Xue chimed in, “When will we poor folks ever afford a car like that?”
The guy teased her, “It took you a month just to remember what the Audi logo looks like.”
Shao Xue retorted, “Isn’t it just four rings? I remember it now, so stop teasing me about it.”
“You’re right,” a local girl joined the conversation, “Even now, whenever she sees an Audi, she thinks of the four rings before the car itself.”
Their jokes weren’t meant to hurt, but they left Shao Xue feeling out of place.
This was a world entirely different from her past, far more complicated than she had imagined. Wealthy girls in sparkling shoes attended parties, while spoiled rich kids scratched their heads in confusion when hearing about Thunderstorm being performed in Italy, asking if it was some local drama.
Sometimes, late at night, the house next door would host parties, waking Shao Xue at three in the morning. She’d grab a bottle of sparkling wine and silently climb up to the rooftop.
The night wind sobered her up. Thinking of the unread papers and unfinished theses, she wondered why she had even come here in the first place.
Then came 2012, a year after she graduated—the eve of the Mayan-predicted apocalypse.
Shao Xue admitted that when it came to passing the buck, people worldwide were all equally disappointing.
She couldn’t pinpoint when her anger had first been ignited. Maybe it was when her manager, with a factual expression, blamed the loss on a "translation error." Or maybe it was when her white colleagues whispered about her being an "easy-to-bully Asian," thinking she couldn’t understand. Or perhaps it was even earlier, when she’d just started on the project and was sent all over the city like a fool running between cafes.
In any case, Shao Xue quit.
That’s the polite way to put it, as if she had control over the situation. In reality—
Shao Xue was unemployed.
Qin Si Mu was six hours ahead of her in China, squeezed onto a bus under the blazing sun while Shao Xue was sobbing late at night. Not knowing how to comfort her, Qin Si Mu shared her own miserable experience: “You think my job’s any easier? Early mornings and late nights, and barely enough money to show for it. Yesterday, we had to pull an all-nighter because some scumbag client demanded our team rush a major translation project. My face—ugh—it’s as rough as tree bark now.”
Life seemed to go this way. Those who had once seemed like goddesses in school were all knocked back down to reality once they entered society. And the worst part? You still had to put on your heels and keep your makeup flawless.
You’d tell yourself: They’re all watching. Stand tall.
“All right, let’s hang up now,” Qin Si Mu finally advised. “You’re already jobless, and now you’re wasting money on this long-distance call. Those aren’t tears you’re shedding, that’s your phone bill.”
The thought of money gave Shao Xue a jolt, and she abruptly ended the call with a sharp "click."
As the saying goes, those who have nothing to lose have nothing to fear. Unburdened by her job, Shao Xue felt surprisingly free. She counted up the savings she had accumulated from over a year of hard work and decided: Screw it, I’m going on a trip.
And so, she chose to visit the homeland of the Russians.
Mainly because anywhere else with higher costs was out of the question.
Shao Xue didn’t like talking about those days, so she didn’t. Her story, as far as she was concerned, began from there.
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