Diligence is the way to make up for one's stupidity.

Sometimes I wonder, how clumsy must I be to need such intense diligence to make up for it.

I told my mom that I scored 614 on my exam, the best score I've gotten in my three years of junior high.

I sit inside, my mom sits outside, a curtain separates us.

She's listening to a live stream on her phone, and when she hears my words, she doesn't even spare me a glance.

In a cold tone, she says, "Oh, but what about Chang Jianing? I'm sure she did much better than you. How many points did she get?"

The joy that had just started to ignite was immediately extinguished by a bucket of cold water.

My hard-earned success was subconsciously rejected by my mom.

Not believing in me, denying me, it's her instinct.

I say, "I scored three points higher than her."

My mom's shadow on the curtain pauses, she puts down her phone and hesitates for a moment before picking it up again.

She says, "What does it matter that you scored higher than her once? You have to score higher than her every time to prove your ability."

Suddenly, I felt an unprecedented suffocation, my heart seemed to be gripped, beating with pain.

Her shadow on the curtain is a dark mass, the edges blurred, weakening the outline of her body, but at this moment I see a body covered in countless thorns.

All those thorns are aimed directly at me.

Chang Jianing and I were admitted to the same high school.

And this has completely reached the peak of me being compared to others.

I found that I had completely lost the talent and motivation for studying, as if everything had been taken away from me.

When my mom's laundry pole beat against me, I seemed to have lost the ability to feel pain.

My grades plummeted, from being in the top five at the start of the school year, gradually falling to the middle and lower ranks.

Originally, Chang Jianing and I sat in the same exam room, but now I can only look up from a distance at the unreachable first exam room.

After every exam, my mom would explode, "Look at how many points you're behind Chang Jianing now! How many points did you have less than her in the high school entrance exam, when you were clearly doing better than her before!"

I stay silent, allowing my mom's laundry pole to whip me.

She used to punch and kick me, even threatening to beat me to death with a kitchen knife.

But in the end, it always turned into a hoarse cry.

She says my dad doesn't care about me, that no one at home takes care of me, only she takes care of me, only she has spent so many years working hard for me.

She says I don't understand her difficulties, and as I grow older, I become more and more disobedient and ignorant.

My mom found out from Chang Jianing's mom which prep classes she's attending and which study guides she's using.

She bought them all for me, regardless of my wishes, and forced me into that prep class.

Chang Jianing and I sat together, she touched my hair and said, "Qiqi, are you losing a lot of hair recently?

"Your dark circles are so heavy, when was the last time you slept well?"

She threw out a series of questions, but I couldn't answer any of them.

I didn't like the prep class teacher, he spoke quickly and was hard to understand, I felt repulsed by his teaching method.

But my mom said, "Chang Jianing's mom said Chang Jianing thinks this teacher is great, why do you think he's no good? You just don't pay attention in class every day, you have so many problems."

She forcibly imposed Chang Jianing's preferences on me.

I probably understand what my mom wants to do.

She wants to mold me into another Chang Jianing.

When choosing between arts and sciences, Chang Jianing prefers chemistry and physics, so naturally she would choose the science track.

But my physics and chemistry grades are not good.

After choosing between arts and sciences, experimental and parallel classes are divided based on grades in arts and sciences.

If I choose arts, maybe I could barely squeeze into the experimental class, but if I choose sciences, I'll definitely be placed in the parallel class.

I know I'm already bad enough, I can't afford to get worse.

After school that day, my mom and I sat at a stir-fry restaurant near the school.

It was peak time after school, and both inside and outside the restaurant were filled with students and teachers from the school.

I hesitated for a moment, but ultimately told my mom that I wanted to study arts.

After hearing my words, my mom's face immediately darkened, her tone filled with annoyance, she said, "You're not allowed to study arts, go study sciences."

I hung my head and tightly gripped the chopsticks in my hand, my voice was soft but carried a resolute tone.

I said, "No, I want to study arts... I want to study arts."

The next second, my mom exploded, pointing at my nose and cursing, "What arts will you study! What can you understand? You, with your pig brain, might as well not study anything at all.

"I regret giving birth to such a stupid thing, I should have just strangled you when you were born if I knew you'd turn out like this!"