Life Plan

Chapter 1, Her Control Group

Liu Chichi began her internship in the pharmacy department of the Second Affiliated Hospital when she started her senior year of college, and it has been exactly ten months since then.

Today is the last day of her internship, and she's checking prescriptions in preparation for handover. Her advisor's message pops up for the fifth time: Have you found a job yet? Remember to sign the employment agreement.

She looked at her phone screen, now off. As the only student in the class who hadn't signed an employment agreement, her advisor paid extra attention to her, as it was related to the class's employment rate.

The special window required shift work, day and night, and Liu Chichi was the only intern who volunteered. Her mother told her that she should strive to be hardworking, diligent, and down-to-earth in her work.

Her evaluation was indeed that she was down-to-earth and hardworking; all the teachers who had taught her said she was the most obedient one.

But out of ten interns, only two positions were available for retention, and her name wasn't on the list.

"Obedience" is not as good as "flexibility." Flexible people are good at proactively asking questions and avoiding risks in advance, and are often exaggeratedly called "lucky stars" by teachers. Nor is "enthusiasm and cheerfulness" as good as being able to soothe the emotions of noisy patients, making them the social experts of the department.

Those two types of people will get the positions that can be retained, but Liu Chichi, who is "obedient," will only get more work.

The pharmacist handling the handover looked at the long list of prescriptions on her computer and frowned impatiently: "This one, this one, and these few are all from three days ago, and they haven't been picked up yet. Didn't you contact them?"

"I've already contacted them. These ones said they'd come to pick them up tomorrow, but I can't get in touch with this one."

"So you're going to leave all this work to me?"

"I'm sorry," Liu Chichi apologized quickly, for forbearance was a lesson she had been taught for a long time. "I will improve them tomorrow."

"Your internship is over, I have no intention of making you work overtime."

"I'll tell the teacher that I haven't finished my work yet." Taking the blame upon herself would earn her a kind look from others. Liu Chichi looked at the sky above the pharmacist's house and breathed a sigh of relief.

She went home with Sun Ying, who lived in the same residential compound; Sun Ying drove her. Liu Chichi's phone screen was lit up, displaying numerous inquiries from her counselor. Sun Ying glanced at it casually, "Have you found a job yet?"

"not yet."

Does your mother know about this?

"Don't tell her." Liu Chichi suddenly tensed up. Her mother cared a lot about her job at the hospital. In her mother's circle of friends, hospitals were very respectable workplaces, with a social status that surpassed that of the sons of her father's new family after his divorce. In her mother's words, those who did community service couldn't compare to the nobility of those who treated and saved lives in hospitals.

The book says there are no different levels of jobs, but people do have them in their hearts.

When Liu Chichi opened the door, she smelled the aroma of food, but today was not her mother's day off.

Liu Chichi sat down at the dining table with trepidation.

Liu Chunhong didn't touch her chopsticks, and Liu Chichi didn't dare to either.

"Did they stay on?"

The voice was cold, not like a question. Alarm bells rang in Liu Chichi's mind. While considering how to respond, she tried to calm her mother down first: "The results aren't out yet."

"Liar! Today is your last day of internship. If I hadn't called your advisor, how long would you have kept this from me? You've even learned to lie?! You're clearly very smart. You can recite more poems than her son, and you did better in college entrance exams. He's already got a government job. Are you going to go out and work?"

"Her son," the stepson of her father's new family after the divorce, a boy two years older than her, someone who would always stand before her as a reference point. Liu Chichi had never met him, but he appeared at every juncture in her life, like the answer key to a subjective question; she had to be equal to or surpass him in order to score points with her mother.

"Do you know how hard I work to earn money? I work in a supermarket, carefully budgeting every day. I can't even afford to buy clothes for myself, all so I can support your education and help you succeed..."

These words, repeated countless times, were being repeated again. Liu Chichi looked at her mother's red polo shirt, with "Beautiful Life" embroidered on the collarbone, and tentatively whispered, "Mom, I can go out to work..."

Her mother's lecture was abruptly interrupted. She opened her mouth, paused briefly, then slammed her hand on the table. "You really want to go out and work?!"

After years of getting along, Liu Chichi keenly sensed that she had angered her mother.

She blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what was wrong, and carefully explained, "I'll try my best to get a job in an office building, to become a white-collar worker, just like you said before..."

"That was so many years ago. Even white-collar workers are just employees now. Do you know what her son passed the exam for? It's a government-affiliated position, he can work there for life and never be laid off!" The mother tugged at her clothes, the words "good life" practically shoving into Liu Chichi's face. "If you can't stay at the hospital, you'll have to go work. If the company doesn't want you, do you want to work in a supermarket selling vegetables like me?"

Liu Chunhong suddenly swung her hand, and before the slap could land on Liu Chichi's face, the chopstick holder fell to the ground first, and the wooden holder and chopsticks instantly scattered.

The shadow of her childhood resurfaced before her eyes, and she immediately lay down on the ground and began to pick them up one by one. She remembered very clearly that there were eight pairs, sixteen strands in total, and not a single one could be missing, otherwise she would not be able to sleep.

She rummaged through the refrigerator and pulled out the last chopstick, washed it clean, put it back in the container, and placed it on the table. Taking out her phone, she opened WeChat and smiled ingratiatingly at her mother: "I didn't lie to your mother. Look at our work group; all the students who finished their internships are gone, but I'm still here. You know, my window of opportunity is special, and my internship period is relatively long."

She was incredibly grateful to the pharmacist at that moment. Hospital work involves the privacy of many parties, and leaving a job means being dismissed. However, because Liu Chichi's report to her teacher was not yet complete, she was still in the group chat.

Liu Chichi pulled up the messages in multiple groups. Looking at the internship end-of-internship reflections posted in the internship group and the constantly updated communication messages in the work group, the angry red on Liu Chunhong's face faded. She transformed into a loving and tender smile unique to mothers, reaching out to gently stroke her daughter's face: "Chichi, you know, Mom is doing this all for your own good. Mom's life is already over, and I don't want you to end up like me."

A neurotic lifestyle.

This thought resurfaced in Liu Chichi's mind.

The food on the table was still steaming, and the room was filled with the sweltering heat of June. Yet, Liu Chichi felt a chill creep down her spine. Her sweat-soaked clothes clung tightly to her chest, and the cold seeped into her heart through her skin.

Sometimes Liu Chichi would feel as if her mother was rehearsing a play, with her dramatic emotional ups and downs as her performance style, and herself as an important prop in the theater, needing to maximize the actor's emotions.

The props themselves do not require personal emotion.

The tools of rebellion are treated as broken tools and repaired, just like when she disobeyed her mother in elementary school and was punished by being made to stand outside the door at night. The flickering lights in the hallway when she was nine years old were her psychological shadow and also the "repair marks" left by her mother, which steered Liu Chichi's steps, which had broken free of control, back onto the track arranged by her mother.

Not hearing a reply, Liu Chunhong emphasized again, "You have to be good, my dear girl. You're all I have left. Everything I do is for your own good..."

Liu Chichi nuzzled her mother's palm like a docile pet: "I'll be good, Mom."