Chapter 79: Rain Streaks and the Answer Sheet

At six in the morning, the rain had already soaked everything through. Dense trails of water clung to the window glass, and the world outside had been washed into a gray-blue blur. Lin Chen woke forty minutes early, moving lightly so he would not disturb the roommate sharing the room. He sat on the edge of the bed, lifted his left foot first, and waited a moment for the blood to return before lowering it slowly to the floor. A test. The gauze was dry. The seepage had been held down by iodine, but the swollen ache around the edge of the wound was still clear. He pulled on his old rubber shoes, tightened the laces, and tied them in double knots. The canvas bag went across his body, its weight settling evenly on his right shoulder. Then he went out.

Water had pooled in the corridor and spilled over the threshold, frothing with murky bubbles. He kept close to the wall, his stride twenty-five centimeters long, avoiding the low spots. The soles of his shoes brushed the cement floor with a faint rustling sound. The air was damp, carrying the smell of wet earth, rust, and the alkaline steam of buns from the cafeteria in the distance. A few people were standing beneath the bus stop sign, umbrella ribs dripping, trouser legs rolled to their calves. The minibus pulled in with a shrill screech of brakes, a plume of white smoke coughing from the exhaust. The door opened. He dropped in his fare. One yuan fifty. He squeezed into the back. The seat was hard plastic and cold. He hugged the canvas bag to his chest. Through two layers of clothing he could still feel the stiffness of the error notebook pressed against him.

Outside the window, the streets slid backward. Steam from breakfast stalls mingled with the rainy haze; bicycle bells rang in broken bursts through the standing water. He closed his eyes and ran through the theory points in his head. The convergence conditions for the Fourier transform. The aliasing boundary of the Nyquist sampling theorem. The reflection-coefficient formula for impedance matching. Discrete convolution in digital signal processing. The formulas meshed like gears, without emotion, nothing but chains of logic. He did not need to memorize them by rote. He only needed to push the right gear into place when the moment came.

At seven twenty, he arrived at the Provincial Electronics Institute. A red-brick building, the iron gate half open, the notice about admission-ticket inspection pasted on the guardroom window. Queue up. Hand over the pass. Verification. Stamp. Entry. The lobby smelled of disinfectant and old paper, while the electronic clock on the wall ticked forward in red numerals. The seating chart for the exam rooms was posted on the notice board. Laboratory Three. Second floor. He went up the stairs. The steps were slick with moisture, and he held the railing while keeping his left foot away from the puddles. Every step was precise. At the end of the corridor, the proctor was handing out scratch paper in a dry voice. He found his seat by the window, third row. The desktop was scarred with scratches and initials carved by students from some unknown year. He put down his bag and took out two 2B pencils, an eraser, and a ruler. He laid his admission ticket flat on the desk. His movements were slow, but steady.

At exactly eight, the bell rang. The exam papers were handed out, and the dry rustle of paper spread through the room. He opened to the first page. The sections were laid out in order: single choice, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, calculation. The first five questions were fundamentals. He filled in the answers directly, the pencil point moving without pause. Question six: fundamentals of digital signal processing. The periodicity of the discrete Fourier transform and spectral leakage. He paused for two seconds, recalling the boundary conditions he had derived in the library the night before. Substitution. Check the result. Write out the process. His handwriting was neat, without joined strokes.

Time passed. The rain outside was sealed away behind the double-pane glass; in the exam room there was only the sound of pages turning and pencils writing. He reached the calculation problems: cascaded noise figures in an RF link. The formula was complicated, involving the conversion of noise temperature across multistage amplifiers. He first wrote out the matrix on the scratch paper and worked through it step by step. At every stage he checked the units, converting dB to linear values and then back into dB. He kept four decimal places in the intermediate values to avoid accumulated error. By the third part, his left wrist had begun to ache. He stopped, shook out his wrist, took a deep breath, and continued. There was no agitation, only procedure. At eleven, the bell for handing in papers rang. He checked the answer sheet: every shaded area filled, no missed questions, no misalignment. Name and admission number, checked twice. He stood, handed in the paper, and when the proctor collected it, he picked up his canvas bag and walked out of the room.

People in the corridor were already comparing answers, their voices noisy with either the looseness of relief or the irritation of regret after the exam. He kept to the wall, said nothing, did not look back. Twenty-five-centimeter strides. Downstairs.

At noon, the cafeteria. He queued for food: two vegetable dishes and a soup, four yuan fifty. Carrying the tray, he found a seat in the corner. The rice was slightly cool, and there were beads of oil floating in the dishes. He ate slowly, chewing thoroughly, replenishing heat and strength. There was nothing scheduled for the afternoon, so he went back to the guesthouse room temporarily assigned to them. Six beds to a room, two bunk beds, the air stuffy. He set the canvas bag by the head of the bed, took off his rubber shoes, and untied the laces. The edge of the gauze had already turned a dull yellow, and the seepage was worse than in the morning. He did not deal with it immediately. He only propped up his left foot with a dry towel to let the blood flow back. The pain was dull, like a fine thread tied around his ankle, pulsing with each heartbeat. He did not think about it. He focused only on the steps.

He took out the error notebook and opened to the flyleaf. The lookup values boxed in red pen were still there. Cold start, 0–5 minutes, +0.4 dB. 5–12 minutes, +0.25 dB. After 12 minutes, back to zero. A line had been added below: rain. voltage drop. +0.15 dB. He stared at that line, his finger tapping lightly on the tabletop in a rhythm that mimicked the turning of a dial. A 0.5 dB step meant the margin for error had been cut in half. Manual attenuation. He could not rely on automatic calibration. He would have to trust his ears to catch the floor noise and his eyes to read the trembling of the needle. He closed his eyes and built the lab scene inside his head. Instrument panel. Key layout. Coaxial cable ports. Grounding clip. Every step played out in advance.

By evening, the rain had stopped. A crack opened in the cloud cover and a dark red sunset shone through. He went downstairs at the guesthouse and bought two packets of desiccant from the kiosk for one yuan, then tucked them into the inner compartment of the canvas bag. Moisture protection. Backup. He returned to the room. His roommates had not come back yet, and it was quiet. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled out a sheet of graph paper and wrote: theory, estimated score. Practical, risk points. The pen hovered. Risk point one: insufficient warm-up time for a cold machine. Risk point two: manual adjustment error with 0.5 dB steps. Risk point three: stability while standing on the left foot. He crossed out “stability” and replaced it with “weight distribution.”

He re-bandaged his left foot. The motions were practiced. Iodine. Cotton swab. Drying. Gauze. Tape. Secure. He put his shoe back on and tightened the laces. Then he stood and walked once around the room. He adjusted his stride to thirty centimeters, let his weight settle on his right foot, and used his left only as a light touch point. Adapt. Recalibrate the muscle memory. He returned to the desk, took out the insulated case, and checked the connectors. Nothing was loose. He arranged all his things in the order he would need them. Admission ticket, pens, scratch paper, insulated case, desiccant, spare gauze. The list was clear. Nothing unnecessary.

At nine that night, footsteps sounded in the corridor. Chen Hao pushed the door open, his hair wet, a plastic bag dangling from his hand. “Bought some bread. The practical exam might drag into the afternoon tomorrow.” He set the bag on the desk and looked at Lin Chen. “Still hurts?”

“I can stand,” Lin Chen answered.

There was nothing more to say. Chen Hao nodded and did not ask again. He sat on the lower bunk and opened his notes. The room was left with nothing but the sound of turning pages. Lin Chen lay down and closed his eyes. There were water stains on the ceiling, shaped like an unfinished circuit diagram. Listening to the dripping outside the window, he ran through tomorrow’s procedure in his head. Power on. Warm up. Check the chart. Compensate. Set. Read. Every step was carved into his nerves.

Tomorrow, the practical. The 0.5 dB steps. The power grid after the rain. And his left foot. He placed a hand over his chest. His heartbeat was steady, his breathing even. There was no fear, only waiting. Outside, the wind passed through the clothesline and let out a faint hum. He opened his eyes and pulled that fifty-yuan money-order slip from beneath his pillow. The edges of the paper were already worn soft. He tucked it back into the error notebook and zipped up the canvas bag. Click. The room fell completely quiet.