Chapter 135: Cardboard and Tick Marks

At five-fifty in the morning, before the alarm had a chance to ring, Lin Chen opened his eyes on his own. The light in the main room was still gray-blue, and the paper window let in a hint of coolness. He moved his left foot first. Under the gauze, the skin felt tight. The seepage had dried and formed a dark yellow crust. The pain was no longer sharp, only heavy and dull, like a sponge swollen with water pressing down on his ankle. He sat up, soaked a towel in warm water, and carefully wiped around the edges, moving slowly and avoiding the scabbed-over skin. When he put on his shoes, he loosened the laces by two eyelets to leave room for the swelling. Inside the sole he had tucked a piece of stiff cardboard to spread out the pressure on the arch.

There was half a bowl of cold porridge left by the stove. He heated it up and ate it with half a piece of fermented bean curd. Then he tucked twenty yuan, his student ID, and his ledger into his inner pocket and went out.

The streets were not fully awake yet. A sanitation worker's bamboo broom scraped over the asphalt with a dry rustling sound. He walked along the sidewalk, keeping his pace at one hundred ten steps per minute. Each time his left foot touched down, his weight shifted slightly to the right, letting his right leg and hip take the strain. It was a new balance he had worked out yesterday. Not perfect, but enough to keep moving. His breathing stayed even. He was not short of breath.

At six o'clock sharp, the side door of the county library opened. He was third in line. He showed his student ID, signed in, and took his computer-use card. Only two machines were lit in the computer room, and the whirring of their fans sounded louder in the emptiness. He went to a seat by the window and turned his machine on. The Windows 98 startup screen flashed past. The desktop was bare except for a few basic icons. He inserted a floppy disk and pulled up the training plan he had written the day before.

He opened Notepad, then launched Jinshan Typing Tutor. He selected Key Position Practice. Letters began dropping one by one across the screen. At first, his fingers still dipped instinctively toward the keyboard. He forced himself to keep his eyes on the monitor. Whenever his fingering was wrong, he backed up and typed it again. One mistake meant deleting the whole line. There was no shortcut to building muscle memory, only repetition. Forty minutes passed. His speed rose from forty-two characters to forty-eight. His fingers began to ache, the joints going stiff. He stopped, shook out his hands, and drew tally marks on a sheet of paper.

Recorded: 48.

At seven-thirty, he switched to Excel. He opened Fundamentals of Computer Applications to the chapter on functions. The syntax for VLOOKUP was long. He copied it out by hand three times first.

VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup)

Meaning of the parameters: lookup value, range, column number, match mode.

He opened a blank worksheet and manually entered twenty rows of sample data: name, student number, score. Then he tried matching them with the function. The first time, the formula returned #N/A. He checked the range reference and realized he had forgotten the absolute reference marker $. He corrected it, pressed Enter, and the result came out right.

He wrote down the source of the error: lock the range, keep the parameters in the proper order, set match mode to 0.

Then he continued. Nested IF functions. Logical tests. He drew a flowchart: condition branches, true to the left, false to the right. After two hours, he had only worked through three basic functions. But the chain of logic had clicked into place. He knew real data entry would never be this clean. There would be spaces, full-width and half-width characters mixed together, missing values. The book said nothing about those. The only way to learn them was by trying.

At eleven o'clock, the computer room chime sounded. His two hours were up. He saved his file and exited. When he stood, his left foot suddenly cramped. He caught himself on the edge of the desk and waited for the numb soreness to pass. Then he walked to the front counter.

The administrator glanced at him. "Four yuan."

He handed over the coins.

Balance: sixteen yuan.

Minus two yuan for lunch. Real cost: six yuan.

Remaining: ten yuan.

Days he could still reserve: two and a half.

He sat on the library steps and ate a compressed biscuit. It was dry and hard to swallow. He chewed in small bites, washing it down with cooled boiled water from his thermos. A few high school students preparing for exams were sitting nearby, checking answers against each other, their voices edged with anxiety. He did not listen. Instead, he reviewed the morning in his head.

Typing speed was stuck at forty-eight. He was still twelve short of sixty.

He understood Excel syntax now, but he still had not touched a real worksheet.

Not enough time. Not enough money.

He opened his ledger. Next to Typing Practice, he drew a circle and wrote:

Fingering not yet fixed. Touch typing still dependent on visual feedback. Must break away from the screen. Excel needs a real data source. Computer room cost too high. Need an alternative.

He closed the notebook, stood, and went to Xinhua Bookstore. Not to buy anything, but to look for free material. In the teaching-aids section he found an outdated Office Automation Training Manual. The copyright page said 2005. The material was old, but the practice exercises were real. He copied down the structure of three pages of spreadsheets. Photocopying was too expensive. Hand-copying was his only option. His pen nearly cut through the back of the page. His handwriting stayed neat.

In the afternoon, he did not go back to the computer room. He had to save the money. He returned to the alley behind the repair shop and found a discarded piece of packing cardboard. With a ruler, he drew out the layout of a keyboard: A to Z, function keys, number pad. He used a marker to label the home keys, F and J, with their little raised dots. Then he sat on a low stool, rested the cardboard on his knees, held both hands above it, closed his eyes, and typed from memory.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The cardboard made no sound. There was only the faint friction of his fingertips against the surface. He recited the key positions under his breath. Left little finger on A. Ring finger on S. Middle finger on D. Index finger on F. Same on the right hand. Every time he got it wrong, he stopped, thought it through, and started again. After an hour his fingers cramped. He kneaded the web between thumb and forefinger and kept going.

It was a clumsy method. But it cost nothing. It did not take up computer-room time. He split the work in two: accuracy in the morning, touch typing without visual aid in the afternoon. It might not be the most efficient way, but it was a way that could run.

Toward evening, he spread out the spreadsheets he had copied by hand and simulated data entry in his head. Name. Phone number. Address. Convert full-width to half-width. Delete spaces. Match with VLOOKUP. Use IF to assign grades. He ran the logic through once in his mind. No errors. When he opened his eyes, the sky had already darkened. The streetlights were on. Moths wheeled in their halos.

When he got home, the main-room light was on. Wang Guiying was sorting vegetables. Lin Jianguo was repairing an old chair. Xiaoman was bent over the table drawing. At the sound of his footsteps, she looked up and handed him a sheet of paper. On it she had drawn a keyboard. The key positions were all over the place, but F and J had been marked with two obvious little bumps.

Lin Chen took it. The paper was thin. He slipped it into his folder.

"How was it today?" Wang Guiying asked.

"I'm practicing," he said.

He sat down, switched on the desk lamp, and updated the ledger.

Date: August 3. Expenses: computer room 4 yuan, lunch 2 yuan. Income: 0. Balance: 10 yuan. Typing speed: 48 -> 52 (after cardboard training test). Excel: basic grasp of VLOOKUP/IF, no real practice yet. Foot injury: dull pain, gait stable.

He stopped writing and looked at the number 52.

Eight more to go.

Of the seven-day cycle, only six days remained.

At this pace, he could barely make sixty. But it would not be stable enough. Real data entry would come with distractions.

He opened the folder and pulled out the photocopy of the job notice the repair-shop owner had given him yesterday. The back was blank. He picked up his pen and began drafting a mock data-entry test. Not the random letters from typing software, but a real customer list—with typos, duplicates, and formatting chaos. He typed slowly. But every keystroke landed where it was supposed to.

At nine that night, he stopped and rubbed his eyes.

Speed: 55.

Accuracy: 98%.

He leaned back in his chair. The main room was quiet except for the turning of the fan. He knew that tomorrow he had to make a trip to the municipal employment office. Every Wednesday afternoon, they offered a free typing test there. Anyone who passed could sign a temporary contract on the spot. Forty yuan, paid daily. But it was far. Bus fare would cost eight yuan. Could his injured foot hold up? Would the timing conflict?

He picked up a ruler and drew lines across a piece of paper.

Starting point: county town.

Destination: municipal employment office.

Distance: 18 kilometers.

Bus transfers: 2.

Walking: 1.5 kilometers.

Travel time: 2 hours 10 minutes.

Start time: Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.

Need to arrive 40 minutes early.

When he finished the calculation, he folded the paper and tucked it into his ledger.

Tomorrow. Six in the morning. Computer room. Final push.

He turned off the desk lamp. Darkness dropped over the room. The gauze on his left foot pressed against his skin. The pain was still there. But the marks on the scale were moving forward.

Outside the window, the wind died. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked twice.

He closed his eyes. His heartbeat was steady.

Tomorrow. Six o'clock. Keyboard. Cardboard. Test.

The road ahead was still long. But every step landed on solid ground.