6 Aspirations

In high spirits, Zhiyu skipped towards the home library, encountering one of her tutors: Han Lingyu.

Tutor Han was a middle-aged lady and had taught Chinese for over 20 years, becoming one of the most renowned teachers in the business. It had come as a shock to her when elder Wang suddenly turned up a year ago, offering double her yearly income in return for tutoring his granddaughter exclusively. Initially, she was worried about how demanding this girl would be but eventually convinced herself to take up elder Wang's offer, believing it wouldn't be too bad. It was only one girl after all, not a hundred.

She had to admit that it was one of the best decisions of her life. Not only was Wang Zhiyu polite, but she was also one of the brightest students tutor Han had ever met. Within 3 months, Zhiyu had successfully comprehended all the middle school content for Chinese and after half a year, the high school content for Chinese was done as well.

Since then, they had gone on to study the university syllabus, but even still, tutor Han merely acted as a guide for what Zhiyu ought to study rather than actually teaching the content itself, allowing the girl to understand it for herself and ask questions when she was stuck. As a result, tutor Han usually had a free and easy lifestyle and speaking with the other tutors, it was clear that they too had similar lifestyles.

Seeing tutor Han, Zhiyu beamed. "Tutor Han, grandpa has let me go to school!" Tutor Han's smile froze and she could feel a feeling of dejection rise up in her, yet seeing Zhiyu's beaming face, she couldn't bring herself to put a damper in her elation.

"Th-That's brilliant! When will you be starting?" She smiled weakly, worrying about having to find a new job.

"Probably when the school year begins." Zhiyu shrugged lightly.

"So soon?! Are there any schools that still enrol students a few weeks before the term starts?" Tutor Han had a point. Most high schools enrolled and accepted their students at least a few months before the start of the school year. In fact, it was even harder to enrol directly into the third year, especially since there was no evidence that Zhiyu had completed the first and second year.

However, tutor Han had forgotten one crucial point: Zhiyu had two rich and prominent grandfathers who would do anything for their baby granddaughter. "Oh, I'm sure one of my grandpas will figure something out." With that, she gathered several foreign language books and was prepared to head to her room to read them.

"Zhiyu, what do you want to do with your life?" Tutor Han's question was sudden, surprising Zhiyu, who paused. In fact, even tutor Han was surprised. She had not expected the question to be vocalised and had merely wondered about this brilliant student.

Zhiyu felt herself pause. What did she want in this life? Of course, she wanted to be happy and lead a normal life. If she had been the previous owner, the answer would undoubtedly have been to be a world-famous model. But the Wang Zhiyu now was not the same. "I haven't really thought about it." In the end, she gave a generic answer. "I suppose I should pay a bit more attention to my future. I'm almost 17." She laughed nervously.

Hearing this, tutor Han merely said, "Don't worry too much about the future. Your life is in the present. What has passed, has passed and what will be, will be. Just live life on your own terms." Tutor Han's words were wise and caused Zhiyu to feel somewhat thankful for this mentor figure in her life. "Now, go read your books. I don't even know how you manage to understand so many languages."

Laughing, Zhiyu walked out of the library and entered her bedroom. She immediately went towards her bed and lay on her stomach reading, greedily absorbing knowledge about the operation of catalytic converters [1] in cars. In her past life, her father had insisted on making her learn only skills that befit a lady in the Underworld: a multitude of languages, musical instruments, martial arts, shooting, horseback riding, swimming and if she was lucky, a poisons expert would come over.

Despite being fluent in over 10 languages, there was one language she never had the chance to familiarise herself with: a programming language. Her father had banned all technology in their family house, claiming that spies could easily trace them through technology. As such, her computer literacy was close to that of a toddler's. No, in this day and age, you could say that even a toddler could use a computer better than she did, so she was keen to learn as much about technology, even delving into books about engineering. Upon finishing the book, she pondered tutor Han's question. What exactly did she want to do with her life?

She had wanted to become an expert in the chemical field in her previous life but her father refused to let her fulfil this dream, insisting it wasn't a field for women of her background and even resorted to burning the laboratory attached to their home. Her older brothers weren't much better. Although one of them did sneak scientific texts into the family home for her to read occasionally, they mostly belittled her aspirations and told her to just listen to their father.

In this life, she didn't want to become a closed-off scientific researcher. It had seemed appropriate in her previous life as her family had rarely let her out of the family home and it was the one role where she could be useful without having to be seen in public. Now, the world was her oyster. She could do whatever she wanted. Why would she choose to spend her life living in a laboratory?

Of course, she didn't want to become a model. She felt it was pointless and that the messiness of the entertainment industry wasn't for her, who was fairly introverted. 'I suppose I could take over grandpa Wang's company? But then, there's still Wang Siqi, who will almost definitely leave all his shares to Wang Zhiling and let's not forget my uncle Wang Siyuan.' This was such a dilemma for her.

'Urgh, forget it. I'll just figure it out later. Maybe a job will just land in front of my feet and then, I won't have to figure out something.' With that, she got off her bed lazily and headed towards the kitchen to get some water. Walking past the dining hall, she heard the two elders arguing.

<< Footnotes >>

[1] When fuel is used up in cars, carbon dioxide and water are typically produced. Sometimes, more toxic gases are made and catalytic converters convert them into less dangerous gases.