In the snowboarding circle, many renowned riders have dozens or even hundreds of apprentices. It has little to do with being a role model or having many students; rather, they use the name of “taking apprentices” as a way to run training sessions and make money.
One way people usually pay for lessons is by paying 800 yuan per hour.
Another way is by formally becoming an apprentice, which usually involves paying several thousand yuan upfront, after which the apprentice follows the master throughout the entire snow season. Whenever the master has free time between lessons, the apprentice follows closely behind to receive guidance.
No one really knows who invented this “master-apprentice” relationship; it’s not necessarily bad, but it feels somewhat distorted.
As everyone knows, this approach doesn’t really work with Jiang Ran.
Countless people have tried to pay her to become her apprentice—some were drawn by her reputation, hoping to later establish their own schools and profit from being her student;
Some simply wanted to ride with her;
Others genuinely wanted to learn but didn’t want to pay hourly rates, thinking it wasn’t cost-effective;
And there were even those who paid 30,000 to 50,000 yuan hoping to develop a more intimate relationship with her—
Jiang Ran always refused without blinking an eye.
She could have many students, but the only apprentice she ever acknowledged was Lin Shuang.
…Later, when Lin Shuang passed away, the word “apprentice” became a taboo for her.
—”Jiang Ran has no apprentice, not even one”—became a shared understanding in China’s carving snowboarding community.
But now, when she smiled happily and naturally said the word “apprentice,” everyone was naturally shocked. Some people even started desperately recalling what the guy looked like earlier, but after thinking for a while, they couldn’t remember—
He was too well-covered, wearing a helmet, goggles, and a face mask neatly, with only the tip of his nose visible…
What’s even more brilliant is that he used a ridiculous stage name; no one even knows his real name.
Totally mysterious.
Some people stood up straight, stretching their necks trying to find the guy’s figure in the crowd, but after looking around, they couldn’t find him anywhere…
Of course, they couldn’t find him.
Because he crouched down.
On the other side of the padded barrier, the tall teenager immediately used the barrier as cover the moment it happened. Like a pervert, he hugged his snowboard and crouched in the corner, one hand tightly covering his mouth.
Beijiao: “…”
Back then, when he checked his college entrance exam scores on the computer, his heart was calm. He didn’t feel any emotional weight from twelve years of hard study; he just thought it was natural.
But now, his heart was in turmoil, and his eyes were almost brimming with tears.
All he could think about were every tumble and fall he had on the slopes over the past two months, the sleepless nights chasing mosquitoes in the bar’s storage room, and the two grown men forced to share a hard mattress at Daitou’s place…
The more he thought, the more wronged he felt, pitying himself as he hugged himself tightly.
He had been through so much, but this moment made it all worth it.
Even Olympic champions wouldn’t be this emotional—
Closing his eyes, all he could see was that woman’s beautiful face smiling, holding a hand warmer, looking warm and gentle as she lifted her head and said in a matter-of-fact tone: “My apprentice!”
…Right now, if she asked for one of his kidneys, he would give it to her without hesitation.
…
She left in the morning, and by the time the competition ended, the sun was already setting.
Jiang Ran hung her down jacket on her arm and searched everywhere for her lost dog, finally finding the young man crouching by an empty space next to her car, holding a bottle of cola. She had no idea how long he had been there.
He was dozing against a fire hydrant.
It was like he was crazy, not sitting in the snow resort’s restaurant with its comfortable sofas but choosing to squat here.
And he was sleeping so soundly in the summer heat that Jiang Ran unlocked her car with the remote, the lights blinking, but it didn’t wake him.
Jiang Ran walked over, hesitated for a moment, and then gently kicked his toe.
The young man, who had been dozing off, woke up, slowly opening his eyes, showing no sign of wariness in their black depths—his gaze slowly lifted to look at her, his eyes dazed. For a moment, Jiang Ran even doubted whether he recognized her.
“What are you squatting here for?” she asked, looking down at him.
“Huh?” He let out a nasal sound from deep in his nose, and after a while, as if he had finally figured it out, his voice came out lazily and a bit hoarse, “My phone ran out of battery. I was afraid you wouldn’t find me if I was somewhere else.”
As he said this, he pulled out his powered-off phone to show her.
“…”
Jiang Ran suspected his brain was empty. There were mobile power rental machines every few steps in the snow resort. Who in this day and age could let their phone die completely?
“I was competing and didn’t notice,” he explained. “By the time I finished, it was already dead.”
“I was at the judges’ stand. Why didn’t you come to find me to borrow a power bank?”
He was going to be annoyed by his stupidity.
It turned out that not mentioning it was better. When she brought it up, he had just been looking dazed and sleepy, slowly dragging his soft limbs into the passenger seat… but now, for some reason, a certain keyword must have triggered something in him. His eyes lit up, and he turned to look at her.
That gleam in his eyes was so bright it left her puzzled.
Before she could ask, “What are you staring at?” he just fell silent for a moment and then said, “I was afraid you were busy. I left after the quarterfinals, so I didn’t come up to find you.”
So he didn’t hear anything you said at the judges’ stand!
He thought to himself, his lips curling slightly.
Jiang Ran watched him talk himself into a good mood, not knowing what he was happy about. She stared at his upturned lips for a while, puzzled: “You didn’t come up, fine. Why are you so happy…? Are you afraid I’ll scold you?”
Beijiao was fastening his seatbelt. Upon hearing this, he looked up, somewhat bewildered: “Are you going to scold me? Why?”
“…You’re asking why? Did you even place?” Jiang Ran leaned on the steering wheel, not in a hurry to start the car. “You know how you lost in that race against Suxing, right? Forget it, don’t look at me like that. You don’t know, but I do! I saw it clearly. Everything was going fine until the third gate, where your foot slipped, right? Your path suddenly went out of control. If you hadn’t pulled it back in time, you’d have flown into the neighboring slope.”
Beijiao had originally been somewhat indifferent, thinking she was just nitpicking and looking for trouble. But upon hearing this, he felt amazed—
It was an amazing feeling, like “I didn’t even know what I was doing at the time, but my master did.” At that moment, he had felt that just a few gates after the start, his footing had become unstable. He felt like he was floating, as if the board was controlling him instead of the other way around.
He really thought he was going to fly off the slope, and he had pulled himself back with sheer force, without understanding why that sensation had occurred…
He had assumed it was because the snow surface was uneven.
“I’ve told you a thousand times: ride with the board, don’t panic and use your back leg to forcefully end the frontside edge and randomly push with your backside. You never listen! When you ride normally, you flick the tail of the board like that, and once you swing it over, you just go into the backside edge naturally, so you think it’s fine… But this time was different. There was a pole there. You know you need to control your path on the backside edge. Once you passed it, you realized too late that the path couldn’t be controlled. The tail of the board lost speed and swung outward, sweeping snow three meters away—
Jiang Ran kept talking without stopping.
As she spoke, she noticed the person sitting nicely in the passenger seat start to slide downward.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the person who had been half a head taller than her was now sliding down past her shoulder. She turned her head and saw that half his face was now buried in the loose collar of his hoodie, leaving only half his forehead visible.
Jiang Ran: “…Do you realize I’m scolding you?”
Beijiao: “I realize it.”
Jiang Ran, expressionless: “Then why are you blushing?”
He didn’t answer anymore. Instead, he lifted his hand, grabbed the collar, and “whoosh,” his whole head disappeared into the hoodie’s collar. Then his hand fumbled around, pulling the hood over the collar.
His head disappeared from her sight.
After a long while, she heard his sweet, hoarse voice say, “I won’t tell you.”
…
On the way back, Beijiao took the opportunity when Jiang Ran wasn’t looking to crawl out of his shell, plugged in his phone to charge it, and curled up on one side playing with his phone.
Scrolling through the short video app, he accidentally came across Jiang Ran—this woman who rarely updated her short video app account. The last time she posted something was handled by Zhao Kehua, and she herself was as quiet as a chicken, peacefully and lifelessly.
Suddenly seeing her name pop up now, Beijiao was momentarily stunned, thinking he must have been seeing things. He paused the video and turned to look at Jiang Ran, lazily and provocatively asking, “Finally updating your social media? Has your teaching business gotten slow lately?”
Makes sense, since school started.
Jiang Ran didn’t even bother to reply.
It was just a casual question; she wouldn’t care about not having lessons. She’d be more than happy to spend time with him. So Beijiao didn’t press her for an answer, redirecting his attention back to his phone to see what his master had posted—
And then he saw himself.
Hmm.
Himself.
It was a video lasting over thirty seconds.
Five seconds, third-person perspective, she stood beside him and gave him a little push. He, wearing a black mask, turned his head and frowned at her disapprovingly. She pointed at his right foot, which had stepped forward first, saying, “Oh, right foot forward.”
Three seconds, third-person perspective, she was tying his shoelaces for him. He mumbled in a hoarse voice, “It broke. Be gentle.”
Four seconds, he was pushing the slope on the front edge of Huang’s board.
Four seconds, he was sitting on the ground, reaching toward the camera, asking for help to get up.
Three seconds, third-person perspective, she was holding his hand, guiding him to push the slope on the back edge.
Four seconds, he was pushing the slope on the front edge, and her voice was stern as she said, “Lift your head, straighten your chest, look at me. Am I not more beautiful than the snow?”
Five seconds, he was touching the snow on the front edge, and she was recording behind him while chasing him, yelling, “Don’t bend over! Don’t touch the snow! Where’s your back hand? You forgot again—on the front binding!”
Four seconds, he was transitioning from front edge to back edge, and his back foot instinctively jerked, sending him flying and rolling down the slope like a soda can for three rotations.
Three seconds, he was touching the snow on the back edge, and she was filming from the side, roaring, “Why are you straightening your back leg so much? What’s the point of your knees? Bend them!”
The final five seconds showed his performance in today’s competition: smooth carving, decisive pole weaving, his body naturally folding, the edges of his snowboard deeply cutting into the snow, leaving deep marks on the snow with every meter he moved…
Snow flew in the air.
His hand gently brushed the snow.
In the instant his glove lifted, a perfect arc of flying snow rose behind him.
The video ended. The background music was simple, and the caption wasn’t too wordy, just with a hashtag: #It’s very fulfilling to grow up with you
The video was probably posted while Beijiao was asleep. Within half an hour, it had tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments—
[Oh my god! How many years has it been since I saw someone other than Ranjie on her short video! Finally in this lifetime!!!]
[Wait, wait, wait, who is this!! Who is this!! Is this the new apprentice!!]
[…Just now, Alü said in the group that you have a new apprentice, and I didn’t believe him.]
[Holy crap, this is the guy with the super cool competition ID today, right? Is this Jiang Ran’s new apprentice? That’s insane! Who is he exactly? His face is so well hidden that I can’t recognize him. Please @ someone who knows!]
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