PART 8: FIRST STEPS AMIDST THE GLITTERING METROPOLIS
The brilliant graduation ceremony at the prestigious university drew to a close, marking the exact moment the triplets—Ava, Claire, and June—officially stepped into the vast world of adulthood. Their top-tier university was located in a bustling, hyper-modern metropolis, thousands of kilometers away from their father’s impoverished hometown. On the day he saw them off at the train station, the single father stood silently amidst the roaring crowd, clutching a frayed canvas bag. His rough, calloused hands clumsily straightened the collars of each daughter's coat. He didn't pressure them to top their classes; he merely whispered: "Out there, if it ever gets too exhausting, just come home to me. We are poor, but there will always be a warm bowl of rice waiting for you."
The three girls carried nothing but their full-ride scholarships, but university life proved to be about much more than just textbooks. It was an entirely different universe—one where the gap between the rich and the poor was starkly defined by designer clothes, top-of-the-line laptops, and luxury vacations enjoyed by their peers.
June, entering as the valedictorian of the Molecular Science department, immediately faced an invisible pressure from classmates who possessed flawless family backgrounds. During group discussions, while others casually debated funding expensive research projects abroad, June remained silent, taking meticulous notes with a cheap, scratched plastic pen. There were moments when agonizing self-doubt crept back in, reminding her of that painful day at age 14 when she was mocked for her "dirty" father. But this time, June didn't cry or lock herself away. She looked down at the thick calluses on her own fingers—a legacy inherited from nights of studying under an oil lamp alongside her dad—and weaponized it as motivation. June stormed the laboratory at 5:00 AM every morning and was always the absolute last person to leave when the clock struck midnight.
Claire chose International Relations and Linguistics. With her elegant features and innate eloquence, she quickly drew attention. However, this environment demanded expensive networking and social outings. To avoid becoming a financial burden to her aging father and to honor the sacred pact they forged years ago, Claire took on a grueling schedule: she worked as a private tutor, translated documents, and served coffee at a local book café from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM. On bitter, freezing winter nights when her hands shook uncontrollably while wiping down tables, she would simply envision her father’s tearful, proud smile at their graduation. With that image in mind, she would smile, open her dictionary, and continue translating under the dim streetlights.
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Meanwhile, Ava—the resilient soul with a fierce passion for mathematics and computer science—faced an uphill battle in a heavily male-dominated, tech-saturated field. While her peers utilized cutting-edge, customized rigs, Ava’s laptop was a heavily used, refurbished model her father had scraped together cash to buy from a liquidation store. It ran painfully slow and frequently crashed when executing complex data structures. During a major university hackathon, her system completely froze just 30 minutes before the final submission deadline. Looking at the high-end setups surrounding her, Ava almost broke down. But her father’s voice echoed in her mind: "They have the money for better machines, but you have the brain and the grit." Whipping away a stray tear, Ava calmly migrated to a library desktop and spent the entire night rewriting her source code from scratch. Her optimized algorithm ultimately won first place university-wide, forcing those who had looked down on her to bow in absolute respect.
Back in their hometown, the old father never ceased his labor. Even though his daughters’ tuitions were fully covered, he refused to rest. He hoarded every single cent from his grueling construction shifts, refusing to even buy himself a new pair of sandals, just so he could send a little extra allowance to the city. Every Saturday night, the four of them huddled over a cheap phone with a cracked screen. The father always laughed heartily, boasting about how strong and healthy he was, but the three girls could clearly see the deep, unyielding wrinkles engraving his forehead and his hair turning as white as winter frost. It was a silent, beautiful war where love was the only weapon keeping them anchored across the distance.
