Axolotl Translations

There were less than two months left until the college entrance examination. Over the past six months since her rebirth, Wei Jiajia had been completely focused on her studies.

Since fate had granted her a second chance, she was determined not to let it slip away. She would earn a spot at a prestigious university and make up for the regret of never attending college in her previous life.

After entering the workforce in her past life, her limited education became a constant obstacle. Unlike university graduates, she had to work twice as hard to gain the same opportunities. Therefore, pursuing a college degree had turned into an obsession for her.

Her original plan had been to take adult education exams after her career stabilized, but who could have guessed that when she next opened her eyes, she would find herself in this era?

In her former life, Wei Jiajia had grown up in an orphanage. With so many children and so little food, every meal became a battleground. Fights often escalated into vicious brawls.

She had been sent to the orphanage at the age of six, after her parents died in a car accident. With no relatives on either side willing to take her in, it had been her only option.

Children of that age matured quickly, especially those like Wei Jiajia, who had lost their parents and been treated like a burden, passed from one person to another like a soccer ball.

There were plenty of people interested in adopting Wei Jiajia, especially since she was incredibly beautiful, like a delicate porcelain doll. Even at such a young age, one could see the stunning beauty she would grow into. Despite the fact that a six-year-old child is already quite mature, and might be difficult to raise, many people were immediately drawn to her.

However, Wei Jiajia herself was unwilling. When she was in kindergarten, one of her classmates had been molested by a relative, and the incident had caused a major uproar in society.

Her parents were worried for a long time and had repeatedly told her that she must never let anyone touch her inappropriately, except for her mother. No other man, not even her father, was allowed to do it.

She was also told never to go to anyone’s home alone, no matter who it was. If a stranger approached her, she was to find a teacher or a police officer. After school, she could only wait for her parents to pick her up.

Because she was so cute, bad people might target her, and she had to always remember her parents’ words.

Although she didn’t fully understand the implications at the time, seeing her parents’ worried expressions, she quietly memorized everything they had told her.

Therefore, even when someone was willing to adopt her after she was sent to the orphanage, she cried and refused to go.

She had her own parents, and although they were no longer in this world, she didn’t want new parents to replace them in her heart.

New parents were still strangers, and she was never supposed to follow strangers home—her parents’ warnings still echoed in her heart.

As she got older, the number of people interested in adopting her gradually dwindled.

The orphanage was crowded with children. While the government provided free schooling through junior high, high school education required students to pay their own tuition and living expenses—either by working part-time, earning scholarships, or relying on donations from kind-hearted individuals.

Back then, Wei Jiajia had been an excellent student, but illness struck during the high school entrance exams. She missed two subjects due to fever and couldn’t achieve the scores needed to continue her studies.

As she grew older, her appearance became even more striking. In the orphanage, that beauty made her a target—delinquent boys would harass her, and jealous girls sought to make her life miserable.

Determined to earn a living and gain independence as quickly as possible, she enrolled in a vocational school to study tourism management.

Now, seated at her desk, she was reviewing a senior-year math textbook from this era. With the original owner’s memories intact, her academic foundation was already solid. Merging her past-life experiences with her current ones had made her cognitive abilities exceptional. Generally, two or three reads were often enough for her to memorize something.

At this time, jigh school education lasted two years. The college entrance examination would be held in late July, just around the corner.

With the combined effort of the original owner’s knowledge and her own relentless studying over the past six months, she was confident. She might not make it into top-tier schools like Qing University or Jing University, but getting accepted into a reputable local college in Shencheng was definitely not an issue.

Wei Jiajia’s current bedroom was on the first floor, located on the far-left side. The ground floor had three rooms in total. The middle one served as the main living area, with a bedroom on either side. The left room had originally belonged to her parents, but since both of them were soldiers who spent most of their time on the army and often gone for years without returning, the original owner had moved downstairs from her old upstairs room. The right-side room was occupied by Auntie.

The layout upstairs mirrored that of the first floor, with three rooms. The twins shared one room since they were still young. Of the other two rooms, one was reserved for her parents when they returned, while the last room remained empty.

When the twins were born, Aunt Fen had gone to the army to help with their mother’s postpartum care.

Her father was frequently away on missions, and her mother, a military doctor, had gone back to work soon after her confinement period ended. Both were consumed by their careers and unable to care for the children themselves.

With elderly relatives and three children needing attention back home, Aunt Fen couldn’t stay on the army for long. When the twins were eight months old, they were brought back to Shencheng, where their parents felt reassured knowing the family was together.

From the time they were little over a year old, the twins had been sharing a bed with their older sister. Auntie, growing older, no longer had the energy to keep up with the demands of caring for two energetic children at night.

The twins were deeply attached to their big sister. They refused to sleep with anyone else and would cry inconsolably if they couldn’t see her at night.

Wei Jiajia’s room was right by the staircase leading to the second floor. Because the ceilings were high, the area beneath the stairs was spacious. A bathroom and toilet had been built there, both connected to a drainage system, but their doors opened out to the backyard.

Opposite the main house was a smaller, two-story structure. The first floor had two rooms,of modest size, about twenty square meters each. One was used for storing firewood and miscellaneous items, while the other served as a kitchen.

A loft had been constructed on the second floor, where Aunt Fen and Uncle Zhuzi lived.

Although called a loft, the space was built with high ceilings, making it spacious and far more comfortable than the cramped communal housing common at the time.

A small storage room was sectioned off inside Aunt Fen’s room, used as a pantry where all their grain was stored. The door to this pantry opened directly into their room.

In this era, food was more valuable than anything else. Even though the surrounding neighbors were friendly, and military families were held in high esteem, anyone who had lived through a famine treated grain as more precious than life itself.

The front courtyard of the Wei family wasn’t very large. The main house, where the family lived, stood directly across from the entrance.

The building where Aunt Fen lived was adjacent to the gate.

To the right was the neighbor’s house and a dividing wall, while to the left was a path leading to the backyard, with a small door built into the wall.

Although their family had moved from Su City to Shencheng after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Wei’s father was originally a native of Shencheng. He had met Wei’s mother while participating in the revolution in Su City.

This house was the ancestral home of Wei’s father. After both of his parents passed away, and with Wei’s father spending years away at war, the house remained unoccupied for a long time and had fallen into a state of neglect.

When Aunt returned to live there, only the kitchen-side building was in relatively good condition.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Father Wei finally returned from the battlefield and demolished the uninhabitable sections, replacing them with the current two-story blue brick house where Wei Jiajia’s family lived, along with the loft where Aunt Fen’s family stayed.

Their house was the last one in the alley and covered a large area. When it was rebuilt, fearing that the courtyard would become muddy and impassable after rain, they paved the entire front yard with bluestone. Since the space was relatively small, it didn’t seem overly lavish. If it had been any larger, it might have drawn gossip about being too extravagant.

The backyard, however, was over two hundred square meters, perfect for growing vegetables and raising chickens. In the city, feeding a large household made daily grocery shopping impractical, especially with the introduction of rationing coupons, which made many goods difficult to purchase even if one had the money.

Eggs were particularly hard to come by—without egg coupons, it was impossible to buy them. Even in the city, people had to make the most of every bit of space to raise a few chickens to nourish their families. This was why, when they rebuilt the house two years ago, they deliberately left such a large backyard.

While Wei Jiajia stayed in her room, fully immersed in her studies and pushing hard for the college entrance examination, the twin siblings squatted in front of the chicken coop, whispering among themselves. Behind them stood Xiangdong and Xiangxi, watching the pair’s antics with a mix of bemusement and helplessness as they tried to follow the incomprehensible chatter that only they seemed to understand…

“Yangyang, when do you think Ooo-Ooo will lay baby Ooo-Ooo’s?” Nuannuan asked her brother as she fixed her gaze on a speckled hen.

At breakfast one morning, there had been fewer eggs than usual. Aunt Fen didn’t boil eggs for the children but made egg-drop soup instead.

When Nuannuan asked why there were no boiled eggs, Aunt Fen casually explained that the old hens weren’t laying much anymore and that they would need to start raising chicks again.

Ever since then, after every meal, the little twins had taken it upon themselves to inspect the chicken coop.

“Huahua is not good,” Yangyang frowned, scrunching up his little brow. “She didn’t lay an egg today. No eggs, no baby Ooo-Ooos!”

Nuannuan stood up, placing one small hand on her hip and pointing the other at the speckled hen. In a stern, commanding tone, she threatened, “If you don’t lay eggs, I’ll have Aunt Fen cook you into stew…” Her stern threat, combined with her tiny stature and puffed-up indignation, was so comical that the two older boys behind her burst into laughter.

Huahua was the name the twins had given the hen, and soon everyone in the family started calling her that.

Because there were many children in the family, the monthly ration of egg coupons was never enough, so they raised five hens to provide fresh eggs for extra nutrition. Lately, however, two of the hens had grown old and stopped laying regularly, which deeply worried the twins. Every morning, they hurried to the coop to check whether Huahua had laid any eggs.

The younger twins were a perfect blend of their parents’ good looks. Wei Father and Wei Mother were both strikingly attractive. Although Wei Father was a native of Shencheng, he was 1.8 meters tall, with sharply defined features and a handsome, commanding presence. Wei Mother was equally remarkable—poised, elegant, and beautiful.

The older twins resembled their father more, looking almost identical to photos of him as a child. One could easily imagine that, as they grew older, they would undoubtedly captivate many girls.

Wei Mother was a typical southern girl—slightly over 1.6 meters tall, fair-skinned and delicate, with eyes that seemed to speak for themselves. The twins and Wei Jiajia both inherited her eyes. As for Wei Jiajia’s looks, they took after her maternal grandmother. According to Aunt Fen, she resembled her grandmother at a young age by about seventy percent, though Wei Jiajia’s features were more refined.

Wei Jiajia’s appearance in her past life was identical to that of the original owner, though the original owner had slightly fairer skin.

The two even shared the same birthmark on their shoulders. This was one of the reasons why she quickly adapted to her new identity. She felt that she was destined to live in this era to take over the original owner’s life and continue it…

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