月亮的温泉(英文)

　　《月亮的温泉（英文）》：　　In the end it all came down to one thing： money. Her family was too poor. If they had money, her parents' decisions might have been different from the start. A piano, for instance： they couldn't afford one. Even if they could it wouldn't fit in the house, just finding a spot for it would be a problem.　　If you got right down to it, though, the problem of money had always been secondary, the real issue was her parents' taste, and vision. Yao Zihan's sense of humiliation welled up again. Her classmates all knew Yao Zihan's home was in the "big yard" of the teachers' university. That sounded good, as far as it went, but Yao Zihan never went into any more detail. In fact, her parents were peasants from the distant edge of town. It had been the relocation and expansion of the teachers' university that had allowed Mr. and Mrs. Dayao to transform themselves overnight from a young peasant couple to university staff members. That transformation had cost Dayao's father no small amount of cash.　　It is the nature of humiliation that it can lead to self-pity. Yao Zihan, that renowned Painted Skin, that encyclopaedic giant, pitied herself profoundly. It was all completely meaningless. Through all that suffering and hardship she'd accomplished nothing but to lay the wrong-headed foundations of a wrong-headed life. It was too late to go back.　　Thank god for "Her Royal Highness." "Her Royal Highness" was in the same dance class as Yao Zihan, a goblin-grade boy from No. 21 Middle School. He was actually quite macho, but the girls in the dance class insisted on calling him by his nickname. HRH didn't mind, he just gave a red-lipped, white-toothed snule.　　Yao Zihan and HRH weren't friends for any particular reason, besides the fact that they had similar problems. People with similar problems might not be able to comfort each other, but just being together can often be reassuring. HRH had told Yao Zihan that his greatest wish was to invent a time machine, in which all the children no longer belonged to their parents. Instead, they would be their own masters, and could choose their fathers and mothers as they pleased.　　Yao Zihan and HRH walked their bikes back from class, chatting for a few minutes along the way. Just as they were reaching the intersection, as they were about to part, Dayao and Han Yuejiao appeared and blocked the way. The two of them were squeezed awkwardly onto one electric bicycle, and looked peculiar. The moment she saw them Yao Zihan was unhappy-hadn't she told them not to accompany her? Yet here they were.　　At this particular moment, however, she wasn't the only unhappy one. She hadn't attended very carefully to her parents. If she had, she would have seen that Han Yuejiao's face was severe, and Dayao's expression could be described as distorted.　　He squeezed the brakes of the bike, and said with no preamble：　　"What do you mean by this?"　　"What do I mean by what?" said Yao Zihan.　　"What do you mean by not letting us accompany you?" he said.　　……