This essay was originally written in Chinese on October 12, 2025, then later revised.
I often recall the past.
Before I became an OI contestant, I already knew how badly I wanted to win. Maybe it came from something primitive, some instinct deep inside me. Victory made the world feel clear and orderly. It told me that my choices were right, that my efforts had meaning, and that I was allowed to keep moving forward.
But I was not always able to win.
When I realized this, I would become irritable, then exhausted, and finally indifferent. What frightened me more was another habit: whenever I felt I was unlikely to win, I would not step back calmly. Instead, I would take the most extreme path, as if one desperate gamble could turn the tide. I imagined that by going all in, I might recover everything I had lost.
Before the high school entrance exam, several unexpected things happened to me. I nearly hit rock bottom. During the review period, while teachers went over homework and exam papers, I often stared at a blank sheet. My thoughts drifted toward absurd questions that sounded childish, yet truly troubled me. Some of them still have no answers.
And yet, I really wanted to enter zhzx. It felt like something I had promised my younger self. So what could I do? I did what little I could. I wrote several Chinese essays. I tried to memorize the outline of history. I kept telling myself that everything would be fine, but on the night before the exam, I still could not sleep.
Fortunately, fate was kind to me. I got a score that looked fairly good.
But I had no time to celebrate. A new round of training began immediately, just as it had in my final year of junior high school. The difference was that this time, I had no room for trial and error.
I began to wonder: were my abilities gifts from the world, or blessings from heaven? If I had been given something, then what had been taken from me in return?
Old friends faded from my life, along with those who had only seemed like friends. Those who once moved me became people I could hardly speak to. In the end, I was left alone, holding the chips I had once been proud of — the chips I was about to lose.
I have played many competitive games, and I know one thing well: people with truly bad hands often fold early. It is those who believe they have a promising hand who go all in.
But was my hand really good enough?
What was my trump card?
Talent? I doubt that a few brief flashes of insight can truly be called talent.
Hard work? I have never been very hardworking.
Perhaps what I held was neither talent nor effort, but only the illusion that I still had something to bet on. And perhaps that is why I keep looking back: I am still searching for the moment when I first mistook chips for destiny.