Chapter 10: Look! Mr Platov did a jump!

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As everyone knew, anatomy was a necessary subject for all medical students, which resulted in the Faculty of Medicine having the highest number of domesticated animals within Leningrad State University.

So after the second-best figure skater in the world left, the bear-like professor named Avraam dragged in a basket of white mice.

The students collectively fell silent.

Jiang Jinghu, who came from a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, pointed a trembling finger at the squeaking animals and asked Zhang Sushang, “Th-Those are mice, right? Qiupu, why did the professor bring those things in?”

“Every medical student has to pass this test, be more open-minded,” he replied very calmly.

Later on, there would also be frogs, rabbits, dogs, monkeys, and more waiting for them, Zhang Sushang had a particularly open mind. After the professor handed out the mice, he first grabbed the mouse’s tail and swung it, then he turned to his groupmates Danil, Jiang Jinghu, and Ivan C to explain his actions. “Knock it out first to prevent it from biting us later.”

His father was a doctor. Many years ago he had been bitten by a small animal while taking an anatomy class and had to get the rabies vaccine — by the way, this vaccine consisted of five shots over 21 days, plus injecting rabies immunoglobulin along with the first dose,¹All true, as of 2024 it’s 3 doses if administering pre-exposure or 4 doses if post-exposure; rabies is also, for all practical purposes, 100% fatal after symptoms start for those unvaccinated it was a miserable experience.

Did the rabies vaccine exist right now?

Yes, the great Louis Pasteur developed the first version of the rabies vaccine at the end of the 19th century and successfully used it to save people. However, Zhang Sushang still didn’t want to get bitten, because his pain threshold was low and he was afraid of pain.

To dissect mice, of course, they had to be killed first. The most economical method was definitely not death by injection, both the serum and syringe cost money. No, the most common method was cervical dislocation, meaning snapping its neck, which allowed the mouse to die quickly with little pain. They still did things this way in 2050, it could be said to be a classic way of killing mice.

The professor also gave a demonstration. Who knew if these kids were brave or stupid, but the group in front of Zhang Sushang had already killed their mouse, although they used a bit too much force and ripped off the mouse’s head as well…

Human strength was like that of a behemoth compared to a small white mouse.

Jiang Jinghu, who happened to see this scene, couldn’t help but look away. “Oh good lord above,” he muttered.

Zhang Sushang and Danil looked at each other. Danil raised his head, obviously not wanting to step up, so Zhang Sushang turned towards the pale, thin, handsome Ivan C. “You do it or I do it?”

Ivan C looked at Zhang Sushang’s eager face and was silent for two seconds. “You can do it,” he said.

Zhang Sushang deftly pinched the mouse’s neck with one hand and gripped the base of its tail with the other, then twisted his hands sharply. A slight click later, the mouse’s soul returned to God’s embrace.

Someone behind them shouted, “Professor, one of our mouse’s eyeballs popped!”

Professor Avraam angrily walked over. “I told you not to use so much force, what on Earth are you guys doing!”

Compared with other groups who were in constant trouble because it was their first time killing mice, Zhang Sushang’s group was very calm. Danil picked up a syringe and a scalpel, seemingly wanting to get started on the mouse’s corpse.

“I-I want to try it too,” Jiang Jinghu said, even as he shuddered.

No matter how scared he was, the young man never forgot that he came here to learn, and this ambition made him suppress the fear in his heart.

Zhang Sushang, appreciating his enthusiasm, went to the professor to get another two mice for Jiang Jinghu to practise with. He originally wanted to get just one, but two mice took advantage of this life-or-death situation to start mating, so he simply grabbed them both.

Killing mice was just a matter of practice. “You need to practise more, after all, you’ll also have to kill rabbits and frogs in the future,” he advised Jiang Jinghu kindly.

Jiang Jinghu hesitated again and again, but what was surprising was that the quality of his cervical dislocation was no lower than that of Zhang Sushang. It was clear that when he moved his hands he was quite steady, he had a good foundation to be a doctor.

Ivan C held a mouse and dug out 10 kopecks from his pocket. “Extra mice cost money, here.”

Zhang Sushang straightforwardly accepted the coins, but when Jiang Jinghu also wanted to give money, he shook his head, took off his gloves, stole a piece of dried sweet potato from Jiang Jinghu’s pocket and stuffed it into his mouth, then put on his gloves again.

“This is enough,” he said.

His groupmates all looked at him as if he was a freak of nature. Please forgive their lack of experience, they had never seen anyone eat during anatomy class.

At this time, someone from the other end of the classroom began shouting again. “Aaaahh Professor it’s still moving!”

Professor Avraam became more and more irritable, and his roar was so loud that half the entire building could hear it.

They were only in their first year, the course load wasn’t nearly as heavy as it would be later on. After anatomy and basic chemistry in the morning, in the afternoon they gathered together for a big class — an expert from St. Petersburg Central Hospital was coming over to give a guest lecture on a doctor’s personal and professional ethics.

Zhang Sushang wasn’t the kind of student who liked to cram everything at the end of the semester. He roughly memorised everything while attending class, and later he would translate the lessons into Chinese to give to Jiang Jinghu.

Jiang Jinghu was very reluctant to accept his classmate’s hard work. “Keep your notes for yourself and use them for reviewing, I can remember most of it after reading it once and just need to go over it a few more times later,” he said.

Zhang Sushang shook his head. “It’s okay, I have a good memory too, I just need to go back and read the textbook, it won’t affect my exams. Aren’t you compiling the translated textbooks with Wu Yeming and the others? Take mine too.”

Jiang Jinghu opened his notes and found that Zhang Sushang’s translation progress had exceeded what the professor was teaching, he had done almost half the textbook.

He looked at Zhang Sushang with deep worry. “Qiupu, it’s good to work hard, but you have to take care of your body and eat as much as you can. Why don’t you have dinner with us today?” he offered.

“I’m eating fine, you guys can stop worrying about me already,” Zhang Sushang said.

His compatriots all thought that he had lost weight too quickly so he must be unhealthy, thus they always looked for opportunities to show their care, which made Zhang Sushang feel warm yet exasperated.

Jiang Jinghu constantly looked back as he left. “You’re really not coming? Then eat more tonight, tomorrow I’ll bring you more dried sweet potatoes. Don’t lose weight anymore, you’re at a healthy weight already, so don’t keep doing it.”

“I know, I won’t, I’m just exercising, it’s a good thing for medical students to keep fit,” Zhang Sushang replied as he waved him off.

When his father, a doctor, discovered that he wanted to go into the same profession, he specifically told him to never stop his habit of exercising. And when he received his admission notice, his father even reminded him that when he encountered disputes in the future, he should hide behind the expensive medical equipment first…

This arose from the many times his father had suffered physical injuries during disputes with patients in his earlier years, with the worst incident resulting in him sitting in a wheelchair for a month. After he recovered, he returned to the front line of patient care.

Nowadays, the world was so chaotic and the intensity of patient complaints may not be any less than that of the 21st century, so his exercising was for the sake of his future safety. Zhang Sushang even planned to train for short sprints and marathons when the weather warmed and the roads were no longer covered in slush.

Right now he planned to return to figure skating. This was a comprehensive sport that could lose weight, and improve body coordination, reflexes, and posture, and was the sport he was most familiar with.

The lake within the campus hadn’t yet thawed, so there were still many young people milling around there after their classes were over. There was also a place to rent ice skates nearby. Maybe it was due to the presence of an Olympic runner-up today that several of Zhang Sushang’s classmates ran there after classes.

In high-latitude places like Russia, ice sports naturally enjoyed nationwide popularity.

Zhang Sushang followed them to the place where they could rent skates. From his point of view, these skates were utterly incomparable to competition-level ice skates of the future, whether it be their thickness, length, shape, or toe pick.

Not to mention their production or material, the frozen lake itself was vastly different to an ice rink used for competitions. Skating a single lap on it would cause huge damage to the skates, and compounded with the lack of rigorous maintenance, the blades of these skates were so dull that they wouldn’t even be able to slice into a piece of braised beef.²Good braised beef is very tender and should fall apart in your mouth

Zhang Sushang squatted for a while before finally picking out a pair that he could barely accept, changed into them, and then click-clacked his way to the frozen lake surface.

Danil, who had been playing for a while, immediately skated over at the sight of him. “Chyushka, do you want to get on the ice?” he asked.

Zhang Sushang hummed but waved away Danil’s kind offer. He took a single step onto the ice and immediately did a split, causing a wave of laughter around him. Carefully getting up, he found that the gossipy Ivan B had laughed the loudest.

Anyone who stepped foot on ice was used to seeing all sorts of weird postures when people fell, but not many had seen a posture like Zhang Sushang’s which required extreme flexibility. In addition, he didn’t look like a Slav at all, so they had no compunctions taking joy in schadenfreude.

Danil looked at him with a look of suppressed amusement, but he didn’t have ill intentions towards Zhang Sushang, and there was still a bit of friendship between them due to sitting nearby. He reached out to him again. “Didn’t you say you’ve skated before? Why can’t you even stand?”

Zhang Sushang stumbled to his feet, thanked him, and tried to skate forward. Danil and Ivan B looked at each other, then followed behind him, ready to catch this guy before he broke his jaw.

At first, he skated crookedly, but after a few laps, his skating posture gradually became more graceful.

The postures of most amateur skaters didn’t look good because they stuck out their butts and kept a stiff upper body to stay upright. Moreover, they had no concept of alternating between inner and outer blades.

Contrary to what most people imagined, the blades of ice skates weren’t sharp like normal knives, rather they were U-shaped, which made it easier for skaters to keep their balance.

When the foot turned outward, the outer edge was used, and when the foot turned inward, the inner edge was used. Switching between the two allowed a skater to control their speed, including acceleration, and create beautiful lines on the ice.

In this era, some people used the changes between inner and outer blades to draw beautiful geometric figures on the ice and even created many different patterns. Compulsory figures was one of the most important basic skills in figure skating, as well as an event in figure skating competitions.

In other words, figure skaters of this era had to compete in three sub-events:

1. Compulsory figures
2. Short program
3. Free skate

Judges scored based on the quality and artistry of the skater’s movements, with a full score being 6 points, and the final ranking was determined by combining all three events. It wasn’t until 1990 that compulsory figures were removed from all international competitions.

Zhang Sushang had never used compulsory figures in competition, he only practised them as part of his training. Today was the first time he went on ice after time travelling, it was already pretty good for him to skate out a circle with how crappy these skates were.

However, to everyone else, this young man from China had a temperament completely different from others as soon as he stepped onto the ice.

Ever since he became sensible, Zhang Sushang learned ballet along with figure skating, because figure skating had the reputation of being ballet on ice. The two were almost inseparable in the future, so many young people learning figure skating also picked up ballet, which gave them exceptionally good physiques.

It was at the 1928 Winter Olympics that figure skating and ballet were truly combined — the legendary figure skater Sonja Henie, who won three consecutive Winter Olympic gold medals and ten consecutive World Figure Skating Championship titles, first introduced ballet postures in her performance at this event.

It was currently 1926. Both ballet and figure skating existed but had not made contact. Zhang Sushang’s graceful figure was a unique beauty at this time.

After finding the feeling, Zhang Sushang relaxed a lot; he opened his arms as he glided across the ice and stretched his limbs out.

The one who was best at ice skating among the first-years was actually in the same class as Zhang Sushang, more specifically, it was the Faculty of Medicine’s pretty boy — Ivan D. This guy had a childish face that was particularly irritating to look at for macho men.

He stood at the edge of the lake and watched in amazement as Zhang Sushang transformed from someone who couldn’t even stand steadily on the ice to an ice dancer within an hour.

One of the criteria for judging how good amateurs were at skating was their speed. Zhang Sushang not only skated quickly, but he was also very relaxed, this was evidently a master.

“I didn’t expect that a Chinese boy would know how to skate,” Ivan D said to the people around him.

Ivan A’s Olympic silver medalist brother, Misha Platov, had also come to the frozen lake at his younger brother’s invitation, obviously wanting to bond over ice skating.

They happened to see Zhang Sushang’s feet spread to just a bit more than shoulder width, his entire body lean back, and he drew an arc on the lake.

It was a spread eagle, a common figure skating movement that was often used by top skaters as an entrance to jumps in order to increase the difficulty. Although it looked simpler than jumping, if the skater’s balance and flexibility were too weak they would raise their butts high, which reduced the aesthetics of this move.

Someone with Zhang Sushang’s skills could of course do it beautifully, which surprised Misha Platov a lot.

When doing this action, the greater the inclination of the body and the deeper the blade was used, the bigger the resulting circle was drawn and the cooler it would look.

However, the issue was the same. If the body didn’t have the physical ability, it was very easy to fall as they leaned back. Zhang Sushang had only been in this body for three months, had only just solved issues of food and clothing, and recently lost 30kg. Things like strength training needed time to show their results, while he had only begun recovering his figure skating skills today.

Thus when he tried to do a spread eagle using the inner blades, he lost his balance and fell forward, straight into the arms of a thin yet warm person.

Misha, who was just over 1.6m and only weighed 100kg, struggled to support Zhang Sushang, who was 1.8m tall and weighed 150kg. Even though his face turned red, he still asked, “Young man, are you okay?”

Zhang Sushang held Misha’s shoulders to steady himself, then replied sheepishly, “I’m fine, I’m fine. How about you? You’re okay?”

“I’m good, I’m great,” he said as nonchalantly as he could, “I won silver at the Olympics, what can possibly happen if I just bump into you? By the way, your spread eagle just now was amazing, but it’s still a bit jerky, I suggest you practise it a bit more…”

Seeing that he was trying so hard to change the subject, Zhang Sushang followed his words. “Mr Platov, I would’ve fallen just now if you didn’t catch me. Thank you for your help, I’ll keep practising my spread eagles.”

“That’s great,” Misha replied happily, “you have good athletic ability, you skate very fast, and you have good control over your blades, I hardly ever see amateur skaters like you. If you can master spins and jumps you might even be able to try out some competitions. I mean, if you had started practising since childhood, you might’ve been able to reach the top ten in international competitions.”

Mr. Misha said this out of good intentions because he had always enjoyed encouraging young figure skaters. In addition, Zhang Sushang was Chinese; in his impression, people of this country didn’t place importance on sports, generally didn’t have any athletic talents, and had no one attending international competitions in their name. No events, no sports. None of it had even the shadow of a Chinese person.

So when he said that Zhang Sushang had the potential to be a professional athlete, it was already the highest praise he could think of for a Chinese figure skater.

Zhang Sushang, who had competed in and won second place in the ISU Junior Grand Prix at fifteen: Although I’m the most noob in my family, isn’t it a bit much to say that I can only get top ten in the world?

“See you next time,” Misha said with a smile, patting Zhang Sushang’s shoulder.

Then he pulled his brother Ivan A to the centre of the lake. Zhang Sushang watched them go, smiled, and then turned and pulled off his skates.

He still wasn’t used to this pair of skates. Its blades were so dull that he could only barely reach 70% of his original skating speed, and he always felt as if he was about to stumble. He planned to find a shop that sold proper ice skates later.

It was good timing that he was about to receive his latest batch of royalties. He’ll buy a new pair of shoes on the way home — not to mention running shoes, a pair of ice skates was indispensable to his shoe cabinet.

Behind him, exclamations continued to sound.

“He’s so good!”

“Mr. Misha can also draw circles on the ice.”

Ivan B grabbed Zhang Sushang. “Chyushka, won’t you stay and watch Mr Misha’s performance? He just did a jump!”

“Although I also want to watch, I have to go home now,” he said apologetically as he put on his cotton-soled shoes.

He had dinner at six o’clock on the dot every day, then rested for an hour — reading and doing some translations — before starting strength training. Zhang Sushang felt no need to change his schedule just to watch someone do single jumps.

---

Author:
Introducing Ivan ABCD↓
Ivan A: a petite man of 1.65m, Misha’s younger brother
Ivan B: know-it-all gossip
Ivan C: Danil’s deskmate, a pale, thin, and handsome Slavic man
Ivan D: babyface, sweet personality, likes ice skating

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• 1
  All true, as of 2024 it’s 3 doses if administering pre-exposure or 4 doses if post-exposure; rabies is also, for all practical purposes, 100% fatal after symptoms start for those unvaccinated
• 2
  Good braised beef is very tender and should fall apart in your mouth