When Zhao Yang received Lin Zi’s text, he was lying facedown on his desk with his eyes closed, taking a rest. His head hurt so badly it felt as though it might split open at any moment.
Seeing Zhao Yang lying motionless over his desk, the students around him all assumed he was upset over having his confession rejected.
After all, everyone knew he loved Su Qin with all his heart.
The thirty-minute break between classes was not over yet. The air was filled with an endless stream of noise: chair legs scraping against the floor, students chasing and horsing around in the hallway, and, farther away, the faint sound of a ball being slapped around on the sports field…
Those sounds were far too real, so real that they did not seem like part of a dream.
Feeling the unmistakable chill of the desktop beneath him, Zhao Yang was bewildered for a moment. What on earth was going on?
Could he be lying on the security office floor, dreaming this entire thing?
Zhao Yang’s memories were a mess.
Just then, someone charged noisily through the back door of Class 1.
Xu Lei had heard about Zhao Yang’s “feat” from someone else. He had not even had time to finish his game of basketball before racing back to the classroom at full speed. He yanked Zhao Yang upright and shook him.
“Fuck, didn’t you say you were going to confess after school?”
“How did it suddenly turn into the break between classes?”
“And I heard you even humiliated Su Qin in front of the whole school?”
“Were you confessing, or were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Xu Lei fired off seven or eight questions in one breath.
Shaken until his face went pale, Zhao Yang felt even more like vomiting. Then an absurd thought flashed through his mind.
Suppressing his dizziness, he grabbed Xu Lei’s arm and twisted it as hard as he could.
A howl erupted from the back of the classroom.
Xu Lei’s entire face contorted with pain. He jumped up and cursed, “Fuck, are you sick in the head? Why the hell did you pinch me for no reason?”
Zhao Yang answered dazedly, “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dreaming…”
Xu Lei stared at him blankly at first. Then, realizing what he meant, he smacked Zhao Yang hard on the shoulder without holding back.
“If you were dreaming, shouldn’t you have pinched yourself to check?”
Zhao Yang grimaced from the blow. The pain in his shoulder finally confirmed that he was not dreaming.
If this was not a dream, then only one possibility remained. For some unknown reason, he had been reborn, and he had returned to the age of seventeen.
Once he accepted that reality, he thought back to the message Lin Zi had sent, telling him to run the moment school let out, and his heart lurched.
Starlight Avenue, the confession letter, giving it to the wrong person… Just think about what he had done moments ago.
Zhao Yang’s face went deathly pale, and his voice began to tremble. “Fuck, Stone, I think I’m screwed.”
The bell signaling the end of the break rang. Xu Lei pulled out the chair at the desk in front and sat down. He had run back too quickly and was drenched in sweat, so he used his textbook as a fan while teasing Zhao Yang.
“You really are screwed. Su Qin definitely won’t let you off.”
Anyone with the nerve to humiliate the school bully in front of the entire school had to be out of his mind. Even someone who had eaten the heart of a bear and the gall of a leopard would not do something that stupid.
“So what was going on with you? Were you embarrassed?”
Aside from that, Xu Lei could not think of a better explanation.
“It wasn’t embarrassment…”
Zhao Yang slumped back over his desk, looking utterly hopeless. He stammered, “I just… don’t like him anymore.”
Human dignity had its limits. The foolish things he had done in his previous life, throwing away all sense of shame for someone, could stay in his previous life.
“That suddenly?”
Xu Lei looked as if he had just heard the biggest joke in the world. He reminded Zhao Yang, “When we were at the flag-raising ceremony this morning, you told me Su Qin was your light, your electricity… that no one could ever replace him in your heart.”
“Only two periods have passed, and you don’t like him anymore?”
The students lined up by class for the flag-raising ceremony, and Class 7 happened to be right behind Class 1. That morning, when Zhao Yang had spouted those lovesick lines, he had shamelessly turned around to sneak glances at Su Qin. He had not bothered to hide it at all, and the students around him had covered their mouths, snickering.
Xu Lei, standing beside him, had been so sickened that his gooseflesh had practically fallen off.
“…………”
After hearing this, Zhao Yang got goosebumps himself. Fuck, had he really been that reckless?
He cursed himself silently and denied it with a grim expression. “I never said that!”
“He’s not in my heart anymore!” He did not even want to say Su Qin’s name.
Suspicion was written all over Xu Lei’s face. “Did you fall for someone else?”
Zhao Yang shook his head. “No.”
Xu Lei rolled his eyes. “Then what the hell are you talking about?”
Zhao Yang had loved beautiful things ever since he was a child. Whenever he saw something that appealed to him, ten oxen could not drag him away. He had to get it before he would give up. Everyone in the compound knew about his rotten temper.
Xu Lei had grown up with Zhao Yang and spent more than a decade fooling around with him. He knew his childhood friend’s obsession with appearances all too well. Zhao Yang judged people solely by their looks and never cared whether they were good or bad at heart.
His love at first sight for Su Qin in their first year of high school had begun because Su Qin’s looks happened to match his exact aesthetic preferences.
So unless someone appeared who could outshine Su Qin, Zhao Yang would never give up.
Xu Lei had witnessed Zhao Yang’s obsession with Su Qin firsthand.
Take the summer tutoring period, for instance. Before Zhao Yang had decided to confess to Su Qin for real, he had dragged Xu Lei into the flowerbeds in the compound in the middle of the night to secretly perform a “ritual.”
Xu Lei remembered that night vividly. Even now, thinking about it made him shiver.
It had been a pitch-black, starless night.
Zhao Yang had crouched beneath a sago palm, holding a sheet of paper covered in Su Qin’s name. As he dug a hole, he had muttered,
“I heard this from someone else. Apparently, if you burn the name of the person you like together with your own name, then bury the ashes beneath a sago palm, the two of you will be together forever if it blooms the following year.”
The compound was right next to the hospital, so smoking and open flames were forbidden and strictly controlled.
Xu Lei had yawned as he stood guard with a flashlight. After hearing this, he shuddered from head to toe and sincerely felt that his friend was truly and deeply in love.
Deep enough to stake his entire life on it.
After vividly reminiscing about the sago palm and the smell of burning paper that night, Xu Lei teased him, “Weren’t you planning to be together forever? You’re not waiting for that sago palm to bloom?”
Zhao Yang knew he had done plenty of stupid things back then, but he had not realized he could be that stupid. He covered his face and wailed, “For fuck’s sake, stop…”
And it had not just been two periods.
It had been ten years.
But Zhao Yang did not know how to explain that to Xu Lei, so he could only answer vaguely, “Anyway, I just don’t like him anymore.”
He would never like Su Qin again.
His life had finally given him a second chance. He absolutely would not get tangled up with Su Qin again.
To avoid running into Su Qin, Zhao Yang bolted the moment the dismissal bell rang.
He had barely left when Su Qin, furious since morning, appeared at the back door of Class 1. Lin Zi and Old Gao followed behind him.
Su Qin stopped someone at random, his entire face dark with anger. “Where is he?”
The unlucky person was a short girl. The moment she saw Su Qin, her face flushed, but she was also trembling with fear.
“Zhao, Zhao Yang? He left a long time ago…”
Su Qin: “…………”
Class 1 of the second year was directly opposite the grade office. The slightest disturbance could alert the homeroom teachers, so if Su Qin wanted to have a “proper talk” with Zhao Yang, he could only wait until school let out.
Zhao Yang had spent so many years by Su Qin’s side in his previous life that he understood the man’s vindictive nature down to the last detail. Only an idiot would sit in the classroom and wait for him to come.
So at noon, he ran out the moment the bell rang. In the afternoon, he left an entire period early. That evening, he went even further and skipped the whole night study session.
When Wei Guoxue made his rounds, he saw that one of the seats in the back row was empty and nearly exploded with rage all over again.
So his lecture that morning had been wasted yet again!
Su Qin went to Class 1 three times in a row to corner him, and every time he came up empty-handed. His face grew darker and darker.
“Wow, you should’ve seen Su Qin’s expression. He looked absolutely terrifying. It was like his eyes were about to spit fire.”
After night study ended, Xu Lei rode home with Liao Xingchen.
Remembering the scene of the school bully blocking the back door and questioning people, Xu Lei still felt frightened. He clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“Zhao Yang really made a huge mess of things this time.”
“Why couldn’t he just confess normally? Why did he have to pull something like that?”
The fury of a delinquent teenager was not something that could be extinguished easily.
It took about fifteen minutes to cycle from Shining High School back to Binjiang Courtyard. Xu Lei chattered the entire way, and every word was about Zhao Yang.
How much Zhao Yang loved Su Qin, how fiercely Zhao Yang had pursued Su Qin, how Su Qin was Zhao Yang’s water, fire, light, and electricity…
Taking Zhao Yang’s behavior throughout the previous year into account, Xu Lei simply could not believe that he had truly stopped liking Su Qin.
How could someone crazy enough to burn paper at midnight and bury the ashes in the ground give up so easily?
He had to be plotting some grand scheme!
Xu Lei agonized over it the whole way home. Even after racking his brains until his head hurt, he could not think of a reasonable explanation. He decided that his intelligence probably was not up to the task, so he turned to the top student for help.
“Brother Chen, what do you think Zhao Yang is really planning?”
The top student remained silent.
He had no interest in the subject of Zhao Yang and did not care what exactly he was planning.
In fact, Liao Xingchen did not know much about his upstairs neighbor.
Aside from “love-struck,” “good for nothing,” and “has no idea what he’s doing with himself all day,” Liao Xingchen had no deeper impression of Zhao Yang.
Or rather, he had no favorable impression of him.
He did not like Zhao Yang.
If their parents had not been close and frequently forced them to act familiar at family dinners, Liao Xingchen would not even have spared him a glance.
In Liao Xingchen’s eyes, every action and event in the world followed a traceable pattern. Everything had a cause, an effect, and a motive that could be identified.
Zhao Yang alone was an unknown entity, a remarkable creature beyond the limits of his knowledge.
In short, Liao Xingchen could not understand anything this person did.
Rather than trying to figure out what kind of medicine Zhao Yang was selling in that gourd, he would be better off solving a few sets of math competition problems.