Lin Ruoxi. This unremarkable girl had changed Xue Rui's entire life. He had seen her countless times in his dreams.
Except, they were all nightmares.
Xue Rui remembered it clearly. It was the day before the 2012 Mid-Autumn Festival—the fourteenth day of the eighth lunar month.
Xue Rui knew the route like the back of his hand as he snuck out of the dorms to go to an internet cafe. His figure was swift under the moonlight, moving quickly along the walls without a sound. Sticking to the walls let him avoid the surveillance cameras and the notice of patrolling teachers.
However, just as he rounded the academic building, a figure fell from the sky.
Lin Ruoxi—the thin, frail girl who never dared to look up when she spoke—had actually leaped from the roof of the Houde Building, crashing down face-up right in front of Xue Rui.
Lin Ruoxi had delicate features, but her face was gaunt and her lips were bloodless. Her large eyes were slightly sunken, and they remained open after she landed, locking with Xue Rui's gaze.
The moonlight was as white as snow, turning night into day. Xue Rui saw it all with perfect clarity: the full moon, reflected in the pool of blood, had become a crimson blood moon.
That was the first time Xue Rui had ever seen the girl's face clearly, and also the last.
This tragically beautiful and unsettling scene was what became Xue Rui's nightmare.
It was so bad that for his last two years of high school, he quit his habit of pulling all-nighters to play games. He found that only by constantly cramming dry, boring knowledge could he numb his mind enough to stop thinking about it.
By a strange twist of fate, Lin Ruoxi's jump was the reason Xue Rui managed to get into a top-tier university.
Of course, it also left a scar that would last a lifetime.
...
"My name is Lin Ruoxi..."
Lin Ruoxi's face flushed red. Her slender hands tightly gripped the hem of her baggy school uniform, her body trembling slightly.
Xue Rui frowned and shouted at the jeering boys, "Are you all going deaf already? I'm standing over here and I heard her just fine!"
The boys in the class instantly fell silent.
For once, Xue Xiaying didn't reprimand Xue Rui. Instead, she spoke gently to Lin Ruoxi.
"Try to be a little more confident. Everyone here is your classmate. They're just being playful; they don't mean any harm."
Lin Ruoxi nodded, burying her head even deeper.
...
Soon, the self-introductions were over, and the bell rang, signaling the end of class.
"C'mon, let's go to the bathroom and light up a 'weed of forgetting sorrows'," Qiu Mengze whispered, jumping up and slinging an arm around Xue Rui's shoulders.
It was their 'covert' way of saying they were going for a smoke.
"Get lost, get lost. I'm not in the mood," Xue Rui said, irritably shoving Qiu Mengze away.
"That's all the more reason to have one." Qiu Mengze suddenly felt like Xue Rui had changed.
He couldn't put his finger on how, though. He reached for Xue Rui's pants pocket.
"What the fuck are you doing."
The material of the school uniform track pants was slick. Having a hand in the pocket felt like someone was touching his leg, which gave Xue Rui the creeps. He instinctively wanted to deck Qiu Mengze.
Seeing Qiu Mengze fish the cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket, Xue Rui warily hiked up his pants.
"I'll buy next time," Qiu Mengze said with a sly grin, then grabbed a few other guys and headed for the bathroom.
Xue Rui speechlessly watched the group walk away, their arms slung over each other's shoulders.
His childhood friend's motivation for smoking was remarkably simple: Qiu Mengze thought holding a cigarette in front of girls looked cool. To put it bluntly, it was purely for show.
From the back door of the classroom, Xue Rui watched the boys' bathroom. Qiu Mengze was pacing back and forth in front of it, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. He kept craning his neck to look around, then quickly yanking his head back whenever he saw someone he didn't recognize.
Qiu Mengze was afraid of being seen by a teacher, yet terrified the girls heading to the girls' room wouldn't see him.
He was completely oblivious to the fact that his furtive, sneaky posture made him look no different from a thief trying to pick a lock.
"Fucking moron," Xue Rui muttered. 'This is too damn real.' He was certain now that he had returned to his high school days.
'I probably died from overwork in the other world,' he thought. 'My parents must be heartbroken.'
'Then again,' he mused, 'I died in a private club. Not exactly a dignified place to go.'
'Plus, because of all the business schmoozing, I was constantly footing the bill for clients. My membership account showed several hundred thousand in spending every year. I was a top-tier VVIP—the kind the club would visit at home if you got sick and send a deluxe floral arrangement if you died.'
'Even if I were to be revived now, no one would likely listen to my explanation. My reputation was shot the moment I collapsed in a place like that.'
"With that level of social suicide, it's better they didn't revive me. Being reborn is pretty good."
Xue Rui quickly accepted the fact that he had been reborn.
But his primary goal now was to completely root out this nightmare named Lin Ruoxi from his life. Otherwise, he'd never be able to eat or sleep in peace.
"The one who tied the bell is the one to untie it," Xue Rui muttered to himself. He grabbed a chair with one hand, walked up to Lin Ruoxi, and said, "Lin Ruoxi."
Lin Ruoxi froze. She cautiously raised her head, peeking from behind her bangs at the tall, well-built boy in front of her.
"Lin Ruoxi, why didn't you answer when I called your name?" With a CLANG, Xue Rui slammed a chair down facing her, then sat on it backward, straddling the backrest.
'A girl like this isn't ostracized by others; she isolates herself,' Xue Rui thought. 'It's going to take a lot of work to figure out why she decided to end her life.'
"I... I..." Lin Ruoxi's body started to tremble.
'She had known of Xue Rui for a long time, and none of her impressions were good.'
'For example, the time he was publicly reprimanded before the entire school for shattering a backboard while dunking a basketball.'
'Or using the dorm room lights to form a giant heart to woo the school beauty.'
'Or hijacking the morning exercise broadcast to play a love song as a confession...'
'In short, it didn't matter if you were a boy or a girl; anyone who caught Xue Rui's attention ended up terrified.'
'And now, this flashy, unruly boy had come for her. She couldn't for the life of her figure out why.'
"Why is Brother Rui talking to her instead of looking for Gu Muxue?" a short boy in black-rimmed glasses asked.
"Who's Gu Muxue?" The moment Xue Rui said this, he remembered.
'That was the girl he had chased from middle school all the way through high school. He'd done countless crazy things for her, but in the end, he had never managed to win her over.'
'Who would've thought that after so many years, her name would be less memorable than Lin Ruoxi's. He'd even forgotten what she looked like.'
'It made sense, though. Lin Ruoxi often appeared in his dreams in the image of Sadako, while the name Gu Muxue had slowly faded from his memory after he started college.'
"The girl I've been chasing for years. The most beautiful girl in school," Xue Rui answered his own rhetorical question, not wanting anyone to notice something was off about him.
"Xue Rui, why aren't you in Class One looking for Gu Muxue?" Qiu Mengze swaggered back, feeling he had suavely completed his break-time "mission" and deepened the impression he'd made on the surrounding girls.
"What, am I fucking obligated to go find Gu Muxue?"
"Break is only a few minutes. Is it that necessary? What is she, a Ginseng Fruit? Is taking a whiff of her going to add years to my life?"
Xue Rui finally let loose with a string of sarcastic questions, drawing many bewildered stares.
'Why does it seem like everyone expects me to be chasing after Gu Muxue?'
'Now that he was reborn, he'd be damned if he was going to be a simp again. What was that saying... A simp is the lowest form of life.'
"I don't care about any of that." Qiu Mengze couldn't be bothered to figure out what new brand of crazy Xue Rui was on. He pulled out fifty yuan and stuffed it into Xue Rui's hand.
"You bought Gu Muxue a cupcake and milk tea this morning. She just asked me to give you the money for it."
"How much did I spend?"
"Forgot. Twenty-something, I think."
"You know, I think a man has to be devoted. You can't just give up halfway," Xue Rui said, stuffing the cash into his pants pocket.
'He suddenly had a thought. Maybe he hadn't been completely head-over-heels back then. Maybe he'd been sticking to Gu Muxue for the kickbacks.'
'No wonder he remembered always being the one to treat his classmates at the school store, his allowance seemingly endless. Turns out he had another source of income.'
RING-RING-RING~
The bell for class rang, and the students returned to their seats, somewhat disappointed.
But unnoticed by anyone, Lin Ruoxi's hands, which had been clenched white, finally relaxed.
'She was grateful that Qiu Mengze and the others had bought her some time. But then she remembered Xue Rui's reputation for being relentlessly persistent and realized he would probably come for her again. The nervousness returned.'
It was the last class of the morning. The physics teacher was a short man in his fifties or sixties with more stubble around his mouth than hair on his head. You could tell just by looking at him that he was a veteran teacher.
As Xue Rui listened, however, he started to get drowsy. He vaguely recognized each symbol, but when they were all strung together, they looked like some kind of sleep-inducing incantation.
'Damn, I was a real genius back in the day for learning this stuff,'
Xue Rui thought, praising his past self, and then peacefully drifted off to sleep.
'The image of his death from overwork was still fresh in his mind. Now that he had a second chance at life, he couldn't afford to get that exhausted again.' Xue Rui especially cherished his time for sleep.