My school, Vanilla City Vocational and Technical College, is located south of Central District in Vanilla City, about nine kilometers from Chang’an Avenue, the very heart of the district.

You could tell from the name alone. It was a junior college. Or, to put it bluntly... a vocational one.

Back then, “my” gaokao score was only a little over three hundred. A school like this was all I could get into.

This world was completely unfamiliar to the me from my previous life.

If I had to use web novel terms, then this was an “alternate” world.

Overall, it was pretty similar to Earth. But the map of every country was completely different from the country I knew in my past life. Time had also jumped forward by more than ten years.

Today was Thursday, October 23rd, 2030.

The country I was in now was called the Skyflame Nation. Vanilla City, the capital of Longan Province, was a genuine first-tier coastal metropolis. Life here moved fast. The urban area alone was split into nine districts, and the largest one, Central District, sat right in the middle of the city.

Still, even though time had advanced by more than ten years, the technology and people’s daily habits were about the same as in my previous world. At least, that was what I could tell from Bi Xinxue’s memories.

And because Vanilla City was just too huge, and life moved way too fast, everyone was busy like spinning tops. The whole city had developed a strange kind of “low-desire” culture. Ordinary young people didn’t want to buy houses. They didn’t want to work overtime and save money. They just drifted through life. They didn’t want blind dates, romance, marriage, or even socializing.

That was the kind of environment the “Civet Cat” girlfriend rental app was born into.

Otaku guys were scared of blind dates, but sometimes they still got lonely and wanted a girlfriend to keep them company? Easy. Rent one.

Want to show off your relationship at school? Want to get back at your ex? Want to experience what it feels like to be loved? Rent one. All of it was rentable.

Anyway, your boyfriend or girlfriend was someone you paid for. Afterward, there were reviews and ratings too. So they definitely wouldn’t hold anything against you. You didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing. You didn’t have to worry about making them mad over every little thing. You could speak freely and do whatever you wanted. How comfortable was that? It was basically the ideal relationship setup of the current age.

So far, Civet Cat was still just a local app in Vanilla City. It was in the startup phase. Very few people knew about it, and there weren’t many customers or signed members either. That was why the boss was willing to lose money signing female college students like “me” just to bulk up the app’s inventory. If I wasn’t mistaken, once they got big in the future, signing up probably wouldn’t come with money anymore.

“Is that her?”

“Probably... right? The computer science girl, Software Class Two. The really pretty one.”

“Then I guess the news was right. She really was saved.”

After getting off the bus and walking forward a few hundred meters, I saw the front gate of my school, Vanilla Vocational and Technical College.

I let a few cars slowly drive out of campus first, then entered through the side gate on the right. On the way to the girls’ dorm, I heard plenty of whispers around me.

Most of the people talking were pointing at me. Their voices were very, very low. But maybe because I’d been drowned once, or maybe because my hearing had sharpened after being reborn, I could still hear them clearly—

“Why would she do something like that...”

“No idea. If I were as pretty as her, I’d be happy every day. Why would I want to die?”

“Shh, lower your voice. What if she hears you and gets upset again? We’ll be held responsible. Didn’t you see what the counselor said in the group chat? She’s been saved, so stop bringing it up.”

“Oh, right...”

This really was...

For a moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Looks like I’d become a minor celebrity at this school after the whole river-jumping incident.

Then again, it made sense. This body was so pretty that even if she was withdrawn, she’d still attract plenty of attention just by going to class and coming back from the classroom every day. And this was the age of instant information. Forget my own school—even if a student from the school next door jumped into a river, those chaos-loving guys would spread the news and photos through QQ groups and WeChat groups until every student had seen them.

Well, if it were the real Bi Xinxue, she probably would care about all these weird looks.

“I’m back.”

Enduring all the strange stares from the students around me, I followed my memories to the second girls’ dorm building, then dragged my suitcase up to the second floor.

Girls’ Dorm Building Two, Room 202. My dorm.

The moment I pushed open the dorm door, I suddenly realized this was my first time entering a girls’ dorm—even if I was using a girl’s body.

“How many times have I told you? Don’t blast Douyin videos out loud. Can’t you understand that?”

“And you’ve got the nerve to talk about me? It’s not like I’m watching videos during rest hours. So what if I play them out loud? You’re the one chatting with that Qing-ge every day, talking on the phone forever. It’s two in the morning and you’re still chirping away. Are the rest of us not supposed to sleep?”

The moment I opened the door, I saw two girls lying on their own beds, accusing each other.

One of their phones was still blasting a loud song—

“Hahahahaha... You can’t beat me, can’t help it, I’m just this strong... lalalala...”

When they saw me walk in, both girls froze. Then they looked like they’d been scared out of their wits.

“X-Xiaoxue?”

The girl on the left fumbled to turn off her phone speaker. “Y-you’re okay now?”

“I’m fine.”

I smiled and walked in with my luggage. “Sorry for making everyone worry.”

According to my memories, the old “me” wasn’t like this.

Forget saying something like “sorry.” On normal days, the total number of words “I” exchanged with these people could be counted on one hand. Every day, “I” was like a lifeless block of wood.

“Whoa... no way. It feels like you’ve become a different person.”

The girl on the right curiously crawled to the end of her bed and carefully looked me over. “I saw the news... the firefighters pulled you out.”

“Yeah.”

I shoved my suitcase under my bed, then put my backpack on the computer desk.

“The next day, the police officers even came to visit us. I apologized to them too, and thanked them.”

This was a six-person dorm. I didn’t know whether the other girls had gone out to eat or on dates, but only these two were here right now.

The girl on my right, near the bathroom, was my classmate. Her name was Chen Xiaorui. In “my” memories, she was a slightly chubby girl with a cheerful personality and a boyfriend. The two of them could talk on the phone until late at night.

As for the one on the left... I honestly couldn’t remember her name. I only remembered that she liked scrolling short videos, kept the volume way too loud, and laughed in a kind of wild, carefree way.

You couldn’t expect the old “me,” a withdrawn girl, to memorize all her roommates’ names in just one month. Especially when that roommate wasn’t even in the same class.

That’s right. Aside from Chen Xiaorui on the left, the rest of the girls in this dorm weren’t in my class. They were all e-commerce majors from the School of Information Engineering.

Back when I filled out my college applications after the gaokao, I remembered choosing this school with a whatever attitude. I’d even checked the “accept adjustment” box. And somehow, that was how I got admitted into the computer department’s software technology major here.

A girl studying software. You could imagine how that turned out.

There were only two girls in Software Technology Class Two: me and Chen Xiaorui. Naturally, the school wasn’t going to give just the two of us a room by ourselves. And that was how this mixed “Software Technology + E-Commerce” dorm came to be.

“T-that’s good...”

Seeing how cheerful I looked, Chen Xiaorui seemed to let out a sigh of relief. “That’s more like it. You probably don’t even know this yourself, but you’re practically about to be voted the school beauty. You’re so pretty, your figure’s so good, and your voice is so cute. By then, the people chasing you could probably fill a whole camp. So why did you have to do something so rash?”

“Yeah. I was impulsive.”

I tidied up the slightly messy computer desk a little, then rummaged through the small wardrobe beside it and pulled out a plaid skirt.

A full JK outfit... probably wasn’t happening in time. This would have to do.

This little skirt was my sixteenth birthday gift from Mom last year.

In a whole year, Mom only came back twice. Once for Lunar New Year, and the other time was “my” birthday.

“Is the supermarket downstairs still open?”

I put the little skirt on the desk, then stuck my head out and asked Chen Xiaorui on the upper bunk.

“It is, of course it is. The shops on campus usually don’t close until eleven at night. Did you forget?”

The beds in this dorm were the old-fashioned bunk style. Three on each side of the room. Under each bed was a computer desk and a wardrobe. So Chen Xiaorui had to sit up to see me below. “Do you want to buy something? Want me to come with you?”

“No need. I’ll go by myself.”

I grabbed my phone and wallet, glanced at my chest—those two big white rabbits still impossible to hide even under a plain T-shirt—and ran out of the dorm with them bouncing.

Following the body’s memories, I found the campus supermarket and headed straight for the shoes and socks section, then found the women’s sock display.

After digging around for a while, I finally found a pair of over-the-knee black stockings in an inconspicuous corner.

“9.8 yuan? So expensive...”

With the black stockings in hand, I walked toward the supermarket exit, only to be drawn in by a small counter selling braised duck wings and drumsticks.

Mm...

Then I thought of my mom, who hesitated even over taking out a thousand yuan each month, and I quickly came back to my senses. I shook my head.

I was a girl now. If I ate too much meat, I’d get fat. No, no.

With that in mind, I handed the stockings to the cashier girl and paid.

I checked the time. It was exactly five o’clock.

Back in the dorm, I took out the cutest sky-blue T-shirt I owned from my suitcase, then carried it, the plaid skirt, and the stockings I’d just bought into the bathroom. Then I took off my clothes.

“Please let everything go smoothly...”