“Su Yu? Su Yu...”

An Zhi stretched out her not-so-long arm and waved it in front of Su Yu’s eyes. There was some worry in her bright eyes. Ever since they left the cafeteria, Su Yu had been spacing out.

“Oh... I’m fine.” Su Yu came back to himself and smiled as he shook his head.

“Really fine?”

“I’m perfectly okay. Why would anything be wrong?”

“Then you should pay attention in class. It’s only the first day of school.” An Zhi seriously reminded him, then turned back toward the podium and listened to the lecture.

Beside him, Gu Chuan had his head lowered, playing on his phone. Lu Siyuan and Chu Feng were still listening. But Su Yu couldn’t focus anymore.

He had zoomed in and out on that background photo countless times. He was sure of it. The one in the picture was the elementary school he used to attend.

It was a very ordinary public school. He even remembered that his grade had four classes in total.

Qingchuan was who knew how far from his home. And that school was so ordinary. Yet it had appeared in that woman’s social media post as a background image.

If it didn’t mean something... who would use such a dull photo as a background?

But the more he thought about it, the less he could make sense of it.

Maybe everything could be explained as a coincidence. But he couldn’t convince himself.

Maybe that woman had once been at his elementary school? It wasn’t impossible that she had been a teacher there. But Su Yu had no clear memory of it.

He had already almost forgotten all his elementary school teachers in his previous life, let alone now...

The woman was young... and beautiful. He searched his memory for a long time, but still couldn’t find any teacher like that from his elementary school.

No... could it be her?

That face in his memory was blurry, but he still vaguely remembered her beauty. But... it absolutely couldn’t be the woman from the bar.

Because they carried completely different tones.

The impression she had left in Su Yu’s mind had sunlight as its backdrop. Warm... like the winter sun. It was a pity that after elementary school, he never saw her again.

His thoughts were like a tangled ball of thread. The more he tried to sort them out, the messier they became.

Su Yu frowned and irritably raked a hand through his hair. What rebirth had brought him was baseless suspicion. He always couldn’t help recalling things from the past, even if he got no answer in the end.

Stop thinking about it... it’s meaningless.

Su Yu frantically told himself that in his heart, little by little trying to empty his mind. He not only didn’t want to ask that woman for the truth anymore, he even wanted to delete her contact and cut off the thought completely.

“Ring ring ring—”

The crisp class bell rang. His thoughts were cut off by the noise rising in the classroom. He rubbed his temples, easing the swelling pain in his head.

“The next class is still in this room, right?” Gu Chuan scratched his hair, sounding casual. “What class is it again? I don’t think I brought the book.”

“It’s Mental Health,” An Zhi answered right away with enthusiasm. “I think it’s some kind of beginning-of-term counseling class.”

“Then it’s probably super boring. What, are they gonna tell us to study hard and improve every day?”

An Zhi tilted her head and asked in confusion, “Huh? Shouldn’t we study hard? Also, my roommates from other majors said the teacher for this class is a really pretty big sister.”

“Uh...” Gu Chuan curled his lip, clearly not thinking this “pretty big sister” could be all that pretty.

But when the class bell rang, all of them subconsciously glanced toward the door, curious what kind of person this pretty big sister An Zhi mentioned would be.

...

The woman stepped into the classroom right on the bell.

The room went quiet for a moment. Then it suddenly exploded. Flashes kept going off in the crowd.

For a classroom that had still been drowsy just moments ago to erupt like this, it was exactly as An Zhi had said. The female teacher for this psychology class was very beautiful, the kind that stunned you at first glance.

It was a beauty that stirred not even half a trace of lust, yet still drew every eye and made people stare.

She wore a particularly well-fitted off-white dress. The finely patterned hem fell all the way to her ankles. The bit of pale skin left at her ankles was white as frost, smooth as cream.

She held a book in her arms and slowly walked to the front. Then she turned to face the classroom. A smile curved at her lips, light and gentle. It was like the warm sun after winter, shining with crystal clarity against white snow.

“Hello, everyone. I’m the teacher for this class from now on. At the same time, just like all of you, this is also my first time coming to this school. I hope we can all get along happily here in the future.”

The woman’s voice was soft and light, clear and quiet like spring water striking stone. It was also like a nun whispering a prayer by your ear in a church, as if it could smooth away all the violence and irritation in your heart.

Holding a piece of chalk, she wrote neat, graceful characters on the blackboard:

Gu Zhi.

That was her name.

“My name is Gu Zhi, and I’ll be your psychology teacher from now on. You may be wondering why this class is scheduled on the very first day of school. Actually, it’s so that in your future university studies and daily life...”

Gu Zhi began the lesson with a smile. Whenever someone asked a question, she would stop and answer it seriously. No matter how boring or vulgar the question itself was, that earnest attitude of hers made many people retreat red-faced.

The teacher might be pretty and gentle, but she probably had nothing to do with them. Listening to class also wasn’t as fun as the games on their phones. The shock Gu Zhi brought when she first entered the room quickly faded.

But there were still people sunk in a daze, unable to come back to themselves for a long while.

An Zhi stared blankly at the full softness on Gu Zhi’s chest, her little mouth hanging wide open. She couldn’t understand why they were both girls, and Gu Zhi was clearly still so young, yet there was a gulf between them.

She tilted her head and looked at Su Yu and Gu Chuan beside her, both staring straight at Gu Zhi with unblinking eyes. In her big eyes, all that remained was envy toward Gu Zhi, and annoyance at her own body, which was practically underdeveloped.

By the time Su Yu came back to himself, Gu Zhi on the podium had her back to him and was writing something on the blackboard.

He recognized that back.

That voice.

And even more, that name.

Gu Zhi.

If the impression hadn’t been deep enough, how many people could still remember their elementary school teachers? There wasn’t much from elementary school still left in Su Yu’s memory.

Gu Zhi was one of the few.

In his previous life, Gu Zhi had taught at Su Yu’s elementary school. It was an interest class related to health care and nursing. Su Yu still remembered that when she wasn’t teaching, Gu Zhi would usually stay in the school infirmary.

She often held a book in her hands. Sunlight filtered through the lush green shade outside the window, and she would sit beneath that tender green shadow.

So many years had passed, and she still hadn’t changed.

Especially that shoulder-length hair falling loose around her. At a glance, she looked gentle and elegant.

It was just that in his previous life, Gu Zhi left the school when Su Yu was in sixth grade. After that, Su Yu never saw her again.

No matter how deep the impression had once been, it had still been lost in the long river of time, its outline fading away.

He hadn’t expected... Gu Zhi to be in Qingchuan.

But as his memories revived, the unease in his heart still remained. Because vaguely, he felt that the contours of Gu Zhi’s face looked extremely similar to the woman sitting in the shadows at the bar.