Gan Lan walked out of her room wearing an oversized shirt and a pair of loose sweatpants.

Ye Yubai made no attempt to deny that he’d just picked the lock on her room with a piece of wire.

But he didn’t feel the slightest bit ashamed.

In fact, he even said, completely unabashedly, “I was worried about you! What if the pressure from school got to you and you hanged yourself in your room? Then I could rush in and save you in time, right?”

Gan Lan was at a loss for words.

Did she really look that fragile?

You really couldn’t expect anything decent to come out of his mouth.

Ye Yubai had already dished out her dinner and even thoughtfully prepared some garlic sauce.

“Try this. My mom made it. It’s way better than the junk from that restaurant downstairs.”

Gan Lan murmured, “Mm.”

She scooped up a spoonful and put it in her soup bowl, then stirred it around.

She lifted the bowl and took a small sip.

The savory, spicy flavor gave the whole bowl of soup a soul.

In both her past and present lives, Auntie Ye had always been amazing at making sauces.

Even after starting college, Gan Lan would often go to the Ye Family’s place to mooch a meal.

“Hurry up and eat. Clean up when you’re done. I’m going to study, hehe.”

Ye Yubai wolfed down his food.

As soon as he finished, he darted into his room and locked the door.

Thinking of how eager he’d been before she came in, Gan Lan could guess what he was in such a hurry to do.

Still, she couldn’t be bothered to call him out.

Knowing Ye Yubai’s shameless nature, he might even sling an arm around her neck and force her to watch something lewd with him.

…

Night had fallen completely.

Gan Lan took her time finishing her portion, cleared the table, packed up the takeout containers, put them in a garbage bag, and tied it shut.

Was Ye Yubai the type to love studying?

Obviously not.

He was a top student who regularly came in first or second, but he really didn’t like studying. He relied entirely on talent.

That was just how unfair the world was.

Someone like Gan Lan, who studied hard, could never catch up with naturally gifted people like him.

Gan Lan went back to her room and closed the door too.

She opened her schoolbag, took out the assignments from class, sorted them one by one, and worked through them carefully.

Gan Lan was good at humanities subjects, like Chinese and history.

Math problems gave her a headache. She’d been working for over half an hour and had only managed two problems—and on both, she’d only finished the first two parts.

Looking at the vast stretches of blank space on her math test, Gan Lan scratched her head.

This was one downside of being reborn.

She couldn’t remember the things she’d studied before very clearly anymore.

And she’d forgotten even more in the subjects she wasn’t good at.

By comparison, she remembered a lot more of Chinese and history.

“It’s been eight years, after all.” Gan Lan lay across her desk and sighed.

Suddenly, her phone went ding.

She picked it up and looked.

It was a message from Ye Yubai.

Ye Yubai: Hehe! Wanna come do homework in my room?

Gan Lan: …

Out of habit, she replied with an ellipsis, then put her phone down.

Doing homework with Ye Yubai would only end with neither of them finishing.

After all, Ye Yubai had no shortage of ways to have fun and kill time.

If Gan Lan were still a boy, then messing around together like they used to would be fine.

But now she was a girl.

She had to keep her distance from Ye Yubai.

Ye Yubai sent another message: Are you coming or not?

Gan Lan: No.

Ye Yubai: If you come over now, I’ll share the Naruto DVDs I bought yesterday.

Gan Lan: …

She rubbed her forehead and sighed.

Oh, right. She’d forgotten that everyone used to love watching Naruto back then.

But she wasn’t who she used to be. Now that she already knew how Naruto ended, would she still be interested in the DVDs?

Just then,

someone knocked on Gan Lan’s bedroom door.

Ye Yubai’s voice came from outside.

“Hey, you really don’t want to watch Naruto anymore? I paid a huge price to get the whole set! The picture quality’s amazing. If you don’t watch it, that’s your loss!”

Gan Lan sighed and stood up.

She went to the door and opened it.

Sure enough, Ye Yubai was holding a pile of brand-new DVDs.

Gan Lan looked at him, then at the DVDs in his hands, and curled her fingers into a fist.

“Wait here a second.”

She turned around, packed the extremely difficult math test into her schoolbag, slung it over her shoulder, and left her room.

By then, the wind had started blowing outside.

The cold wind battered the window, making it rattle.

Ye Yubai folded his arms and looked out the window. “Tsk.”

“Man, what a drag. Why does it have to rain tonight?”

Gan Lan heard him and paused.

Fragments of memory began to overlap.

She sat across from Ye Yubai’s seat, set down her schoolbag, and took out her test.

Ye Yubai shut the door with his foot.

He picked a DVD at random and slipped it into the player.

A familiar tune began to play.

Gan Lan picked up her pen and went back to working through the math problem.

Without thinking, she glanced up at Ye Yubai’s homework.

There were only three characters written on it.

And all three were the same: “Solve!”

Just looking at Ye Yubai’s homework gave Gan Lan a headache.

She could only lower her head and return to her own work, ignoring him.

“Gan Lan, look! The Chūnin Exams are coming up. Woohoo~”

Gan Lan: “You watch. Leave me out of it.”

“Holy crap, look at this! So cool!”

Gan Lan: “…”

She’d finally started to get somewhere, and he’d interrupted her again.

What a useless troublemaker!

Gan Lan looked up at him. “Shouldn’t you get started on your homework?”

Ye Yubai: “Isn’t tomorrow Saturday? What’s the rush?”

Gan Lan: “But you’re going to the movies with Meimei on Sunday.”

Ye Yubai frowned and gave her a strange look.

“Didn’t I already say I don’t want to go?”

Gan Lan shook her head.

“You’ll go.”

You went in your last life.

There was no reason this life would be any different.

Still, it was Ye Yubai’s choice. Gan Lan wouldn’t encourage him, but she wouldn’t try to stop him either.

Ye Yubai’s gaze grew complicated.

But he didn’t ask her anything else.

Watching anime alone wasn’t much fun, so he simply turned off the player and sat down at the desk.

He had just sat down

when lightning flashed and thunder roared outside.

Crack—

A dull boom sounded right beside her ear.

The torrential rain started pouring down all at once.

Ye Yubai clicked his tongue.

The lights flickered once, then went out.

“Power’s out. This lousy wiring.”

Ye Yubai stood up, went to the cabinet, and began searching for candles.

As he searched, he grumbled and complained.

“I told him this place was no good, but Dad wouldn’t listen. He just had to move here.”

Gan Lan rested her chin in her hand and gazed at the storm outside.

It was already a quarter past midnight.

At this point in her previous life, something had happened that she’d never forgotten…