Chapter 36: Ex-Girlfriend Zhang Ningzhi

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“Can you still bite it open?” Zhang Ningzhi asked, as innocent and curious as a little child.

“Yeah, it’s easy. You just do this and this...” Jiang Nian pinched up one corner of the milk carton and expertly bit a hole into it. “See? Open.”

Li Hua thought, Fine, fine, you opened it. I’m practically moved to tears.

He felt like the older brother in *My Classmate’s Younger Sister*—the one who kept his head down at his desk for two hours doing homework, pretending to be completely absorbed.

Bro-bro, stop flirting. The NPC can’t take it anymore.

At long last, class ended, and Nan Tong began acting insane again. Either several people merged layers in the same spot, or they embraced one another from front to back to practice the Heimlich pregnancy technique.

“How does it taste? Want Want Milk QQ Gummies!”

“Come on, baby!”

“Yes~”

Olympiad Class Three was bursting with talent, and the academic atmosphere was exceptionally strong. Before long, the madness became contagious, and zero-class energy filled the air.

“Holy shit!”

Li Hua was still in his seat when Ma Guojun and several others swarmed him, seized him by the arms and legs, and hoisted him up like a pig being slaughtered for the New Year.

“Jiang Nian! Help! Help me!”

“Leave him alone, Jiang Nian. Today, we’re taking care of him!” Ma Guojun adjusted his glasses.

Jiang Nian sat there looking awkward. He rose and said, “He is, after all, my sworn brother. Just standing by and watching would be a little lacking in loyalty.”

“I’ll hold his left leg. I don’t trust anyone else with it.”

Oh, screw you. My hanging heart has finally died.

During the extended break, they had only three minutes to rest before the warning bell for the running exercise rang. According to the Academic Affairs Office, all third-year students had to go downstairs and run.

In those three minutes, Li Hua got Arubad twice and was completely drained. But by blowing his own cover, he quickly dragged Jiang Nian into the circle of several boys from Olympiad Class Three.

Jiang Nian had observed that Li Hua was the sort of socially adept guy who was popular in class. A man like him could chat with even a stray dog by the roadside, and he had friends both inside and outside the class.

As for Zhang Ningzhi, the moment class ended, Yao Beibei dragged her to the bathroom for a two-on-two match. Girls’ little circles were harder to break into, and Yao Beibei was attempting to use bathroom diplomacy to help her escape the outsider zone.

The young students were not malicious. Each was using their own way to help the new classmates adapt to the group.

On the other hand, Yu Tongjie stood in stark contrast.

Ever since moving up to the advanced class, Yu Tongjie had eagerly answered questions in class, his voice drowning out everyone else’s. Even after class, he never slept. He simply lay over his desk in silence and worked through problems.

This guy was utterly impervious to persuasion. Kid, you’re invincible.

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Fortunately, this was a Chinese-style youth story. At most, his classmates thought he was a little strange. They might discuss him behind his back in their spare time, but they would not actually do anything, such as playing some kind of eighty-point game with him.

“Let’s go. Time for the run.”

Jiang Nian and Li Hua walked past the first group with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Jiang Nian glanced at Yu Tongjie, who was holding an English vocabulary book and preparing to go downstairs alone for the running exercise.

What a hardworking young man.

Aside from not being a decent human being, he could almost pass for one.

“What? You know Brother B?” Li Hua asked. “He’s the biggest poser in the class. He acts like some damn anime protagonist. Even the students in Class Zero can’t match him.”

Jiang Nian shook his head. “Not familiar with him.”

He was not the sort of person who repaid evil with virtue, but neither did he seek revenge for every little grievance. If someone merely whispered about him behind his back and it was nothing serious, he generally treated it like a dog barking and let it go.

The school was a giant rookie parcel station, packed with countless small packages and oversized shipments that could never be completely cleared out.

The running exercise was utterly uneventful. A few people simply looked as if they were about to die.

The huge Ma Guojun ran beside Jiang Nian in the same line. After two laps, he disappeared from sight. When Jiang Nian turned around, he saw that the bastard had completely merged into the line of the class behind them.

Wait. Who the hell are you, classmate?

While trotting along beside the physical-education representative from the neighboring class, Ma Guojun adjusted his glasses and gave him an ingratiating grin.

“I’m from the neighboring class. Let me cut in for a bit.”

What the hell was that? What a disgusting thing to say. Fortunately, the other class’s representative was a boy. But less than half a minute later, the enormous Ma Guojun accelerated back to Jiang Nian with a horrified expression.

“What happened?” Jiang Nian asked.

“Damn it! I said, ‘Let me cut in for a bit,’ and that white-socked athlete blushed!”

Ma Guojun’s two plump legs pumped furiously. During the final lap, he did not dare fall behind again.

Jiang Nian did not know whether running could improve physical fitness. But he did know that Ma Guojun’s moral standards declined in inverse proportion to the number of laps.

For every extra lap, he randomly selected the mother of a school administrator to curse.

As soon as the running exercise ended, Yu Tongjie’s eyes instinctively swept across the girls in the class. His gaze settled on two of them. Zhang Ningzhi was not among them.

He was deeply disappointed in Zhang Ningzhi now because she had defended Jiang Nian.

Still, when his gaze swept past the group, he inevitably saw Zhang Ningzhi. Her face was flushed, and she unconsciously turned her head, seeming to have locked onto someone else in the class as well.

Jiang Nian was tall and stood on the outer edge, chatting with the low-class Ma Guojun. When he turned around, he suddenly caught Zhang Ningzhi looking at him and could not help taking a second glance.

The girl, caught red-handed, instantly blushed. Like a willow branch retracting after being stretched out, she quickly shrank back.

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Ah. He saw her.

Pretending not to see him would not work.

Jiang Nian was just about to laugh when a sudden chime rang out in his mind.

[At thirty-eight, while tidying up your belongings, you open an ordinary-looking box and awaken the past buried within.

A neat ponytail. Her innocent face. Photograph after photograph and carefully prepared gifts, all covered in dust.

Your gaze comes to rest on a lunchbox. Ten years ago, you accidentally broke your leg. On a snowy night, she carried that lunchbox across a thousand miles to come see you.

You realize that you had not been a complete failure. At the very least, you had once won the wholehearted love of a lovely girl.

Mission: Reestablish contact with Zhang Ningzhi, your girlfriend from many years ago, with whom you have lost touch.

Reward: 300 yuan.]

Looking at the panel that had appeared before him, line after line of text, Jiang Nian was slightly stunned.

Hold on. How did the version of me from another timeline in the future have an ex-girlfriend?

Having an ex-wife is already impressive enough. And now I have an ex-girlfriend too?

The classes were dispersing from the field in batches, and the surroundings were filled with a clamorous din.

Jiang Nian could not help falling into thought. Logically speaking, he had remained in the regular class throughout high school. Zhang Ningzhi, on the other hand, had been capable of advancing into the Olympiad program. So from high school through university, the two of them should never have crossed paths.

Yes. That made sense.

Ten years ago meant he had been twenty-eight.

Wasn’t that the year the other version of himself had gone on blind dates? Jiang Nian could not remember clearly. After all, it was not something he had personally experienced; he had only seen it mentioned on the panel.

Two years later, he had already started bleeding money for the bride price. Why had he married so hastily? With such a wonderful girlfriend, how had she become an ex-girlfriend? And why had he been forced into blind dates that very same year?

This life-simulation game... No, wait. This life-replay game was seriously burning his brain.

For Jiang Nian, he could treat it as a game. But the information it revealed did seem to offer faint glimpses of the future, even if many things would change.

Since he could not figure it out, he simply stopped thinking about it.

He would complete the mission first.

If this had been the thirty-eight-year-old version of himself, completing the mission would clearly have been a losing proposition. He might have had to pay a huge sum to make inquiries or track down Zhang Ningzhi’s whereabouts.

But now...