Back To The Past To Cherish You - Chapter 1

“Qinqin, I left the kiwi in the dining room. Remember to eat it before bed.”

“Got it! I’m coming to get it now!”

Si Chun put on a headband and ran to the dining room in the beige bunny slippers she had loved most when she was twelve. She picked up the kiwi, still cold enough to chill her fingers, carefully peeled it, and scooped into it with a little spoon. Sure enough, it was red inside.

Ms. Si Jiao was usually careful with money, but she believed that no matter how hard things were, a child shouldn’t have to go without. When it came to food, she always chose the best for her daughter.

The sweet and tart flesh danced on Si Chun’s tongue. Every time she ate, the sensations were unmistakable, as if reminding her that a car accident had sent her back to the summer when she was twelve.

In her last memory, she and her girlfriend, Ling Yan, had been waiting for the light to change on their way home from work when they got into an argument over something trivial.

Then a car suddenly drove into what should have been a safe area. Si Chun’s head struck the car hard, and the last thing she saw before losing consciousness was Ling Yan throwing herself toward her without a thought for her own safety.

For the first little while after arriving here, Si Chun’s thoughts were a mess every day.

She missed her mother. She missed Ling Yan.

She came from a single-parent family, and her mother, Ms. Si Jiao, loved her dearly. Even a minor illness or ache would worry her mother for a long time. Si Chun couldn’t imagine how devastated she would be by the news of the accident.

Besides, before she lost consciousness, she had felt no pain apart from the blow to her head. Yet she had still returned to her younger years. She didn’t know whether she was trapped in a long dream or whether… she had died just like that.

But if Ling Yan had shielded her from another impact, then, in theory, Ling Yan must have been hurt even more badly than she was.

Si Chun forced herself to stop thinking about things she had no way to confirm. Summer vacation would end in a few days, and she would have to report to Zhiting No. 3 Middle School.

Everything in this world felt too real. For now, she could only assume she had been reborn and had to start again from scratch. Naturally, she couldn’t neglect her studies either.

“Yanyan? Yanyan!”

A woman’s voice came from behind Ling Yan. When she received no answer, she called again at once, louder this time, with undisguised impatience.

Ling Yan turned her head mechanically. Her aunt’s face came into view.

In the past, Ling Yan had numbed herself to it and never noticed. Now she could see it clearly.

Her aunt’s every expression betrayed heartfelt annoyance, as though an unwanted burden had been thrust upon her and she couldn’t get rid of it. Bound by so-called morality and family ties, she could only swallow her resentment and bear it.

So her uncle and aunt’s family had disliked her from the very beginning.

She had been back in her younger days for quite some time, but she still couldn’t tell whether she was dreaming or whether, just as in online novels, she had died in an accident and been reborn at the start of it all.

Either way, fate had played a joke on her that wasn’t funny at all.

“Yanyan, you’ll be reporting to Jiarui in a few days. Is everything ready? Do you need us to buy anything new?” Seeing how strained things had become, her uncle hurried over to smooth them out.

“Thank you. Mom prepared everything long ago. I don’t need anything,” Ling Yan replied tersely, her tone cool.

“Listen to this child! Why do you have to be so cutting when your elders are only showing concern?” her aunt said, plainly displeased. “Jiarui is an elite school! If you overlook anything, those rich people will eat you alive before you even know what’s happened! No matter how thoroughly your mother prepared, she won’t be able to look after you in the future—”

“That’s enough! Stop it!” Her uncle cut her off immediately, then looked at Ling Yan apologetically. “Yanyan, your aunt only wants what’s best for you. After all, we’re your family now. If you need anything from now on, tell your aunt and me, all right?”

“I need to help my little brother with his summer homework.” Ling Yan couldn’t be bothered to say more. She dropped the words lightly, and the couple fell silent, their good-cop, bad-cop act brought to a halt.

As for whether she would actually do it, or how much effort she would put into helping that useless brat who threw his family’s weight around, that would depend entirely on her mood.

Back in the little bedroom she had occupied for years in this “home,” Ling Yan locked the door at once. She touched the black cloth she wore over her heart, took it off, folded it, and locked it in a drawer.

During the summer after she finished primary school, when she was twelve, both her parents had drowned on a trip to take her to see the sea. Her uncle’s family had then taken her in.

Fate had sent her back to the beginning of everything at the point in her life when she had most wanted to die. Should she call that fortunate or unfortunate…

Ling Yan thought with bitter amusement.

September came, and the first year of middle school began.

Si Chun returned to a school environment she knew all too well.

Middle school was an important time, when a bewildered child gradually grew into a teenager capable of standing on her own. Ms. Si Jiao had worried about Si Chun, so she had deliberately enrolled her at Zhiting No. 3 Middle School, where she taught. That way, she could check in with Si Chun’s homeroom teacher and subject teachers whenever she needed to and be there for her until graduation.

After graduating from university, Si Chun had also taken a teaching job at Zhiting No. 3 Middle School, partly for personal reasons and partly because it was convenient.

There was no end to things to deal with at the start of the school year. Si Chun taught middle school Chinese, and she knew how lopsided her abilities were. Back then, she hadn’t done well enough on the high school entrance exam to qualify for guaranteed admission to the top key high school. Now that she had a chance to start over, she needed to quickly find and fill the gaps in the science subjects she had long since forgotten.

The first week was the usual military training. The blazing September sun left Si Chun dazed. During a break, she flung out both arms and collapsed onto the grass beneath a tree.

“Get up. Drink some water first.”

But the moment she did, Ling Yan’s voice suddenly sounded in her head.

Si Chun pushed herself upright, startled. Ling Yan was nowhere near her.

She looked around in confusion, but couldn’t see Ling Yan anywhere.

…Of course. She was back in her younger years.

Naturally, the girlfriend who had lately been picking inexplicable fights with her over the smallest things had no reason to cross paths with her at this point.

But Si Chun vaguely remembered Ling Yan mentioning once that they had actually attended the same middle school, just not the same class.

That made things easy. She could ask her mother for the list of first-year students. Once she knew Ling Yan’s class, she could sneak over to see her!

Si Chun had never looked forward to lunch break so much. As soon as she finished eating, she hurried to her mother’s office and greeted the teachers one by one. Then she opened a drawer with practiced ease, took out the neatly stapled student list, and carefully read down each page without skipping a single name.

Her heart thudded in her chest, each beat faster than the last, and her cheeks grew a little warm.

She didn’t even know what she was hoping for. Perhaps… she was simply curious to see what the person she loved most had looked like when she was young and innocent.

Jiarui International School.

Ling Yan had long since grown used to returning from a meal to find her water bottle and important textbooks missing.

When she had still been a naive young girl, her fascination with the elite schools in novels had led her to apply to one nearby, with her parents’ consent.

It was only many years later that she learned how expensive Jiarui’s tuition was.

Her parents had worked hard and knew how to seize opportunities, so they had saved a great deal and could naturally afford it. As for her uncle’s family…

Whenever Ling Yan remembered what a former classmate—whose name she had since forgotten—had confessed to her while drunk during a game of Truth or Dare at a reunion years later, she wanted to laugh coldly.

—“Remember how you transferred out of Jiarui after only a few days? I think a group of people was bullying you, right? Your uncle actually paid them to do it. That cost a lot less than three years of tuition at Jiarui!”

Her uncle had taken in his deceased older brother’s orphaned daughter, but he hadn’t wanted to pay her tuition. Too concerned with appearances to suggest a transfer himself, he had chosen to spend a little money to maintain the pretense and let the school environment and the cruelty of other children hurt an innocent girl who had no idea what was going on.

She was going to transfer sooner or later. She had no intention of enduring even half a day more of it.

That evening, when she returned to the place where she was staying, Ling Yan went to her uncle and asked to transfer to Zhiting No. 3 Middle School.

In truth, transferring to Zhiting No. 3 had not been her choice back then. No. 2 and No. 1 both had better overall results and teaching environments, and her grades and aptitude had been good enough to earn her a place at No. 1.

Ling Yan could more or less piece together her uncle’s reasons for arranging things this way. It would make it easier to keep her down and control her, so she wouldn’t grow strong enough to leave them behind.

She even knew exactly what awaited her at Zhiting No. 3 Middle School. Still, she wanted to jump into that fire.

—Si Chun was at Zhiting No. 3 Middle School.

It was Si Chun’s alma mater, and the school where she would work after graduating.

If nothing unexpected happened, they were destined to have no contact with each other during those years, right up to graduation.

But Ling Yan had decided to go anyway.

Even if she could only catch one glimpse of Si Chun before Si Chun knew who she was…

The name “Si Chun” repeated itself over and over in her mind. By the time Ling Yan suddenly came to her senses, she discovered she had dug her nails into her wrist hard enough to draw blood without realizing it.

Si Chun spent the entire lunch break going through the list without finding Ling Yan’s name.

Unwilling to believe it, she waited patiently until she got home from school. After going over the science material she had scheduled for herself, she borrowed her mother’s computer on the pretext of looking up a question. While her mother cooked in the kitchen, Si Chun quietly opened the digital student list and used Ctrl+F to search for the name.

Still nothing.

Ling Yan had never liked talking about her past, and Si Chun was used to respecting her wishes. If her girlfriend didn’t want to bring it up, she wouldn’t ask. As a result, she didn’t know what Ling Yan had gone through in middle school.

Besides, Ling Yan’s grades throughout middle school didn’t seem to have been particularly good. Otherwise, the school would have favored her early on, entered her in plenty of competitions, and helped her win all sorts of honors. By the final year, she should have been placed in Class One with the other top students and qualified for guaranteed admission to a key high school.

As Si Chun searched her memory, she found one clear recollection of Ling Yan from that period.

On the high school entrance exam, and only then, Ling Yan had performed far beyond expectations. She had ranked first in their year, and even first in the entire district.

When the results came out, Si Chun had heard her homeroom teacher mention a girl in another class who had emerged as a dark horse. Her score was so high it was as though she’d seen the answer key, yet she had never stood out at all before then.

After expressing her amazement, the teacher had lamented that the girl wasn’t in her class. Otherwise, she could have secured her competition places and a recommendation for admission. If she had gone to the top key high school with those honors, the teachers there would have valued her from the start.

Which class would Ling Yan end up in?

And why had she hidden her abilities for three years, only drawing her sword at the last and most important moment?

At dinner, Si Chun told her mother the name “Ling Yan” anyway.

Ms. Si Jiao could plainly tell that her daughter was avoiding her eyes and hiding something.

Curious, she propped up her chin and asked, “Would you like to tell Mom who that is?”

“She’s…” Si Chun paused. “A very good, very talented girl.”

The person she loved most, the one she would never let go of for the rest of her life.

“She’s going to transfer here, is that it?” Si Jiao asked.

“Mm. Unless something unexpected happens, yes.” Si Chun didn’t know whether things would change in “this life,” but if Ling Yan wasn’t on the initial list at the start of the school year, the only possibility left was that she would transfer in. “Please keep an eye out for her, Mom!”