Returning to Infancy with my Nemesis - Chapter 74

The winter break always seemed too short, with hardly any time left after the Lunar New Year celebrations.

Due to the separation of subjects in the second semester of the first year of high school, there weren’t many assignments for this winter break. Aside from the standard winter break assignments provided by the school for various subjects, there wasn’t much else.

Since Tang Mian would be moving to a new liberal arts class in the next semester, he only needed to focus on the liberal arts assignments.

The teacher hadn’t torn off the answers from the summer vacation assignments, so there wasn’t much pressure. Tang Mian had already completed and checked all of them before the Lunar New Year.

After the Lunar New Year, during the snowy days, the temperature outside remained low. Tang Mian stayed indoors with the heater on, doing some early preparation for the textbooks he would be using in the second semester of the first year, or helping his mother draw illustrations of winter plants. He hardly wanted to go out.

There was no choice; going out meant freezing his ears, and he didn’t want to wear earmuffs. Getting frostbite would be even more unpleasant.

Someone like him, who was afraid to go out during winter and summer breaks, was more suited for freelance work.

Fu Shizhao had left the lucky bag he got from the temple at Tang Mian’s place, saying it was for the kitten.

This action completely dispelled Tang Mian’s doubts.

It seemed he had indeed prayed for lucky bags for Snowball and Cotton Candy.

Originally, the lucky bag was tied to the kitten’s cage. Tang Mian noticed that Cotton Candy liked to scratch with its claws, fearing it would damage the lucky bag in a few days, so he took it down and put it away, then bought some new toys for it.

Now the lucky bag was stored together with his own lucky bag in the cupboard, and he didn’t pay much attention to it anymore.

He must have overthought it. Fu Shizhao spent every day with him; if he had someone he liked, he couldn’t possibly not notice. Even if he didn’t notice the ambiguous relationship between Mu Zichen and Fu Jiacao… for Fu Shizhao …he should still be able to tell. After all, Fu Shizhao was different from Mu Zichen and Fu Jiacao.

This life’s Fu Shizhao was someone he watched grow up.

As he sat in the car with the heater on, on the day they descended the mountain, Tang Mian completely pushed aside the fleeting thoughts that had stirred up before he drifted into sleep. He really didn’t want to think about anything related to Fu Shizhao from his past life anymore.

Even if he did have some kind of special feeling towards the Fu Shizhao from his past life, like Mu Zichen and Fu Jiacao did… it was all in the past now.

There was no need to invest too much emotion into things that couldn’t be realized.

It was like a math problem with a mistake in it; no matter how you tried to solve it, you couldn’t get the answer, and you’d just keep exhausting yourself.

Once last semester, there was a math question on a test paper that had a printing error. Tang Mian couldn’t solve it no matter what, thinking the question was just too difficult, and spent a lot of time on it, only to come up with nothing.

Not long after, Fu Shizhao raised his hand and told the teacher about it. After checking, the teacher corrected one number in the question, and it became much easier to solve.

Tang Mian knew he couldn’t be the one to “change the number”.

He didn’t want to waste any more time on this question that couldn’t be answered.

After coming to terms with it, Tang Mian felt much lighter.

There were always regrets in life.

So many regrets from his past life were fulfilled in this life; he was already quite content. To ask for more would be too greedy.

On the first day of school in the second semester of high school, Tang Mian got up early.

His sister-in-law had come home for a visit the day before school started, and this morning, his parents accompanied him to school.

Tang Mian didn’t have breakfast, but instead had Fu Shizhao bring him rice balls and freshly ground soy milk from a breakfast shop near his house, just like he used to. After a whole winter vacation without them, he had been craving them badly.

Perhaps it was the cold on the mountain, coupled with the warmth of the car’s heater, Tang Mian couldn’t resist the drowsiness that crept over him. With still about half an hour of driving from the foot of the mountain to home, Tang Mian decided to simply fall asleep.

He leaned against Fu Shizhao as he slept.

At this moment, he didn’t care about maintaining any distance from Fu Shizhao or pondering about anything else. What distance was there to maintain anyway?

He and Fu Shizhao couldn’t possibly be like Mu Zichen and Fu Jiacao. At least, not with this incarnation of Fu Shizhao.

Tang Mian startled himself with his own thoughts, but the drowsiness was too overwhelming for surprise to dispel it. Snuggled against the comfortable warmth of Fu Shizhao’s loose down jacket, Tang Mian closed his eyes tightly.

Fu Shizhao’s hands were tucked in his pockets, feeling the slight sway of Tang Mian’s hair against his neck. His fingers lightly traced the patterns on the lucky bag. Would the little cats and dogs be happy forever?

He had drawn a very auspicious lot this time. The slip of paper with the fortune was also placed into the lucky bag.

Actually, Tang Mian could have brought more snacks from home to class; there was no need to run to the cafeteria every day. They weren’t lacking snacks, but isn’t the fun of high school life all about that? It wasn’t fun to always stay in the classroom.

In his previous life, Tang Mian even skipped classes.

During that time, things started to go wrong at home, and his mood was really bad, so he skipped an evening self-study session and went out for a walk. At that time, he was accompanied by a friend from the same class—the one who later got into a fight with Fu Shizhao and ended up in the hospital.

 Tang Mian still hasn’t figured out what that fight was all about. Was it a personal grudge between Fu Shizhao and his friend, or did it have something to do with him?

He vaguely remembered that he did meet Fu Shizhao with his friend, but nothing seemed to happen. It was like many other unintentional encounters they had before—silent and even somewhat hostile.

After that fight, the friend transferred to another school, and Tang Mian couldn’t contact him anymore.

At the hospital, he had forcefully pushed Fu Shizhao, who was using crutches, to the ground and left without looking back. They didn’t have any interaction until graduation.

Combined with the pressure from home and school during that time and the anger he felt towards Fu Shizhao, Tang Mian fell ill after returning home. By the time he fully recovered, that incident had come to an end.

Bringing his thoughts back, Tang Mian took a sip of his soy milk.

 “I wonder if they’ve arrived.”

Cell phones weren’t allowed in school, so it wasn’t convenient for them to contact each other.

“We’ll know once we go over. Let me put my backpack in the classroom first, then I’ll accompany you upstairs,” Fu Shizhao said.

Tang Mian nodded lightly, not refusing.

Mu Zichen wasn’t in class, but his backpack was, so he was probably accompanying Fu Jiacao upstairs.

Fu Shizhao put his backpack on Mu Zichen’s desk and turned back, only to find Tang Mian staring absentmindedly at his own seat in the classroom.

Fu Shizhao gently took hold of his arm and brought his thoughts back.

“Let’s go,” Tang Mian hurriedly lowered his eyelids, not breaking free from Fu Shizhao’s grip, and walked upstairs with him. He remembered some things from the previous life.

In the previous life, Fu Shizhao and Mu Zichen also became desk mates after the class division.

The difference from this life was that they didn’t know each other before the division; they became acquainted after being assigned to the same desk. Both of them were tall and had good eyesight, so they always sat in the last row of the classroom.

Fu Shizhao’s class was always Tang Mian’s route to his own classroom, although he could take a detour to the stairs on the other side, but sometimes time was too tight, and he could only take this route.

Standing outside just now, Tang Mian inexplicably felt a sense of overlap with the previous life. It felt sour.

Continuing like this would only become increasingly strange.

Tang Mian continued to focus on his rice ball, stuffing his cheeks full and occasionally responding to Fu Shizhao’s words. In the end, he almost choked and had to drink half a cup of soy milk to feel better.

Fu Shizhao patted his back for a while.

Upon reaching the top floor, as they exited the stairs, Tang Mian subconsciously glanced at the steps leading to the rooftop.

One of the extracurricular activities for students in the top-floor classroom was going up and down these steps.

But Tang Mian knew that the door at the end of the steps leading to the rooftop was always locked, and students were not allowed up there, for fear of accidents. However, the view from up there was nice; Tang Mian had gone up once with a teacher.

Nevertheless, many couples would secretly cuddle and kiss at the end of the stairs during evening self-study.

Next to them were two experimental buildings where no one would be at night, an absolute “dating sanctuary” for school couples, although it was a bit embarrassing due to the easily triggered sound-controlled lights.

Exiting the stairs, the two of them headed straight towards Tang Mian’s classroom. As expected, Mu Zichen and Fu Jiacao were both there. Cheng Ruan was there too; the girl had cut her hair short and looked quite handsome.

The reunion of the five kindergarten classmates was quite pleasant, with one topic following another. Seeing that time was running out and the bell for class was about to ring, almost all the students in the classroom had arrived.

Just as Fu Shizhao and Mu Zichen were about to leave, a figure hurriedly rushed in. He was tall, with a jade pendant hanging from a gold chain around his neck.

A fleeting hint of imperceptible coldness flashed in Fu Shizhao’s eyes. He noticed Tang Mian’s gaze also falling on this person. It was the friend from Tang Mian’s previous life, the one he had fought with.

Fu Shizhao had long checked the student roster for Tang Mian’s class and his own to avoid suspicion. He knew that this person had been placed in the same class as Tang Mian.

He didn’t manipulate anything to influence the class assignments, nor did he secretly ensure this person was separated from Tang Mian’s class.

With Fu Jiacao and Cheng Ruan in Tang Mian’s class this time, and him waiting for Tang Mian to go to and from school together every day, he felt somewhat relieved. Last time, he had been annoyed by this person for a long time, and coincidentally needed to stir up trouble at school, so he “found” him and got into a fight. This time, he was determined to let Tang Mian see what kind of person this “friend” really was.