CH 39

“Teacher! He was the one who stole the money!”

“His family is so poor; he must have stolen it…”

“Son of a bitch, you’ve disgraced me!”

“Son, it’s mommy’s fault…”

“Jiang Li looks gloomy, he’s a little scary!”

“I didn’t expect him to like men, how disgusting!”

…

Jiang Li felt a strong negative emotion scurrying around in his brain like a thin wire, stirring all his nerves together, strangling them to death and making him ache.

“Lord Host.”

System’s voice sounded in the brain, the usual mechanical calm voice almost exorcized the exploding negative emotions in Jiang Li’s brain, slowly awakening Jiang Li’s own consciousness.

Jiang Li felt his body was somewhat floating, unable to find a point of strength, he then asked System, “Where am I?”

“In the water.” System replied, “Please reach the shore as soon as possible.”

Jiang Li slowly opened his eyes and found himself in the water. He could see a figure swimming towards him through his blurred vision. Before reacting to what was happening, the other party suddenly grabbed him and swam upstream. With a “splash”, the two emerged from the water.

Fresh air flowed into his nasal cavity. Jiang Li subconsciously breathed deeply and had a feeling of survival after the disaster.

The other party brought him to shore, casually threw him on the grass, and asked in a not-so-good tone, “Hey, you’re not dead, right?”

The blinding sunlight made Jiang Li not able to see the other party’s face. When he was about to speak, he coughed out two mouthfuls of water, and the choking sensation of drowning made him very uncomfortable. He turned over on his back, lied on the grass and coughed hard a few times, and finally said thank you in a hoarse voice.

“Tsk, it’s good that you’re not dead. Why did you jump into the river when you’re perfectly fine? You’re just finding trouble for yourself.”

The other party saw that he could still talk, muttered two grumbles, turned around and left.

Jiang Li wiped the water on his face, looked up at the other party’s back and slowly sat up. He then looked around at the surroundings.

This was obviously the outskirts. There was a river in front of him and green grass could be seen around him.

Jiang Li knew that he had entered the second world. The negative emotions earlier were so strong that he still had palpitations even after coming to his senses.

“Little Cutie.” Jiang Li called out to System, “Transfer the memories of this body.”

“Roger that.”

After a few minutes, the memories belonging to this body surfaced little by little.

Same as in the previous world, this body was still called Jiang Li.

Jiang Li, sixteen years old, a student from first year senior class (5) of the Second Senior High School of Jiang City, the only son of his parents.

Jiang Li’s mother left home when he was ten years old and never came back. His father was a car mechanic, a heavy drinker, and gambler who scolded him when he was drunk and thought he and his mother, who left without saying goodbye, were the same shit.

Because of Father Jiang’s gambling, the family was heavily in debt and life had been very difficult for them. Even when Jiang Li was in elementary school, school fees were often delayed again and again. Every time someone went to his house to collect the debt, Father Jiang would go out to hide for a few days, letting Jiang Li fend for himself at home alone.

Jiang’s father’s reputation in this county wasn’t good and could even be said to be bad. Because of such a father, most of the surrounding neighborhood and classmates didn’t like Jiang Li and thought that if his father was someone like that, he wouldn’t be any better. This then caused Jiang Li to have low self-esteem and a timid personality.

In the fourth grade, the class organized a spring excursion. When he needed to hand in the spring excursion fees, a student in the class found that his money was missing. It so happened that Jiang Li stayed in the classroom during the last PE lesson, so the student decided that it was him who stole the money. The reason was that Jiang Li’s family was so poor, he didn’t have money to pay the activity fee last time, how did he have money to pay this time? He must have stolen it.

At that time, everyone was still young and didn’t yet have the ability to distinguish what was right and what was wrong, so they followed and agreed that Jiang Li was the thief. They then put Jiang Li in the middle of a circle and pointed at him.

Xiao Jiang Li, who was only ten years old, cowered himself in a corner and shook his head desperately, saying that he hadn’t stolen the money, that he had saved it bit by bit from his summer vacation scavenging, and that he wanted to go on a spring trip with everyone else.

However, no one cared about him. The voices of people calling him a thief kept flowing into his ears, like a curse, covering his frail body tightly, making him suffocate and he could only keep shrinking into the corner.

Even the teacher was suspicious of him and called Father Jiang to come over to deal with it. Father Jiang came to the school and slapped Jiang Li’s face without asking anything, scolding him for disgracing himself.

As a car mechanic, Father Jiang’s arm was strong. Jiang Li’s nasal cavity was directly beaten by him and blood came out. Half of his face was numb; his left ear was buzzing all the time. Before he fainted, he was in a trance and thought it would be good if his father had beat him to death.

Since that time, Jiang Li never thought to integrate into the class. He was alone and didn’t socialize with anyone. He sat in the corner position during class every day, his half-long bangs and thick glasses blocking most of the face, and his whole person gave a sense of gloominess. Even after studying for almost two semesters of the first year of high school, he still didn’t even know what his classmates looked like. 

Such a student like Jiang Li who had normal grades, was timid and gloomy, and without much existence in the class was often overlooked by teachers. This was the case until the secret of Jiang Li liking Xu Haowen from the next class, class (6), was discovered. 

Xu Haowen was the class president of first year senior class (6). Unlike the inferior and weak Jiang Li, he was cheerful and sunny, always in the top three of his class, and was an outstanding student in the eyes of many teachers.

People would often be attracted to the opposite things; Jiang Li was also like that. The gloomier and lowlier he was, the more he yearned for sunshine in his heart, and Xu Haowen was the kind of person he wanted to be.

Since the opening ceremony of his first year of high school, his eyes had been uncontrollably following Xu Haowen who spoke on stage. He carefully collected information about him, and wrote down his joy at meeting such a wonderful person in his diary, which was hidden in the innermost part of his bookshelf.

This was his deepest secret, he never thought to tell anyone, not even Xu Haowen. In his heart, he thought that such a useless person like himself wasn’t worthy to like a dazzling person like him. 

However, things didn’t go as planned. Once during class, when he went to the cafeteria to refill his water, the students at the front table accidentally knocked over his desk when they were messing around. Books fell to the ground, including the diary that was pressed at the bottom of the books, his secret was unguardedly exposed in front of his classmates.

When he returned to the classroom after fetching the water, his diary was being held in the hands of the most mischievous boy in the class, and his sonorous recitation caused the others to laugh. After the laughter, there was a constant ebb and flow of disgust.

“I long for myself to be like him, like a beam of sunshine, a bouquet of flowers, I want to illuminate myself … wtf, I can’t continue reading this anymore, how can he write such a disgusting thing.”

“Sunshine? He looks so gloomy and scary.”

“So disgusting.”

Jiang Li stood in front of the classroom with a hot water bottle, listening to their words. He could only feel that he went back to the day when he was falsely accused of stealing money by his classmates as a child, he shrank in the corner and desperately shook his head to deny it, but no one believed in himself, including his own father.

The story was spread to Xu Haowen by busybodies, Xu Haowen didn’t know Jiang Li. Towards the fact that he was liked by someone of the same gender, although he didn’t feel happy, he didn’t laugh at Jiang Li like the others, and just pretended not to know about it.

After this incident, Jiang Li’s situation in the class became more and more difficult. He could even hear the people nearby gossiping and snickering about him while pointing at him, making him feel embarrassed. 

However, although he wasn’t living the way he wanted, Jiang Li had never thought of committing suicide; this drowning was an accident.

Every weekend, he would work odd jobs in the wood factory located in the outskirts. He saw a child drowning on his way back today, and without hesitating, he jumped in to save him. When he pushed the child to the shore, he suddenly got a cramp in his foot and lost his strength. While he was panicking, he grabbed onto the grass on the shore a few times, but slipped and sank into the water. 

After being rescued, the child ran away without looking back. There was no one else in the surroundings, Jiang Li then died drowning in the water.

…

After receiving the memories of the original host, Jiang Li understood why he felt such strong negative emotions when he just woke up earlier, those were the dark side of the original host that was pressed deep inside.

The original host lived in such a family, not only did his parents not love him, even the students around him had great malice towards him. In such an environment, other than his character defects, he didn’t do anything wrong to others. He would use the money he earned from odd jobs to buy some food to feed stray cats, he would sweep the trash that were left by his classmates in the corner of the classroom after the class had been dismissed, he would go to the orphanage to do volunteer work.

Today, he didn’t hesitate to jump into the river to save someone, but the other party abandoned him after being rescued and didn’t even call for help.

Jiang Li looked at his hands, slowly clenched them, and sighed softly. “Rest in peace.”

There was wind blowing beside him, like the sound of someone’s whimper.

After a long while, Jiang Li brought up the system tablet to check the tasks of this world, and as soon as he opened it, he saw that the column of the male lead was actually lit up.

[Main Mission: Capturing the male lead – Chi Fang; Side Mission: Meet Mother Jiang once again and ask her why she left without saying goodbye back then.]

[Chi Fang, seventeen years old, student of first year senior class (6) of the Second Senior High School of Jiang City.]

According to System’s setting, the mission bar would only light up when the male lead appeared.

Jiang Li thought that the only person he had seen since he came to this world was the person who saved him just now. If everything went well that person would be his capture target in this world. However, that person left after saving him, and he didn’t have time to see what he looked like.

But since they were in the same school there would be plenty of opportunities later.

Jiang Li stood up from the grass, took two steps, and felt something hard under his feet. He looked down; it was a silver lighter that was reflecting silver light under the sunlight. 

The workmanship of the lighter was very exquisite, the word ‘Chi’ was engraved on the bottom left corner, showing that it was specially customized. 

Jiang Li guessed that it was dropped accidentally by the male lead when he was saving him just now. He bent down to pick it up and stuffed it into his pocket, intending to return it to him next time. He then slowly walked towards the place where he could get a ride.