Chapter 1: A Boy and a Girl, Alone Together

(Please check your brain at the door.)

“Um… I guess that counts as us kissing. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I feel awful. Give me… I want…”

The air was thick with tension and an awkward intimacy.

To explain how they had ended up like this, though, we have to go back an hour.

An hour earlier, Su Ze had been staying up late to finish a paper. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and found that his laboratory had turned into a classroom.

He was back at university, ten years in the past!

It took a bewildered Su Ze all of 0.1 seconds to accept that he had been reborn.

In his last life, he had worked himself into the ground, from the university entrance exams all the way to a career as a scientist. His reward? Dropping dead without warning.

If heaven was giving him another shot, he was going to ditch the pressure and live for himself.

What Su Ze didn’t know yet was that, in just a few minutes, he would run into the university’s most beautiful girl—and find himself much closer to her than he could ever have expected.

“Is anyone there…? Help… please help me…”

His PE instructor had sent him to fetch some equipment from the basement storeroom.

He had only just reached the door when he heard a faint cry for help from inside.

Su Ze blinked. Why was someone calling for help in a locked equipment room?

And that voice… was it a girl?

Puzzled, he turned back and took another look at the iron door. Then he stepped closer and tried pulling it.

It opened easily.

Su Ze went straight in and followed the weak voice to the very back of the room.

He stopped in front of a battered metal cabinet. The cries were definitely coming from inside it.

He lifted the padlock to inspect it. Fortunately, someone had merely threaded it through the hasp without snapping it shut.

He immediately removed it and pulled open the cabinet door.

A girl was huddled in the corner, trembling.

Her blue-and-white sailor-style uniform was covered in dirt. The arms and calves left bare by her blouse and short skirt were marked with injuries of varying severity, as were her cheeks.

It was an ugly sight.

Her eyes were red, strands of disheveled hair clung to her face, and she kept shivering with both arms wrapped around her knees.

She was so frail that Su Ze couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

But that beautiful face looked familiar.

He searched his memory and soon matched it to one of the university’s legendary figures.

Xia Zhiwei. Everyone at Modu University knew the brilliant student with the icy manner and stunning looks.

She was also one of the few people he had met in his four years at university whose intelligence could match his own.

He had entered plenty of competitions, and Xia Zhiwei had been there at most of the award ceremonies too.

As he remembered her, she never smiled and almost never went anywhere with anyone else.

She was always alone, always quiet. Her unapproachable air had scared off countless boys who secretly admired her.

Even so, everyone agreed that no one on campus could rival her beauty.

There was one thing Su Ze didn’t understand, though. In his last life, Xia Zhiwei had always worn baggy long sleeves and trousers, winter and summer alike, keeping herself covered from head to toe.

Why was she now in a cabinet in the equipment room, dressed in such a revealing, suggestive outfit?

The answer came to him almost as soon as the question did.

Someone had obviously bullied her and shut her in here.

He really hadn’t expected to encounter school bullying at university.

Especially not at an elite institution like Modu University.

Su Ze glanced at her injuries again and instinctively lowered his voice. “Do you have any strength left? Can you stand up on your own?”

She gave a weak nod and whispered her thanks.

Seeing the state she was in, Su Ze decided that whatever else happened, getting her out came first.

But just as he reached out to help Xia Zhiwei up, a jumble of footsteps and laughter sounded outside the equipment room.

Hardly anyone ever came down to the basement. There was a good chance these were the people who had bullied her.

If they walked out now, they would run straight into them.

He could force his way past and take Xia Zhiwei with him, but people like that were hardly going to let it drop.

And one of the easiest ways to ruin someone was to start a rumor.

Rumors were like a sticky medicinal plaster: once one latched on, you could never quite peel it off.

That went double for someone as well known as Xia Zhiwei.

If word got out that the aloof beauty of their department, a student admired for both her grades and her character, had been alone in a basement with a boy, who knew what filthy stories people would tell?

Better to avoid the trouble altogether than go out and argue with a bunch of unreasonable bastards.

The footsteps were getting closer. There was no time left to weigh his options.

Su Ze ducked his head and squeezed into the metal cabinet in the dim light, pulling the door shut behind him.

There had barely been enough room for Xia Zhiwei alone. With someone Su Ze’s size crammed in as well, the little space became impossibly tight.

Surprise and alarm filled her eyes.

They had no choice but to press against each other.

Even the slightest shift of his shoulder made him accidentally brush her soft, smooth skin.

In the darkness, every sensation seemed magnified.

Xia Zhiwei could distinctly feel the warm, steady breaths of the young man in front of her brushing her cheeks and neck, whether he meant them to or not.

Each breath sent a faint, tingling shiver across her skin.

Her heartbeat quickened.

She had never been this close to a boy before…

It was Su Ze’s first time being so close to a girl too, and he could feel his own cheeks warming.

Given Xia Zhiwei’s cool, proud nature, was he the only guy in her eighteen years of life who had ever got this close to her?

If all those admirers in their department found out, wouldn’t they chop him into mincemeat?

Before his thoughts could wander any further, Su Ze hurriedly turned his face toward the narrow crack between the cabinet doors and cautiously peered out.

The people outside had reached the equipment room’s iron door.

They weren’t coming in, though. Just as Su Ze began wondering what they were up to, he heard a sharp clatter of chains against metal.

Then the laughter receded, and the basement sank back into darkness and dead silence.

An unpleasant suspicion took shape in his mind. He shoved the cabinet door open and climbed out.

Striding to the entrance, he launched an Ultraman Leo-style flying kick at the heavy iron door.

The door didn’t budge. Su Ze, on the other hand, grimaced in pain.

Those bastards really were determined to see it through. Locking Xia Zhiwei in a cabinet hadn’t been enough—they’d locked the equipment room too?

Su Ze silently cursed every last one of their ancestors.

All he had wanted was to be a decent guy and help a fellow student. Now he hadn’t managed to get her out, and he had trapped himself in here as well.

“Um… I think someone’s locked the door from outside.”

He went back to the cabinet and gave the girl still huddled inside a brief account of their predicament.

Perhaps the fresh air was helping. Xia Zhiwei looked noticeably better than she had a moment ago.

Holding the edge of the cabinet, she climbed out and stood unsteadily on the floor.

In the dim light, Su Ze could see just how thin she was. She swayed as though she might fall at any moment.

“I’m sorry. Now you’re stuck in here because of me.”

She lowered her head, guilt heavy in her frail voice.

“It’s all right,” Su Ze reassured her. “The instructor sent me to get some equipment anyway. I couldn’t just leave you here once I’d found you.”

He took out his phone, intending to call one of his roommates for help.

But when he checked the screen, the full signal bars he had enjoyed upstairs had been replaced by two words:

No Service.

Su Ze had no words.

Seriously? What year was this? How could a basement still have no reception?

Xia Zhiwei seemed to realize what had happened. Disappointment flickered across her lovely face.

“Are we stuck here?”

Su Ze put the phone away and gave an awkward smile. “We’ll get out. When I don’t come back, the instructor’s bound to send someone down to check.”

“We should be rescued in a little while.”

He had barely finished speaking when he noticed something wrong beside him.

Xia Zhiwei’s body was slowly sliding down the cabinet door. Then her legs gave out, leaving her slumped on the dusty floor.

Startled, Su Ze hurried over and crouched to check on her.

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling ill?”

She shook her head weakly. She barely had the strength to speak.

“I… didn’t have breakfast… or lunch today. I think I’m just… too hungry to stand…”

Su Ze immediately recognized the signs of a severe drop in blood sugar.

If he didn’t get some sugar into her quickly, she was going to pass out right here.