Chapter 1

Liu Xun jolted awake and instinctively reached for his stomach.

His fingers found no beer belly, the souvenir of years spent drinking with clients. His stomach was flat, with even a hint of muscle.

He froze, then sat bolt upright.

A pink wall filled his vision, plastered with handwritten sticky notes. In the next booth, three girls with wildly elaborate hairstyles chatted and laughed, surrounded by the smell of cheap perfume.

“Wait. Something’s wrong.”

Liu Xun frowned. Last night he’d been at a banquet, knocking back eight glasses in a row at his boss’s urging, all to secure a crucial construction contract. He could still remember his stomach churning. How had he ended up in this milk tea shop, surrounded by the trappings of a bygone youth subculture?

A cool voice called from behind the counter. “Order 184, please come collect your drinks!”

Liu Xun looked over and went rigid.

A girl about five foot six stood behind the counter in the yellow uniform of a COCO milk tea shop. She stood straight, her skin pale and cool-toned. Her features were flawless, and she carried an air of distant reserve that warned strangers away.

He smiled. Wasn’t that Li Qian?

He knew that face all too well. Whenever a video of the “Most Beautiful Woman Professor” appeared on his feed, he’d spend ages staring at the ceiling afterward.

He’d at least dared to pursue the girl he’d pined for in high school. Li Qian was different. She was so far beyond his reach that he knew better than to try.

As a student, she’d come from a poor family. Her father had died early, and her seriously ill mother had been bedridden for years. From the start of freshman year, Li Qian had scraped by on financial aid and countless part-time jobs, even taking out a high-interest loan at her lowest point.

She’d made it through those dark years. In her senior year, she became a student counselor while preparing for graduate entrance exams and caring for her mother. She fought her way forward and became a professor at Qing University at just thirty.

Later, at a public academic forum, she’d appeared in a tailored pencil skirt, sheer stockings, and heels. A group of senior professors had fired hostile questions at her, but she answered calmly and methodically, dismantling their arguments until they had nothing left to say.

The video went viral. Her cool, intellectual bearing captivated the internet, and countless viewers hailed her as the “Most Beautiful Woman Professor.”

A year later, she traveled abroad as a representative of China to attend an international finance forum. Top European scholars challenged her in turn, and she cleared three rounds of questioning, taking apart the foundations of their arguments point by point.

That performance made her a legend and a role model for young scholars. Even a popular celebrity declared in an interview, “Professor Li Qian is my idol.” A famous director went on to make a biographical film based on her life, and it became a box-office hit.

Liu Xun remembered the rumor that had circulated when he first started college: the COCO on West Street was the only place you could get a chance to speak to Li Qian, the campus beauty from neighboring Qing University.

He and his roommates had practically treated the place as a second dorm. They’d come countless times, always vowing to ask for her contact details, yet none of them had ever managed to get through even one sentence of an introduction.

An absurd thought exploded in his mind.

Wait… Have I gone back in time?

With trembling hands, he pulled a phone from his pocket. It wasn’t the Huawei Mate 80 he’d used last night. It was a Motorola.

He pressed a button. The screen lit up, displaying the date and time:

August 31, 2010. Ten thirty in the morning.

Memories came flooding back. He was at the COCO on West Street in Qingdu’s university district. Tomorrow was the day he was supposed to register as a freshman.

He really had gone back. He was eighteen again!

His head throbbed. For more than a decade, he’d worked himself like a beast of burden, grinding away until his hair turned gray and his belly grew round. In the end, he’d even sold his family home to scrape together 2.8 million yuan.

He’d planned to buy an apartment in the city and finally put an end to more than thirty years of bachelorhood.

And now he’d gone back in time? Before he’d spent a cent of it?

Had all those years of slogging been for nothing?

The last woman he’d been seeing was a young divorcee. At first, she’d asked for 180,000 yuan in bride price. He’d spent two years chasing after her, only for the price to climb to 280,000. Their courtship had ended in death—what a jinx. Maybe she’d give the next lucky guy a discount?

In his previous life, he’d always felt pushed along by his parents’ expectations and society’s ideas of how a life should be lived: study hard, work hard, have children.

He’d followed the rules at every step. No one could fault him for that. Yet somehow he’d been stuck on the last step for more than ten years. He’d gone on countless blind dates. When he was young, women thought he didn’t have enough money. Once he got older, they still thought he didn’t have enough money.

He’d finally scraped together 2.8 million to clear that final hurdle, and then he’d woken up to find it all gone. He hadn’t even had the heart to spend a single yuan or enjoy the fruits of his labor. What a miserable way to be reborn.

Glumly, Liu Xun reached for a cigarette, only to remember after a search of his pockets that he didn’t smoke at this age.

His fingers brushed against two bank cards. One held the first month’s living expenses his parents had given him for college. The other…

Wait!

He pulled it out and held it up in the sunlight streaming through the glass wall. China Construction Bank, ending in 5807.

Wasn’t this the card holding the 2.8 million he’d scraped together before he died? Had it come back with him?

The corners of his mouth had barely begun to lift when the glass door swung open. Two burly men with fierce tattoos on their arms strode in and planted themselves by the entrance like a pair of iron towers.

“Li Qian! You’ve had us looking everywhere. So you’ve been hiding out working in this milk tea shop!”

“The money you borrowed from Brother Long is due tomorrow. Tell us, how are you going to pay back the principal and interest?”

The customers scrambled for the door like startled birds, then lingered outside to watch the commotion. Liu Xun alone remained seated.

He looked at Li Qian, whose face had gone deathly pale behind the counter. A complicated mix of feelings crossed his eyes.

Perhaps because he’d been reborn, his memories of around 2010 were extraordinarily clear, as though it had all happened yesterday. The whole incident flashed through his mind like a slideshow.

He’d been there in his previous life too. When the two men came in, he’d fled with the other customers and watched from behind the crowd.

Li Qian had pleaded with them, only to be shoved into the counter. She’d broken down in tears. However strong she was, she’d only just started her second year of college. In the end, someone called the police, and the officers got her out of trouble.

From the police questioning, Liu Xun learned that the pair weren’t some feared gangsters, just two big middle-aged men with theft records.

Afterward, he’d fantasized that if only he’d been braver, he might have won the beauty’s heart. But the thought of her debts had scared him off. He’d been a broke college student himself, after all.

God, it was embarrassing to remember.

Liu Xun took a deep breath and slowly stood up.

In his previous life, he’d followed his parents’ advice and his own rules: work hard, mind your own business, keep your head down. What had it gotten him? A lifetime of frustration, and blind dates who looked down on him even when they didn’t have jobs themselves.

He’d been given another life. Surely he had to change something.

He wasn’t going to spend that 2.8 million on an apartment. He was going to spend it on a life—his own. A life that told playing by the rules to go to hell, a life lived boldly and on his own terms.

He strode forward, not just to play the hero for a beautiful girl, but to put an end to the coward he’d been in his youth.