Chapter 4: The Virtue Lies In Stability
After speaking clearly, the two fell into silence.
After a long silence, as the sky grew darker, Wang Heng said, “Let’s go, I’ll walk you home.”
Han Yixuan nodded. Then the two stood up and walked side by side toward the young girl’s home.
After walking in silence for a while, Han Yixuan suddenly stopped.
After taking a few steps, Wang Heng noticed something wrong, stopped, and turned around. Then he saw the young girl gazing at him, as if she had a lot to say.
After hesitating for a few seconds, Han Yixuan finally spoke: “I understand what you mean, but dating doesn’t have to cost money. Like right now, without buying anything or doing anything, just strolling and chatting, isn’t that okay?”
“Unfortunately, I have to do part-time work this summer vacation. There’s no way for university tuition, but at least I can figure out living expenses myself.”
“Can’t you skip the part-time work?”
Wang Heng smiled: “Without earning money, will you support me?”
Han Yixuan gritted her teeth: “I’ll support you!”
Wang Heng’s smile instantly froze.
After a while, he sighed: “Why bother? I really don’t understand what exactly is so good about me that I have this honor…”
Wang Heng remembered his interactions with Han Yixuan in the previous playthrough, but in his impression, right after the Gaokao ended, at the beginning stage of this relationship, Han Yixuan shouldn’t have been so deeply in love with him.
“Are you wondering why I’m so persistent? I can’t explain it myself; this reason is really… you’d definitely laugh at me if you heard it.” At this point, Han Yixuan became a bit shy.
This was a bit strange; what words could be harder to say than a confession?
But the next moment, Wang Heng understood—there really were.
Han Yixuan continued: “I’ve been dreaming these past few days. It started the night after the English exam; I dreamed of confessing to you, chatting happily, confirming our relationship. Then, we spent the entire summer vacation together. You didn’t do any part-time work, but we didn’t spend much money either—just sat on the bus dating every day.”
“Dating on the bus?” Wang Heng was utterly shocked, his eyes widening.
Han Yixuan confidently recounted her dream: “Yes, hopping on any bus to the end of the line, then switching to another. We sat in the back row together, watching the scenery outside the window, watching the other people on the bus, chatting easily. When hungry, we’d get off and eat at a roadside noodle restaurant; when thirsty, buy a bottle of water, ignoring everything, thinking of nothing… no, we thought of so much, imagining what the future would be like, imagining university life. We agreed that after university starts, we’d buy round-trip train tickets every two months for face-to-face dates. Other times, video chat. The feeling in the dream—you can’t imagine how happy it was…”
However, Wang Heng could not only imagine it but had truly experienced it. In the previous playthrough, when he and Han Yixuan started that first romance, it was exactly like the dream she just described!
So cold sweat was breaking out on him— he thought only he was reborn; could Han Yixuan also have memories from the previous playthrough?
The young girl continued: “For several days in a row, like a serialized drama. That feeling was so real, so real it didn’t feel like a dream, as if it really happened… So do you understand? I was really looking forward to that moment of confessing to you, really, so looking forward to it.”
Wang Heng felt his throat itch and subconsciously swallowed, only to find his mouth so dry there wasn’t even a drop of saliva.
After a while, he barely smiled and said: “This nearly free romance is really nice… If we were at the same university, I definitely wouldn’t refuse you. Let’s go, I’ll still walk you home first.”
Han Yixuan finally realized she couldn’t shake this guy’s thoughts. Her expression collapsed, her little face looking mournful: “No need for you to walk me; I can get home myself!”
Wang Heng was blunt: “Alright then, be careful on the way.”
At this moment, he really wasn’t in the mood to act like a gentleman.
————
After parting with the disappointed young girl, Wang Heng didn’t go home. He went straight to the largest bookstore in this small town, found the psychology section, and carefully browsed.
He first found Freud’s famous book, 《The Interpretation of Dreams》. After skimming the table of contents, he was sure it didn’t have what he wanted. But among that row of psychology books, few actually discussed dreams, and aside from 《The Interpretation of Dreams》, most were weird chicken-soup books like 《XXX Teaches You How to Interpret Dreams》 or 《Find the Key to Life in Dreams》, obviously even less reliable.
“No, Han Yixuan’s dream is way too unscientific… Check the philosophy section? Or when in doubt, quantum mechanics?”
Wang Heng muttered to himself and wandered the bookstore for two more laps. Helplessly, he left the bookstore and entered the nearby internet cafe.
The best way to look up materials was of course the search engine, but his mobile phone was an old button phone without even a network browser. As for the only computer at home, no need to think—Father had definitely hogged it. Anxious Wang Heng could only spend some of his remaining pocket money to boot up the lowest-spec machine in the internet cafe.
However, while there was a lot of information online, there was even more useless trash. Wang Heng searched for a long time but couldn’t find a single valuable reference hypothesis.
“Makes sense; rebirth can happen, so someone having a dream crossing worldlines is even more normal…” Wang Heng sighed and was about to shut down the computer. But just then, a window popped up on the screen.
【Want to understand the meaning of life? Want to… truly live?】
Below this sentence were two buttons, 【Yes】 and 【No】.
Wang Heng was instantly dumbfounded—this seemed like the setup for an infinite flow story?
He gripped the mouse and unhesitatingly clicked 【No】.
The popup flashed and changed to this text:
【More prudent than expected. I originally thought that after rebirth, you’d feel like you had a protagonist halo and the courage to charge ahead recklessly.】
Wang Heng couldn’t help pondering.
Since it could accurately say the word “rebirth,” it seemed he’d encountered some extraordinary existence?
The popup flashed again:
【No joking around; let me introduce myself. I’m the time-space administrator of the multiverse, mainly responsible for maintaining normal causality in each world and cleaning up bugs that shouldn’t exist. By the way, you don’t need to type—just speak to communicate with me. Moving your silver tongue at whisper volume is enough; I can hear it.】
Wang Heng narrowed his eyes, read the text twice, and said lowly: “Uh… hello?”
【Good, very polite.】
【By now you should have adapted to life after rebirth. Regrettably, I have to tell you some information, information you probably won’t want to hear.】
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