Reborn as a high school freshman with an awakened system, a fat boy transforms into a male god.

The electric fan in the classroom creaked and groaned, and the chalk tapped crisply on the blackboard.

"Brother Bei, Brother Bei." Zhou Ziheng's voice drifted over from the front, very low, like a thief.

Lin Bei raised his head.

Zhou Ziheng twisted his body slightly and slipped a note under his desk. His movements were so practiced that it was clear he'd practiced in middle school. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked very sleepy.

Lin Bei opened the note, on which was written a line in crooked handwriting: "Want to go to an internet cafe after school? A new one opened near the back gate of the school, called 'Flying Life.' The environment is nice, and the computers are all new. The owner said that if you recharge 100, you get 50 free."

He glanced at it, crumpled the note into a ball, and stuffed it into his pocket. He picked up a pen, wrote a line on his draft paper, tore it off, and handed it over from under the table.

"I'm not going."

Zhou Ziheng received the note, glanced at it, and then quickly wrote a line and handed it back: "Why? Are you short of money? I'll treat you, top up as much as you want, don't be shy! My allowance isn't much, but I can still afford to pay for your internet access. My dad used to say that you should be generous to your brothers, although his exact words were 'be generous to your brothers, but be even more generous to your girlfriend.' I don't have a girlfriend right now, so being generous to you is in line with his teachings."

Lin Bei held the pen and hesitated for a moment.

He remembered the face he saw in the mirror that morning—round and chubby, his features squeezed together by flesh, his belly bulging out of his pajamas. In his previous life, he had lived in this body for thirty years, and was always the least popular person to team up with in gym class.

Also, he was always the one who took up the most space in the graduation photo. His classmates would all rush to stand next to him when taking pictures. Later he found out that his classmates did this to make their faces look smaller.

He wrote two words on the paper: "Losing weight".

Zhou Ziheng stared at those two words for three seconds, then turned to look at Lin Bei's physique, which was stretched taut by his school uniform to the point of almost bursting. The buttons on the uniform seemed to be making a final struggle, as if they might pop off at any moment.

His lips twitched slightly, and he finally wrote on the paper: "Then you really should... lose weight."

When the note was passed back, Lin Bei noticed that Zhou Ziheng's handwriting was noticeably messier than before, so crooked that it resembled a doctor's prescription, clearly indicating that he was trying to suppress his laughter so hard that his hands were shaking.

Lin Bei ignored him, stuffed the note into his pocket, and looked up at the blackboard. Old Gu was drawing the third Wayne diagram, the part where the two circles intersected was shaded, and chalk dust was falling down.

The last class in the afternoon is English.

The English teacher's surname was Fang, and her given name was Fang Yi. She was a woman in her early forties with curly hair and red-rimmed glasses. She spoke very quickly, as if she were speaking at 1.5x speed.

"In your first year of high school, you will complete two textbooks, 'Required Course 1' and 'Required Course 2.' Each book has five units, and each unit will take about one to one and a half weeks to complete. That means you will have to memorize the vocabulary for one unit every two days on average. Note that this is memorization, not reading or looking at the words. After memorizing, you will have to recite them from memory. If you make a mistake, you will have to copy them as punishment. After copying, you will recite them again, and if you make another mistake, you will have to copy them again."

The classroom was filled with wails.

Teacher Fang pushed up her glasses, her face expressionless: "What are you howling about? This is nothing! When you get to your second year of high school, you'll find that your first year was heaven. When you get to your third year, you'll find that your second year was also heaven. And when you get to college... well, college will be much easier, at least no one will be watching you."

"Teacher, is there really no one to care about students at university?" someone in the front row asked, their voice filled with longing for freedom, like a caged bird gazing at the sky.

Teacher Fang glanced at him: "Nobody will care about you, but your report card will. If you fail a course, you'll have to retake it; if you fail the retake, you'll have to repeat the course; if you fail the repeat course... Don't think that far ahead yet. First, memorize the vocabulary for the first compulsory course."

The student in the front row's expression changed visibly from "yearning for freedom" to "recognizing reality" in no more than two seconds.

Lin Bei sat in the last row, flipping through his English textbook. He recognized every single letter on the pages, but when they were put together, he had no idea what they meant.

His English has always been lacking. In his previous life, he barely passed the college entrance exam in English, and he only passed the College English Test Band 4 on his third attempt. The first time he got 424, the second time 423, and the third time he finally got 426. He was incredibly excited at the time. Now that he's been reborn, he doesn't remember any of the words, but he seems to have retained a little bit of his sense of language.

Lin Bei's gaze passed over the backs of several classmates' heads and landed on the front of the middle of the classroom.

Above Su Wantang's head, the string of numbers was still jumping.

He stared at the string of numbers, his mind racing.

She'd already accepted money directly once, but that only worked when he used the lie that her mother owed money. Once was okay, twice was barely acceptable, but three times would just be a lie. He couldn't possibly tell her every few days, "My mom remembered another debt," could he? That would be too insulting to her intelligence.

"How much money did your mom borrow from us?" "Uh... about... tens of thousands?" "Exactly how much?" "...My mom has a bad memory, she pays me back little by little as she remembers."

He himself didn't believe his own explanation. Besides, he was only sixteen. If he were to give a girl a sum of money every month, his mother, Wang Xiulan, would be the first to suspect something. "Son, are you dating too early? I don't object to you dating, but what does it mean to give a girl money? Our family may not be rich, but we can't buy feelings with money!"

The probability of the host's mother saying "I don't object to puppy love" is about 15%, while the probability of her saying "I'll break your legs" is about 85%.

Lin Bei ignored the system and continued to think.

He needs to come up with a sustainable solution.

The idea of ​​having a tutor suddenly popped into my head.

Yes, a private tutor. He asks her to improve his English, then pays her the tutoring fee openly and legitimately. A perfect closed loop: she needs money, he needs to improve his grades. Supply and demand match, it's mutually agreeable, and perfectly reasonable.

Although he hadn't mastered English grammar in his thirty-year life in his previous existence, he was determined to give it a try in this one. At least this reason didn't sound like charity; it sounded more like a struggling student's attempt at self-redemption.

But will she accept it?

If a neighbor you've barely spoken to suddenly asks you to be their tutor and pays you regularly every week, anyone would find that strange. She might think: Is this person crazy? Do they have some ulterior motive? Are they trying to seduce me?

The last thought made Lin Bei's face flush slightly.

[A 0.3-degree increase in temperature was detected in the host's right cheek. The host experienced a slight physiological reaction when considering a certain possibility. Also, the host secretly glanced at Su Wantang's back of the head for 0.8 seconds. This has been recorded by the system.]

Lin Bei: ...

No, he really didn't mean it that way. He just didn't want the countdown to reach zero. Okay! She is indeed beautiful, and his heart races every time he sees her. It's absolutely impossible not to have feelings for such a pretty female neighbor. He admits that, but admitting it is one thing, business is another. Save her first, everything else can wait.

Well, this needs to be done slowly, there's no rush. First, I need to talk to her normally, get to know her, and make her think I'm not a strange person, then I'll find an opportunity to bring up the tutoring thing. Haste makes waste... uh, that analogy isn't quite right.