I turned reality into a romantic comedy

However, Zhu Wenyun, who was sitting in the next classroom, showed no signs of falling asleep.

Although quite some time had passed, she was still replaying the scene of her conversation with Chen Junqian in her mind. Even though the two of them had barely exchanged a few words, it seemed as if she had to reconsider and re-examine every single word before she could feel at ease.

However, she quickly pursed her lips, looking conflicted.

Just like the sofa in her house isn't red and doesn't contain a music city that can cure illnesses, and the canned yellow peaches that her grandmother specially bought don't contain any little people with unique talents, even though her name contains the word "ask," sometimes she just can't bring herself to ask many questions.

She couldn't bring herself to directly ask the boy who had stumbled upon her secret—a secret that seemed so small to others but so huge to her—how he got there and found her, whether he would tell others about it, or what he thought of her.

She couldn't answer any of those questions.

Just like how she couldn't get an answer from her grandmother about why her parents could only come home once a year.

Chapter Thirteen: The Embarrassing System That Is Trying to Localize

When get out of class ended, Chen Junqian took the book to the door of Class 3 next door to return it, only to find that their class was still running overtime. So he had to stand near the door and wait for a while. After about three to five minutes, he finally saw the teacher come out with the lesson plan.

Because of the extended class time, many students who needed to use the restroom had already gathered their strength and rushed out right behind the teacher. Chen Junqian had no choice but to temporarily give way to avoid being bumped by one of the students who were rushing in and out.

After the group of people at the door had all dispersed, Chen Junqian finally had a chance to wave inside and carefully handed the textbook back to Zhu Wenyun, who was sitting inside, through the window.

"Thank you."

Although he didn't actually need it, Chen Junqian still politely said thank you before turning to leave. Zhu Wenyun, who was behind him, could only sit back down with a sigh of relief after carefully checking her textbook and finding no obvious signs of damage.

After school in the afternoon, the four-person blackboard newspaper team also worked together to clean the blackboard at the back of the classroom before going home separately. However, Chen Junqian and Lin Mu were just pretending and reunited after a few steps.

Perhaps because he hadn't eaten snacks from the school gate for several days, Lin Mu's eyes lit up when he looked at the colorful packaging on the roadside. But when he thought about how he only had a few yuan left, he immediately deflated.

It was early September, and the weather hadn't completely cooled down yet, so the shops near the school gate were still selling popsicles. Everywhere you looked, you could see elementary school students eating popsicles or licking green tongues. Seeing this, Chen Junqian tentatively offered a suggestion:

"Lin Mu, would you like some popsicles? It's my treat."

"Okay, okay, if it's just the two of us, let's buy some shaved ice."

As one of the most popular popsicles among children, the advantage of Want Want Ice Popsicle is that it is easy to share in a friendly way. After taking out an Ice Popsicle from the freezer and paying for it, Chen Junqian cleanly tore open the packaging, snapped it at the joint, and cut the popsicle in two with a snap. He then gave the slightly larger piece to Lin Mu.

"Thank you."

After politely saying thank you, Lin Mu took the popsicle Chen Junqian offered and took a bite, feeling her steps become much lighter.

Just like the previous two days, Chen Junqian bought groceries and cooked, but changed the dishes a little. After greeting Lin Mu, who was engrossed in eating, he took a car back home.

After three days of this, his family finally realized that he was coming home later and later, so Chen Jun soon came over to subtly inquire about his son's whereabouts after school.

"I need to prepare the blackboard bulletin board for the next two weeks, so I'll probably be coming home a little later. I also need to use the home computer to look up some information tonight."

However, Chen Junqian had already come up with a reason, and without batting an eye, he simply used the blackboard bulletin as his excuse.

The father seemed quite happy that his son was actively participating in class affairs. After all, Chen Junqian was indeed a child who was flawless in every aspect, except that he didn't seem to care much about anything, didn't have many friends, and was usually invited to play by others. He rarely took the initiative to invite friends to play together.

After his father left, Chen Junqian sat at his desk in his room and began to think about a blank page in his exercise book.

In the few days since his rebirth, he has probably fully adapted to the various aspects of this era. However, whether it's muscle memory or the influence of his current elementary school student body, he does tend to see things from a child's perspective more easily.

But actually, Chan Kwan-him himself doesn't dislike this.

For a long time before his rebirth, he, as a third-rate children's literature writer, struggled with this question: how to write literary works that would be popular with children from their perspective.

But I just can't do it.

Whether he tried to communicate and interview his childhood friends, or directly observe his audience—the elementary school students who are now skilled at using smartphones to watch short videos and even shoot videos—Chen Junqian could say he gained nothing.

So much so that many times, even he himself would think that it might be because of his parents' sudden accident in his last year of elementary school that his entire childhood came to an abrupt end, while at the same time preserving his most precious memories, as if freezing the most beautiful moment and constantly adding to and beautifying it in the years that followed.

However, he is not the kind of person who would casually click on a nostalgic video one day and say something like, "We used to eat so well when we were kids." It was precisely because everything in his childhood profoundly influenced him that Chen Junqian later chose to become a children's literature creator.

Although the result was quite unsatisfactory.

It was probably around that time that the idea popped into his head that if he could go back to his childhood and relive it all, he might be able to write a good story.

However, compared to the somewhat distant future plans, Chen Junqian does have two other things that are more immediate.

First, there was the accident that happened to my parents about three years later. Although I don't know how big the effect of his butterfly effect was, if possible, I should have let my parents leave the factory before that, to avoid that production accident from the root.

Then came an even closer incident, about five months later, that occurred at their school.

This was probably one of the most memorable things for Chen Junqian throughout his primary school years. On the one hand, he was indeed a witness to the incident, and on the other hand, it was after that incident that the school officially introduced and implemented the staggered dismissal system throughout the school.

On March 11th of next year, at the start of the second semester of his fourth grade after his winter vacation, a serious stampede occurred in the stairwell of his school building during the evening dismissal time.

Chen Junqian couldn't quite remember the initial cause of the incident. He only remembered that the entire downward stairwell was in chaos, filled with the cries and shouts of students who had been trampled. The situation was finally stabilized after school staff arrived from nearby. The only relief was that no one was actually killed, but nearly ten students still suffered injuries of varying degrees. One girl in his class even had several stitches in her forehead.

For Chen Junqian at this moment, these are probably the two tragedies that happened around him that are closest to him and that he can most easily change.

Thinking this, Chen Junqian heard the voice of that useless system that seemed to be frequently produced by a certain online novel website before he transmigrated into his mind again after a long time.

Ah, compared to these events, I definitely prefer events like the school festival, swimsuit episode, study tour and hot spring episode, and the lucky pervert episode—events that fit the romantic comedy setting better.

Looking at the system that hadn't been around for a few days and was now acting crazy again, Chen Junqian rolled his eyes silently. He sincerely felt that the system was not as good as those systems on other websites that could grant you something like the Eternal God Emperor Physique just by signing in.

[I already said it's because someone insisted on forcing me to bring him back to this real world that I'm completely unfamiliar with. If it were a romantic comedy world, even if you asked me to install a mod that turns everyone into a girl or reverses chastity concepts, and modify all my background and abilities to my liking before entering, I would have no problem with it.]

[And I haven't come away empty-handed these past few days. At least from your perspective, I've roughly figured out some of the operating rules of your world. I'm currently trying to convert those Japanese-style codes, which is actually a huge undertaking, since I don't understand them at all.]

[For example, the trope of a high school student who is a light novel author, which is very common in the world of anime and manga, I can tentatively convert it into a web novel author. But there are still a lot of other tropes that I don't understand at all. For example, this 'Tokyo handsome guy' trope. I've browsed around the internet here and the closest thing seems to be some weird 'Kyo-ye' trope, but you're not in Beijing. It's a headache.]

Chen Junqian almost choked on his own saliva because of the complaints from his own system, so he quickly raised his hand to stop them:

"You'd better not mess with things that involve real-world elements. I don't want to wake up one day to find that the whole world has become something else."

[Okay, let me figure it out a bit more, but it's no use if I figure it out by myself. You, the protagonist of my chosen romantic comedy, also need to play a role, otherwise I won't be motivated... Let me see, wow, you seem to be doing pretty well these past few days, your network of relationships has suddenly expanded by several.]

As he spoke, a report resembling a resume quickly appeared on Chen Junqian's retina:

Lin Mu: Appearance adaptability A, basic ability adaptability B+, personality adaptability C, action adaptability C, speech adaptability B, current romantic comedy adaptability B, first candidate for childhood friend (childhood sweetheart).

"...What the hell is this?"

If we compare a romantic comedy to a play, the actors are definitely the most important. And given that reality is the stage backdrop, finding such good candidates is already quite good; otherwise, every character should be a standard A-list actor.

Presumably quite proud of what he had cobbled together, the embarrassing system thoughtfully added the following explanation:

First of all, the characters in a romantic comedy should ideally all be beautiful girls. Although the story can use its settings to explain who is more attractive, in the illustrator's work, all the heroines appearing in the color illustrations and on the cover must have a level of attractiveness that would make readers want to stop and buy the book. This is the principle of appearance adaptability.

[Then there's the basic ability. After all, having only good looks without any skills will only make you a pretty face, and while you can use the lack of ability to trigger events that increase favorability, repeating it over and over again will only make you seem like a hopeless case, significantly lowering the reader's favorability.]

Next are personality, actions, and speech. Many characters in romantic comedies are characterized by their cuteness through these three aspects. If we take a younger sister character as an example, the one I prepared for you originally had all three adaptability ratings of A, a personality that is both energetic and assertive and weak and clingy, and who would appear on your bed every morning and say things like, "Isn't a younger sister born to meet her older brother?" or "The innate sibling relationship that exists from birth is a more noble existence than that of a couple."

"I'm so frustrated I'm digging my toes into the ground."

After listening to the system's detailed explanation, Chen Junqian was relieved about the CCB ratings it listed for Lin Mu. After all, he really couldn't imagine that Lin Mu would do something so extraordinary that no real human would say or do.

[However, her overall rating is still B, so she's a potential star. I feel like I can already see all sorts of possibilities in her. But romantic comedies always need a childhood friend character, right? After all, the saga between a childhood friend and a newcomer is always the most frequent. By the way, the second most frequent is the relationship between a younger sister and a childhood friend.]

"...I'll say it again, I don't have a sister."

[But just a few days ago, I didn't see any childhood friend connection in you either. Connections between people always need to be actively created, especially on this real-world stage. A sisterly relationship can be created, just like a childhood friend relationship. Although there's always less of a sense of transgression and sweetness when there's no blood relation, you can't force too much in this kind of situation.]

After rambling on and on like this, the system, in a remarkably human-like manner, yawned:

Alright, I'm going back to hibernation. Consider this a reward for finding the top candidate for childhood friend. I'll also give you a buff from my storage that doubles your intelligence and learning efficiency. After all, the host of the world I visited before was the kind who aspired to get into Tokyo University, said women would only interfere with his learning speed, but ended up having a romantic comedy with a bunch of arts, science, and sports students. Your world is probably equivalent to Peking University? Anyway, this should help you. Keep moving towards your goal of becoming the strongest romantic comedy male protagonist. Good luck!

And so, the system, which had made a brief appearance in a long time, fell silent again in Chen Junqian's mind. However, according to it, at least he hadn't come away empty-handed this time.

The first candidate for childhood sweetheart...

Unconsciously, Chen Junqian thought of Lin Mu's smiling face again, and he also raised the corners of his mouth as he looked at the blue sky outside the window.

He shouldn't be considered a substitute at all.

Chapter Fourteen: What she wanted most was the Sheep Talisman.

Perhaps it was because of the embarrassing system's statement last night, but today Chen Junqian suddenly started paying special attention to Lin Mu's every move and smile.

Girls of this age haven't had time to fully develop yet, especially for someone like Lin Mu who is visibly developing later. So, although she was rated as having an A-level appearance adaptability, Chen Junqian still couldn't find any words like "beautiful" or "pretty" to describe Lin Mu right now. However, she was undeniably adorable when she smiled.

For the four of them who create the blackboard newspaper, the only perk they can currently claim is that they can legitimately skip the long break between classes every day, instead of lining up for morning exercises on the playground, and leisurely hide in the classroom.

After printing the blackboard bulletin board layout they had found the night before onto paper using their father's printer, the four of them started working on their own tasks.

It has to be said that Xu Youwei's painting skills are quite good, and she is one of the best among her peers. Chen Junqian was even tempted to ask her to draw the pictures for his hand-copied newspaper in the future. This was probably the homework he hated most when he was in elementary school. The main reason was that he couldn't draw and his handwriting was not good. Every time he forced himself to hand it in, it was just barely passing the passing grade and he couldn't even stand it.

The class monitor and Lin Mu's chalk writing was also quite neat. While the three of them were busy working on stools, Chen Junqian mainly took on the role of a logistics assistant, helping to hand things over, helping to hold the stools, and occasionally taking two steps back to squint and check the overall effect or whether the characters were crooked.

Listening to the music for morning exercises playing on the radio, and estimating that the break was almost over and the students in the class would soon be coming back, the group temporarily stopped working, wiped the benches clean, and put away the chalk, blackboard eraser, rulers, and other tools. Then they went to the restroom to wash their hands and faces.

As soon as Zhong Yu returned, he familiarly slumped onto the table again. It seemed that the morning exercises during the break between classes had exhausted his remaining energy. He was just short of nagging Chen Junqian to let him join in making the blackboard newspaper, so that he could legitimately avoid going downstairs to sunbathe.

He has always had this kind of personality. Although he gets along well with everyone, he never makes requests in a joking tone that would make the other person feel uncomfortable. He has a great sense of propriety in his interactions with people. Not to mention among elementary school students, even when Chen Junqian was in college in his previous life, he never saw anyone with this kind of habit and skill.

Chen Junqian pulled out two Pipilu series books that he had specifically looked for on the bookshelf when he got home last night from his schoolbag, and took advantage of the last bit of the long break to run to the door of Class 3 next door.

Whether it was a coincidence or the other person had been waiting there, as soon as he approached, he saw Zhu Wenyun sitting by the window, looking somewhat absent-minded and glancing at the classroom door every now and then. He casually handed the book to her through the open window.

"Here, this is what we agreed on yesterday, for you."

"Thank you."

Just like Chen Junqian yesterday, Zhu Wenyun also took great care today, specifically using both hands to receive the book:

"I should be able to finish reading it and return it to you next Monday."

"It's okay to watch for a while, since I've already finished watching it."

After saying that, Chen Junqian glanced at the covers and titles of the two books again, then leaned halfway against the window and asked Zhu Wenyun a question with some curiosity:

"Is it because these are the only two books left in the Pipilu series that you haven't read? Otherwise, why would you choose these two?"

As one of Zheng Yuanjie's most devoted fans, Chen Junqian not only read almost all of Zheng's works many times when he was young, but also revisited many classic children's literature works after becoming a creator in the field himself.

However, it was precisely because of this that he was genuinely curious about Zhu Wenyun's choice.

Among Zheng Yuanjie's numerous series and works, 419 Sins is probably the least like, or rather, not a fairy tale at all. Instead, it consists of a series of very short stories used to educate readers about my country's Criminal Law. It can only be said that in every aspect, it seems like a work that is just padding out the word count to get paid for the manuscript.

In contrast, while "Pipilu and the Germ Boss" does tell a long story, firstly, Chen Junqian doesn't think children would have any fondness or interest in germs, especially for clean girls; secondly, the book has too many realistic elements, so it can't be considered a fairy tale that children can enjoy reading.

However, it seems that most of Zheng Yuanjie's works are in this style.

"No, I borrowed these two books from you first because I was quite interested in their titles and summaries."

It sounded like the question had been thrown back at him verbatim, but considering that Zhu Wenyun hadn't actually read the contents yet, Chen Junqian didn't press the matter further. After all, the other party might complain in a couple of days that the title had misled them or that the content didn't match their expectations.

It's fair to say that his perspective on the book title "Pipilu and the Remote Control Teacher" changed when he was a child compared to when he grew up and experienced more things...

It's best not to think about it any further; the impact on elementary school students is immeasurable.

"Okay, I'll come again next Monday."

After saying that, Chen Junqian quickly left the classroom of Class 3 as soon as the bell rang for the next class, returned to his seat in his own classroom, and began to wait for the teacher to come for the next class.

Today is Thursday, and the weekend is just around the corner. The students seem more restless than in the past few days, though this could also be due to a computer class in the afternoon.

I remember when he was in junior high school, he also had computer class on Thursday afternoons. Back then, the first two classes were biology and chemistry, so together it was biochemistry computer class, which was quite entertaining.

Lin Mu's parents should be back in a couple of days, so his cooking duties will be over. However, starting next week, he will be taking up his post as a discipline committee member again, partnered with Xu Youwei.

Thinking of this, Chen Junqian subconsciously glanced in the other person's direction twice, but unexpectedly, Xu Youwei was also secretly glancing in his direction. Their eyes met briefly in the air before she looked away, and feeling a little embarrassed, she turned her head back.

"Why don't we go with Weiwei after school today? There are leftovers from yesterday's food, and I can heat it up myself now, so we should have plenty of time."

At lunchtime, while eating and watching cartoons at the after-school care center, Lin Mu, with a bitter face, chewed on a bitter melon and, as if trying to distract himself, made the same suggestion to Chen Junqian, as if that would make it easier to chew the food in his mouth.

"Today? It's possible in terms of time, but we need to work on the blackboard newspaper together after school. By the time we finish and leave the school gate, most of the students will have left, and it would be easier to be discovered if we tried to follow them."

"That's what they say, but I just feel really uncomfortable because I feel like Weiwei has been acting weirder and weirder lately..."

All I can say is that if that embarrassing system were still awake at this moment, it would probably roll its eyes and mutter, "As expected, people in the real world are quite unadaptable in their speech and actions." In a typical anime/manga setting, it would definitely say something like, "Because xx is about to break down."

Despite the limited vocabulary and descriptive abilities of a primary school student, Lin Mu still tried her best to convey her meaning to Chen Junqian:

"That's right, didn't I ask you about the talisman yesterday?"

As she spoke, she glanced up at the television screen, which was still playing the series in sequence. After the Twelve Talismans arc ended, the Eight Demons arc began. This episode featured the Black Hand gang using the power of the talismans to rob a bank, and Valmont being possessed by Shendu. It was just as thrilling, but Lin Mu clearly didn't feel the same way as yesterday.