I turned reality into a romantic comedy

"How did Qinqin know I really have ghost stories here?"

Xu Youwei's eyes lit up when she heard this, and she pulled out two copies of "The Horror" from her desk drawer. This thing was about the size of a story magazine, and it was full of all kinds of horror stories. The price of six yuan for two copies was also quite affordable. Chen Junqian remembered that it was indeed popular in their primary and junior high schools for a while, to the point that the teachers had to confiscate it. However, it seemed to have disappeared along with the decline of print publications.

"You actually bought one of these?"

Seeing Chen Junqian frown slightly, Xu Youwei assumed he was a little afraid of ghost stories, so she leaned closer to test him:

"It looks quite exciting to pass the time. Is Qinqin also afraid to read ghost stories with supernatural phenomena? If I tell you a couple more, will you be too scared to go home? After all, there are plenty of ghost stories and legends in the countryside. But it's okay, I have a bed here too."

Seeing Xu Youwei's seemingly inescapable thought process—that seeing a white arm immediately conjures up images of xxx—Chen Junqian reached out and gave her a light tap on the forehead.

"What are you thinking? Just look at these things and don't take them seriously, and don't try to do any of those weird rituals or anything like that."

"Tch, I certainly don't believe it either. There are no ghosts in this world. Forget it, let's go play in the yard instead."

Xu Youwei pouted in disappointment at Chen Junqian's performance, thinking she had finally found his weakness or vulnerability.

The two of them left the room and walked into the yard. Unlike last year when Xu Youwei had to carry them to Chen Junqian's place herself, there was only one slight difference. Perhaps it was because her father had told her about it. The small house next to the yard was filled with all kinds of fireworks and firecrackers.

In fact, there are quite a few achievements in the achievement list that are related to fireworks or fireworks displays, but they are basically all closely related to the "Fireworks Festival". Whether it was last year or this year, even though there were fireworks everywhere outside, the system did not seem to directly identify it as a fireworks festival.

Thinking about the upcoming ban on fireworks and firecrackers in the next few years, Chen Junqian felt a little melancholy. After browsing through the list again, he suddenly realized that if he couldn't find a way to get those achievements, such as "Fireworks Festival with No Sound", "Fireworks Festival Must Be Done in Yukata", and "You Can Watch Fireworks from Anywhere", through the system's evaluation in the next few years, he would probably have to go to Japan to experience them in person when he became an adult.

Among the many entries strongly related to "fireworks festival," judging solely from the description, "fireworks festival where the sound disappeared" seems to be judged more leniently:

If confessions could be easily conveyed, the suspense and tension in romantic comedies would undoubtedly be reduced. Therefore, the various unexpected events that occur when deciding to confess are an essential element to appreciate in romantic comedies.

Condition for completion: You are confessed to by the female lead, who is suited for romantic comedies, while fireworks are being set off, but her voice is drowned out by the explosion.

It only mentions that the fireworks and firecrackers are being set off, without specifying a fireworks festival scenario. However, it also stipulates that the female lead must take the initiative to confess. Otherwise, Chen Junqian would have already found a time on New Year's Eve when the fireworks and firecrackers were so loud that people were about to go deaf, and deliberately whispered something ambiguous, such as "We should watch fireworks together in the future." Even if someone heard it, it would be easier to explain.

As he watched another rocket shoot straight into the sky and then burst into flames in the night sky, Chen Junqian suddenly felt a weight on his back. It turned out that Xu Youwei had suddenly leaned over there and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"What's wrong?"

"Hmm... I just suddenly remembered when I was very young, every year on the Lantern Festival, my parents and I would go to the city square to watch the fireworks. Back then, my dad would carry me on his back like this, but I could also sit on his shoulders."

Upon hearing the other person mention the fireworks display at the municipal government square on the Lantern Festival (January 15th of the lunar calendar), Chen Junqian had a vague recollection of it. He remembered that there was indeed such an event, but since he hadn't been to many places as a child, he asked another question:

Are they still available?

"I'm not too sure either, since I haven't been there for two years."

As she spoke, Xu Youwei brought her mouth close to Chen Junqian's ear and whispered:

"Qinqin, are you going to take me to see it again? Then you'd better grow a little taller, so it'll be easier for you to carry me then."

"So I had to carry it back then too?"

"It's because you carried me on your back last year. I didn't even realize it at the time, and I was even showing off by saying something like 'Don't move around so you can save me some energy,' although I admit I did look pretty cool."

Just like when she was a child, Xu Youwei put all her weight on another person. For a moment, she even felt as if she had returned to the time when her family had not changed before. As a result, she unconsciously wrapped her arms around Chen Junqian's neck and tightened them. It was a bit like the kind of supernatural curse that would haunt you for life if you were just slightly involved in the ghost stories she had read.

"It's too tight."

Chen Junqian almost blurted out, "I can't breathe," but he only managed to move two steps with the koala on his back before pretending to be exhausted and sitting down, putting Xu Youwei down as well.

"Sorry, would you like me to blow on it and rub it for you?"

"That's not an exaggeration."

Chen Junqian stretched his neck a little while sitting there, and looked up at the girl standing behind him who was also looking down at him, as well as the entire night sky next to her. Suddenly, he inexplicably thought of the couple nicknames that Zhong Yu and his girlfriend had just seen earlier today, and what she had said after brushing her teeth that morning: "Even my saliva tastes a little sweet like oranges."

"Speaking of which, your dad secretly slipped me a red envelope before he left today. I opened it this afternoon and saw that it contained exactly two thousand yuan. You should return it to him for me."

Perhaps simply to distract himself, or perhaps because he felt the atmosphere was somewhat subtly romantic, Chen Junqian suddenly remembered this matter and took out the red envelope he had received from Xu Zhiling that morning from his pocket, intending to hand it to Xu Youwei.

“This was specially given to you by my father. He definitely won’t accept it if you return it. If Qinqin doesn’t want it, how about I help you think of a way?”

"any solution?"

"Just spend the money on me."

Xu Youwei reached out and affectionately ruffled Chen Junqian's hair, then spoke with great enthusiasm about the idea she had been thinking about all day:

"In preparation for the impending 2012 doomsday, we should start making the necessary preparations now. This is our Noah's Ark plan for the two of us. How does that sound?"

"...So you're still thinking about this, huh?"

"Otherwise, besides, I always felt that the name Noah's Ark was not quite appropriate."

Hsu Yu-Wei seems to be seriously considering this matter.

"What we have should be called a shelter, a home for the two of us after the end of the world actually happens."

"It should be well-hidden so that it won't be easily discovered, and sturdy enough so that it won't be easily destroyed even if it is discovered. It should also have our favorite food, drinks, toys, and books so that the two of us can stay inside for a long time without any problem. Doesn't that sound great?"

"Um, probably."

Rather, Chen Junqian only felt that things were getting worse.

At least for this type of romantic achievement, he doesn't want to unlock any of them.

Chapter 8: Action A means being ruthless and taciturn (combined)

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, most shops on the street began to reopen one after another, including a subway milk tea shop that had just opened in Guoning this year.

Girls are indeed more enthusiastic about these new things than boys. In fact, Chen Junqian first learned about this from Lin Mu, and then Mu Mu asked him to go with her to buy it.

Since today was the day he organized the four of them to study or do homework together, Chen Junqian asked Xu Youwei and Zhu Wenyun on QQ what flavor they wanted to drink, planning to bring them a cup on his way.

Unlike the Hong Kong-style milk tea they had at the Shanghai World Expo last year, the first subway store to open in Guoning is a Taiwanese-style bubble tea shop, located near the Guoning Center, seemingly targeting middle school students.

At that time, the types of milk tea were not as fancy as they would be more than ten years later, to the point that you couldn't tell what they were just by looking at the names. They were just simple types like pearl milk tea, red bean milk tea, and pudding milk tea. Most of the products were priced between four and six yuan, which was within the range that students could barely afford.

After all, the price is about the same as a cup of Xiangpiaopiao or Youlemei milk tea, and it saves you the trouble of brewing it yourself.

Looking at the familiar subway sign, Chen Junqian subconsciously glanced at the shops next to him, but he didn't see the sign of another shop he remembered from junior high school. Only then did he belatedly realize that fried chicken shops such as "Zhengxin Chicken Cutlet" and "Haoda Chicken Cutlet," which had become popular due to the popularity of "bursting chicken cutlet," had not yet officially arrived in Guoning at the beginning of 2011, and had not yet had time to form a classic duo with the milk tea shop next door for students.

What would Qianqian like to drink?

Lin Mu's words brought Chen Junqian's thoughts back to reality. Another year had passed, and Mu Mu felt that her height had changed very little. She felt that she could change the target next to the height record ruler on the wall of her room from 1.65 meters to 1.6 meters. That seemed more likely.

"I'll have red bean milk tea. I just asked Wenyun and Youwei, and they both drink pearl milk tea with standard sugar."

"Then I'll have red bean milk tea too."

Lin Mu happily ordered the same milk tea as Chen Junqian, and generously handed one of her New Year's money to the clerk, saying:

"I'll treat you to dinner today, since everyone came to help me."

As the one with the worst grades among the four, Lin Mu was well aware that Chen Junqian organized this study session mainly to help him. So he tried his best to put aside his desire to play around during the holiday and put it back into studying.

Okay, it's still a bit difficult.

Perhaps because of the little incident at his hometown a few days ago, Lin Mu started to pay special attention to Chen Junqian's appearance and clothing when he saw him again. Then he saw Chen Junqian wearing the gloves that Zhu Wenyun had knitted and given to him, politely thanking the milk tea shop clerk and accepting all four cups of milk tea.

When the two of them were about to go back hand in hand, Chen Junqian noticed that Lin Mu had started to misbehave and was putting her fingers inside his glove, where a small bump had formed.

"Is it too cold?"

"No, because if Qianqian is wearing gloves and I'm not, it feels like I'm holding hands with yarn and gloves, which doesn't count as holding hands at all, so I have to put my hand in."

"...What kind of theory is this?"

Clearly, Lin Mu didn't have the subtle and methodical approach of her best friend Xu Youwei, who could casually say "wearing gloves makes it difficult to set off firecrackers" and then quietly remove the gloves. So, she simply stuck her fingers in as well, tickling Chen Junqian's palm in a rather unconvincing manner.

Although Chen Junqian took the initiative to organize today's study session, considering that his room was definitely not big enough for four people to sit and do their homework together, they had to temporarily move it to Lin Mu's house.

"But I remember that Qianqian's family is also buying a new house, right?"

"Well, my parents have saved up some money after working for so many years. If we borrow a little more from relatives and friends, it should be enough. After all, I will be starting junior high school next year, and they still want to buy a house in the school district of Ningzhong. Also, renovations will take time, so they probably will pay for the house this year."

Before Chen Junqian was reborn, his family had bought a new apartment this year. Now, with his help, his father's career is even more outstanding than in his previous life. Considering his salary and benefits, it seems that this progress can be accelerated. He just doesn't know if this butterfly effect will cause his second home's address to change.

"I wish it could be in my neighborhood, then we could become neighbors."

"...That would be too much of a burden for my family. The housing prices in Mu Mu's area are very high, and we don't plan to buy such a big house. Our current target is probably between eighty and one hundred square meters."

Carrying the milk tea, Chen Junqian chatted as he walked, and easily found himself at Lin Mu's house, the place he visited most frequently since his rebirth, besides his own. After putting on the indoor cotton shoes that Lin Mu's mother had prepared for him as his shoe size increased, he went inside. Not long after, he heard the doorbell ring.

Perhaps they bumped into each other at the entrance of the residential area. Zhu Wenyun and Xu Youwei came together, and Lin Mu found two pairs of her mother's shoes for them to wear.

Of the three, only Zhu Wenyun was visiting Lin Mu's house for the first time. However, perhaps because Chen Junqian was there and Lin Mu's parents were not home, she didn't seem too nervous. After the four of them shared the milk tea, she even wanted to pay for her share, but Lin Mu politely declined.

The four of them sat at the four corners of the square table in the living room and first checked each other's progress on their winter vacation homework. Chen Junqian and Zhu Wenyun were basically in sync, since they had always been a self-disciplined person who consistently completed their daily homework tasks. Xu Youwei had done almost everything she was supposed to do, leaving only her Chinese weekly journal and a few English essays temporarily unfinished.

Lin Mu... Mu Mu owes quite a lot. Rather, it's more accurate to say that this child's homework is characterized by a haphazard approach. When she encounters a question she knows how to do, she will do it first, and skip the ones she doesn't know how to do or that require thinking. As a result, she said that she had completed about half of her winter vacation homework, but when you open it, you can see that she had only written about half of each page in a scattered manner. It would probably make someone with OCD want to die.

In fact, during the period before Chen Junqian's rebirth, his way of dealing with winter and summer vacation assignments was to form a group with Zhong Yu and a few other boys, agree on which part each person would write, and then copy each other's work after finishing their own part. The efficiency of group work was even higher than that of college students doing group assignments.

However, the homeroom teacher seems to have noticed this trend among the students recently. In order to prevent it as much as possible, an additional plan has been introduced this year that the students must submit the draft notebook for each page and each question of their math winter vacation homework. Just a couple of days ago, Zhong Yu was complaining about this to Chen Junqian. After all, given their relationship, it would be an easy thing for him to borrow homework from Chen Junqian, who is the top student in the grade, to copy it.

Faced with Lin Mu's situation, Chen Junqian, who had quickly completed his tasks for the day, could only temporarily move to the bench where Lin Mu was sitting and began to teach her the questions one by one.

As someone who had also spent some time working in educational institutions during his university years, Chen Junqian was quite aware that teaching someone to learn a knowledge point and learning a knowledge point yourself were two completely different things. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many cases where teaching one's own children to do their homework resulted in the destruction of one's own Dao heart.

Even though you often feel like you've broken down the knowledge point into the smallest possible pieces, the next second the other person forgets what you just said, and with clear, foolish eyes, asks you a loud "Why?" or "I didn't understand" when you ask for your obvious "So, shouldn't we change xx to xx here?"

However, Chen Junqian was relieved that, firstly, Lin Mu's learning ability had not deteriorated to that point; he could still absorb the knowledge points after they were broken down and fed to him.

Then, Mu Mu's attitude was excellent, and she never hesitated to give him positive feedback. She would often say things like, "I feel that Qianqian teaches really well," "Yes, I understand completely," and "If Qianqian continues to teach me, my grades will definitely improve as much as Weiwei's." At least she wouldn't let him, the temporary substitute teacher, get upset or upset because of external factors.

...But isn't the last sentence a little off?

So you really do care about Xu Youwei being my deskmate, huh?

As expected, the moment Lin Mu uttered those words, Xu Youwei, who had suddenly been called out, completely lost the mindset she had had a year ago when she was willing to come to Lin Mu's rescue. Instead, she smiled and said, "..."

"Yes, I also feel that being Junqian's deskmate has been a great help to me, after all, the homeroom teacher said so."

It felt like a speech challenge where no one could fall behind, and Zhu Wenyun quickly spoke up again:

"I owe my improved Chinese language grades to Chen Junqian."

"Ahem... There's no need to give all the credit to me. It's mainly thanks to everyone's hard work. After all, we're all learning for our own benefit."

Chen Junqian quickly tried to control the situation, but Xu Youwei, his former wingman and now a master of backstabbing, showed no intention of letting go. She immediately raised her hand again, smiling at him, and said:

"Hello, Mr. Chen, I also have some questions I don't know how to answer. Could you come and teach me?"

"Don't you only have Chinese weekly journal entries and English essays left?"

"I just don't know what to write."

It seemed she had specifically practiced; Xu Youwei deftly twirled the pen in her right hand between her fingers, not even glancing at it, and leisurely used her free hand to prop her chin up, raising the corners of her mouth towards Chen Junqian:

“Maybe once you come over, I’ll suddenly remember what to write again, right, Wenjun? You should understand what I mean, right?”

Unlike a certain silly girl who was still immersed in the fact that her story with Chen Junqian had been written into a book and published, Xu Youwei also bought a copy of "My Nine Yuan and Fifty Yuan Survival Challenge with My Deskmate" and easily realized what the author of this story, Zhu Wenyun, was writing and thinking.

The other party was just using Lin Mu's story to express her own thoughts, and it was obvious that she wanted to write about her own story with Chen Junqian later, which is what she just said, 'as soon as someone comes over, they will know what to write.'

When Xu Youwei, whom Zhu Wenyun had known for over a year but with whom she had little interaction, pointed at her in such an ambiguous way, Zhu Wenyun's attitude also became somewhat subtle. However, in the end, she chose not to get involved any further. She shook her head while chewing on the pearls in her mouth, did not reply, and continued to do her homework while pretending not to see anything. After all, this was ultimately a matter between Lin Mu and Xu Youwei, so why drag her into it?

"Today we'll mainly focus on teaching Mumu. As for the problem of not being able to write her weekly journal, if all else fails, she can just copy a couple of entries from her own diary. Anyway, the teacher definitely won't notice."

Whether it was because they didn't want to escalate the topic further in front of Chen Junqian, or simply because they heard him say "copy two entries from your own diary," Lin Mu and Xu Youwei, who had been a little annoyed with each other just moments before, turned their heads away in unison, their faces flushed with embarrassment.

After all, their diaries were indeed not suitable for others to read.

One type starts with some genuine emotion but ends up being purely for the sake of being sensational, half-truths and half-fictional content written for a specific audience. The other type is so bad that even the writer feels embarrassed when looking back on it occasionally, and it's something even their mother can't touch. Submitting it as a weekly journal entry to the teacher would only make it seem like an open confession.

Taking a quick glance at the achievement list, even though Chen Junqian felt it was a bit awkward, the system stubbornly stuck to its bottom line of strict quality control over the Shura Field, and so far only the achievement "Let's have a study session together" has been unlocked.

However, children's emotions come and go quickly. After calming down for a while, with Chen Junqian's active guidance, Lin Mu and Xu Youwei made up again.

Of course, this could also be related to something else.

It was noon when Lin Mu suggested having another meal cooked by Chen Junqian. Seeing Zhu Wenyun naturally follow him into the kitchen and skillfully help him, the two people in the living room looked at each other in unison, then stared at each other blankly.

Chapter Nine: Please Take My Song Home (Part Two)

During the last ten days or so of the winter break, Chen Junqian held several study sessions in the same manner, but the location was basically fixed at Lin Mu's house. After all, there wasn't enough space at his house or Zhu Wenjun's house. Xu Youwei's house had more than enough space, but she herself didn't like staying at home. In addition, there was a possibility of awkward situations, so Chen Junqian, knowing her difficulties, didn't suggest it in the first place.

However, the atmosphere was never as tense as the first time in the subsequent times. Lin Mu and Xu Youwei never had similar arguments again, and they could even often be seen whispering to each other.