Chapter 75

During this week, Xiang Wan watched Chen Yan spend his days in a monotonous college life, going back and forth between home and school.

In the morning, I go to the teaching building for my major courses. If I don't have classes in the afternoon, I go back to my dorm to write code. In the evening, after eating dinner in the cafeteria, I go back to my dorm and write code all night again.

He's not social; aside from handing in assignments, he never chats with classmates in his major. His days consist of attending classes, writing code, and sleeping—a repetitive cycle.

Xiang Wan only has a soul and no physical body. As long as she leaves Chen Yan by a few hundred meters, she will reappear next to him in the next second. Therefore, although she is very bored, she can only watch blankly.

After a week of the same routine, she felt numb. Moreover, when Chen Yan started coding, it was as if he didn't notice the passage of time; he could even go an entire day without eating...

At first, Xiang Wan recalled the eye contact she had with Chen Yan on the train platform and tried to test him several times until she was sure he really couldn't see her before she stopped testing him.

Strangely, a week has passed, but the scene has not changed again.

Just as she was lamenting to herself that she would have to live these same days for several more days, Chen Yan suddenly put on a suit that afternoon.

Xiang Wan raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised that the nerdy guy seemed to be leaving campus today. She followed beside him, looking at the laptop bag he was carrying, wondering where he was going.

Half an hour later, the taxi stopped in front of a building.

In the elevator, Xiang Wan saw Chen Yan press the button for the 10th floor and knew that his destination was probably the headquarters of Shuan Home Furnishings.

She roughly guessed that his trip was related to his first pot of gold. She remembered that in her previous life, Chen Ruilin earned his first pot of gold by selling a program while in college.

Considering the timing and the fact that he had been coding day and night all week, she guessed that he was there to sell programs.

But she never expected that Chen Ruilin's first pot of gold would be earned from Shuan Home Furnishings. She also happened to know the president of Shuan Home Furnishings, whose son was in the same grade as Xiang Wan at Beiyi Affiliated Middle School.

Soon, Shuan Home Furnishings' secretary came down to greet him. Xiang Wan followed him upstairs, but when they were discussing cooperation in the conference room, she did not go with them. Instead, she went to the lounge in the tea room next door.

By the time they finished their discussion, it was already afternoon. When Chen Yan came out, Xiang Wan looked at the joy in his eyes and roughly guessed that the cooperation should have been successful.

On the way back, she followed him as she had come. Just when Xiang Wan thought they would take a car back to school, the taxi stopped in front of a cultural and creative store next to the school.

Xiang Wan walked towards the school gate as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but she noticed that Chen Yan actually went into that cultural and creative store.

She blinked, somewhat puzzled, and followed him inside, only to see Chen Yan stop in front of the letter paper shelf.

The entire row was made of pink stationery, which didn't quite look like stationery; it looked more like love letters without any writing on them.

Xiang Wan thought it was a love letter Chen Ruilin was going to write to some girl in college. She wasn't jealous, but she just wanted to laugh. She never expected that the cold and aloof president in public would have such an innocent and naive past.

Back in the dormitory, even after Chen Yan sat down and started writing a letter, Xiang Wan still thought it was a love letter he wrote to the girl he had a crush on.

Until he wrote her name on the first line...

Upon seeing the name 'Xiang Wan' on the letter, Xiang Wan herself fell into deep thought.

If she hadn't lost her memory, it seems she only met Chen Yan in this life once, when she was 12 years old.

It wasn't until she read the later parts that she realized it was a thank-you letter from Chen Yan, thanking her for sponsoring his studies and for covering his daily expenses.

Just by looking at how fast he writes code, you can tell he's a man of his word.

But for that thank-you letter of only two or three hundred words, Chen Yan spent an entire night writing it, rewriting and revising it repeatedly, even tearing up countless sheets of paper.

The person being thanked, watching from the side, also felt somewhat weary.

Xiang Wan watched as Chen Yan carefully folded the thank-you letter and mailed it at the post office the next day. But she was also a little surprised, as she seemed to have never received a thank-you letter from Chen Ruilin in her previous life.

But she also received quite a few postcards from others, so Xiang Wan thought she might have missed one.

Shortly after Chen Yan sent out the thank-you letter, at the traffic light on the way back to the dormitory, Xiang Wan wanted to follow him back to school, when a white light flashed before her eyes again.

When she opened her eyes again, the scene had shifted to six years later...

*

Six years later in this timeline, Xiang Wan stood in front of the headquarters of Sirong Technology, looked at the Sirong Building in front of him, and smiled.

She had seen Chen Ruilin at his most helpless, and seeing how he had built Sirong Technology from scratch in his past life, she was genuinely happy for him.

Each time her soul was teleported, it would transport her to his side. Xiang Wan was still searching for Chen Yan when, not long after, a minivan came to a steady stop downstairs at the building.

A man got out of the back seat, and she recognized him just by his back view.

At this time, Chen Yan, who was 24 years old, already had an aura that kept strangers at bay, just like he had in his previous life.

Xiang Wan calculated the time and realized that it seemed to be about a month before her death.

She followed Chen Yan into the express elevator and arrived at the 21st floor.

Once inside the office, Chen Yan sat at his desk, took a sip of the coffee his secretary had prepared, and then pulled a greeting card from the drawer in front of him.

The greeting card cover also had the words "Invitation" printed on it.

Xiang Wan looked at the invitation and felt that something about it looked familiar. It wasn't until she saw the contents that she remembered where she had seen it before.

This invitation was the first one she received from Si Rong, because at that time Si Rong's net worth was already approaching that of the Xiang Group, and Secretary Huang even picked this invitation out from among all the invitations.

When she saw it, she found it a bit strange that the invitation was handwritten, so she took a second look at it.

She initially thought it was written by Chen Ruilin's secretary, but she never expected that the invitation was actually written by him personally.

Xiang Wan glanced at the stack of invitations beside her. The cover was exactly the same as the one Chen Yan was holding, but only the one for her was handwritten by him.

However, she was not actually present at the banquet at that time.

After reading the invitation, she casually put it in her drawer. She had planned to attend and had told Secretary Huang to arrange the itinerary and inform her in advance.

However, Zhou Chengze happened to see the invitation. Xiang Wan didn't understand what he was thinking at the time, but he threw it away and even asked Secretary Huang to change her itinerary.

Although the banquet was ultimately canceled due to a time conflict with a meeting of another group's senior management, Xiang Wan still warned Zhou Chengze when Secretary Huang told her about it.

That was the first time she warned him not to cross the line, and it was also the first time he lost his temper with her. In the days that followed, their relationship was somewhat strained.

Looking back now, Xiang Wan thinks that Zhou Chengze's inexplicable behavior back then was probably out of guilt. After all, if it weren't for Li Taohua's interference, the person she would have sponsored was actually Chen Yan.

That's why Zhou Chengze was so resentful about Chen Ruilin's matter. Moreover, she guessed that the reason she didn't receive a handwritten thank-you letter from Chen Ruilin was most likely because of Zhou Chengze in her previous life.

Xiang Wan looked at Chen Ruilin, who was working, and was about to get a closer look at his face when she felt a sharp pain in her heart...

The excruciating pain quickly spread throughout her body. Within minutes, her forehead was covered in cold sweat, and she collapsed to her knees, wondering if she was about to die.

She was still trying to find some humor in her misery, thinking that she had been reborn for so many years, so she had definitely made a profit.

The next second, a white light enveloped her entire body, and when she opened her eyes again, all she saw was a pristine white ceiling…

*

"Wanwan, you're finally awake!!!"

"Wanwan, you're awake!!!"

"Xiang Shuhan, look at me, how many is this?"

…

Xiang Wan was still a little confused by the noise around her, until she saw several heads coming closer to her, but all she could see was Chen Yan.

He looked really haggard; not only were his lips pale, but his cheeks were also completely bloodless.

Realizing she was still alive and had returned to her original timeline, she ignored Jiang Zhuochun, who kept sticking her fingers out to her and asking what year it was. Instead, disregarding the needle in her hand, she leaned in and hugged Chen Yan.

This hug was clearly unexpected for Chen Yan. He seemed caught off guard, but he didn't push her away. In order for her to be more comfortable in the hug, he even leaned forward a little.

Xiang Wan sensed his subtle movement, a slight smile playing on her lips, and whispered in his ear, "Chen Yan, I've missed you so much these past few days."

She could feel his shoulders stiffen for a moment, then gradually relax, and he whispered in her ear in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Me too."

Xiang Wan smiled gently and deepened the embrace.

In a corner of the ward, the trio were secretly complaining to each other—

Che Nanbei was the first to be criticized: "A deluge of dog food (a Chinese slang term for public displays of affection)."

Jiang Zhuochun replied, "We don't need to eat lunch later, we're already full."

Shen Feiyang then peeled an apple for himself with a knife, chewing as he said, "I worried for nothing for so long."

“Yeah.” Che Nanbei sat down and peeled an orange. “It’s been a month and Wanwan still hasn’t woken up. To be honest, I haven’t been sleeping well at night. Now I can finally get a good night’s sleep.”

"Now that Wanwan is awake, we just need to ask her later and the truth will come out."

“But I still don’t understand,” Shen Feiyang frowned and continued, “Why does Zhou Chengze think that Zhou Xinyi pushed Wanwan into the sea?”

After thinking for a moment, she added, "And they are siblings."

“I also find it strange. Xinyi and Xiangwan have never had any conflicts.” Thinking of something, Che Nanbei looked at Jiang Zhuochun, who was leaning against the wall, and said, “You and Zhou Chengze are the closest, didn’t you know that?”

Jiang Zhuochun carefully tossed the orange peel into the trash can, then shrugged: "I don't know either. I asked him, but he wouldn't tell me."

Shen Feiyang held the cushion to his chest: "Aren't Zhou Chengze and Zhou Xinyi siblings?"

Upon hearing this, Che Nanbei's eyes lit up, and he made a bold guess: "Could it be that they are fake siblings, incestuous literature?"

Shen Feiyang: "..."

Jiang Zhuochun looked at her speechlessly: "Miss Che, you've been reading too many novels."

"..." Che Nanbei was clearly unconvinced, and muttered, "You never know."

"Should we tell the two siblings that Wanwan has woken up?"

"Speak up. If you don't make things clear soon, the siblings will break off their friendship."

"OK."

"It's right next door, I bet they'll be rushing over soon."