Scheming

It was late autumn. Golden plane-tree leaves drifted down, often carpeting the hospital courtyard. Ornamental fish swam lazily in the fountain pool, and whenever a leaf landed, it spread tranquil ripples across the surface. Middle-aged and elderly patients in white hospital gowns strolled through the spacious courtyard, either supported by relatives or walking in groups of two or three. Though they had come for treatment, they all looked remarkably relaxed. Yet whenever Jiaming left his ward, he only felt like a mental patient who had wandered into the wrong place—and he even had a little tagalong trailing behind him.

Given Jiaming's actual physical condition, once he had been medicated and properly bandaged, he could have moved around normally. Staying in the hospital was completely unnecessary. However, while the Huang Family might not have cared about Jiaming himself, they did care about appearances. Now that something had happened to him, concern was absent, but they could throw around money by the fistful. The hospital, naturally, understood the Huang Family's circumstances. Since they were willing to pay, the hospital conveniently exaggerated Jiaming's condition countless times over. Thus, Jiaming helplessly ended up staying in the hospital for the following week.

The tagalong was naturally not Lingjing or Shasha, who were attending school, but his fellow sufferer sharing the room. Ever since entering the hospital, the two had had no interaction beyond exchanging a single thank-you that night. However, during the weekend when Lingjing and Yuechi Xun communicated in English, she saw the Japanese girl lying in bed and staring blankly into space all day. Thinking she might be frightened in an unfamiliar place, she suggested that Jiaming take her out for walks now and then. Though Jiaming never explicitly agreed, from then on, whenever he went out, Yuechi Xun silently followed behind him like a ghost.

When Jiaming walked through the courtyard, Yuechi Xun quietly followed behind him. When he sat on a bench, she quietly sat beside him. When he crouched by the pool, she quietly crouched nearby. When he went to the pavilion to play Go with the old men, she quietly watched from the side. The most terrifying part was that whenever Jiaming gained the upper hand, Yuechi Xun's scallion-white fingers would lightly gesture twice over the board, and the old man opposite him would happily say, "Oh, oh, so it goes here, it goes here..." Then he would turn the tables and win.

So Jiaming was thoroughly depressed!

Could it be that he had committed too many bad deeds in his previous life, and now some lingering ghost had latched onto him? Uh... he had indeed done plenty of bad things in his previous life, but that Yuechi Xun had committed suicide back then. What the hell did that have to do with him...? Besides, even a vengeful spirit couldn't possibly travel through time. That was too ridiculous.

In truth, Jiaming was not someone who nitpicked over everything. Although he brooded miserably over it in his heart, he did not say anything aloud. They had no real relationship anyway, and he had no intention of associating with a member of a family that had provoked Peiluojia. If she wanted to follow him, let her. Jiaming always wore an expression that said, "I don't know her."

Lingjing and Shasha came every day at noon and in the evening. Naturally, they brought a portion of food for Yuechi Xun as well. Though Jiaming always acted indifferent, Lingjing seemed to have struck up a friendship with Yuechi Xun through her newly learned, clumsy English. Sometimes, Jiaming wondered whether that friendship would bring him some new trouble.

After staying in the hospital for four or five days, Jiaming was finally ready to be discharged. That evening, Lingjing had probably said her goodbyes to Yuechi Xun. Deep in the night, with Jiaming seven-tenths asleep, he heard Yuechi Xun's voice.

"Gu Jiaming..."

Her voice was soft and cautious, as though she were trying to determine whether he was asleep. After a moment, Jiaming answered with a grunt.

"You... I'm sorry. Please forgive my presumption, but could I... could I ask you for a favor?"

"No, thank you," Jiaming answered in Japanese.

Silence fell from her side. Jiaming turned over, preparing to go back to sleep, when her voice sounded again.

"I'm sorry... but this matter is very important to me. I wonder whether Gu Jun could... hear me out before deciding..."

Jiaming did not answer. He only heard her say, "I wanted to ask whether Gu Jun... has experience with girls, um... that sort of thing..."

Jiaming rolled his eyes. What, was she mocking him? "Yeah," he said. "But it was with a foreign chick, not some flat-chested, flat-assed Japanese woman. What? You want to do it with me?"

Jiaming never bothered with his tone around people he did not care about. He had assumed that, as a girl raised with Japanese aristocratic education, she would be rendered speechless by that line and obediently go to sleep. Instead, she softly said, "Y-yes... I wonder if that would be possible..."

"Forget it. You're not mature enough, and you're covered in scars right now. You look awful. I'm a healthy adolescent still going through puberty. Doing it with you even once would leave a shadow on my young heart and affect my entire life. Even if you want to repay me, you don't need to go this far. I'd be grateful enough if you just disappeared from in front of me... If this hospital weren't so short on wards, I wouldn't want to squeeze into one bed with you either... Ah, no, I mean one room..."

His mouth spouted nonsense, but he was genuinely puzzled inside. What was going on? Why did every woman he saved nowadays want to offer herself to him? He had never noticed that society's moral standards were so high in his previous life. Then again, he had still been training at this point in his previous life. Could society's morals have collapsed completely in just two or three years?

Naturally, that was only a joke. Jiaming waited a while, then heard Yuechi Xun apologize again.

"I-I'm sorry... but... I don't know whether Gu Jun knows that the Yuechi Family is currently facing a crisis..."

Jiaming naturally knew all too well. Mishou Tsuka, Peiluojia's man in charge in Japan, had long planned to move against the Yuechi Family, but he had never found an excuse. It was only after his son, Oomori Yoshi, set his sights on the still fourteen-year-old Yuechi Xun that everything was set aflame. At that thought, Jiaming could not help frowning. Had this little girl seen what he could do and decided to sacrifice her virginity, diverting the disaster toward him so that Oomori Yoshi would face him instead? In that instant, he felt the urge to kill.

Oomori Yoshi was one of Peiluojia's top Ability Users, his strength on par with Gods Without Thought. In his daily conduct, he appeared much more decent, but there was one extremely twisted thing about him: the man was an extreme lolicon. He found all women over eighteen filthy and disgusting. Whenever he slept with someone, he chose innocent, adorable girls of thirteen or fourteen. After taking their virginity, he never gave them a second glance. Oomori Yoshi had taken an interest in Yuechi Xun. Though he had only proposed an engagement for now, the Yuechi Family naturally refused, thereby giving Peiluojia an excuse to make trouble.

That said, although Oomori Yoshi was a pervert, he had never liked using force. He always drowned the families of little girls in piles of money, then used candy and toys to trick them out of their virginity. He was the ultimate strange big brother, a fighter jet among perverts. Anyone could see that using such forceful, tasteless methods against the Yuechi Family was a plan engineered by his own old pervert of a father. Whether they agreed or not, the Yuechi Family would certainly be unable to escape disaster.

"...Because of this, my family requested Takama-ga-hara's help. In order to strengthen that relationship, when I was still in Japan last time, Father mentioned that he wanted me to become engaged to the eldest son of the Ten'u Family. I have never met Masanori of the Ten'u Family, but when I return this time, I will not be able to defy Father's wishes. So I hoped that, at least my first time..."

"Give your first time to your dad. I told you, I don't want it... Or I've got a pencil here. You can just poke it through yourself..."

"P-poke it through...?"

"Yeah, just poke it through, then go show it to Oomori Yoshi of Peiluojia. Oomori Yoshi has this really disgusting sense of aesthetics. Although his father is using him this time, as long as he knows you're no longer a virgin, he'll definitely announce to the whole world that he has nothing to do with you and never had any designs on you. That way, you won't have to marry Ten'u Masanori either. Heh, I'm amazing..."

He had rattled all that off casually, but the more he thought about it, the more logical it seemed. Congratulating himself on having maxed-out intelligence, he sat up and took a drink from the glass on his bedside table. Then he heard rustling behind him. The girl got out of bed in her hospital gown and actually came over to his bedside.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Jiaming had only been joking and had not taken it seriously. Then he saw the girl hold out both hands. "I... I want to borrow the pencil..."

"Gulp—pfft—" To avoid Yuechi Xun's utterly serious, porcelain-doll face, Jiaming sprayed water all over the blanket. Then he clutched his stomach and rolled around. "Hahahaha... Are you brain-dead? I was joking! You really wanted to use a pencil...? Hahahaha, hehehe..."

The image of a beautiful girl like Yuechi Xun spreading her legs beneath the moonlight and poking herself with a pencil played in his mind, and he could not stop laughing. It took a long time before he finally calmed down. Clutching his aching stomach, he patted at the wet stains on the blanket. Then, upon looking at Yuechi Xun's face, he started laughing again. "Hehe... Go back to sleep, dummy. Peiluojia has been eyeing your Yuechi Family for a long time. Even without an excuse, what's coming will still come. Using a pencil... hahaha, at most it would make that pervert Oomori Yoshi feel bad for a while. Hmm, you really are probably his type..."

"Gu Jun, you... know Peiluojia very well?"

"No, I have nothing to do with Peiluojia, and I don't want anything to do with it..." He lay back beneath the blanket, thought for a moment, then decided to reward Yuechi Xun for entertaining him so much. "Don't worry. Once you get to know Ten'u Masanori, you may find that he's actually not a bad person. But whether you like him or not, whether you get engaged to him or not, he won't touch you. He already has a girlfriend."

"Gu Jun... knows Ten'u Jun?"

Jiaming turned away and did not answer another question. Yuechi Xun seemed to take that response as confirmation. At the time, Jiaming did not know that this careless silence would leave the first crack in his life after reincarnation. Fortunately, it did not lead to any major trouble later on.

He was discharged the next day, then returned to school and had no further contact with Yuechi Xun. A few days later, on Thursday of the second week, he left the Ye Family Martial Arts School late at night and returned home. Before he even entered, he sensed that something was wrong. Someone had been in his room.

Only after a careful inspection did he push open the door. A note had been left on the desk beside his bed. Its Chinese characters were impeccably neat, written in such precise regular script that they put one to shame:

"Tomorrow afternoon at two, Xidu Cafe on East City Road. I hope to meet with you. Do not fail to come. Ten'u Masanori."

The following afternoon, the school was closed for an inspection by the education committee. The other party had even found that out.