Rebirth: Account Closed

The sky was dark and the earth dim.

"Fang Huai?"

The long table and several recruiters before him seemed to have changed.

"Ah, that's me." Fang Huai was a little dazed.

It felt like he'd just had a heart attack. The pain had been unbearable, and he'd blacked out for a moment.

He was only in his thirties, yet he'd actually suffered a heart attack. Fuck... Sigh, no more staying up late. At this rate, he wouldn't even live to see himself go bald.

"What position are you applying for?"

"Um... I'd like to apply for your company's corporate services product manager position."

The four people across from him all had question marks written across their faces.

With Fang Huai's years of job-hunting experience, he could tell that the half-bald man in the middle on the left wanted him to leave.

The woman on the right swiftly picked up a sheet from the documents in front of her, flipped it back and forth, read it twice, then looked up with a doubtful expression.

"...At present, our products don't require... The position we're recruiting for today is technical personnel for factories under corporate clients."

Just as expected, another company that sold dog meat under a sheep's head. They claimed to be hiring a product manager, but really wanted someone to tighten screws.

Fang Huai smiled and decided to struggle a little longer.

"My work experience has mainly involved understanding and defining user needs. I also have some understanding of traffic acquisition models for online content service providers. The Web 3.0 era is coming, and information blockchain is a major trend. I also have some insights into personal user services and experiences that focus more closely on users. I even brought a PPT today..."

"Sorry, next."

This place had no room for him.

Fang Huai shoved both hands into his pockets, put away his earlier humble attitude, and prepared to try the next company.

He pulled something out of his pocket...

It looked familiar.

A phone. A slider phone.

Nokia 5200.

The four people in the inner room watched the young man outside the transparent glass wall stare blankly at his phone, all wearing somewhat contemptuous expressions.

"Young people these days want to reach the heavens while sitting on the ground. They're already human, yet they still want to become immortals."

"And he's a little..." The woman's expression was hard to describe. She pointed at her head.

"He even wants to work on personal user experiences! If we made him a salesperson, how many lawsuits would we have to deal with in a year?"

Twenty minutes later, Fang Huai walked out from beside the sign reading "Nuosi Technology (Adult Products)," a cigarette dangling from his lips as he muttered repeatedly.

"Fuck me, it's 2007."

2007... On the day he was supposed to enlist, he'd apparently been angry with his family and run off to interview at a condom company.

After three cigarettes, Fang Huai suddenly turned around.

"Come out! I saw you!"

He felt certain someone was screwing with him, like The Truman Show, with some production crew secretly filming his life.

Other than being toyed with, he couldn't think of any explanation.

But this wasn't Guangzhou. It was Chongqing, and those giant Fuwa holding hands in the square had been torn down more than a decade ago.

He felt around in his pocket again.

Phone, wallet, keys, cigarettes, lighter. Those things seemed to be his only guide right now.

At least he hadn't started with just a bowl.

Rebirth...

Rebirth!

Fang Huai's breathing quickened.

First, he had to go home and take a look!

In the taxi, Fang Huai spent the entire ride memorializing and summarizing his past life.

His life had probably been in crisis since his youth.

He was the son of a cook, and not the kind of cook who made medium-rare steaks. His father was the kind who stir-fried pork kidneys for eighteen yuan a plate.

After leaving the fire service at twenty-four, he joined a struggling public institution. Unable to stand his superiors' PUA any longer, he quit and went to Guangzhou, where he gradually changed jobs more than ten times.

He had no savings, though the banks had more than a hundred thousand yuan deposited with him.

When he'd been so poor he could barely survive, he'd even tried taking bar singer gigs using the guitar skills he'd learned as a teenager to pick up girls.

He was fired soon afterward. They said he was a fraud who didn't know what he was doing.

Every profession had its own misery.

His only clear value was that if he were sold to Myawaddy as a human trafficking victim, he could supposedly fetch three hundred thousand yuan. But if he couldn't help his boss scam money, a thirty-five-year-old victim's kidneys probably wouldn't sell for much either.

At the moment, aside from a Guangxi girlfriend who loved calling him "dickhead," he didn't even have a dickhead of his own.

His mother, Zhang Mei, had passed away in a car accident in 2015.

In 2016, his ex-girlfriend Huang Jiaojiao learned that the driver responsible for the accident and the insurance company had paid his family one hundred and fifty thousand yuan in compensation. She asked to borrow one hundred and eighty-eight thousand yuan to repay debts owed to a cosmetic surgery hospital.

She said it could count as the bride price.

One hundred and eighty-eight thousand yuan. Not expensive—just the price of one cake of Lao Ban Zhang tea.

They'd been together since their school days. He had no money to buy a house or a car, and this was her only request, so he gave it to her.

The ultimate form of makeup was no makeup. The ultimate form of bride price was famine.

Huang Jiaojiao took the money and quickly left, leaving behind only one sentence.

"One of my friends said that following you would just mean drifting through life. I might as well take advantage of my youth and go make more money in Shanghai. Don't look for me. Wait for me for three years. When I come back, I'll marry you."

She even wrote him an IOU, with the repayment date set for one week later.

Only years later did Fang Huai learn that loans had a three-year statute of limitations. If he hadn't demanded repayment during that time, it was gone.

His father hadn't scolded him over it. He'd said that she'd been with him for so many years, so if he'd given it to her, then so be it.

But last year, his father had passed away too, from the same illness that had taken many others.

Anesthesia, intubation, blood transfusions, medication. It had also worsened his kidney disease until his kidneys failed. He needed bedside dialysis in the ICU, which was expensive. He was resuscitated for more than ten days before he died. Every morning, several thousand yuan went into the hospital's official account, and by nightfall, the balance was nearly empty again.

He had called Huang Jiaojiao too, hoping she would repay at least some of the money. Even lending him some would have been fine.

The calls wouldn't go through. He sent WeChat messages, but she never replied.

He looked at her Moments: hyaluronic acid face, silicone breasts, Bulgari Hotel, Balenciaga stockings.

He took on every debt he possibly could and held on until the doctor shook his head, kindly telling him that there was little hope of waking up. If he kept going, he would lose both his father and all his money.

That was when he first learned that removing the tube would make a person die painfully. They had to stop the medication maintaining vital signs first, then remove the tube after the person had passed, so they could leave more peacefully.

For a long time afterward, he was numb.

By the time he reached thirty-four, he had never once considered marriage, not even for an instant.

"Handsome, we're at Wild Water Ditch."

Sixteen years earlier, his home was still poor and bare. It was simply newly poor.

It was an old brick building, a shabby apartment with no property rights and no sunlight. Forget getting rich—even keeping a money tree alive would be difficult.

No one was home.

Fang Huai entered his room, and the first thing he saw was a Camouflage Bag.

Fuck, his household registration had really been canceled. He'd even brought back his things from the People's Armed Forces Department.

After getting reborn, before he could make any money, he had to serve as a soldier for two years.

The main quest was about to activate...

Holy shit.

There was a system too??

Fang Huai swiped his hand through the air before his eyes and found that he couldn't touch the subtitles at all.

That vague, unreal sensation gave him an instinctive feeling: this life was secure.

Bang. Someone shut the door.

"Fang Huai, it's already nine-thirty and you're still dawdling! Hurry up and pack your things. Your father will take you to the People's Armed Forces Department right away!"

Hearing his mother's voice from the doorway, Fang Huai's emotions became unsettled as well.

The slightly illusory words appeared before his eyes again.

Main quest activated: Enlist in the military and become a good soldier who gives back to society.

The corner of Fang Huai's mouth twitched.

His previous life had ended up like that, and now he was supposed to give back to society? This system was seriously messing with him.

Zhang Mei entered the room, and the familiar face appeared before Fang Huai.

"Hurry up and eat the dumplings! Your dad cooked them for you at the shop!"

Fang Huai came back to himself, but he didn't dare speak for a long while. Things regained after being lost always made people tread carefully.

The plastic bag in her hand gave off a scent that Fang Huai could find his way home by smell alone.

Every household had a different flavor. It was the same bowl of dumplings, yet the taste of happiness was so alike.

Dumplings when leaving home, noodles when returning. At last, he could eat them again. His parents, the people who genuinely cared for him in this world, were still here.

He took the plastic bag, opened it, and set it on the table.

"Mm..." Fang Huai hesitated before asking, "Mom, what date is it today?"

He still didn't feel at ease and wanted confirmation.

"What date? The twenty-fifth! Don't you know what day you enlist?" Zhang Mei had no way of knowing the turmoil in Fang Huai's heart and habitually lectured him.

"What year, month, and day were you born?" Fang Huai continued.

"What for?"

"Just tell me. I need to remember it, in case I have to fill out a form."

"1960, November 30! Do you want your dad's and my ID numbers too? I can write them down for you."

It was the same. It really was exactly the same world.

Fang Huai's eyes stung.

He couldn't say anything earth-shaking. He could only stuff a dumpling into his mouth and mumble, "Mom, wait until I make money. I'll spend it on you!"

For the first time, Zhang Mei heard him say something that sounded like something another family's child would say, and her voice softened slightly.

"As long as you can take care of yourself, that's enough. The money your father and I earn is all being saved for you."

"Hurry up and finish eating. Pack your things and let's go."

"Mom, wait a moment. I need to make something!" Fang Huai remembered something and rushed into his room. He turned on the bulky Haier computer his parents had bought him in 2005 or 2006 after he repeatedly promised to study hard, then used the mouse to search all over the screen for office software.

In this life, he couldn't let his parents remain poor. While his memories were still clear, he had to leave himself some plans for making money.

"Fang Huai! We're leaving! What else are you doing?" Zhang Mei put down her chopsticks and urged him.

"Wait till I make a PPT!"

"P what T? Go be a soldier properly! Your uncle said they don't allow game consoles in the army!"

"PPT! Not PSP!" Fang Huai shouted helplessly.

Right, he had an uncle too.

A firefighter, an officer, a Deputy Detachment Leader. He had treated Fang Huai very well, but died in the line of duty in 2008.

Not during that incident.

His uncle came back from that one with Second Class Merit.

It was during a later massive car accident. The valley where it happened froze year-round. First, eleven vehicles crashed into one another in a chain collision. Then the rescue vehicles that arrived afterward couldn't stop, crashing into the pileup one after another.

His uncle's vehicle had been in the middle.

In the years afterward, Fang Huai had become a complete nobody in the military. He missed the only chance in his life to rely on connections. Later, he gradually couldn't even remember what his uncle looked like. Thinking about it now, quite a lot of people had cared about him from childhood to adulthood.

Quest: Arrive at the People's Armed Forces Department within thirty minutes. Please complete it as soon as possible.

Fang Huai froze.

Before he could properly experience the warmth of home again, he had to leave?

What happened if he failed the quest? Would he be erased, like in all those novels he had read?

Quest failed. The opening quest cannot continue, and the system will automatically disengage.

Oh, that was fine.

A system that didn't erase people was a good system.

The system would disengage...

Disengage?!

Fang Huai: ???

Then what the hell was he supposed to play for?

The tone changed abruptly.

"Dad, hurry up! Drive faster!"

Dressed in loose camouflage fatigues with a cap hanging over his shoulder, Fang Huai sat in the back of the van and kept urging his father, Fang Kaiyang, wanting him to put the pedal down.

Without saying a word, Fang Kaiyang rolled down the window, took one last drag from his cigarette, flicked a spark out the window, and sighed deeply before turning to glance at Zhang Mei.

This kid had no sense of respect for age or family. He truly worried him. If he had shown even a little sense, they could at least have sent him to a third-tier college.

Receiving the signal, Zhang Mei turned around and shot Fang Huai a glare.

"There's a car ahead! Now you know to hurry? What were you doing just now? Messing around with that TNT!"

The vehicle jolted to a sudden stop.

Fang Kaiyang had been a soldier too. He immediately turned around in shock. "TNT? Son, don't do anything foolish! Your dad is sending you to the army not because he won't let you go to college, but so you can train yourself!"

Fang Huai fell silent.

"That's called a PSP... no, PPT! Dad, watch the road!"

With only twelve minutes left on the system countdown, he had completely lost the mood for jokes.

"What kind of new weapon is PPT..."

"PPT is a computer... something on a computer! For office work!"

"Office work??"

The moment computers were mentioned, Fang Kaiyang's sore spot was hit.

When Fang Kaiyang slowed down and turned back again, his brows were practically glued together. "You're treating playing games as work now? I knew it! All you think about is that lousy computer of yours! When we get back, I'm smashing it!"

The car suddenly sped up. Firmly convinced that the army could straighten people out, Fang Kaiyang could hardly wait to throw Fang Huai into that blazing crucible.

But...

He had left him a way out, too.

He was still afraid the boy would not be able to endure the hardship, so he had not sent him to the Armed Police Internal Security Force. Instead, he sent him to the Armed Police Firefighting Force, where an uncle could look after him. At least when he went to visit, he could pull a few strings.

Soldiers nowadays were nothing like they had been back when they served in the large army units. Back then, they took off their uniforms to farm, put them back on to train, feared neither the summer sun nor the winter cold!

Those were real soldiers! Not the "grunts" Sichuanese called them!