TSIFB Chapter 12

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穿成校草被迫营业 / Transmigrated into a School Idol and Forced to Do Business
A completely different person

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Hearing He Yan say “next time, send something else” made Yu Baizhou more excited than if He Yan had said “thank you”.

While “thanks” was what was given at the end of a deal, “send something else” was an encouragement to continue.

As long as he was able to send He Yan a present daily, Yu Baizhou knew that he would be one step further from descending into the abyss of hell with every day that passed.

Hahahahaha, he was about to go into a joy-induced insanity!

The two stood face-to-face by the window, separated by just ten centimetres. The warm light of dusk settled over Yu Baizhou’s light pink cheeks and forehead, laying a bright orange glow over his thick eyelashes. The settling sun outlined his entire person with a comfortable and cosy aura. 

He Yan gazed down at the cheerful face in front of him, thinking, “That made him this happy?”

He smiled inwardly. What a simple-minded person.

The bus arrived at He Yan’s stop. Just before He Yan got off, Yu Baizhou took the initiative to say goodbye.

He Yan replied with an “en”.

Yu Baizhou felt that this simple interaction acted as a testimony to the rapid progress of brotherhood between them.

From the very beginning, he was ignored by He Yan, then he was abandoned after offering to eat together, then he was given permission from He Yan to continue the daily strawberry cream bread delivery, and now he could finally talk to He Yan like a friend. This ‘step-by-step closer to the final goal’ feeling, it really was too good!

Right now, he was so full of delight, he wanted to dance in the bus.

But, the many pairs of eyes surrounding him were telling him, no, wait until you go home before dancing.

Yu Baizhou continued to follow the bus route and remained standing. As the bus pulled into the terminal, he looked at the vacant surroundings, a bit dull-witted.

He weakly asked the driver, “Sir, may I ask, doesn’t the Line 4 bus pass by the western extension? This place, I don’t seem to know it?”

The driver turned back. “The western route is Line 14.”

Yu Baizhou: “……”

Ten minutes later, Yu Baizhou was taken home by Uncle Li.

Upon returning home, the first thing Yu Baizhou did was saving the housekeeper auntie from continuously preparing a strawberry cream bread for him every day. Fu Xia heard this exchange while reading a magazine and teased, “Why, have you finally caught yourself a little girlfriend?”

Yu Baizhou: “……”

Giving the bread to a girlfriend, a boyfriend, or just a friend, Yu Baizhou had already given up on trying to clarify.

At this point, Yu Chen had come out of the bathroom and overheard Fu Xia. “What? Yu Baizhou has fallen in love?? You want to invite your teachers home, is that right?”

Yu Baizhou: “……”

Unable to explain clearly, Yu Baizhou scurried back to his bedroom.

Once he thought about his experience of taking the bus with He Yan, Yu Baizhou didn’t know why, but his heart inexplicably released a bunch of positive emotions.

He rolled around on his bed. Since strawberry cream bread can no longer be delivered, what should he send to He Yan after today?

He once again started searching for information about He Yan’s likes and dislikes in his memory, but, instead of finding his preferences, he found something that would make people’s mood sour.

Before, when he had invited Tu Gaoming and his fellow brothers to eat skewers, he saw a person who looked like He Yan outside the mall, entering the Second Central Hospital of the city. Now that he recalled the event, the person didn’t just look like He Yan, but it should be He Yan himself.

The book described how during He Yan’s time in high school, in addition to studying every day, he also had to attend his chronically sick mother and take care of her. His mother’s specific illness was not written in the novel, but it was said to be very serious.

It was serious enough that…when He Yan entered his second year of high school in September, his mother died from the illness.

September… Yu Baizhou recalled that it was now September.

Pan Yi pushed open the door of He Yan’s house, telling the driver who was lugging around various big and small bags to put them inside before letting him go, then shouted inside, “Yan-ge, I’m here!”

He Yan, who had just taken a shower, came out of the bathroom while drying his hair. After seeing the pile of things at the door, he shook his head helplessly, and turned to walk back in.

Pan Yi quickly followed after. “Hey, Yan-ge, wait for me!”

Overtaking He Yan, Pan Yi complained about the day’s affairs. “Didn’t we say we’ll come back together today? I was only called out by the teacher to the office for a moment, why did you leave without me?”

He Yan went to the refrigerator, took out two cans of cold beer, and threw one to Pan Yi. The remaining one was pulled open by him. “Something came up.”

Pan Yi curiously asked, “Yo, what’s the matter? Could it be that you purposely left me to go home with some boy?”

He Yan narrowed his eyes at Pan Yi, who quickly shut up.

After a moment of silence, Pan Yi nodded and whispered, “Although, it’s indeed impossible for the Gaoling Flower* to pull off that sort of thing.”

[T/N: means ‘a flower on the high mountain’, implying HY is a person that you can only admire from afar]

When Pan Yi thought back on the past few years of following He Yan, he recalled encountering both men and women who tirelessly pursued He Yan, but he had never seen He Yan take the initiative to touch someone’s heart, nor did he ever hear He Yan talk about being interested in someone. As a close friend of He Yan’s, Pan Yi knew very well that what he didn’t know would be even less likely to be known to outsiders. In his opinion, He Yan left an impression of a constantly running machine with no storage space for love at all. His occasional kind and smiling faces could be only seen in scenarios where it was necessary, such as in a working environment.

However, He Yan was not without emotion. At the very least, he was sentimental.

Pan Yi clearly remembered that when his family was framed and bankrupted by their opponents, and when the hostile companies joined forces to push them back even further, there wasn’t a single company in the industry that was willing to lend a helping hand. Even his father’s so-called good friends were unwilling to help, too afraid of digging themselves into a trap.

It was probably the darkest period in Pan Yi’s life. His family had completely turned into street mice. Because of the huge debts, his father, just thinking about it, nearly died from stress, and his mother was on the verge of suffering from depression. Just as when he thought his life would end at that point, He Yan extended his hand to them.

He Yan during that time was a newcomer who had just made a name for himself in the business world. In everyone’s eyes, he was the most promising and valuable asset. During that moment in the future, as long as one had a status, they wouldn’t even thinking about dealing with Pan Yi’s family due to their worries of being troubled by the opposing companies in the future. But, even with everything going on, He Yan never turned his back to them and had even reached out to his family, using his own company as a guarantee to help Pan Yi’s family make a comeback.

Afterwards, he had always wondered why He Yan was willing to help him despite being under such great pressure. When he asked, he would never forget the answer He Yan gave in such a light tone: “We are friends.”

Friends…

Pan Yi’s mind returned to the past and his eyes couldn’t avoid reddening.

Holding his can of beer, He Yan passed by beside him and glanced down at the pot full of oily red hot pot soup in his hands. “If you dare spill a single drop of your tears in the hot pot, you’ll be drinking the entire thing tonight.”

Pan Yi heard this and quickly withdrew his tears. He was unwilling to treat hot pot soup as wine to drink.

Towards Pan Yi rattling on about inviting him to eat hot pot despite it being summer, He Yan was completely powerless to refuse. Pan Yi sat at the table to appease him, and said, “It’s not even the burning hot middle of summer anymore, we’ll be entering autumn very soon. My family doesn’t like to eat this, I can’t find anyone else to accompany me, and eating by yourself is boring. You see, Yan-ge, we can eat as we chat. We can discuss the discovery of a recent project that’s worth investing, throw money towards it, then finally make a fortune. Don’t you think it’s good to eat hot pot?”

He Yan lifted his head to stare at him, completely silent.

Pan Yi grinned and pushed him on. “Come, come, come, let’s eat!”

Finished with his successful persuasion, Pan Yi had already begun to move his chopsticks. Pan Yi’s mouth was very talented in talking, he could start from his career to his love life, his love life to his family, and his family to his school life.

When he got to the topic of school, he brought up the questions he had kept inside for quite some time. “Yan-ge, have you thought about how that Yu Baizhou seems to be somewhat strange?”

He Yan raised his eyelids. “What do you mean by ‘strange’?”

Pan Yi explained, “One moment he’s all polite and accommodating towards you, the next he spreads rumours about humiliating you. Is there something wrong with his head?”

Pan Yi had also read the ‘prophecy’ online.

“That’s it?” He Yan asked.

“Not just this. I didn’t have much contact with him while we were in high school, but I’m sure I remember that it was during this period of time when he was most ruthless towards you. However, no matter how I see him now, I have to say, I really can’t tell how he is cruel. In addition to that time he confronted Sun Tianshuo to defend you, I really feel as if there’s something up with him. Compared to before, his temperament has changed a lot.”

Although Pan Yi was unfamiliar with Yu Baizhou in high school, he definitely knew that Yu Baizhou was the number one tyrant in the school, and his position was even above Li Bei. At the same time, he also knew about Yu Baizhou’s famous one-sided conflict with He Yan. If you compared Yu Baizhou and He Yan’s relationship to that between an eagle and a fish, then Yu Baizhou was an eagle, He Yan was a fish, and the eagle will eat the fish. But now the fish was not a fish, and the eagle doesn’t even seem to want fish anymore, so since it’s like this…

Seeing how Pan Yi was driving himself into a mental blockade, He Yan asked with a gentle voice, “What did you think of now?”

Pan Yi pressed his hands flat against the edge of the dining table, and leaned towards the opposite side, seriously asking, “If the fish wasn’t a fish, then the eagle not wanting to eat fish would be normal. But, even if the fish was not a fish, the eagle doesn’t know that the fish isn’t a fish, so if the eagle doesn’t want to eat the fish, what do you think the reason is for the eagle to not eat the fish?”

He Yan tapped on the table with a finger. “’Fish is not a fish, so the eagle does not eat the fish; fish is a fish, so why doesn’t the eagle eat the fish?’ Think rationally, if you can express a question in twenty-five words, don’t use sixty-one.” 

Pan Yi: “…”

Even if they returned to high school, the boss was still the boss.

Pan Yi turned back to the initial topic, but this time spoke with a much lower voice. “Yan-ge, if the question before is true, then do you think that Yu Baizhou has gone through the same experience as us? Do you think he was reborn?!”

He Yan’s tone contained some type of emotion that was a little hard to detect. “Not possible.”

Pan Yi continued to ponder over the possibilities. “So he behaves strangely, but wasn’t reborn like us… “

Suddenly thinking of an alternative theory, Pan Yi’s eyes opened wide. “Holy shit!”

He whipped around to face He Yan, dumbfounded and in disbelief. “Do you think he is a completely different person*?!?”

[T/N: “他该不会是直接换了个人吧”: directly translates to “He couldn’t have just changed his person, ba?!?”, which leans more towards PY believing YBZ had transmigrated, or at least took over the body with his soul (which actually did happen…), but it sounded a bit weird to say ‘changed his person’]

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PY has one brain cell and he put it to work for that one sentence.