Returning to '97, creating a new life

The pain lasted until after 11 o'clock before gradually subsiding. Although the stinging sensation gradually weakened over the next two hours, it was still very uncomfortable.

The cabin was cold, and Xu Kai, a teenager, would never open the door at night to greet the heat from the stove in the kitchen, as it would make him feel like he had no privacy.

Xu Kai didn't have such thoughts now. With the door open, the heat from the stove entered the small room. There was no direct physical sensation. After a while, he didn't need to put on clothes to read "Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty" in his hands, and his hands holding the book weren't so cold.

Go to bed early.

Knowing that her son was definitely not studying with the desk lamp on at this hour, Sun Xiuyun shouted at him as usual, even though she knew he might not listen.

With the pain gone, Xu Kai crawled into bed and snapped the switch off the desk lamp.

Since we're already here, let's make the most of this time and achieve success so our mothers can enjoy a better life.

Yes, it should be possible.

I thought that without the pain, I would be tossing and turning, thinking about how to achieve this goal, but I unexpectedly fell into a deep sleep in a very short time.

Sun Xiuyun, inside the main house, frowned slightly, propped herself up a little, and glanced through the glass window in the door toward the small house. The faint light had disappeared.

So obedient?

Thinking about how my son didn't get angry and argue with me tonight, thinking about how he prepared water for me to wash my feet, thinking about...

Without understanding why or thinking about it in detail, I attributed it to the argument from relatives, friends, and colleagues that children naturally grow up during puberty and will become sensible at that time.

Her brows relaxed, and a hint of ease and joy appeared on her face, though she herself was unaware of it.

That night, the mother and son, living under the same roof, slept exceptionally well.

In Sun Xiuyun's world, every day of life is routine, and she likes this feeling. She has a good personality, but not strong abilities, and living a simple and ordinary life is her most comfortable way of life.

I got up, continued adding coal, washed my face, and heated up my meal...

After getting up and putting on jeans, Xu Kai stared blankly for a few seconds, then walked to the doorway. Looking at the carbon pen marks left on the edge of the door frame, he stood up straight against the wall, raised his right hand, and pressed it against the top of his head to measure the marks.

Without moving his hand, his arm rotated with his body. Looking back at the wall where his palm was pressing, it seemed to be a little higher than the highest point of those carbon pen marks.

He took a pen out of his schoolbag and called out, "Mom, measure me, I think I've grown taller."

Sun Xiuyun responded and walked over to take the ballpoint pen: "Let me see."

It's confirmed, he has indeed grown taller.

Holding a soft measuring tape, I measured from bottom to top: 174cm.

Sun Xiuyun acted normally, opened the pot lid, and placed the heated food on the folding table, unaware that her son had been staring blankly for more than a minute.

"Was it in the second or third year of junior high that I grew to 172 cm and then stopped growing taller? So now..." Thinking of the sharp pain from his bones yesterday, Xu Kai was able to make a logical association. Since he had been reborn, he was very accepting of the other 'changes' and 'differences'.

Despite having the mindset of "since I'm already here," and being confident that he can use his extra twenty years of memories to ride the wave of the times and make himself "better," Xu Kai is willing to become "exceptionally excellent" if he can become even better, both spiritually and physically.

Sitting in the classroom, flipping through the ninth-grade textbooks he hadn't taken home yesterday and left on his desk, he tried out each subject. He also unusually focused during two lessons with his math and English teachers. Then he confirmed it: the more miraculous thing he'd hoped for hadn't happened. He hadn't become smarter, hadn't possessed the genetic mutation to become a top student.

Geometry is like a book written in heaven, and English words and sentences are like Martian language. Even with the composure and self-control of an adult, memorizing English words by rote has some effect, but it is forced. After memorizing a few words, he feels his head is throbbing and uncomfortable. The resistance from his body to learning makes him realize that he is not cut out for it. Even if he spreads his focus and effort across the days, at most he can improve his score by a little, which is not enough to get into high school.

The key issue is interest.

Compared to the challenge of how to earn money at this age, the former's appeal and the cost-effectiveness of the time and energy invested are obviously less important.

After a quick lunch at home, Xu Kai ate a bite of stir-fried tofu that had been reheated twice and tasted terrible. When he returned to school, the lively atmosphere in front of the six basketball hoops on the playground reminded him of his "interest" that he was willing to devote a lot of time and energy to.

When Xu Kai went home for dinner, he felt a slight stinging pain in his joints. It wasn't intense, but it was still very uncomfortable. However, when Xu Kai started running and jumping and joined the half-court basketball game, the stinging pain disappeared, and he felt a warm and comfortable sensation in his joints.

Coupled with his sudden growth in height, and having experienced the mind-blowing era of the internet age, how could Xu Kai not guess what had happened?

Whether his guesses are right or wrong remains to be verified, as long as the logically consistent conclusions are acceptable to him, his rebirth is not without its benefits.

It was a fairly intense sport, but I didn't feel tired at all. On the contrary, running and jumping around on the field made my body feel exceptionally comfortable.

Before his rebirth, Xu Kai was very proud that he had not gained weight in middle age at forty and still maintained a good figure. That was because he loved basketball, loved the NBA, and loved Curry, who later changed the landscape of modern basketball. Curry's appearance rekindled Xu Kai's motivation to turn his interest into reality, who was approaching thirty at the time. "I don't have height, I don't have good athletic ability, and I'm too old. Who can I play with an old man on the basketball court?"

With Curry's emergence, Xu Kai had a goal. Most casual games on the basketball court were half-court three-on-three or four-on-four, which didn't provide enough physical reserves and athleticism. The inside players also lacked height and strength. If he wanted to become a temporary teammate in the eyes of others, shooting from beyond the three-point line became Xu Kai's opportunity to rekindle his interest.

After all, if he wasn't an important part of the sport, Xu Kai, who was already thirty years old at the time, would have been too embarrassed to go. He would have felt ashamed and that his clumsy and useless contributions would have made him quit the sport because of his insignificant pride and face-saving issues.

With his ability to shoot from long range and his relatively accurate shooting, Xu Kai enjoyed considerable popularity on familiar courts from the age of thirty to forty. He was an important part of teams playing half-court games, and even a top choice for some casual games. Occasionally, some high-level games with young athletes would also ask him to come off the bench, relying on his three-point shooting in crucial moments to break the deadlock or even deliver the decisive blow.

Now, with a younger body, he can run and sweat freely on the court. Although he hasn't regained his good long-range shooting touch, who cares?

On the school's sports field, sports and entertainment are the main themes. After he gradually found his rhythm, he made one or two of his long-range shots, which was enough to make his teammates cheer loudly and make some students who were bored during their lunch break stop and take a second look.

Just before class, after nearly an hour of fussing and sweating profusely, I felt completely refreshed from the inside out.

"Holy crap, Xu Kai, you're amazing today! Did you secretly practice during the summer vacation?" Classmate Wang Lei came over and hooked his arm around Xu Kai's neck. They had just teamed up and won several games, and Wang Lei was overjoyed.

Looking at Wang Lei's distinctive small eyes, I realized he was a good friend I remembered from three years of schooling, but like many others, he had disappeared into the future. He was also my comrade in the back row entertainment area, my partner in the computer room, the game room, and even when I occasionally skipped class.

"Damn, you ate chives for lunch?" Xu Kai shrugged and took a step to the side. It's rare for a young man like him to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth after lunch. This guy had been playing basketball for more than half an hour, breathing heavily with a dry, cracked throat and sweating profusely. You can imagine what his breath must have smelled like.

Wang Lei rolled his eyes at Xu Kai. At this age, he might be sloppy and careless about details, but his love of beauty, his naive vanity, and his concern for how girls would perceive him were all bursting forth. He ran into the teaching building, went to the water room, turned on the tap, bent down, leaned close to the tap, and gulped down the tap water to quench his thirst. Then he washed his face with the cold tap water, ran his hands through his wet hair a few times, stood up, and even tossed his head in what he thought was a very dashing manner.

Uh.

This simple and honest era.

There's no such thing as tap water that can't be drunk.

Subconsciously, Xu Kai followed Wang Lei's example, smoothing his hair and giving a wry smile. He had been distracted by his height mutation and the brain experiment in the morning, and then neglected it again at noon because of the pain. How could he possibly endure this low-budget version of Aaron Kwok's middle-part hairstyle?

I walked up to the mirror in the lobby on the first floor of the teaching building. I was sweating from playing basketball, and my hair was soaked with sweat, making me look even uglier.

"Class monitor, what's the first class this afternoon?"

Looking through the mirror, Xu Kai saw two figures walking behind him. Almost instinctively, he asked a question. What was a normal thing for him made the two female students who walked by pause for a moment.

The way men and women interact in this era is very strange. They are either so familiar that there are no boundaries, or they are like strangers who never see or interact with each other.

As a member of the back row lounge area, my interactions with the class monitor, who sat in the first row, were limited to collecting homework, distributing rolls, and the class monitor's reprimands for maintaining discipline.

"Xu Kai, I..." Tong Dan pointed to herself, but before she could finish speaking, Xu Kai realized what she meant and replied naturally, "Sorry, class monitor, I forgot you went to Class One."

Tong Dan glanced at Xu Kai with surprise, nodded as a way of saying hello, and left arm in arm with her female companion.

"You wouldn't happen to have a crush on her, would you?" Wang Lei leaned closer, his lewd manner leaving Xu Kai speechless. But then he thought about it and realized it was understandable; most guys this age and generation were like that…

There was absolutely no such perception. Even in schools with lax management, most students would wear their favorite pants, only keeping the top as the uniform, believing it made them look cool, stylish, and individualistic, thus shedding the stereotype of the uniform as ugly. But in Xu Kai's eyes, it was impossible to judge a woman from a man's perspective. There was no concept of beauty or ugliness; she wasn't even a flower bud. He never viewed things from a man's or woman's point of view, so how could he possibly have any other thoughts?

Shouldn't she be at least eighteen years old and start to blossom a little?

"Let's skip the first class."

After asking a classmate who was passing by, Xu Kai learned that the first class in the afternoon was biology. He then pulled Wang Lei along and left through the back gate of the school.

"Let's go, let's go, 96, let's go! I'm telling you, Ralf is incredibly strong right now..."

Skipping class = arcade; what can you do in the time it takes to skip one or two classes? The two are almost equal.

"You son of a bitch!" A few minutes later, Wang Lei looked utterly astonished: "You skipped class to do this?"