They Dumped Me—Now They’re Reincarnated and Obsessed? - Chapter 24
“I worked so hard to raise a top student from Yanda, and now she’s going to marry the son of the housekeeper? So all my efforts were for nothing? Who’s really the head of this family—me or her? Who’s your mother?! And that girl only has a high school diploma… Mei Jian, where’s your brain?! How am I supposed to hold my head up after this?!”
“Mei Jian, listen to your mother. Her father was a gambling addict who ruined his whole family. If you keep going down this road, you’ll be dragged down by that kind of background.
You have a future, a career ahead of you. Even if—just if—Dad agrees to the two of you being together now, what about your kids? They’ll inherit the genes of a gambler…”
“Mie Jian! Don’t you dare come to my home and run your mouth! If you don’t leave now, I’m calling the police!”
“Grandpa! Grandpa! Call an ambulance—now!”
Mei Jian jolted awake, face pale, breath ragged. His forehead was drenched in cold sweat.
In the dark dormitory, the sound of his roommates breathing rose and fell. Mei Jian quietly got out of bed and opened the door to step into the corridor for some air.
Under the dim lights, he saw someone standing at the railing at the end of the hallway.
Yan Ze turned around and was momentarily stunned to see him.
Mei Jian sighed and walked over to stand beside him in silence.
“I can’t sleep,” Yan Ze murmured. “Every time I think that she might have been murdered, I just… can’t.”
Mei Jian stayed quiet.
Yan Ze continued, “Mei Jian, do you think we came back in time to save her… or is she already dead?”
“We came back,” Mei Jian answered simply.
Yan Ze lowered his head, his eyes rimmed red.
The two stood in silence, letting the cold breeze wash over them. Then Yan Ze asked, “What’s keeping you up?”
“The past,” Mei Jian replied.
Leaning on the railing, Yan Ze looked out at the sky beginning to lighten and said, “Mei Jian, if she could just live quietly and be a good student, do you think her life would still be so hard?”
Thinking of his dream, Mei Jian answered softly, “Maybe.”
“In high school,” Yan Ze said, “a girl’s energy should be focused on learning. She once told me—knowledge is a person’s armor. Without enough armor, when bad things happen later in life, it’s too easy to get crushed. I want to give her that armor. I want to make sure that when she’s building it, no one distracts or hurts her.”
Mei Jian turned to look at him.
Under the faint light, Yan Ze’s expression was earnest yet uncertain.
“Mei Jian,” he said with a smile, “count me in.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to help her succeed only to be left behind later,” Yan Ze said. “So add me in. Let me catch up to you guys—at least in academics. What do you say?”
Mei Jian smiled. “You think I’ll agree?”
“You will,” Yan Ze said with certainty. “You’re not a bad person. You might be sharp-tongued, but when it comes to right and wrong, you have a conscience.”
“This isn’t some great moral issue,” Mei Jian replied, smiling as he looked up. “But I’ll agree. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not just you,” Mei Jian said. “I want more people to understand that studying matters. I want everyone to come learn. When it comes to this, I’ll never say no. So…”
He said, “I’ll help you.”
________________________________________
Wednesday, during PE class, Yan Ze and Mei Jian skipped out and hid in a corner of the campus to discuss a study plan.
“Keep attending all your classes,” Mei Jian said. “Write down your wrong answers in this notebook. For the things you still don’t understand even after asking the teacher, write them in this other notebook. Bring them to me on the weekend.”
“There’s an exam this Saturday, so Sunday’s the only real time I can study according to plan,” Yan Ze said, looking at the schedule Mei Jian had written. He frowned. “Only two private tutoring days a week… is that really enough to catch up?”
“Never underestimate even a single day,” Mei Jian said. “Studying is a long-term process.”
“That sounded kind of weird,” Yan Ze muttered, resting his chin on his hand.
“Stay on topic,” Mei Jian sighed.
Yan Ze set the schedule down. “I want to ask you… about Xie Tingxue. At this stage, you probably know more about her than I do.”
“Go ahead.”
“I checked—her math’s not great, but she still ranks top ten in class, top sixty in the grade. That’s enough to get into college, right?”
“More than enough,” Mei Jian replied. “She probably can’t get into a top-tier university, but a regular one? No problem.”
“Did her grades drop in senior year?”
“They became very unstable.”
“Why?”
Mei Jian paused. “You probably already know—her family situation.”
“Honestly? I don’t,” Yan Ze said. “She never talks about it, and I never asked. But Auntie mentioned once that she went through a tough divorce—her ex-husband was a terrible person.
Every time she brought it up, she said she felt sorry for Tingxue… Do you think her parents’ divorce during high school affected her and caused her to miss out on university?”
Mei Jian stayed silent for a long time before answering in a low voice, “…Maybe.”
“‘Maybe’? What’s that supposed to mean?” Yan Ze asked, surprised.
“When senior year began, Xie Tingxue and her mom moved away,” Mei Jian said. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. My mom said her mom found a new job and quit the old one…
After that, Tingxue started taking a lot of sick leave. Before winter break, she was absent for a stretch. The teachers said it was health-related, and that she was reviewing at home.
After that, we rarely saw her at school. I don’t even know which exam center she went to for the college entrance exams… So, I don’t know the exact reason she didn’t get into college.”
“You never went to see her?”
“…No,” Mei Jian looked away and gave a bitter smile. “I was just a student then, buried in exam prep. I didn’t want to get involved in anything else. There were problems at home too…”
Yan Ze gave him a cold stare.
“And… I didn’t want to admit I liked her,” Mei Jian said.
Yan Ze: “Thanks for reminding me that all those times I insulted you were totally justified.”
Mei Jian gave a faint laugh. “You wouldn’t understand. You didn’t grow up like I did.”
“That’s no excuse for being cold and heartless.”
Mei Jian let out a deep sigh and looked at him. “Then you really have no idea how bitter life can be.”
Yan Ze shot back, “Do you know how bitter her life was? Where were you when she was suffering? What kind of ‘love’ is it if it can’t help her when she needs it most? Does that even count as love?”
“You can’t hold a teenage boy to an adult standard,” Mei Jian said. “Think about who we were back then—weren’t we all just a bunch of clueless kids?”
Yan Ze fell silent. On that point, he had no rebuttal.
He envied Mei Jian for being a straight-A student with a smooth life.
And Mei Jian envied him for living so freely.
Everyone envies someone else’s life—then turns around and calls themselves an idiot.
Yan Ze asked, “That father of Xie Tingxue… what’s his story?”
“Gambler,” Mei Jian replied. “Used to be a public-sector worker with a promising career. Then he got addicted to gambling, changed completely. Became worse than a beast—cut ties with everyone.”
Yan Ze asked again, “Oh. Is he… dead now?”
Mei Jian clearly didn’t want to talk about it. “Who knows.”
Yan Ze studied his expression and pressed further. “Did her father have something to do with your breakup with Xie Tingxue?”
Mei Jian rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking exhausted. “Talking about this is pointless… Let’s get back to the study plan.”
“Say it!” Yan Ze slapped the table.
Mei Jian fell silent.
“Listen to me, Mei Jian,” Yan Ze said. “Neither of us slept last night. We were probably thinking about the same thing. We didn’t come back to repeat the past. You want Xie Tingxue to finish school, and I support that—completely. But that’s not the only reason we’re here. Mei Jian, she died. She died—do you get that?!”
Mei Jian’s expression finally wavered.
“I love her,” Yan Ze said. “I don’t want her to die. I want to know the reason—every single reason that could’ve led to her lying in that morgue. Her life was already too hard. I refuse to believe she’d end it just when she was about to start over.
I never betrayed her—and she wouldn’t betray me. She’s someone who values love and gratitude… That’s why I’m going to find every obstacle in her life and tear them down, one by one!”
Mei Jian finally spoke, “I ran into her in Yancheng while I was in university… She was working there. We dated secretly for three years. Right before I started my master’s, I went home and told my parents. It was hard, but they reluctantly agreed…”
Yan Ze was stunned. “They agreed? I thought your parents—”
“They did, at first,” Mei Jian said. “Then her father showed up.”
Yan Ze’s face darkened.
“He came to our house asking for money—for a bride price. My parents obviously refused, so he went to my grandparents. My grandfather got furious and cursed him out, and they had a huge fight…”
Yan Ze guessed the rest. “No way…”
“We called the police,” Mei Jian said. “He ran. Later we heard he got arrested in another city for criminal activity—sentenced to seven or eight years, I think. We never brought it up again. My grandfather’s gone now. Yan Ze, this is why we couldn’t stay together. The cost was too high. We couldn’t bear it.”
Yan Ze was quiet for a long moment before he found his voice. “Where is he now? At this moment?”
“I don’t know,” Mei Jian said. “But I won’t let something like that happen again. This time, I’ve already decided—she should only have to worry about school. Everything else, I’ll handle.
And you will too, right?”
Yan Ze nodded solemnly. “Absolutely.”
“As long as she’s at school, she studies. That’s it,” Mei Jian said. “At the very least, let this be her safe haven. As for the storms—we’re the adults now. We face them. Agreed?”
Yan Ze gave a firm nod. “No objections. Mei Jian, on this—I’m on your side.”
Mei Jian held out his hand. “Let’s work together.”
“Emotions aside,” Yan Ze said earnestly, “let’s work together.”
Mei Jian smiled. “Good. Now let’s talk about your English—”
Yan Ze: “…”
________________________________________
The English placement test was scheduled for Saturday.
Time was running out for Yan Ze.
His foundation was too weak—every subject needed to be relearned from scratch. He was studying almost every waking minute, burning through two gel pens a day. Still, he’d made some progress. At least now, he could understand what the teachers were saying in class.
Mei Jian called that “catching up to pace.”
________________________________________
Thursday, during composition class, Yan Ze opened last week’s essay with confidence—
Then saw his score: 45 out of 60.
The teacher had written a long comment. The gist: it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t an actual essay.
“Composition still has rules,” Xie Tingxue reminded him after class. “What you wrote reads more like a personal journal.”
“…What do you mean?”
“It just doesn’t feel like a proper essay,” Xie Tingxue said, sharp and direct. “It reads like you’re muttering to yourself. That kind of writing won’t move the teacher.”
“I have to move the teacher?”
“Of course. That’s the power of writing,” she said. “Words are hard to master. Most of the time they only move you. As for others? They may feel nothing at all.”
Yan Ze held out his hand. “Let me see yours.”
Xie Tingxue blushed and turned to leave.
Yan Ze chased after her. “Come on—just let me see.”
She hesitated a long while, then finally handed over her essay shyly.
Yan Ze opened the test sheet. Big, bold numbers at the top: 58.
He leaned against a desk, reading. Mei Jian, standing nearby, commented: “Now compare your writing ability with hers.”
“I know she writes well…” Yan Ze muttered as he read.
Back when he was active on Weibo, some of his posts were written by Xie Tingxue. He would describe how he felt, and she’d turn it into polished words.
Xie Tingxue blushed. “Just read it, no overpraising!”
She was thin-skinned—couldn’t handle compliments.
Yan Ze, very familiar with her personality, gave a little wave and grinned. “As you command.”
In the back row, Li Yuyang looked on with jealousy and muttered under her breath, “Ugh… you fake little—”