Rebirth: Saving the Lovely Girl from the Start

Since it got dark early, the streets were practically empty, and Xue Rui started to act more freely.

Lin Ruoxi was already used to it. She liked it when Xue Rui draped himself over her shoulder as they walked.

"Let me weigh you down so you stop growing," Xue Rui sighed.

Xue Rui claimed to be 185cm tall—with shoes on, of course.

Lin Ruoxi’s height without shoes was 173cm. Now that the weather had cooled, she wore platform shoes that made her noticeably taller.

Plus, Lin Ruoxi had recently grown a little more, reaching 174cm...

Xue Rui figured if this kept up, she’d be looking him straight in the eye if she ever wore high heels.

"Oh, okay. I’ll stop growing then," Lin Ruoxi said obediently.

Xue Rui couldn’t help but laugh. ’As if you can stop growing just because you say so.’

He thought for a moment, worried she might actually start dieting on purpose. "It’s not up to you," he reminded her. "Make sure you eat properly."

"Okay," Lin Ruoxi nodded.

"It’s a little cold," Xue Rui said, tucking his hand against Lin Ruoxi’s neck to warm it up.

"Ngh," Lin Ruoxi flinched, pulling her neck in.

The two of them swayed back and forth as they walked home. Beneath the dim streetlights, their two shadows merged into one.

With Xue Rui still leaning on her from behind, Lin Ruoxi watched their shadow on the ground, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a smile.

’I wish this moment could last forever,’ she thought.

...

After dinner, the game went live.

It was a quiet launch. There were no preparations, no ribbon-cutting ceremony.

There were only two of them, after all. They couldn’t even be considered a proper studio.

Although Xue Rui had posted beta test links on numerous gaming platforms beforehand, the response had been lukewarm at best.

An hour after the launch, they were staring at the backend data. There were only a handful of users...

’One step ahead makes you a pioneer, but two steps ahead makes you a martyr,’ Xue Rui thought.

The mobile user base was still pretty small. He had been obsessively searching online but couldn’t find any similar browser-based games.

That meant it was even less likely for there to be a dedicated mobile version. He figured he was probably one or two years ahead of the major studios...

Xue Rui returned the bank card to Gu Muxue, having only withdrawn 100,000 yuan from her account.

He was lucky to have Gu Muxue’s support; otherwise, he wouldn’t have had enough money to register the trademarks.

He had registered quite a few wordmarks, and even after minimizing the number of categories, it still cost over 70,000 yuan...

As for the issue of game traffic, Xue Rui decided to let nature take its course.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered paying for ads, but he and Lin Ruoxi were too small of an operation. A match-three game, by its very nature, needed a social platform to truly take off.

Even if he spent all of Gu Muxue’s New Year’s money, it probably wouldn’t do much good.

The first-mover advantage was the best promotion he could ask for. Xue Rui believed it was best to keep their initial investment as low as possible.

Lin Ruoxi stared blankly at the admin dashboard, a little disappointed.

She had been playing it for a while and thought the game Xue Rui designed was really easy to get into. It didn’t deserve to be overlooked like this.

Xue Rui noticed her slight dejection. "It’s only been live for an hour," he said. "What’s the rush?"

Even games hyped by major studios weren’t guaranteed to be instant hits upon release.

That went double for a couple of nobodies like them.

Lin Ruoxi picked up the air conditioner remote and aimed it at the unit, pressing the buttons repeatedly, but nothing happened.

After changing the batteries, the air conditioner still didn’t respond.

"The air conditioner’s broken..." Lin Ruoxi murmured. She felt like she’d been really unlucky lately, as if everything was going wrong.

’But Xue Rui’s hands were so cold,’ she thought. She didn’t know what to do.

"Good, we’ll save on the electricity bill. Come over here and warm me up," Xue Rui said with a laugh.

He wasn’t bothered by it. It was already mid-November, and in a few days, the legally mandated central heating would turn on. The room would be sweltering then.

"I... I think I made Aunt Ren upset," Lin Ruoxi said meekly.

She obediently sat down in front of Xue Rui and offered her slender neck.

"No way. That definitely has nothing to do with you," Xue Rui replied without hesitation.

His mother was beyond pleased with Lin Ruoxi. Lately, she would stop by from time to time to bring her food, using it as an excuse to check if he was studying properly.

But Xue Rui felt his mom looked at her like a prospective daughter-in-law—one she grew more and more fond of the more she saw her.

When he was home on the weekends, his mom would occasionally whisper in his ear about Lin Ruoxi.

It made Xue Rui feel like Lin Ruoxi was his mom’s real child, and he was the one they’d found in a dumpster.

"A few days ago, I gave Aunt Ren a sweater, and... she just turned and left. She seemed really unhappy. She was originally going to stay for dinner, too."

Lin Ruoxi was worried. She didn’t want to make Xue Rui’s mother unhappy.

"What sweater?"

Xue Rui was surprised. ’Lin Ruoxi knows how to bribe her mother-in-law?’

Nowadays, he didn’t even want to sit down for dinner at home. His mom was on Team Lin Ruoxi, and his dad was on Team Gu Muxue.

If the subject ever came up, he’d be torn to shreds.

Lin Ruoxi walked over to the wardrobe, hesitantly opened the door, and pulled out an off-white sweater.

As she took out the sweater, a ball of yarn tumbled out of the wardrobe and rolled across the floor, coming to a stop at Xue Rui’s feet.

"This..." Lin Ruoxi said nervously.

She didn’t know if Xue Rui would like it. The clothes he’d given her all looked so expensive.

’Maybe his mom thought it was too cheap.’

But she really didn’t have any money left for a proper gift...

Xue Rui’s eyes widened, and his voice trembled slightly. "You... you knitted a sweater for my mom?"

His mom could go through half a pack of tissues crying over sappy K-dramas.

And Lin Ruoxi had knitted a sweater just for her? She must have been moved to tears.

’What does she mean, "turned and left"? She probably just didn’t want to burst into tears in front of Lin Ruoxi.’

"Who taught you how to knit? Your grandma?" Xue Rui guessed.

’That old lady is a sly one.’

’This is a surefire way to win my mom over completely.’

"I taught myself. Aunt Ren takes such good care of me, I wanted to thank her..."

"Will you... try it on?"

Lin Ruoxi asked in a small voice, holding out a dark gray turtleneck sweater.

GULP.

Xue Rui swallowed hard. He’d suspected there was one for him, too.

To be honest, his own throat was getting a little tight. He suddenly understood why his mom had fled.

He’d never received a hand-knitted sweater in his two lifetimes combined.

Especially with the look in Lin Ruoxi’s eyes—cautious and timid, making herself seem so small.

You could tell at a glance that she was a child who had been starved for affection for a long time. It was so heartbreaking you almost couldn’t meet her gaze.

Xue Rui turned his head away as he took the sweater.

With his back to Lin Ruoxi, he changed into the sweater. It was thick and fit him snugly—so snugly, in fact, that he suspected Lin Ruoxi must have secretly taken his measurements by hand all over.

The soft, fuzzy wool was warm against his neck. Xue Rui lifted his arm to look at the cuff.

Lin Ruoxi’s craftsmanship was excellent; he couldn’t find a single loose thread.

Xue Rui rolled his neck. There was no scratchy tag, just a smooth, flat seam in the back.

Something made with such care was truly different from something store-bought. He loved it.

"Thank you," Xue Rui said, not knowing what else to say.

’Lin Ruoxi has been so busy with the game lately. Where did she find the time?’

’She probably stayed up all night knitting. She doesn’t pay attention in class anyway, so she could have used that time to rest...’

"Mhm..."

Lin Ruoxi fidgeted with her fingers as she watched Xue Rui put on the sweater she’d knitted for him, a wave of pure joy spreading through her.

She had been so worried he wouldn’t like it and had hesitated for a long time before finally giving it to him today.

"Staring at this admin page is just getting depressing. Let’s watch a movie," Xue Rui said, changing the subject.

"Okay."

Lin Ruoxi got Xue Rui a glass of water and brought out a pile of snacks, setting them on the table.

Xue Rui opened a popular streaming site, and the page was littered with pop-up ads.

Some of the ads were particularly explicit. Whenever one of those popped up, Xue Rui would deliberately zoom in on that part of the page.

And every time he did, Lin Ruoxi would quickly look away, her face turning beet red as she turned her head.

"Heh heh." ’She’s so fun to mess with,’ Xue Rui thought.

"Alright, I’ll stop teasing you. Pick something to watch."

Xue Rui scrolled through the options, casually closing an ad that popped up in the bottom-right corner.

There was basically no concept of copyright in this era. The quality of pirated streams was often even better than the damn official versions.

Besides, the official versions were often censored. It was a classic case of paying for a worse product.

Xue Rui had already seen most of the popular classic films. Now he was just rewatching them with Lin Ruoxi to pass the time.

The top-ranked movies on the site’s homepage were all disaster films, which made Xue Rui frown.

’Why are these so popular?’ he wondered.

Suddenly, he spotted one titled *Apocalypse*.

A long-dead memory surfaced. Around this time, that Mayan prophecy about the world ending on December 21, 2012, was all the rage.

No wonder disaster movies were trending so high.

"Want to watch this one?" Xue Rui asked.

"Whatever you want," Lin Ruoxi nodded.

Xue Rui was speechless. The girl had no opinions of her own; she was fine with whatever he picked.

"Don’t just say ’whatever.’ If you’ve already seen it, we can watch something else," he said.

"I haven’t seen it," Lin Ruoxi said, shaking her head.

"Then this one it is."

The film was a blockbuster, full of shocking, large-scale natural disaster scenes.

To be precise, it was about a group of people trying to board a "Noah’s Ark" to survive and preserve the spark of human civilization.

A single ticket cost an astronomical price.

Only a select few elites could afford to board the ark and save themselves.

Xue Rui had seen it before, so he wasn’t completely engrossed in the plot.

Lin Ruoxi, however, was a completely different story. She was utterly captivated, her face pale with fear. She would even flinch whenever she saw someone suffering on screen.

Soon, the movie ended. Lin Ruoxi picked up her glass and took a sip of water.

"Is... is that real?" Lin Ruoxi asked worriedly. The date in the prophecy was next month.

She had heard about the prophecy before but had always been too afraid to watch this movie.

When she looked it up online, some people said it was true and others said it was fake. She didn’t know who to believe.

"Huh?" Xue Rui found her question a little ridiculous.

’How could anyone take this stuff seriously?’ he thought.

But then again, hadn’t he believed it a little bit himself, back in the day?

In any case, plenty of people around them believed it. Students, after all, had boring lives and tended to latch onto these sorts of things...

Xue Rui asked seriously, "If it were real, and we were all drowning, and you were chosen to get on the ark... but you could only bring one family member with you, who would you choose? And you can’t give your spot to someone else."

It was a shameless question, the equivalent of the classic, "If your mother and I were both drowning, who would you save?"

It was a no-win question, a classic test of loyalty versus filial piety.

Xue Rui was curious how the genius, Lin Ruoxi, would answer.

Lin Ruoxi bit her lip, her pale fingernails digging into her palms.

Xue Rui watched her with a grin. This girl was taking it so seriously, actually pondering such a question.

He figured if he kept teasing her, she’d get anxious enough to cry.

Just as he was about to tell her to forget it, Lin Ruoxi spoke.

"You... you get on the ark," she said. "I’ll go down and be with Grandma."