Rebirth: Saving the Lovely Girl from the Start

During the afternoon activity period. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Gu Muxue spent the entire afternoon thinking about what Lin Ruoxi had said.

Xue Rui and Lin Ruoxi ate together, went to and from school together...

An image of the two of them happily chatting and laughing on their way to school formed in her mind, making her chest tighten uncomfortably.

But Lin Ruoxi had also said that Xue Rui would get angry if she got too close to him.

’Does that mean they’re keeping a safe distance? That Xue Rui doesn’t like her type?’

In any case, she wanted to hear Xue Rui’s explanation for herself.

"Why isn’t he here yet?" Gu Muxue glanced out the window from time to time.

She usually gave Xue Rui the cold shoulder, but he always came to pester Mei Lili at the back door of their classroom during the activity period.

Ever since stomping on his foot at noon, she had been waiting for him to show up.

She hadn’t asked Mei Lili to stop him today, but he actually didn’t come?

Xue Rui stood at the front door of Class One, watching Gu Muxue keep glancing toward the back. ’This girl is finally cracking,’ he thought.

He had to admire her. Normally, Gu Muxue wouldn’t have been able to ignore him for even a week, but this time she had managed it for over half a month.

’She must be really mad. I’d better be sincere today.’

Suddenly, the phone in his pocket vibrated with a BUZZ.

The classroom was quiet at this time, with students either studying on their own or playing outside. The phone’s vibration still drew Gu Muxue’s gaze.

Xue Rui saw it was an unknown number from a different region. He walked a short distance away to answer it.

"Hello, is this Ms. Wang? We’re from Le You Company..."

"Piss off!" Xue Rui cursed irritably and hung up immediately.

He had been planning to sneak up on Gu Muxue, but the spam call had ruined the moment.

He deliberately limped, hobbling over to the seat next to Gu Muxue.

"Ow, it really hurts. It still hasn’t recovered," Xue Rui said, grimacing in pain.

Gu Muxue felt a pang of guilt. When she had stomped on his foot at noon, she had put her entire body weight into it. ’Did I actually injure him?’

She had never been stomped on before, so she couldn’t tell if he was in real pain or just faking it.

However, she defaulted to assuming he was faking it, because he often teased her like this.

Gu Muxue turned her head away coldly. ’Today is the twenty-fourth day,’ she thought. ’Just one more week to make it a full month. This is the longest I’ve ever ignored him. I feel like I’m not so easily coaxed anymore. I have to hold out for a month and teach him a proper lesson.’

Because she had been bottling it up for so long, Gu Muxue often stewed in her own anger. Now, it was more like she was in a standoff with herself.

"Muxue, are you hungry?" Xue Rui produced two warm chicken legs from behind his back, sprinkled with red chili powder.

He had noticed she barely ate a bite at lunch. Several hours had passed since then, so she must be getting hungry.

Gu Muxue wanted to say she wasn’t hungry, but just as Xue Rui dangled the chicken legs in front of her, her stomach let out an embarrassing growl.

Instantly, the girl’s face flushed red to the tips of her ears.

’Why is my stomach so useless?’ she fumed inwardly. ’Didn’t I just have a snack? How am I hungry again?’

"One for each of us. I just got these from the cafeteria’s back kitchen. They’re still warm."

He had just traded a pack of cigarettes with the head cook in the cafeteria for the chicken legs.

Gu Muxue’s brows shot up. She snatched both chicken legs, not leaving a single one for Xue Rui.

Seeing Gu Muxue snatch both chicken legs, Xue Rui thought, ’Alright, this makes things easier. She’s finally willing to communicate.’

However, Gu Muxue just turned her head away to eat the chicken, showing no intention of speaking.

Xue Rui didn’t press the issue. He just quietly opened a *5-3* practice test and started doing problems while leaning over her desk.

While gnawing on a chicken leg, Gu Muxue secretly watched Xue Rui work on the problems.

Xue Rui noticed her gaze and deliberately got a few questions wrong.

Making basic mistakes in front of a top student was like messing up a stack of books neatly arranged by someone with OCD.

Gu Muxue was itching to speak up and correct him, but then she remembered the vow she’d made to herself and held her tongue.

"This is so hard..." Xue Rui muttered.

Seeing him scratching his head in frustration, the corners of her mouth couldn’t help but lift into a smile.

’It’s been less than a month and he already can’t solve problems again. He really can’t do without me.’

As for that Lin Ruoxi, she wasn’t sure what the deal was, but it seemed Lin Ruoxi really wasn’t capable of teaching him.

Gu Muxue didn’t say a word. She just reached out and marked the correct answers on his test paper with a pencil.

’If I communicate by writing,’ she wondered, ’does that count as breaking my vow?’

Gu Muxue wrote a line on Xue Rui’s paper: What is your relationship with her?

Xue Rui thought for a moment. This was actually hard to explain.

He and Lin Ruoxi just ate together and worked together; they hadn’t done anything that crossed any lines...

"Ahem..." Xue Rui cleared his throat, thought for a moment, and said calmly, "I’m her boss."

Gu Muxue’s beautiful eyes widened. She quickly wrote another line: "Explain!"

Xue Rui didn’t think he was wrong. Lin Ruoxi worked for him, and he paid her a salary...

"I can’t handle the project by myself, so I need to hire employees," Xue Rui explained.

"Then why didn’t you tell me!" Gu Muxue said through clenched teeth.

The moment the words left her mouth, she quickly covered it. She had broken her own rule.

She frantically searched for a loophole in her mind. ’The day I made the vow was in February, and it’s already mid-March now. If you round up, that’s basically a whole year of not talking to him.’

Having found a self-deceiving excuse, Gu Muxue felt much better.

"Hedong is an agricultural city. Where am I supposed to find a programmer?" Xue Rui said with a wronged expression.

He was telling the truth. Hedong had no internet industry, and it wouldn’t have one even a dozen years later.

Programmers could earn ten or twenty thousand a month in a first-tier city, so who would come back to Hedong for a job paying three or four thousand? A job that didn’t even fucking cover social insurance, no less. You’d have to be crazy to stay here.

As for remote work? The workflows back then weren’t well-developed, and the communication efficiency was far too low.

To be precise, Xue Rui didn’t really have a choice.

"Why didn’t you tell me? I could have had my mom help you find someone."

"And explain yourself. What’s this about giving her a place to stay and feeding her..." Gu Muxue muttered under her breath.

Gu Muxue was fuming. What angered her most was that Xue Rui had hidden it from her.

"Sigh, her family’s situation is very poor. I was just trying to help her out. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d misunderstand."

"Lin Ruoxi’s salary is very low. All she needs is food and a place to live," Xue Rui said with a grin.

The more Gu Muxue listened, the angrier she got. To think Xue Rui would be such a black-hearted boss.

"You’re not allowed to exploit her!" Gu Muxue pinched Xue Rui’s arm.

She thought about her own family’s company, which also provided dormitories and a cafeteria for its employees.

’Isn’t that just company housing and work meals? Why did Lin Ruoxi make it sound so weird?’

She sighed. ’That girl has some serious personality issues. She can’t even speak clearly.’

"Of course I won’t!" Xue Rui said, his face a mask of righteousness.

He was telling the truth in a way. Lin Ruoxi didn’t care about a salary at all; she would even give him the only two hundred yuan she had to her name.

Of course, he wouldn’t actually mistreat Lin Ruoxi. She was free to use the money in his account whenever she wanted.

But whether or not the girl actually used it was none of his business.

"Have you considered changing to a more professional employee? My older uncle has a lot of programmers," Gu Muxue suggested, watching his reaction.

"Hmm... Not considering it. She never writes comments in her code. She did all the previous work on the project, so the cost of switching to someone new would be too high," Xue Rui said seriously.

"Oh." Although Gu Muxue knew this was a work matter, she still felt a little unhappy.

She pulled his test paper over and circled many more problems of the same type. "Do all of these, and then I’ll explain them to you."

She had known Xue Rui for so many years. She knew he didn’t like studying, and the reason he was working so hard now was probably to go to school with her.

She was aiming for Chang’an Jiaotong University. As for Xue Rui, he said he’d see what his scores were like, but the University of Posts and Telecommunications wasn’t a bad option either.

She actually wanted to apply to the same university as him, but Gu Qingshan was watching her too closely. The same school was definitely out of the question...

But in another year, they would be living in the same city.

As for a genius of Lin Ruoxi’s caliber, she would definitely be snatched up by Qingbei...

Therefore, Lin Ruoxi couldn’t possibly end up in the same city as her. In the future, she would be the only one by Xue Rui’s side.

At this thought, a smile touched the corners of Gu Muxue’s eyes.

Xue Rui, however, still felt a little uneasy. It seemed like something was missing, that this whole affair wasn’t completely over yet.

Suddenly, Gu Muxue grabbed his hand, and before his astonished eyes, she bit down with two rows of neat, white teeth.

The anxiety in Xue Rui’s heart finally dissipated.

Only after Gu Muxue bit him could the matter be considered well and truly over.

...

After seeing Gu Muxue off campus, Xue Rui headed toward the "dog hole."

On the way, his phone vibrated. It was a text from Gu Muxue: "If you lie to me again, I’ll bite you to death!"

Xue Rui thought to himself that he had pretty much maxed out Gu Muxue’s trust this time. If she found out about anything else, there would be no explaining his way out of it.

Both girls were so pure and lovely.

That girl Lin Ruoxi didn’t yet understand what liking someone was, what love was. Every day she’d blankly search for all sorts of strange questions online, and who knows if she’d learned anything.

And then there was Gu Muxue. She clearly liked him but wouldn’t say it. She was fiery and proud. After so many years together, they could understand each other’s feelings without a word.

"Sigh~" Xue Rui sighed. His gaze passed through the bars of the dog hole, and he saw Lin Ruoxi waiting for him at the entrance.

As he climbed through the bars, Xue Rui felt the spot that Lin Ruoxi had smoothed down. It was as round and polished as if it had been buffed.

"Who bit you? Does it hurt?"

When Lin Ruoxi saw the teeth marks on Xue Rui’s hand, her heart ached. She grabbed his hand and gently blew on it.

’Why was Xue Rui’s hand bitten again?’

Judging by the teeth marks, it was definitely a girl’s bite. "Did classmate Gu Muxue bite you?"

Xue Rui’s heart skipped a beat. ’How did you suddenly get so smart?’ he thought.

Xue Rui nodded. "Yeah. She gets like that when she’s mad. Haven’t you seen Qiu Mengze chasing after me and hitting me all the time? We’re just playing around."

"Mmm..." Lin Ruoxi gently stroked Xue Rui’s hand.

She couldn’t understand why good friends would want to hurt each other.

Back at Lin Ruoxi’s house.

Just like usual, Xue Rui browsed various news sites online, thinking about how to seize the opportunities of the era, while Lin Ruoxi cooked in the kitchen.

After a long while, Lin Ruoxi handed Xue Rui a fried dough twist.

Xue Rui’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like greasy things like this. Why had Lin Ruoxi fried dough twists?

Lin Ruoxi had an excellent memory; she wouldn’t have forgotten his tastes.

"On the second day of the second lunar month, the Dragon Raises Its Head. You have to eat fried dough twists, or you’ll get bitten by a scorpion."

Lin Ruoxi broke off the end of the dough twist and held it to Xue Rui’s lips.

Her grandmother used to tell her this when she was little. She remembered that Xue Rui’s hand had been stung by a scorpion last year, so she had specially fried these dough twists for him.

Chewing on the dough twist, Xue Rui felt a little unnerved. ’Is that really a thing?’

He felt that Lin Ruoxi was hinting at something. Was she talking about Gu Muxue biting him?

’A scorpion’s bite? Could she be implying that Gu Muxue has the heart of a snake or scorpion?’

After Lin Ruoxi walked away, Xue Rui started searching online for the customs of the second day of the second lunar month.

"Phew~" Xue Rui breathed a sigh of relief. He had been too tense, getting paranoid about everything.

In the rural areas of Hedong, this custom really did exist...

’Yeah, how could such a pure and kind-hearted girl possibly have thoughts like that?’