Rebirth: Saving the Lovely Girl from the Start

After helping Lin Ruoxi swap out her desk, Xue Rui walked her home as usual.

On the way, Xue Rui casually asked, "What have you studied in math? Calculus?"

His advanced math grade in college had depended entirely on participation points, and he only barely passed because the professor took pity on him.

So, Xue Rui genuinely admired anyone who could pass on their own merit.

In his eyes, anyone who would willingly study advanced math could already be called a genius.

"Um... Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Algebra, Analytic Geometry, Topology..."

Lin Ruoxi figured that if she confessed honestly now, she might get yelled at less later, so she listed all the books she had studied.

Xue Rui stopped in his tracks. Those were all university-level courses.

In fact, there were many he had never even heard of—ones that non-math majors would likely never encounter.

"Do you like math?" Xue Rui asked. He thought he might have just discovered a mathematical genius.

Lin Ruoxi thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I don’t like it."

Xue Rui’s scalp tingled. ’She calls this not liking it?’

Someone who truly didn’t like it wouldn’t even bother to open the book.

"If you don’t like it, why study it?" Xue Rui grew even more curious.

"Well... after Li Bin went to college, he only ever gave me math books."

"Li Bin?" Xue Rui was taken aback for a second, but he quickly remembered. That was the college student from Hua Village, Zhang Guihua’s son.

He had even spoken to Li Bin on the phone back when he was in Hua Village.

"In middle school, I used to borrow books from Li Bin..."

Lin Ruoxi obediently explained the whole story from the beginning.

Her teachers often had the students borrow the next semester’s textbooks in advance to study ahead.

Naturally, Lin Ruoxi would borrow from other students in her village, and as it happened, her neighbor Li Bin was in a higher grade.

Of course, Li Bin would never refuse his pretty young neighbor. Even when he couldn’t find his own books, he would borrow them from others to give to Lin Ruoxi.

However, Lin Ruoxi’s self-study pace was astonishingly fast. She would often return all the books in less than a week...

"Isn’t that kid a law major? Where did he get so many specialized math books?" Xue Rui’s eye twitched.

"Later... I didn’t ask to borrow them. Li Bin gave them to me on his own, saying they were books his college classmate didn’t want and that they would keep me busy for a long time," Lin Ruoxi explained.

Thinking about it now, she realized it was true. The math books did last longer than other books.

Xue Rui pretty much understood Li Bin’s mindset. If he had encountered a young genius girl, he would have also schemed to find difficult books to challenge her.

He just didn’t know if Lin Ruoxi had actually been stumped by them.

"Were you able to understand it all?" Xue Rui asked, very curious.

Lin Ruoxi thought for a moment before saying softly, "I finished reading them."

Xue Rui felt her answer completely missed the point.

"I’m asking if you could *understand* them," Xue Rui repeated, his expression turning serious.

"Those books didn’t have many practice problems..."

Lin Ruoxi said weakly, stealing glances at Xue Rui’s face, afraid he would scold her again.

Xue Rui’s eye twitched. ’What kind of humblebrag is this?’

The book titles Lin Ruoxi had just rattled off were ones that many university students wouldn’t... no, they probably wouldn’t even open them more than a few times in all four years of college.

’And Lin Ruoxi said she finished reading them?’

If a college student had said that, he would have assumed they were full of it, but Lin Ruoxi didn’t lie...

’Then again,’ he thought, ’maybe it was just because she was bored.’

Other girls her age were either immersed in the online world, chasing celebrities and dramas, or obsessed with makeup and fashion.

But Lin Ruoxi’s adolescence consisted of farm chores in the village, a mutt for a companion, and a black-and-white TV at home that might not have even worked.

So, when she was bored, reading became one of the few ways Lin Ruoxi could pass the time.

And it wasn’t like she had any choice in what kind of books she got.

’Genetics are fucking amazing,’ Xue Rui thought.

An idiot and a scumbag had produced a genius.

As they passed a vegetable stand, Lin Ruoxi asked out of habit, "What... do you want to eat tonight?"

Xue Rui often requested specific dishes, and if she didn’t know how to make something, she would look it up online.

She thought the internet was a wonderful thing; you could find anything on it.

"Let’s have some walnuts. I could use a brain boost too," Xue Rui joked.

Lin Ruoxi was better at grocery shopping than he was, so Xue Rui didn’t even bother going in.

Who would have known that after waiting at the entrance for a moment, Lin Ruoxi would actually come out with a bag of green-husked walnuts.

They were freshly picked walnuts that still had their green outer shells.

That kind of ingredient was extremely difficult to prepare.

"What did you buy these for?"

Xue Rui was a little surprised. He had only been joking.

"Why would a vegetable stand be selling green walnuts anyway?"

In fact, it was September, which happened to be when walnuts from Jin Province ripened. They were being sold all over the streets, and vegetable stands were no exception.

Lin Ruoxi paused, confused. ’Didn’t Xue Rui just say he wanted to eat them? Green-husked walnuts are still walnuts.’

"Forget it. Let’s go back," Xue Rui said, waving his hand for Lin Ruoxi to follow.

When they reached the bottom of his apartment building, Xue Rui noticed a middle-aged woman staring at him.

Xue Rui thought she looked a little familiar, but people in the same apartment complex rarely interacted, so it didn’t matter.

"Xiaorui?" the middle-aged woman suddenly called out.

"Oh, hey! It’s... Auntie! It’s been so many years. How are you and Uncle doing?" Xue Rui greeted her with a smile.

The woman was probably a former neighbor. To be honest, Xue Rui had no impression of her at all; he couldn’t even remember her last name, so he just tried to bluff his way through it.

Xue Rui thought, ’This auntie is something else. When I was reborn, I could barely remember anyone’s face.’

’But this woman? He had moved away back in elementary school and hadn’t seen her once in all these years.’

’Xue Rui had grown dozens of centimeters, yet she still recognized him at a glance...’

"And who is this pretty little girl? A classmate?" the woman asked with a smile.

"Hello, ma’am. My name is Lin Ruoxi," Lin Ruoxi replied politely.

She wasn’t as nervous around older people.

"Just call me Aunt Wang. Are you two living together? And buying groceries? You look just like a little married couple settling down," Aunt Wang said, her face a mask of gossip.

"Not at all. My family’s old apartment was just sitting empty, so I rented it to my classmate."

"Why don’t you come over to my place for dinner?"

"No, no, we couldn’t."

...

The two of them chatted casually for a few more moments before Xue Rui decided to head upstairs.

Just as he was leaving, Aunt Wang called out, "I ran into your mother the other day! She said we should get together to play cards."

A wave of panic hit Xue Rui. Besides Ren Jun, no one else knew that Lin Ruoxi was living here.

Even though he hadn’t actually done anything wrong, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

’I hope what my mom said was just polite talk.’

’Otherwise, with Aunt Wang’s big mouth, the secret would be out sooner or later.’

Inside the apartment, Da Huang was in full suck-up mode, wrapping himself around Lin Ruoxi’s leg and rubbing against her until she gently nudged him away with her foot.

The old lady was sitting on the sofa, bored, watching TV.

Life went on as usual, quiet and peaceful.

Xue Rui suddenly recalled Aunt Wang’s words. It really did feel like they were a couple settling down.

His own home didn’t have this kind of atmosphere anymore. Because his family had made money, they had a housekeeper to do all the chores.

The house was big, but it lacked that "homey" feeling.

Looking at this small apartment, Xue Rui was reminded of the past: his dad passed out drunk on the sofa, his mom cooking for him and his sister...

"This is nice," Xue Rui murmured with a smile and walked into Lin Ruoxi’s room.

This was their usual routine. Lin Ruoxi would cook while he played on the computer in her room.

But Xue Rui wasn’t just playing around. He was using his knowledge from his past life to post on various industry forums and message boards, trying to build a reputation.

’It might come in handy someday,’ he figured.

As for Bitcoin? The market was as stable as it could get. He had no idea when it would finally go up.

But even at the slowest pace, it would be around 2016.

But today, Xue Rui’s primary goal was to "educate" Lin Ruoxi properly by first digging up the "evidence" on her computer.

He opened the disk drive and saw that hundreds of gigabytes of space had been used up out of nowhere.

"She really knows how to save stuff," Xue Rui remarked.

He closed the door, wanting to sneak a peek and see what kind of "tastes" Lin Ruoxi had.

After rummaging through the computer’s root directory, Xue Rui was stunned.

"VMware? Is this Linux?" Xue Rui thought it looked very familiar.

’Isn’t this software that only computer-related majors use? I didn’t install it last time, did I?’

As he kept searching, one familiar name after another assaulted Xue Rui’s dead memories.

There were even numerous completed project files. When Xue Rui checked the modification times, he saw they were almost all from the early hours of the morning.

He then recalled their conversation from the other day...

"So, I was the only one with a dirty mind," Xue Rui realized. He had misunderstood Lin Ruoxi that day.

Lin Ruoxi hadn’t been secretly watching indecent films; she had been learning software programming...

And as for her sleeping in class recently, it wasn’t because watching those films was taking a toll on her body, but because she was staying up all night coding.

"Math plus computers... is this girl trying to ascend to the heavens or something?" Xue Rui shook his head and patted his own cheeks.

He made sure he wasn’t seeing things.

’Why would Lin Ruoxi be learning this stuff? Does she like it?’

’Oh well, I’ll ask her after dinner.’

Before long, Lin Ruoxi brought the meal over to Xue Rui.

Xue Rui didn’t ask while he was eating, but he kept glancing back at Lin Ruoxi from time to time.

As for Lin Ruoxi, she noticed his strange gazes and silently lowered her head.

The atmosphere during the meal was very strange.

Lin Ruoxi ate nervously. The moment she saw Xue Rui finish, she quickly gathered the dishes and went to the kitchen.

Xue Rui had planned to ask her when she came back from washing the dishes, but a long time passed and she still hadn’t returned.

Just as he couldn’t resist going to check on her, Lin Ruoxi walked in holding a small bowl of stir-fried walnuts.

"Um... walnuts." Lin Ruoxi placed the small bowl on the computer desk.

Xue Rui took a sniff. The walnuts smelled wonderful, a nutty fragrance wafting toward him. They were coated in a sugar glaze.

He noticed Lin Ruoxi’s fingers. Her fingertips were stained black.

That’s what green-husked walnuts do; they stain your fingers black when you peel them.

"You..." A wave of emotion washed over Xue Rui.

Even his own mother wouldn’t go to such lengths just because he wanted to eat some walnuts.

In his two lifetimes, Xue Rui had met more women than he could count, but he had never met anyone like Lin Ruoxi.

Many girls liked to get their nails done. Girls who got their nails done wouldn’t let their hands touch dishwater and did absolutely no housework.

But Lin Ruoxi? Just because of a single, casual remark from him, she had stained her fair, delicate fingers black.

"Don’t make these anymore. It’s too much trouble."

"It’s no trouble," Lin Ruoxi said hurriedly.

She sat on the chair behind Xue Rui, hiding half her face behind a book titled *Fundamentals of Digital Integrated Circuit Design*.