I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

"Because it's a secret base."

Inserting the other key from the keychain into the lock, Xu Youwei answered as if it were a matter of course. As she pushed open the door, she retrieved the strand of hair that hadn't fallen to the ground from the crack in the door. It can only be said that in terms of counter-surveillance awareness, she was quite decent, having been familiar with "Happy Detective" since childhood. And in a sense, it didn't seem like she was outsmarting thin air.

"Whoosh—whoosh."

After taking several deep breaths, Xu Youwei finally made way for Chen Junqian behind her, gesturing for him to go in first. Then, the instant he stepped into the dark room, she slammed the door shut from the outside and locked it again with astonishing speed, leaving Chen Junqian alone in the inner room.

"...What are you trying to do?"

Hearing the door slam shut behind him, Chen Junqian turned around with a bit of helplessness and asked, then heard Xu Youwei's reply from outside the door.

"Because I don't know what Qinqin's expression will be when she sees what's inside, I'm a little afraid to look... so let's leave it like this for now. But I don't mean to lock you up, I just want to separate the two of us temporarily. Hmm, I think this will be better. Actually, even just like this, my heart is already pounding. So I'm sorry, maybe I am a bit of a coward. I'll formally apologize to Qinqin after we come out."

It was almost like a child who was too afraid to look at their final exam report card, only daring to cover it with their hand and peek at each number through their fingers. Xu Youwei, sitting outside the room, was clutching her clothes, trying to guess Chen Junqian's thoughts from the various sounds and reactions coming from inside, so that she could have a little psychological expectation and preparation in advance.

Seemingly to confirm the truth of what she had just said, Xu Youwei reached out again and unlocked the door lock that she herself didn't know why she had subconsciously locked, turning the secret room back into an ordinary room. Anyone inside or outside could simply turn the doorknob to come out or go in.

"Ok."

Since Xu Youwei had already put it this way, Chen Junqian temporarily agreed.

After all, it was a room where he had lived for more than ten years. Even in the pitch black, he still easily found the light switch on the wall by relying on muscle memory. With a little pressure from his fingertips, the light in the room was turned on, and everything in the small room, which was not big to begin with, was immediately reflected in his field of vision with great detail.

Even though she hadn't turned on the living room lights, Xu Youwei could clearly see the light pouring out like water through the crack in the door at dusk. She knew that Chen Junqian inside had already turned on the lights, and everything in the room should be clearly visible to him.

Upon realizing this, Xu Youwei almost unconsciously reached out her other hand towards the doorknob while clutching her clothes at her chest. The metal doorknob, with its characteristic coldness, brushed against her palm, causing a slight itch and pain.

She was almost about to turn the doorknob and reopen the door, but the cold, hard doorknob bit Xu Youwei's outstretched hand, freezing her in place. She pressed her lips against the door, waiting for a reaction or a specific answer from inside, her lips pressed against it, like the mottled vermilion lacquer on the wooden door, vibrant yet fragile, dry, and even precarious.

For Chen Junqian, who was inside the room, what he saw was another scene that was breathtaking in every sense of the word.

To be honest, among the Japanese romance works he encountered after his rebirth due to the system, there was never a shortage of characters with yandere or stalker traits. Their rooms were always stereotypically covered with candid photos of their crushes from various angles, or stolen clothes and daily necessities, with various stereotypical statements such as "I talked to this woman today, it's unforgivable," "This outfit is so cute today, I want to keep it," and "This smile... belongs to me, only to me." The words were filled with a crazy possessiveness, paranoia based on imagination, and a chilling, highly concentrated obsession.

In this respect, their homes and rooms have essentially become religious sites, such as observation stations or sacrificial grounds, prisons built in the name of love and fueled by madness. They only make the individuals involved feel as if they have been spied on and stared at by countless eyes from beginning to end, causing them immense mental pressure.

But the scene Chen Junqian saw before him was not like that.

The first thing that caught his eye was a layout that was no different from an ordinary room, and even felt familiar to him. The bed, wardrobe, and even the mirror were still in their original positions, except that the sheets and blankets had been changed, and Xu Youwei's clothes were hanging in the wardrobe, from underwear to outerwear, everything was there. It seemed that she had indeed set up this place as a secret base where she could stay overnight.

Then there are the left and right walls.

The wall that used to be covered with certificates of merit has been covered with all sorts of photos of him. However, its function seems to have remained unchanged. It is still his honor wall, because it is covered with his various honors from elementary school to the present. Starting with the earliest stampede incident, Xu Youwei found these photos from somewhere and cut them out from various places and posted them there in chronological order.

There wasn't a single photo that looked like it was taken secretly. Even if they were blurry or zoomed in to the extreme, it was still clear that they were all taken from the front, in a straightforward manner. In particular, the photos of him giving a speech as a student representative at his elementary school anniversary celebration were all close-ups of him that Chen Junqian had never seen before, which brought back many memories for him from that time.

The only thing that made Chen Junqian frown slightly was the elementary school graduation photo following behind. It seemed to have been deliberately cut out from a whole photo, but perhaps because Lin Mu, who was standing next to him when the photo was taken, was too close, or perhaps Xu Youwei had intentionally wanted to preserve the three of them from the beginning, what was displayed in front of Chen Junqian was not a fragmented, patched-up double photo with razor blades and transparent tape, but the three of them facing the camera lens with bright smiles. Therefore, Chen Junqian's expression quickly softened again. Looking down, there were various moments of honor from his junior high school years, and the timeliness was even quite good. Even some local reports about him after the first episode of the show aired not long ago were cut out and pasted there.

After looking at the photo wall, Chen Junqian stood a little further away and felt that something seemed off.

At first glance, he simply thought the photos were arranged in chronological order. However, after looking through all the photos, he noticed that the gaps between them were not neat. Sometimes there was a large blank space between them, and sometimes they were close together. Overall, the photos appeared messy and disorganized, as if something was missing.

It's like a blackboard bulletin or handwritten newspaper where only the drawings are finished, but no words have been written yet.

After realizing this, Chen Junqian, who was already feeling like he was playing some kind of escape room puzzle game, lowered his eyes and looked around for usable props. Then he found a flashlight on the bedside table. When he turned it on, it cast a strange light that projected a faint shadow on the wall.

Just like a few years ago when he and Xu Youwei would always align the genuine puzzle cards that came with the Adventure Tigers or Charlie IX books with the solution section of each puzzle, Chen Junqian slowly moved the ultraviolet light closer and found the handwriting left by Xu Youwei in the blank spaces between the photos.

However, the content above is not a yandere statement at all, but more like content that would be posted on QQ Space or a diary-like rant, with some writing of varying lengths next to each photo.

For example, in the very first photo of her being commended for her bravery during the stampede, Xu Youwei kept muttering a series of things like, "Why wasn't I there with Qinqin back then?" "If I had been there, I definitely could have done better than Zhu Wenyun." "Mumu is so lucky to know nothing." Even after Gu Lingguo appeared, there were several more comments in her handwriting, such as, "How many people did Qinqin save back then?" "Girls who cling to you because of this kind of thing are quite annoying. Why can't they learn from TV dramas and say they'll repay you in the next life?" "Never mind, even the next life won't work." Chen Junqian felt a bit like he was reading Hu Shi's card-playing diary online back then, and the corners of his mouth unconsciously turned up.

[This is the most handsome Qinqin has ever looked... It was worth asking his dad to bring in a photographer, hehe]

[Qinqin and Mumu's three-legged race... I ended up tying them up too~~~~]

[Qinqin and Zhu Wenyun won first prize in the essay competition... It was clearly just for the purpose of creating a literary society, don't get your hopes up.]

[Qinqin's famous now! But I hope he can come back to China soon. If he doesn't... then I'll go to Beijing and kidnap him back, hehe~~~]

Well, it's basically all this kind of scathing commentary. Just a few years ago, Xu Youwei was depressed in every sense of the word. She scared her own father into thinking that his daughter was mentally unhealthy to the point of wanting to commit suicide with just a half-true, half-false diary. But now she's become like this. It seems that all that time and night they've spent making up jokes on the internet over the past year hasn't been in vain.

With this relaxed mindset, Chen Junqian naturally turned around and turned his gaze and the light in his hand to the other wall opposite the photo wall, closer to the original desk. The first five words he saw made him feel a sense of awe, and he subconsciously gripped the flashlight in his hand as if he were an investigator looking directly at some ancient god.

Don't hate me.

P.S.: Thank you for reading and subscribing.

Chapter 64: It's great to improve a little bit each time (Part 2)

Don't hate me.

With these five words as a starting point, Chen Junqian walked a little closer to the wall covered with tiny characters, and began to quietly and carefully examine the densely packed words on this area from top to bottom.

Some of them were obviously copied from various background walls, sentences that always appealed to girls of this age, such as "I ordered an iced coffee, the black coffee is me, the white mocha is you, I want to raise an independent cat, a dog that loves to be pampered, have you seen my fickle and shy heart?" or "I like wearing the same T-shirt as you, I like every kind of dessert you like to eat, holding hands and walking through the wind of longing together, half of you plus half of me equals the happiest thing," one sentence after another neatly arranged there.

Echoing these are various non-mainstream copywritings below. Just reading a couple of sentences makes you feel like you can already see those dark-toned background images filling empty streets, dim corners, broken mirrors, backlit profiles, bleeding hearts, broken wings, lonely cigarettes, and so on. However, judging from the age of the handwriting, these should be the earliest marks left on this wall. And through a date left in a corner, Chen Junqian realized that the time was even written before he moved.

No wonder they were all huddled in the corner. Back then, his desk and bookshelf were right in the center, making it impossible to write on the wall that was blocking the way. I vaguely remember my mom saying that Xu Youwei would sometimes go to his room alone, so it seems she was doing something like that.

Without taking a closer look at these earliest ones, which were essentially just copying and excerpting, Chen Junqian, who had been half-squatting, stood up again and began to move the ultraviolet lamp he was holding tightly toward the middle of the wall. The information content was not even as much as the diary-style rants he had seen on the photo wall on the left.

This area was originally blocked by the desk and bookshelves, so compared to the walls in the corners and along the edges that inevitably become mottled and yellowed over time, this wall is undoubtedly cleaner and whiter, and more suitable as a canvas for painters to freely apply colors and leave brushstrokes.

It was at this moment that Xu Youwei, who had been secretly observing Chen Junqian's actions, suddenly reached out and pressed the light switch next to the door. The entire room went dark again, and the only light source was the ultraviolet flashlight in Chen Junqian's hand.

However, at this moment, Chen Junqian had no time to pay attention to Xu Youwei's sudden action of turning off the lights, because the light in his hand had torn through the darkness in front of him, and a vast universe emitting a faint blue fluorescence suddenly exploded in front of him, occupying his entire field of vision and firmly attracting all his attention in the most unreasonable way.

Unlike the earliest writings on the corner of the wall, everything here has a clear subject and object. The scenes that Xu Youwei had drawn on the magnetic drawing board and deleted countless times over the past few years, sprayed on the ground with a snow spray can and lit, and outlined in the air with a sparkler and then disappeared have finally found a real basis. They are all small comics that echo the photos on the opposite wall.

Xu Youwei wasn't exactly a girl who was good at using words to accurately express her inner emotions and feelings. So at first, she would copy down those seemingly plausible words that her classmates shared on their QQ space backgrounds. Later, she would read Zhu Wenyun's novel serialized in "Fireworks" to gain some empathy, like "Oh my god, this is exactly me." But she did have something she was good at: painting.

Xu Youwei has never been stingy with spending a lot of time and energy on matters concerning herself and Chen Junqian. Just like the signature she designed after several days of research, which others would only think was scribbles if not explained, but actually contained the initials of the two of them, Xu Youwei spent a long time designing a set of Q-version character designs for herself and Chen Junqian.

However, when she started writing, she realized that Mu Mu's appearance frequency was indeed a bit too high, so she took matters into her own hands and drew a character for her good friend. As for the other unknown characters who occasionally made cameo appearances, they could only be stick figures with surnames like "Zhu" or "Shen" written on their faces. Anyway, these people wouldn't appear often in their story.

The two of them when they first met, the two of them doing crafts together in front of the "Artistic Creativity" program, the two of them running and playing in the streets and alleys of Guoning after school... For those scenes that only exist in the past memories, and for which everything has changed, even the most advanced camera technology cannot travel through time to record those scenes again.

But painting can, just as Xu Youwei is showing Chen Junqian at this very moment.

The azure fluorescence breathed gently, each painting and each sentence like a tiny heart pounding violently in the silence. The beam of light swept across the entire wall, which had taken countless hours and efforts, inch by inch. Beneath the lines and ink that faded and were redrawn, mottled and intensified, lay the burning, glowing thoughts of a young girl.

He ran his fingertips along the marks, tracing the strokes slowly. Standing there, Chen Junqian found it hard to describe his true feelings at that moment. It wasn't until he heard the soft sound of the door closing again that he belatedly turned around, taking stiff steps to go out and talk to Xu Youwei outside, even though he really didn't know how to express his thoughts.

But just as Chen Junqian reached out to grasp the doorknob and prepare to turn it, Xu Youwei, who was outside the door, took the initiative to stop him:

"Wait a moment."

"What's wrong?"

"...I want to talk to Qinqin for a bit first."

Hearing Xu Youwei lean back against the door and slowly slide down to sit, Chen Junqian simply followed her and sat down on this side of the door with his legs stretched out. Inside the room, the two of them sat back to back, separated by a door, slowly sorting out their feelings in this state of both intimacy and distance.

[The walls of the gate and the walls of the heart]

Sitting in a room, being honest with each other through a door is always one of the most classic scenes in romantic comedies. When a door separates you, the warmth of being back to back seems to pass through the wood. Not being able to see each other's true expressions can sometimes make it easier to say the truth.

Whether it's a younger person feeling the slight tremor when the other person speaks, or forcefully pounding the door when they get excited, or opening the door simultaneously in perfect unison to embrace the other person in a moment of deep affection, those trembling confessions and choked responses will all be imprinted on the door at this moment, becoming each other's most profound memories.

Condition for achieving this: Recreate the above scenario with any heroine who is suited for romantic comedy.

Completely oblivious to the newly unlocked achievement in his mind, Chen Junqian, with his mind blank, simply leaned back and focused all his attention on Xu Youwei, who was sitting next to him, quietly listening to what she had to say.

"Has Qinqin seen it all?"

"There shouldn't be any leaks, unless you're telling me now that there's something on the ceiling."

"I can't reach it..."

Although both felt they had a lot to say, they didn't know where to begin. In the end, Chen Junqian took the initiative to ask:

"If Lin Guo and Xi Xi hadn't suddenly said they wanted to come here, when was Youyou originally planning to tell me about this place?"

"I don't know. Maybe it'll be when I've actually filled up every part of this place, even the ceiling? Because I can keep drawing forever anyway. After all, Qinqin and I will definitely have many more stories to tell in the future. The scene of us celebrating our birthdays together yesterday should be enough for me to draw for a long time."

"So why did Youyou choose to use an invisible pen? It must be inconvenient to draw on the wall with this, right? It's like that in every way."

"Hmm... I guess it's because this is the first time I doodled on Qinqin's wall. Qinqin probably saw it too, right? I had already written things in the corner before you moved. Actually, not only there, I also wrote on other things of Qinqin's with an invisible pen."

Perhaps it was easier not to look at the person's expression while speaking, or perhaps she simply felt there was no need to hide anything anymore, Xu Youwei simply recounted the message she left on the glass bottle Lin Mu gave to Chen Junqian, without deliberately omitting her feelings and thoughts at the time, but explaining them completely:

"Because I also want Qinqin to be able to see me as soon as she looks up."

"Wouldn't an invisible pen be completely invisible?"

"But it's enough that I know."

Okay, I understand.

Xu Youwei wasn't exactly a literary enthusiast, so naturally she couldn't quote or quote passages from literary classics. She couldn't use lines from *Remembrance of Things Past* like, "When one cannot possess something, the only thing one can do is not forget it," nor could she use Haruki Murakami's lines from *1Q84* like, "It's okay to be alone, as long as you can genuinely like someone, life will be saved, even if you can't live with them," to accurately describe and depict her thoughts and feelings. She could only repeat one more point:

"I'll think... it's enough that I know."

"But now I know."

"Well, then I need to let Mumu know. Maybe I should have told her about this a long time ago, because she would most likely just say, 'It's okay, after all, I gave Qianqian the little stars and origami cranes inside, not the glass bottle outside.' Qinqin, do you think that's the case?"

"Even so, you have to tell Mu Mu yourself and hear her answer with your own ears."

"I know."

After the topic of the glass bottle came to a temporary halt, the two fell into a brief silence again. Chen Junqian, who was sitting there, turned on his ultraviolet lamp once more and shone the beam of light on them, taking the initiative to start a conversation:

"I just realized that if you look at this wall on the right from a distance, all those comics together actually form the initials of your and my names. Was that a design intentional?"

"Yes, actually, if the space weren't so small, there should be more content later on."

"What content?"

Faced with Chen Junqian's question, Xu Youwei bit her lip and remained silent.

What else could it be but the unified password for all her accounts, a string of numbers that sounds like "5201314".

Girls of this age are never shy about repeating and mentioning words of liking and love in their QQ space backgrounds and posts, or in their carefully designed signatures and passwords. However, when it comes to saying such things aloud, they still maintain the pride and timidity of a young girl. This is because she doesn't know whether the outcome of doing so will be good or bad. After all, the current situation is a completely unexpected event, unlike the fireworks display at the beginning of last year, which was a pre-planned scenario that she had carefully imagined and considered.

However, even last year, when she had made all the mental preparations and the external environment and stage were all set, she still couldn't bring herself to actually say the confession...

Chen Junqian, unaware of what Xu Youwei, sitting outside the room, was thinking at that moment, was also somewhat flustered.

Because this was truly the first time he had felt such a clear, immense, yet specific emotion called liking from a particular girl after his rebirth, and it just so happened to be Xu Youwei, the girl whom Chen Junqian tentatively categorized as cat-like.

If I had to give an analogy, it would be like your usually aloof, arrogant, and unresponsive cat suddenly transforming into a clingy golden retriever. It keeps watching you, rubbing against you, sticking close to you, clinging to you, dragging you along, and trying to take you to its secret hideout that it has been hiding for a long, long time. There, it is willing to share everything it has treasured with you.

"So, what exactly is Yoyo thinking?"

However, the moment Chen Junqian asked the question, the other party seemed to deflate again, rapidly reverting from a golden retriever to a kitten.

It is a completely unnecessary prefix adverb.