I turned reality into a romantic comedy.

"So that's how it is. You should have said so earlier. Do you think I'm surprised by this, Wenyun?"

Upon hearing Zhu Wenyun stammering out these heartfelt words, Shen Nianqiu smiled broadly, revealing a very happy expression.

"I also think that the three of us cooperated pretty well tonight, right?"

"Hey—brother, wake up! The National Day holiday is over, it's time to go to school."

It wasn't until he saw his sister's familiar face and heard her call him that Chen Junqian finally felt like he had returned to his identity as the male protagonist of a romantic comedy. This was the kind of daily life a male protagonist should be able to have, even though his high school grades were still quite good. Sure enough, he couldn't just let Shen Nianqiu and Zhu Wenyun get together. They were both paired up, and it felt like the impact would be even more exaggerated than if the other two were tied together.

Although he, as a real-life anime protagonist, truly possesses a certain level of anime knowledge, the two of them mainly come up with all sorts of outlandish tricks, making Chen Junqian momentarily unsure if he had been transported to some strange film set.

"So touching..."

When her brother suddenly sat up and hugged her, Chen Xi instinctively trembled, but quickly calmed down. After all, it was common for him to say things she couldn't understand right away when he woke up in the morning. She would even use the information she had to make deductions like a detective game, just like now.

"So my brother really isn't a pure older sister type after all."

"How did you come to this conclusion..."

"Because in general, we would call this situation 'the blessing of having multiple wives,' and by the way, this idiom is also a classic example of one that has gradually lost its original meaning in the process of being passed down."

"I know, the original text comes from Mencius. The mysterious sacrificial beggar man, I don't know how he managed to get two wives, one wife and one concubine. I can only sigh that the people of Qi in that era were indeed very powerful."

After a long-awaited good morning hug with his sister, Chen Junqian finally let go of her. As usual, the two got up and washed up separately, ate breakfast together, and then went to school together. Sitting on the back of the bicycle, Chen Xi hugged Chen Junqian's waist while watching the bustling other students on the way to school. The wind blew against her face. This was the start of her daily routine.

Just like her feelings towards Shen Nianqiu in college, everything in high school was fresh and interesting for Chen Xi, especially after she was actually in the same class as Chen Junqian. Even the running exercises, which she hated in junior high school and would rather fight the homeroom teacher with a hundred schemes than participate in, became barely acceptable. After all, Chen Junqian had plenty of experience in leading his weak childhood friend in running exercises. The last person who graduated from his class had already developed an A4 waist and abs.

However, despite saying that, after running exercises every morning, she still had to lie down like a corpse. If she weren't really incapable of doing that, Chen Xi would have really performed the scene where she most wanted her brother to carry her upstairs. After struggling back to her seat, she collapsed there. Lin Mu, who was sitting next to her, also followed the example of Chen Junqian taking care of her back then, and tried to cheer up his sister a little by feeding her.

If knowing the past life story of her childhood sweetheart was undoubtedly a huge win, then as the other party continued to delve deeper and add details, Lin Mu was able to gain various smaller wins from it. In short, the childhood sweetheart was constantly winning, and the same was true for Chen Xi.

Firstly, the so-called arranged marriage or betrothal that she had arranged back then, which was so embarrassing that she even had to transfer it from historical records, now seems to be purely a case of hindsight by both sets of parents. It's essentially the same as having distant relatives even when you're rich. After all, in Qianqian's narration, although Chen Xi in her previous life also held the title of this younger sister, their relationship was no different from that of ordinary relatives' children. In fact, because of the child's aloof personality, she was only considered somewhat unapproachable. This is one advantage.

The childhood sweetheart has a win in hand, while the younger sister has zero wins, making it 1-0, which is two wins...

Chen Xi had no idea that Lin Mu's mind was already racing with a series of nested doll-like scenarios of victory and defeat. However, she was quite curious about how her brother had managed to win Lin Mu over. After all, their relationship had almost ended not long ago, but now Lin Mu seemed to have transformed back into that understanding childhood sweetheart. It was as if her brother had been engrossed in a real-life Chinese youth drama during the National Day holiday.

However, the answer to this question was quickly found on the title page of Zhu Wenyun's new book, "Let's Be Childhood Sweethearts Starting Today," which was released this month:

Everyone says they'll go to very, very far places when they grow up, but I'm not afraid, because I know that no matter how far you wander, you'll eventually find me. Just like the wind will bring back spring, and birds will fly back to the eaves, we're meant to grow up together.

Because a very, very long time ago—longer than we were born—we must have met somewhere already. You are my you, and I am your me; it has been like this since a very, very long time ago.

As a veteran romance novelist who has been writing about childhood sweethearts since her debut, many readers felt that Zhu Wenyun had reached the limit of this genre after her previous book, "We Live in Guoning." After all, it was her masterpiece based on herself as the female protagonist. As a result, the web series based on it quickly gained popularity after its release, comparable to the highly acclaimed "With You" in the first half of this year, and garnered considerable discussion on various social media platforms.

Despite this public opinion backdrop, Zhu Wenyun still delivered a satisfactory result.

She almost completely abandoned all possibilities for the subsequent adaptation of this novel, because the entire content consists of seemingly contradictory and even self-contradictory diaries, QQ space updates, and letters. The timeline is chaotic, the relationships between events are confused, and sometimes it even seems like a dream.

After seeing this, Chen Junqian even interviewed Zhu Wenyun. She said that it was because someone's trick had fooled her. Originally, she really planned to continue writing another Lin Mu version of "We Live in Guoning" along her comfortable path. After all, with Mu Mu's diary as support, she was quite confident in writing another sweet childhood sweetheart romance novel. However, the plot twist almost made her throw up her back, and the style of the story became completely different from before.

"If I had to say, I probably referenced Zweig's 'Letter from an Unknown Woman,' but this should be considered a letter from a stranger, a childhood sweetheart?"

"Can the words 'stranger' and 'childhood sweetheart' really be related?"

"But this is the first feeling I had after talking to Mu Mu in detail, because even the same word, childhood sweetheart, has a completely different definition for everyone."

Although she wouldn't know about the rebirth, with the keen insight of a writer, Zhu Wenyun still noticed this fact that seemed somewhat unbelievable at first glance. However, she simply assumed it was because the two of them became acquainted later than the conventional childhood sweethearts, and Lin Mu was also the kind of girl who needed a deeper level of intimacy in her relationships. But the plot she wrote just happened to coincide with Lin Mu's needs.

If Zhu Wenyun previously drew inspiration from the experiences of the girls she chose as the female protagonists in her books, then this book is entirely based on that very distinctive characteristic for plot design. Therefore, the theme of the first half of the book can be summarized simply as: I consider myself your childhood sweetheart, or rather, a childhood sweetheart from a stranger.

Of course you won't remember me.

You don't remember me, not because you have a bad memory, or because time has erased the dust of your childhood, but simply because you've never seen me in the first place.

For you, childhood was a bright and wide road. You ran on it, fell, laughed, cried, and quickly got up again. I was just a small patch of grass by the roadside that wasn't trampled. When you passed by, I would gently bend down and think that was how I experienced the wind with you.

I first met you when I was six years old.

That summer was strangely hot. The pomegranate tree in the yard hadn't blossomed yet, but the cicadas were already chirping so loudly it seemed like they were going to tear the sky apart. We had just moved into that alley, and my mother held my hand as we went from house to house to meet our neighbors. I was very thin then, and my mother had combed my hair too tightly, leaving my forehead exposed. Everyone who saw me would say, "Why doesn't this child smile at all?"

You were squatting by the water tap at the end of the alley, poking at a beetle that couldn't turn over with a twig. A few boys older than you were calling to you, urging you to play tag. But you didn't leave immediately. Instead, you turned the beetle over and watched it wobble into a crack in the brick before standing up.

As you stand up, the sun shines through the leaves and falls on your eyelashes.

That was the first time I realized that a person could be illuminated like that.

You didn't look at me; you just ran past my mother and me, the wind carrying a faint smell of sweat, earth, and the scorching scent of soap. But that night, lying in my unfamiliar new bed, listening to the children's noise in the neighboring yard, I suddenly felt that I was no longer the outsider who had just moved in.

The next day, I deliberately rolled the glass bead my mother had given me into the middle of the alley.

It was a very beautiful bead with a light blue line inside, like a small river frozen in glass. I squatted down and pretended to be anxiously looking for it, but I had already seen it lying by the drain in front of your house. I knew you would go to buy popsicles at this time every day. Later I found out that you were just sent out by your mother that day. But at the time, I stubbornly believed that fate had made me roll the bead there and that you just happened to bend down and pick it up.

You put the bead in my palm and said, "Be careful, or you'll lose it if it falls into the ditch."

I did not answer.

I was so scared. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, you would hear that strange, rumbling sound in my heart. I was afraid that you would discover that a six-year-old girl felt like she had won the whole world just because a strange boy picked up a glass bead for her.

You probably thought I was mute, so you put the beads down and ran away.

But I held that bead in my hand until my palm was raw and red, and I didn't tell anyone that you had touched it.

That night, I hid it under my pillow and looked at it many times before going to sleep. I thought, since you picked it up for me, it no longer belongs to me alone; it has become the first secret between us.

From then on, I began to know many things about you.

I know you always leave home a little later than the other kids every morning because you never eat breakfast properly. Your mother stands at the door scolding you, and you rush out of the alley with half a piece of bread in your mouth and only one strap on your schoolbag. So I always deliberately dawdle until I hear your iron gate bang, then I pick up my schoolbag and run downstairs.

We didn't go to school together.

You went to the elementary school in front, and I went to another one behind the street. But there was a stretch of road that overlapped with yours, from the alley entrance to the soy milk stall, and then to that big sycamore tree. You always walked very fast and never looked back, so I fell far behind you. I didn't dare to get too close, but I was also afraid of falling too far. I watched you kick the pebbles on the side of the road, watched you play with your friends, watched you throw your schoolbag over your shoulder and then casually lift it up again just before you slipped down.

That short stretch of road is my most solemn ritual every day.

One winter, I suddenly fell ill, and my mother wouldn't let me go to school. I cried so hard that she thought I really loved reading. But she didn't know that I was just afraid that if I didn't go, you would walk alone through the snow past that sycamore tree, and that day would be missing from our shared childhood.

So in the end, she still wrapped a scarf around my neck and saw me out the door.

I saw you standing in front of the soy milk stall from afar, holding a steaming paper cup in your hand. You took a sip, probably because it was too hot, and you frowned. You kept blowing on it, and I suddenly wanted to go over and cool it down for you, since my hands must be really cold right now.

But I still didn't move, because just standing in the snow and looking at you made me feel incredibly warm inside.

You see, you've never been kind to me. You didn't even recognize me, but I was happy all day just seeing you drinking a cup of hot soy milk. I hid my frozen hands under the desk in the classroom and secretly laughed many times. When the teacher called on me to answer a question, I was so dizzy that I didn't hear anything. I wasn't sad at all after being criticized, because I knew that I had walked through the snow with you that morning.

At least, in my memory, we went through it all together.

Although she used to discuss Zhu Wenyun's new book with Gu Lingguo, now that Lin Mu was sitting next to her, Chen Xi couldn't contain her curiosity after reading the first two paragraphs. After all, this didn't look like a sweet childhood romance novel at all, and wasn't it supposed to be based on Lin Mu? She couldn't see the slightest resemblance.

"Was this book really written by Mu Mu and Wen Yun together?"

"Hmm? Yes, and I really like it. Now I understand Sister Shen. She must have been very moved when she first saw the book 'Dearest Forever,' just like I am now."

Even though he had already read all the contents and had a sample copy from Zhu Wenyun at home, Lin Mu still paid out of his own pocket to buy another copy, which he held in his hands and played with over and over again.

"But it seems to have absolutely nothing to do with what happened between you and my brother?"

"What's important isn't the event itself, but the feeling, or rather, the predicament we're facing? I can't quite put my finger on it, but Wen Yun really did write it down. That's amazing, no wonder it's Wen Yun."

"So it's a happy ending? I felt a bit uneasy after reading the beginning."

"Yes, Xiaoxi, please continue reading without worry."

Lin Mu responded with a smile.

However, after Chen Xi finished reading the entire content because of Lin Mu's words, she realized that she had been deceived again:

"Is this really a good ending? In the end, there's still no interaction at all. Childhood friends who were strangers remain childhood friends in the end. No, it's not even fair to call them childhood friends. I thought the contents on the title page were a confession, but why is it a last message or a last wish? When they're about to die, they meet someone and say, 'Let's be childhood friends from today onwards...'"

"So Xiaoxi just pretends that they are a happy childhood sweetheart pair who are fantasizing about what would happen if they didn't know each other in another timeline, so she wrote a lot of diaries to simulate this situation."

"It feels worse than waking up to find out it was a nightmare."

Seeing Chen Xi turn her head back as if she was truly hurt, Lin Mu smiled again, rested her chin on her hand, and briefly flipped through the entire book once more.

Unfamiliar childhood sweethearts, childhood sweethearts formed later in life.

It seems that every adjective is the complete opposite of childhood sweethearts, but if this kind of relationship is based on the accumulation of years so that you can confide in someone, then strangers can also become childhood sweethearts, that is, childhood sweethearts after birth. If you meet someone at six years old and can tell others that this is your childhood sweetheart at sixteen, then you should be able to say the same thing when you meet someone at sixteen and are twenty-six.

Chen Junqian took the first step, transforming her from an acquired to an innate bond, and now she can take the second step, truly transforming their childhood friendship from strangers into a pure and unadulterated relationship.

After all, there's only one simple way to turn a bad ending into a good one, but she didn't have Zhu Wenyun write it in the book because the solution had already been realized in reality—that is, to go back to the past, hold their hand, and say:

Let's be childhood sweethearts starting today.

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

P.S. 2: What this chapter doesn't explicitly state is that a certain childhood friend's mindset is actually somewhat like reading Cyber ​​Indulgence...

Chapter Thirty: Let's all speak our truths!

Guoning is indeed a small city where spring and autumn are not easily perceived. It always feels like the height of summer hasn't been over yet, but the temperature has already begun to drop visibly towards winter. By November, it had entered a state of "one layer of autumn rain, one layer of coolness." After a few chilly rains, the students obediently changed into their autumn school uniforms, pulling their long sleeves up and watching the leaves on the branches outside the window swirling and falling downwards in the wind during the coldest mornings and evenings.

The only thing that really excited the students at Guoning High School was the upcoming sports meet. Thanks to the increased fun and innovations of last year's meet, this year's sports meet has been eagerly anticipated by many since the start of the school year, especially by the freshmen who had just enrolled. Most of them had heard about the many fun new events added to the high school sports meet last year, and this time they were finally able to experience them firsthand.

Unlike last year, when he had to write the proposal from scratch, Chen Junqian, who should theoretically be the president of Ningzhong Student Union, only needed to make some minor revisions to last year's plan. Therefore, his workload was much lighter. However, just as the world of martial arts is not only about fighting but also about human relationships, the school's Youth League Committee office was actually much more lively this year because of the addition of new students.

Perhaps because Chen Junqian was here, the number of freshmen who wanted to join the school's Youth League Committee to see the school's heartthrob... no, it should be said that the number of freshmen who wanted to serve the students was several times higher than in previous years. Gu Lingguo, who had been determined to join the student council since she was a child, even if it meant becoming a puppet student council president supported by someone, was also among them. If Chen Xi hadn't said that she had no interest in this and that she would have to do all sorts of work after joining, she would have dragged her best friend to sign up as well.

Chen Xi's idea was actually quite simple. This was completely different from the club in junior high school, which only had a few people. There was a whole bunch of people, from teachers to students, and even Zhu Wenjun was in it. It wasn't like joining would give them the opportunity to spend time alone with their brother. Besides, how many times had it been said that this was the school's Youth League Committee, not the student council!

Gu Lingguo obviously didn't care about her friend's complaints. After all, some student councils in romantic comedies didn't have as much authority as Chen Junqian now. However, she really didn't expect so many people to sign up. She was surprised when she saw a corridor full of freshmen at the interview site after filling out the form.

However, Gu Lingguo must solemnly declare that she is definitely not like many superficial girls who come here to chase after handsome guys. She is here to recreate those sports festivals, cultural festivals, school festivals, school trips, and other similar events in high school. As for whether there will be any interesting plot developments between her and the male protagonist during these events, that is another matter entirely.

Incidentally, the person in charge of the selection today is 'Student Council President and Secretary' Zhu Wenjun.

Of course, this title was given to the other party by Gu Lingguo herself. She actually hesitated at first whether to use student council president/secretary or student council vice president, but when she thought that in such works, the student council president and vice president are usually in a antagonistic relationship, she chose the former. After all, she was clear about the relationship between the two.

Although she was only a year older than the freshmen present, Zhu Wenyun's maturity in temperament was completely different from the others among all the girls. Moreover, compared to her previous simple and aloof demeanor, Gu Linguo could clearly feel a certain charm that occasionally emanated from this literary girl. This special aura, combined with her outstanding figure and appearance, was enough to make all the other girls around her pale in comparison just by standing there.

Gu Linguo grinned and made a victory sign at the glass mirror of the window. Finally, she heard her name called. After sitting down in the room, she saw the interview lineup, which included Zhu Wenyun and a teacher from the school's Youth League Committee.

Compared to other high school students her age, Gu Lingguo undoubtedly has the most extensive social experience. Whether it's dealing with people or organizing activities, she has gained ample experience in her career as an anime content creator. Zhu Wenyun, of course, didn't deliberately make things difficult for her. In the end, she easily stamped the seal and announced Gu Lingguo's entry into the school's Youth League Committee.

Because the arrival of this batch of new students coincided with the preparations for the sports meet, the teachers of the school's Youth League Committee, with the spirit of "since we're here, we can't be idle," entrusted them to Chen Junqian's team to help.

Taking advantage of the break before the start of evening self-study, the uncrowned king of Guoning Middle School's senior high school section finally arrived at his loyal school's Youth League Committee meeting room. He extended his warm greetings to the newly joined members, saying that the Youth League Committee was a place where everyone could shine during their three years of high school, and he hoped that everyone would fulfill their duties and ensure the smooth preparation of the upcoming sports meet...

"So, is it time for you to start making Rasengan too, oh well."

Chen Junqian, who was drinking water, almost choked on his drink when Gu Lingguo leaned in and made that sarcastic remark. He knew that Gu Lingguo was saying he looked like the student council president from the second season of Oregairu, who would make some strange Rasengan-making gesture while spouting platitudes during meetings, but he could only reply helplessly:

"If I don't say these things, what else can I say to them? They've hired too many people this year, and they're all working right away. I'm lucky if they don't make things worse."

"It's all the senior's fault."

"Yes, yes, so you feel disappointed?"