7: Chapter 7 Youth is Wonderful

"Did you really spend the whole night at the internet cafe last night?" Jiang Chen, who was sitting beside him, asked.

"Yeah!"

"Holy crap, why didn't you call me?"

"Can you even get out at night?" Chen Fan looked at Jiang Chen doubtfully. He remembered that Jiang Chen lived in the county town, so he stayed at home at night. However, his parents were strict, so he probably couldn't sneak out at night.

Jiang Chen chuckled, "My parents aren't home these past two days, so I can come out."

"I'm going again tonight, you coming?" Chen Fan looked at Jiang Chen.

"Definitely!" Jiang Chen said with an excited look on his face.

"Jiang Chen."

From the podium, Teacher Zhou's voice drifted down, neither loud nor soft.

"You stand and listen too."

The smile on Jiang Chen's face froze. He opened his mouth as if to say something but swallowed it back. Finally, he stood up dejectedly, his chair legs letting out a soft scrape against the floor.

After standing up, he turned to look at Chen Fan standing beside him. The two looked at each other and couldn't help but chuckle.

As the bell rang, the class soon ended, and the two were finally able to sit down.

During the following classes, Chen Fan took every opportunity to sprawl across his desk and sleep.

Since Chen Fan sat in the last row, which was basically the hallmark of a poor student, the other subject teachers mostly ignored him except for the homeroom teacher. This allowed Chen Fan to get plenty of rest.

By a little past three in the afternoon, Chen Fan felt like he had fully recovered his energy, and his whole person felt refreshed again.

"It really is good to be young!" Chen Fan couldn't help but sigh.

In his previous life, before he even reached thirty, it would take a whole day to recover from pulling an all-nighter. After thirty, he couldn't even handle staying up all night; if he stayed up until two or three in the morning, he would sleep until noon the next day and still wake up with an aching back.

Having returned to his eighteen-year-old body, Chen Fan felt as if a heavy stone weighing on him had been cast aside, and his whole body felt clear and transparent.

At 8 PM, as soon as the bell for evening self-study rang, the two of them stood up and left the classroom immediately.

"Which internet cafe are we going to? Mangrove or Leap?" After leaving the classroom, Jiang Chen looked at Chen Fan and asked.

Leap Internet Cafe was also relatively close to the school. Although it was further than Mangrove, it had a better environment. However, Chen Fan didn't care; in this era, the environment of internet cafes wasn't much better anywhere—they were all about the same.

"Let's go to Mangrove, it's closer."

"Alright." Jiang Chen didn't say anything else, nodded, and followed Chen Fan toward the school gate.

After arriving at the internet cafe, since there was still over an hour before 10 PM, they first opened a temporary session and waited until around 10 PM to start an all-nighter session.

"Wanna play a round?" Jiang Chen gestured toward Chen Fan while looking at the CrossFire interface on the computer.

"No, I have things to do. You go ahead and play." Chen Fan shook his head, then opened a Word document and began typing.

Seeing Chen Fan's actions, Jiang Chen looked surprised. "What are you doing?"

"Writing a novel~"

"A web novel?"

"Yeah, just writing for fun."

"You're awesome~" Jiang Chen couldn't help but say, "What suddenly made you think of writing a novel?"

Chen Fan was stunned for a moment upon hearing this, then said, "I heard that writing novels can make money, so I wanted to try."

Hearing that it could make money, Jiang Chen immediately became interested. "How much can you earn?"

"It's hard to say. Some earn one or two thousand, while others can't even make a few dozen bucks."

Hearing Chen Fan's words, Jiang Chen lost interest. He didn't usually read novels and was only interested in games. After an "Oh," he immersed himself in the intense and exciting game.

Before long, the sound of Jiang Chen "greeting" the family members of his opponents and teammates could be heard.

Amidst the noisy environment, Chen Fan also began his continuous typing.

By the time the all-nighter ended, Chen Fan had also completed his task of fifty thousand words for the day.

Perhaps because it was his second consecutive all-nighter, his energy wasn't as good as yesterday, and it took him longer to finish the fifty thousand words today than it did yesterday.

As they stepped out of the internet cafe, the early morning breeze blew against them, and both of them involuntarily shivered.

For some reason, after every all-night internet session, there was always a feeling of being very cold.

After returning to the classroom, there were still ten minutes before morning self-study. The classroom was still mostly empty, with only five or six people.

Chen Fan's eyelids were already drooping, so he just slumped onto his desk and began to sleep.

Ring, ring, ring~

The piercing bell for the end of class rang, waking Chen Fan from his deep sleep.

He opened his eyes dizzily and found that the students in the class were leaving the classroom one after another.

Turning his head, he saw Jiang Chen sleeping soundly on his desk.

Chen Fan instinctively wanted to stand up, but his body's reaction was a beat slower than his consciousness.

Just as he was about to move his right leg out, an indescribable sensation suddenly surged from the base of his thigh to the tips of his toes—it felt as if his entire leg had vanished into thin air, or as if it were filled with lead, swollen and heavy, completely refusing to obey him.

"Shit..." He cursed in a low voice, propping himself up on the edge of the desk with both hands, gritting his teeth as he waited.

Only after that numb and painful sensation had completely faded away did he tentatively straighten his leg and then curl it back. After doing this twice and confirming it was finally under his control again, he stood up.

He checked the time on the digital watch on Jiang Chen's arm: 12:02.

He hadn't expected to sleep until noon. Surprisingly, no teacher had bothered them this time. It seemed they had truly given up on them.

Chen Fan wasn't surprised. His Class 8 was already ranked near the bottom, and his and Jiang Chen's grades were at the bottom of the class, so it was normal for the teachers to give up on them.

Occasionally, the teachers might intervene if they couldn't stand it, but most of the time, they couldn't even be bothered.

Chen Fan was happy with this arrangement. Since he spent his nights at the internet cafe, he needed to sleep during class in the daytime to recover his energy.

Thus, even though it had been two or three days since his rebirth, he still hadn't remembered the names of most of his classmates.

After sleeping all morning, Chen Fan was hungry. Looking at Jiang Chen, who was still fast asleep beside him, he shook him awake without hesitation.

"What's wrong?" Jiang Chen asked groggily.

"Wanna go eat? You coming?"

"You go ahead, I'll sleep a bit more." Before Jiang Chen could even finish his sentence, he slumped back onto the desk and fell asleep again.

Seeing this, Chen Fan didn't force him and went to the cafeteria alone.

After eating, Chen Fan was in no hurry to return to the classroom.

The weather was great today. The early autumn sunlight shone on Chen Fan, making him feel unexpectedly comfortable.

He walked lazily like that, thinking of nothing, only feeling his back being warmed by the sun, just like the feeling of dozing off in the courtyard when he was a child.

Unknowingly, he arrived at the school playground.

He found a spot on the steps of the stands next to the playground and sat down, quietly watching the boys and girls running not far away.

Some were playing soccer, shouting and arguing over something; others were walking slowly along the track in twos and threes, the girls' long ponytails swaying with their steps.

Before his rebirth, he had returned to the school once and sat in the stands like this, watching the young boys and girls on the playground. Besides a sense of being out of place, he also felt envy.

He envied their youth, their abundance of time, and that vitality that allowed them to laugh without needing a reason.

Later, Chen Fan sat for a while and then left.

But now, he looked down at his hands and then up at the people on the playground.

The sunlight was still the same, and the stands were still the same. But this time, sitting here, that empty feeling in his heart was gone, and that faint sense of alienation had also vanished.

He suddenly smiled.

There was nothing to be envious of anymore. Because now, he was one of them.

It's good to be young~