Chapter 004: A New Day! July 8!

Chapter 004: A New Day! July 8!

Wu Chen’s home sat in an alley deep in the old part of East District—narrow, uneven roads, no good for a car riding as low as this one. He parked the Lamborghini on the main road outside the alley and walked the rest of the way in.

Mu Qianqian clung to his arm as they walked beneath the amber glow of the streetlights, craning her neck to take in the surroundings.

“You live here? Pretty low-key for you.”

“Low-key how? I’ve always lived here. It’s the family’s old house.” He smiled. “You weren’t expecting some big shot, were you? Because I’m really not one.”

“You’re not?” She laughed. “Then why was everyone so terrified of you back there? One phone call and that man’s kowtowing on the floor. You even stole a Lamborghini without blinking.”

“You still don’t get it, do you? A single day, looping for a thousand years. In all that time, I could use any method I wanted, without worrying about consequences, to learn far too many things. In Donghai, anyone with even a little social standing—I know them inside and out.”

“But the truth is, I don’t actually know any of them. I know about them. They don’t know me at all. All I have is information—and that’s enough to play one against another, without ever worrying about getting caught, because it all resets. Understand?”

“So… you were bluffing them. All of it.” She stopped walking and slipped her arm free of his.

“More or less.” He shrugged. “What, having second thoughts? Now that you know I’m nobody special, not so eager to come home with me? Suit yourself.”

He tucked his hands into his pockets and kept walking, unhurried, toward home.

Wu Chen never forced himself on a woman.

It crossed a line he wouldn’t cross. He’d lost himself to madness once before, and afterward, to keep from sinking back into it—to keep himself from tumbling into something monstrous and endless—to keep some shred of himself intact, he had drawn a line for himself and never let it move.

Tap tap tap!

Quick footsteps closed in behind him.

“Wait up! Hey!”

Something landed on his back—Mu Qianqian, having sprinted the distance, now clinging to him piggyback.

“Why’d you stop?” He caught her, hands braced behind him, and kept walking with her on his back.

“Why would I leave?”

“I told you, I’m nobody.”

“So what? You’re interesting.”

“Girls your age shouldn’t be so reckless.”

“Oh, please. You claim to have slept with ten thousand women, and you’re lecturing me?”

“I thought you didn’t believe that.”

“Doesn’t hurt to believe it for now. I’ll just pretend it’s all true—so, no harm done, right? Whatever happens tonight, it all resets when we wake up. You won’t know me. Nothing happened. Isn’t that how it works?”

“Mm. That’s exactly how it works.”

He carried her the rest of the way, setting her down only once they were inside with the door shut behind them.

The house was old, but the layout was decent—three bedrooms and a living room, with plenty of space. The furnishings were simple, and the renovation was plainly more than twenty years old.

“It’s so clean in here. Doesn’t look like a bachelor pad at all.” Mu Qianqian wandered the room, taking it in.

“Hard to make much of a mess in a single day,” he said, pointing. “Bathroom’s that way. Hair dryer’s on the second shelf, left side of the cabinet. No spare towels—use mine.”

“Hm?” She turned back, puzzled. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Take a shower. Aren’t you going to?”

[Content omitted for safety: sexually suggestive dialogue involving a character identified as seventeen. In the omitted exchange, Wu Chen says he will fall asleep at exactly 4:00 a.m. whether he wants to or not, then wake at 7:00 a.m.; he also mistakenly assumes Mu Qianqian has dated before.]

“When did I ever have a boyfriend?” Mu Qianqian looked genuinely baffled.

Wu Chen froze. Bad intel?

Over the past thousand years, he’d crossed paths with Mu Qianqian more times than he could count—maybe over a hundred, most of them here at Huahe Bar, others by chance while he was busy pursuing some other woman.

Someone, somewhere, had told him she had a boyfriend.

But he’d never set his sights on her before, so he’d never actually looked into her properly.

“Then who’s Sun Haoran?” he asked, direct.

“Whoa, you even know about that jerk? Just how much did my traitor of a best friend tell you about me?”

“You never dated him?”

“No!”

“Then why does everyone say he’s your boyfriend?”

“That’s… okay, we had a childhood betrothal. My grandfather and his grandfather arranged it, way back, just talk between old men—it was never official, my parents never even acknowledged it. Then when I was in middle school, that jerk transferred to Donghai and started telling everyone I was his girlfriend. That’s the whole story.”

“And then?”

“Then I had my cousin round up some guys to rough him up, and he transferred right back out of Donghai.”

“Ah. I see.” Wu Chen nodded.

Sun Haoran wasn’t from Donghai, which was why Wu Chen had never dug into him—and since he’d never actively investigated Mu Qianqian either, he’d only ever caught fragments of gossip, which had led him astray.

[Content omitted for safety: an implied sexual passage involving a character identified as seventeen.]

—

Dawn broke. Seven o’clock, exactly.

Wu Chen woke on schedule, eyes drifting blankly to the ceiling. Another loop. Every day began this way—waking, staring at the ceiling, turning over the events of “yesterday.” Habit, by now.

“Hey! You jerk, didn’t you say July 7th repeats forever? That everything resets every day? So how come today’s July 8th?” A girl’s voice, cool and pointed, cut in from beside him.

His face drained of color, nearly in horror. He shot upright and turned.

Wrapped in a blanket, Mu Qianqian sat gripping a baseball bat in both hands, cheeks puffed out, glaring daggers at him.