Rebirth: Once Again With You

"You are already in the hospital? That's good." Li Caiyi smiled gently.

"Yeah. Father has just woken up again. He can already tell jokes, so I'm not so worried anymore."

"Zhi, you sound delighted."

"I am. Shame you can't be here with us. What are you doing right now?"

Li Caiyi fixed the position of her phone on her ear before replying, "I was just reading a book before you called me."

"I see. Don't read until too late, and have a good rest tonight."

"You too. Use this chance to rest, and please tell Uncle I will visit him again tomorrow."

"En. I'll tell him that. Good night."

The phone call ended sooner than she wished, but she didn't want to interrupt the Dai family's good time. The brothers must have a lot of things they wanted to tell their father.

Li Caiyi looked down at her book, suddenly losing her mood to read. So she closed it and put it back on her shelves. Then, she took out her notebook from her study desk drawer. Opening the page where she had written her memories about Dai Zhiqiang, she still felt somewhat puzzled.'

Before this, she barely could remember anything she had written here. However, since she had genuinely fallen for Dai Zhiqiang, she didn't put that much importance on it anymore. For her, the present was more important, so this might be her first time looking at it again after weeks.

"Right. Shen Qiang is such a person. These memories suddenly came and went away like the wind. It scared me a bit." Li Caiyi muttered to herself.

,m The first time Meng Renshu started having dreams about their previous life was after they slept beside each other. The more he remembered, the more Li Caiyi forgot about Shen Qiang.

Then, Dai Zhiqiang slowly remembered something that only she and Shen Qiang should know. Moreover, she slowly began to recognize the memories she had lost. Confirming that Dai Zhiqiang was indeed Shen Qiang, probably the best discovery she ever made. But even that caused more questions to appear.

If there were similarities between Dai Zhiqiang and Meng Renshu's situation, it was that they started regaining their memories through dreams.

"Then, is sleeping with me the required condition for that?"

Li Caiyi couldn't help thinking that it was a very crude condition to make. There should be some rules behind it, and to figure out more, it seemed she had no choice but to sleep with Dai Zhiqiang more.

Of course, it was so he could remember more about what happened in the past. She absolutely had no ulterior motive!

Thinking about it made her thirsty, so she went downstairs to fetch a glass of water. There she met Li Junjie, who was making a glass of coffee. His brilliantly handsome face somehow looked duller, perhaps due to nights of insufficient sleep.

"Brother Jie. Have you finished studying?"

"Not yet. I'm currently taking a fifteen minutes break."

"Are you okay? Your complexion doesn't look good."

"There's no need to worry. I'm not stupid enough to force myself, only to mess up on exam day."

"O-oh. I see."

The conversation was cut short. Li Caiyi couldn't say anything more and decided to quickly return to the room after filling in her glass with water.

"Have you made up with Xiaohua yet?"

"Huh? Well, we haven't really made up, but I feel like her attitude has softened than previously." Li Caiyi scratched her cheeks sheepishly.

"I saw her wearing the same earring as you. Is that your present for her?"

"Yeah. Xiaohua likes small things like that." Li Caiyi replied. A moment later, she suddenly remembered something she hadn't had the chance to do before. "It was all thanks to your advice. Thanks, Brother Jie."

"No need to thank me for every small thing. I merely give you the most reasonable solution for your problem."

"Did you perhaps do that because you are worried about us?"

Li Junjie's finger twitched a bit as he took a moment before replying, "If I didn't do that, then there's no use in punishing you."

Li Caiyi blinked her eyes a few times in confusion. Then, a realization struck her. "So you have been planning this from the beginning? You are not grounding me just on the whim?"

"Why would I do something useless like that? Mother and Xiaoahua have been missing you a lot. I know there are still a lot of disagreements and ill feelings between you, but I thought it was a good opportunity for you guys to fix it." Li Junjie casually took a sip of his coffee before continuing, "But it seems I have been too optimistic. I guess it won't be that easy to convince you to come back, after all."

"Brother Jie, you have changed so much."

Li Junjie's brows raised in curiosity. "Oh? How so?"

"You didn't try to avoid the problem this time. I have always thought it was weird that you want me to stay here for a month. You wanted me to forgive Mother and Xiaohua, so they won't be burdened with guilt anymore, right?"

"I'm the last person who should be talking about this, but a family should stick together. I'm surprised you haven't crawled back to this house even after being harassed by that delinquent girl."

Li Caiyi looked away. A sense of discomfort crawled up on her. "I have decided to move out, so naturally, I should solve my problem alone."

"You can say that again, but I remember you are inviting Xiaohua to stay over at your place for a few days. Isn't that because you are scared of being alone? I found it ridiculous that you would drag your sister to such danger instead of asking others to help. The thing that spurred you to do that, was it arrogance?"

"No! You are wrong!" Li Caiyi shouted at the top of her lungs. His words were so unpleasant to hear they made her face scrunch indignantly. "What do you know about me? Yes, I asked her to stay with me for a while, but I always ensure she won't be harmed. What right do you have to reprimand me like this when you did nothing to help, even when you know what happened?"

Li Junjie seemed a bit surprised by her outburst. His eyes widened slightly. "Xiaoyi, calm down and listen…."

"It's so touching to know you care so much about Xiaohua. Right, I may be a despicable person who drags her sister into great danger. But what about you? What have you done except blame me for everything?

You never asked me how I was doing after I went missing on the mountain. You knew how I collapsed after the false rumor about me was spreading, but you acted like an unrelated bystander. No, even before this, never once did you try to ask how I felt about everything. You concluded that I moved out of the house out of resentment on your own and expected me to agree with you. Who is the arrogant one here?"

Li Junjie listened until she finished before heaving a deep sigh. "So you want me to care for you and always ask for your well-being? You should have said so from the beginning."

"No, that's wrong, Brother Jie. You don't have to do those things because I never set any expectations for you from the beginning. If you are determined to be a bystander, don't do anything out of character; just leave me alone. Just like what you always do."

Li Caiyi blurted those words out of anger. She thought he would just dismiss it as something insignificant, as always, but Li Junjie seemed to be strangely bothered by it. His brows furrowed, and his mouth hung open without words coming out.

In the end, he couldn't say anything and turned his back on her. "I understand. There's nothing more I can say to you. You should return to your room if you already have your drink."

He was the one who picked the fight first, but when she confronted him, he brushed it off like nothing? Li Caiyi was so baffled she was at a loss for words. She even began to think that his attentiveness from a few days ago was just a mere illusion created by her stressed-out brain.

"You don't have to tell me. I don't want to spend even a minute with you."

Spitting those last words, Li Caiyi rushed out of the kitchen and returned to her room.

Li Junjie sighed in frustration before dumping his half-made coffee into the sink. He didn't think he could focus on studying after this and decided to sleep early for today.