Back then, David Bennett didn’t know that after registering for his freshman year, he would never return to this house. There were a few times, after getting drunk, when he truly missed the days he spent here.

Pushing open the front door and parking his bicycle, David Bennett was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of nervousness at being close to home.

“Mom, Dad, I’m back.”

His parents didn’t notice anything unusual about David Bennett. Looking at their much younger faces, David Bennett didn’t dare say much, keeping his head down as he ate, afraid he might not be able to answer their questions properly.

After lunch, following his routine from senior year of high school, David Bennett went to his room and lay down for 30 minutes. Lying on the hard single bed, looking at the celebrity posters he’d put up on the walls, he began to think about what he should do next.

David Bennett had already experimented a few times and discovered that all his memories were from before his rebirth. In other words, the “yesterday” he now recalled was the day he worked the night shift editing, drove home, and got into a car accident—not his “yesterday” from 2001. He could remember some news headlines from the August 13, 2014 issue of the Songjiang Daily, but had no idea what the teachers had reviewed in class yesterday.

Chinese, math, English, politics, history, geography—the knowledge that would be tested in the college entrance exam in 48 days was a complete blank in David Bennett’s mind.

This is bad!

Wait, wait, don’t panic, I have advantages.

David Bennett sat up, found a clean diary, and began to list his advantages one by one.

First, he knew the provincial college entrance exam cut-off scores: 511 for the top-tier liberal arts universities, 454 for the second tier.

Second, he knew his seat number for the exam: the fourth desk from the wall on the far left of the classroom, and right in front of him sat Henry Jordan, one of the top three students in his class.

What else? The exam questions… right, the questions.

2001 was the first year of the “3+X” system. In David Bennett’s memory, after the exam, many classmates in his class had stumbled on the “X” comprehensive test.

There were two reasons: first, it was the first year of this format, so both teachers and students lacked experience; second, the 2001 liberal arts comprehensive exam included a lot of content that had been officially removed in the pre-exam “Exam Guidelines,” so many students had ignored those topics, only for them to show up—especially the final 30-point essay question.

David Bennett was lucky!

In 2014, the bookshelf at David Bennett’s home still held the high school textbooks used by Shawn Harris. After the college entrance exam, Shawn Harris had marked many of the exam questions in those textbooks and folded the pages. A few months ago, on a weekend night, the two of them had tidied up the bookshelf together, carefully flipping through those textbooks and reminiscing about their high school days.

As a senior in high school, is there anything better than knowing the exam questions before the college entrance exam?

In an era when you filled out your college preferences before getting your scores, is there anything better than knowing the cut-off scores in advance?

As a Chinese person, is there anything better than knowing in 2001, when housing prices were low, that they would skyrocket in the future?

Uh… thinking too far ahead.

David Bennett pulled his thoughts back, trying hard to recall his memories of flipping through those marked textbooks of Shawn Harris’s: the key points for politics… for history… for geography… He clearly remembered that the last few big questions on the liberal arts comprehensive exam combined all three subjects… African national independence, soil erosion, rural areas and agriculture, and maybe also the technological revolution and industrial structure…

David Bennett also knew that the essay topic for the Chinese exam was about “integrity,” and the English essay was to write a letter to a foreign friend.

David Bennett quickly jotted down a few lines, rummaged through his desk for the textbooks he wanted, but couldn’t find them. He called out, “I’m off to school,” and pushed his bike out the door.

For the entire afternoon, David Bennett seemed possessed, flipping through one book after another, occasionally making notes. He didn’t move during breaks, didn’t look up during class, and no matter which teacher was lecturing, he was busy with his own things. At one point, the math teacher called on David Bennett to answer a multiple-choice question from the test paper. His deskmate, Dylan Gordon, saw David Bennett flipping through a history book, but he stood up and calmly answered: “A.”

When did this guy get so sharp?

Dylan Gordon asked David Bennett several times what he was up to. David Bennett just mumbled a few words, signaling him to look at the teacher on the podium, meaning “class is in session, don’t talk,” and that was the end of it.

Dylan Gordon felt a bit bored, curled his lips, and thought to himself: What’s so interesting to look up? It’s not like you know the college entrance exam questions. He would never know that, that afternoon, David Bennett was actually marking the very questions that would appear on the national college entrance exam in just over forty days.

At 5:10 p.m., it was break time again. The classroom was once again sparsely populated. David Bennett stood up and stretched, looking at the crowded, messy, yet warm senior classroom. Then he leaned back in his chair, gazed out the third-floor window at the treetops and the red clouds on the horizon, and fell into a daze.

Unlike the rebirth novels that would become popular online years later, in 2001, David Bennett had no girlfriend throughout his senior year, nor did he have a secret crush. He had once sorted through his memories and was quite curious about what he used to think about besides attending class.