Fifteen years ago, it was right here, with exactly the same tone and exactly the same gestures, that he said goodbye to these people and finally set foot on what now seemed to be an incredibly bleak path in life. Only, after so many years, in this crisp autumn season, like two intersecting straight lines, suddenly, there was a point where they crossed.

Ryan Carter didn’t dare to move. He was afraid that what he saw before him was nothing but an illusion, just a dream after a drunken night. He didn’t know what he had encountered—was it the legendary gods or demons, or perhaps the rebirth and time travel that often appeared in his own novels? He was even breathing with extreme caution, afraid that in the next moment he would discover this was just some strange dream.

But these familiar people, these familiar things—could they really be just a dream?

“Big Carter, what are you doing?”

Just as Ryan Carter stood there in a daze, not knowing what to do, a voice suddenly rang out. With that voice came Ryan Carter’s heavy breathing and coughing.

Immediately after, a sharp pain shot from his toe, which had just banged into the iron bed, traveling through his nerves straight to his brain!

“Ouch! Ouch!”

It was pain—real pain!

Ryan Carter was completely stunned, utterly shocked by this sudden answer. Then he heard the concerned voices of his roommates around him. He blinked, confirming once again that he was wearing pajamas instead of that fake designer brand he’d spent fifty yuan on, and boxers instead of the unforgettable dress pants from his memory. At this moment, Ryan Carter could barely hold back a cheer!

With a whoosh, he jumped off the bed and, not caring about anything else, rushed to the mirror by the dorm door that he remembered. Finally, he saw what he looked like now.

On his face, which looked more than ten years younger, there was still that youthful rebelliousness. His hair wasn’t the messy style he’d had later when he was writing books, but rather a neat, energetic middle part. Only his height and the slight awkwardness of his muscles made him look a bit green. This was exactly how he looked the year he graduated.

After grinning foolishly at the mirror for a full minute, Ryan Carter finally spoke his first words of the day: “Can someone tell me, what year, month, and day is it today?”

Standing behind him, a man with a slightly pale face and glasses, looking at him as if he were crazy, blinked, glanced at the others who were trying not to laugh, and finally said to Ryan Carter, “Today—today is June 30, 2001. It’s our last day at school. By the way, Big Ryan, could you please move your foot off my shoe?”

Ryan Carter was taken aback and asked instinctively, “Why?”

The guy with glasses shouted angrily, “Because my foot is still inside!”

Chapter 002: Meeting Is Not As Good As Remembering

Poor Ryan Carter found himself at a loss for words by the scene before him. Was he supposed to tell his brothers that he’d just woken up and time had rewound fifteen years?

There was no time to sigh over how things had changed. The next moment, Ryan Carter suddenly remembered that today seemed to be the day this group was leaving school. Could it be that the fate he’d cursed for ten years was really playing a joke on him, letting him return to the past in this way? Or was he simply having a bizarre dream?

It was the hottest time of summer, and for these soon-to-be-graduated college students, it was their last day in the ivory tower. Most of them would gradually become ordinary after leaving here, just like Ryan Carter in his dream. Looking back after more than a decade, Ryan Carter always felt he’d missed something. But as he looked at the familiar dorm and teaching buildings with excitement, he suddenly realized there was nothing here he truly missed.

To him, it seemed that the seven boys grinning at him felt even more dear.

These seven people before him were Ryan Carter’s seven college roommates, who later became his closest friends. Deep in his memory, among these guys, the fat guy Seventh EricEric Bennett who slept on the lower bunk was assigned to the procuratorate by his family after graduation, and apparently later became a division-level official—though that was in the union of the procuratorate. The one he’d just stepped on, Third EricDavid Bolton, became a successful businessman. Among the rest, some went abroad, some became teachers, and as far as he remembered, in the year he was reborn, Second EricBrian Cooper had just been promoted to deputy editor at a newspaper.

Fifteen years later, he had almost no contact with any of his college friends. Only occasionally, when he called a few of his dorm mates, would he hear a bit about what had happened to those people he vaguely remembered.

“Big Ryan, what’s gotten into you today? Weren’t you going home to negotiate with your parents?”

Eric Bennett looked at his dazed best friend and couldn’t help but ask. After four years as bunkmates, the guys in the dorm were as close as real brothers, so of course they knew what Ryan Carter was planning today.