“Hehe, it’s not the ‘丁’ character, it’s the ‘人’ radical ‘余’. Natalie Young is a recent graduate from Buyang Normal College, and she’s teaching us Chinese.” Brian Bolton said casually, but his gaze seemed to pierce through time and space, recalling the moment he first met Natalie Young.

Back then, Natalie Young still had a simple, youthful innocence. Although she wasn’t particularly beautiful, as a young female teacher, she was truly exciting. Plus, her name had the same pronunciation as Yu Na, who won last year’s (2000) New Silk Road Model Contest, which made the boys’ hormones surge even more.

Yu Na, who won last year’s New Silk Road contest, became a sensation across half the country, and countless young men saw her as their dream girl.

They couldn’t see the Yu Na of their dreams, but the Natalie Young in front of them was a pretty good substitute. So, she quickly became the first goddess of Class 5, Grade 1. Of course, the term “goddess” wasn’t popular back then, so people used the old-fashioned “dream girl” to describe a woman’s charm.

Natalie Young taught Chinese, and in order to get her attention, Brian Bolton worked hard at Chinese, read essay collections, memorized Tang and Song poetry and all kinds of classical texts, and eventually developed excellent writing skills. He was always the top student in Chinese in his class, and even in the whole school. That was probably the proudest achievement of his student days.

Oh, and there was one more thing—he was also the top student in geography in the whole school.

Unfortunately, his other subjects, especially math and English, were a complete disaster. The reason he didn’t get into college was because of his lopsided performance.

The topic of Natalie Young kept the three restless youths talking for half an hour.

Meanwhile, Brian Bolton had already left, grabbed a notebook, and hid inside his mosquito net. He needed to take advantage of his still-sharp memory to write down everything he could remember about the future. Especially those major turning points in history, and the content of various works that would guarantee his future success.

For major events, just recording the time and outcome was enough.

For works, just jotting down the story outline was fine.

Human memory has a trigger mechanism—once there’s a connection, forgotten memories come back. Just like how he had completely forgotten he had classmates named Eric Warren and Paul Lawson, but seeing them brought back memories of their time together.

Of course, at the moment he could only recall some story outlines. The human brain isn’t a computer hard drive; it can’t remember every detail perfectly.

Now, he could remember the outlines of many stories, and it felt almost unbelievable. It was as if, having lived again, his memory had improved a lot. Before, he could only remember the main plot points, but now, when he tried hard to recall, the memories came alive instantly, as if he’d just seen them a second ago.

“Could it be because this body is still developing, so the brain is agile and memory is clear? Or is it because I’ve been reborn, and the two souls are stacked together?”

This was destined to be an unsolved mystery. Brian Bolton couldn’t figure it out, and he wouldn’t tell anyone. He would just keep this secret buried in his heart forever.

……

That night, Brian Bolton was busy until midnight before he finally went to sleep. His 32K notebook was already filled with over twenty densely written pages, and that was only a small portion of the memories he needed to record.

In the future, it would all be typing on a keyboard, and he’d rarely used a pen. Brian Bolton was almost forgetting how to write by hand, so he wrote very slowly. Plus, there was no desk in the room, so he had to write lying on the bed, which was a real hassle.

Several times, even for very simple characters, Brian Bolton had to ask his roommates.

“Kyle Lawson, how do you write the ‘擎’ in Optimus Prime?”

“‘擎’ in Optimus Prime? I think it’s the ‘敬’ in ‘respect’, with a ‘hand’ radical underneath.”

“OK, got it… Uh, how about the ‘锤’ in ‘hammer’?”

“‘锤’, it’s the ‘hand’ radical, with the character for ‘droop’ underneath.”

“How do you write the ‘垂’ in ‘droop’?” Brian Bolton kept asking without shame.

Paul Lawson, who slept on the top bunk, couldn’t help but chime in, “Brian Bolton, are you here to make us laugh? How come there are so many characters you can’t write?”

“Just testing you guys.” Brian Bolton didn’t care whether he was being funny or not; he was focused on taking notes, since this was crucial for his future development.

A thirty-year-old man knows that if you want to live freely in your second life, having money is the most basic guarantee.

For now, he was just going through the motions of coming to school and registering for classes. That didn’t mean he would always follow the rules, go to school, and take the college entrance exam. It was just that, for now, he didn’t have the ability to make changes. Everything would have to wait until he made some money, and then he could make long-term plans.

Shuangdun Middle School was just a temporary stop for him.

He hadn’t figured out where his path would lead.

After a busy night, the next day, September 2nd, was still registration day. Brian Bolton turned down Paul Lawson’s invitation to go online together, grabbed his notebook, and headed straight to the playground. The school’s playground was just a dirt field, with a running track made from a ring of bricks and a large open area.

The soccer field was just this open space—just stick two bamboo poles in the ground and that was the goal.

As for the basketball court, it was on another abandoned old playground, with six basketball hoops, but they were all basically falling apart. These were built in the seventies or eighties, and after twenty or thirty years of wind and rain, the fact that the hoops hadn’t collapsed yet was already a miracle.