Li Weiyi was furious, yet her nose inexplicably felt sore. There were even more chaotic emotions, like an overturned spice bottle, spilling across her heart.

She said, “Zhang Jingchan, boyfriends aren’t something you can force on someone through strong-arm tactics. Besides, I’m still nominally Xu Yi’s girlfriend, so you can’t kiss me.”

Zhang Jingchan’s expression grew several degrees colder. His hand had just moved to rest against the glass behind her when Li Weiyi had already escaped back to the sofa, finding a corner where she turned her head away, refusing to look at him.

Zhang Jingchan slowly slipped his hand back into his pants pocket and walked over, sitting down half a person’s width away from her. He said, “He has nothing to do with your situation here. This timeline has been disturbed—your relationship with him doesn’t count.”

Li Weiyi muttered quietly, “Whether it counts or not isn’t for you to decide.”

As soon as these words left her mouth, she could clearly feel the air pressure around the person beside her drop even lower.

Li Weiyi’s heart grew a bit uneasy again. She stole a glance—his hands were clasped together, his arms resting on his thighs, his back hunched, his head tilted up, looking in the other direction, not at her.

Li Weiyi mustered her courage: “Wait, what exactly do you mean by all this?”

“What do I mean? You don’t understand?”

Li Weiyi jumped up: “Why should I understand? We never had… never had…” Her face flushed red.

Having already kissed her and made his attitude clear, Zhang Jingchan instead became calm and composed. He even poured them both cups of kung fu tea, set the teapot down gently, and said, “Never had what? Never hugged, or never held hands? In 2014, you were hugging and lifting me around like I was nothing. Now that we’ve kissed, you won’t acknowledge it?”

Li Weiyi nearly choked, pointing at him: “Zhang Jingchan, you’re pulling a scam.”

He smiled indifferently.

In the end, Li Weiyi couldn’t come up with any other retort. Face burning, she hung her head and sat back down. Both fell silent for a moment before Zhang Jingchan, eyes fixed ahead, asked her, “Eight years is full of variables. I told you to leave yourself a message—did you actually leave one or not?”

Li Weiyi answered slowly, “I only left two sentences—don’t change your phone number, and… treat Zhang Jingchan well.”

Zhang Jingchan was silent for several seconds, his tone softening somewhat: “Then why did you change your number?”

“China Unicom had such a big promotion for new subscribers, I couldn’t resist in the moment…”

Zhang Jingchan turned his face away. Li Weiyi heard his breathing grow heavier, and both his hands clenched into fists. Li Weiyi wished she could bury herself in the floor. After quite a while, he finally turned back, staring straight ahead.

He spoke slowly: “I don’t blame you. It’s my fault. Before leaving 2014, I should have loaded 200,000 yuan worth of phone credit into your phone. I failed to guard against this.”

Li Weiyi tugged at his sleeve: “I was wrong, I was really wrong…”

He glanced at her hand, and Li Weiyi quickly withdrew it.

Fortunately, Zhang Jingchan was still the same as before—after calling her out, he let it go, no longer mocking her about changing numbers. Instead, he turned to criticizing her second message: “That second sentence was also too vague, no wonder you couldn’t control yourself.”

Li Weiyi: “…”

After being criticized by him for so long, Li Weiyi’s brain—which had been trampled into mud by those three kisses—finally started working again. She aggressively countered, “What about you? Did you leave yourself a message saying not to date anyone for eight years and wait for me?”

He turned his head to look at her without speaking, his expression cold.

Li Weiyi’s heart skipped a beat, and she blurted out, “No way, is that the impulsive thing you mentioned? But back then we were barely anything to each other—it wasn’t worth you…”

“Whether it’s worth it or not is for me to judge.” Zhang Jingchan interrupted her. “First, let’s solve the immediate problem—you need to break up with him right away. This is an error in the timeline; let’s get everything back on track.”

Li Weiyi suddenly fell silent, her whole person seeming to deflate.

Then she heard his slow, heavy voice: “You… don’t want to?”

“It’s not that…” Li Weiyi lowered her head. “Zhang Jingchan, you don’t understand how I feel. The person who was with him—she’s like me but also not me. For these eight years, he’s been by my side through everything, and I remember it all clearly. He’s not some insignificant person. Moreover, he’s been very good to me. As a boyfriend, there’s nothing to criticize. If I just dump him like this, I’d be too much of a scumbag to him. This happened too suddenly. Give me time to process, to sort things out, to resolve this in the most proper way. The way things are now, it’s like I’m the one cheating. I can’t do something like that.”

The room suddenly became spacious and quiet.

After a moment, Zhang Jingchan said, “Li Weiyi, this calculation isn’t fair to me. In this timeline, you got together with him first. But counting the total timeline, what happened between you and me clearly came first.”

Li Weiyi raised her head: “But still… clearly nothing has happened between us yet.”

Zhang Jingchan stared fixedly ahead, slowly sitting up straight, and said, “That’s what you think? In your heart, nothing has happened between us?”

Li Weiyi couldn’t utter a single word.

Seeing her face unable to hide her guilt, Zhang Jingchan’s mood eased somewhat. Just as he was about to speak again, he heard her say, “But Zhang Jingchan, I never thought about being together with you.”

Zhang Jingchan’s expression shook. This time, he seemed frozen by her words, sitting perfectly still without moving a muscle.

Seeing him like this, Li Weiyi felt terribly blocked up inside, but she still spoke her true thoughts: “I admit that a man like you has great appeal to women. The time I spent with you was also very happy, but you can’t forget—we two encountered an extremely special circumstance, swapping souls, forced to become partners. If not for these accidents, we fundamentally wouldn’t be people from the same world, and you would never consider being together with me. Sometimes, when people are in particularly difficult circumstances, if there’s a companion, they’ll instinctively grow close and dependent. Maybe… they’ll mistake this mutual warmth for love. You and I both need to stay clear-headed to avoid regretting it later.”

She looked directly into his eyes but found them deeply melancholy, like rain falling in the dead of night—impossible to see clearly.

He said, “This is what you think? That with me… it was just mutual warmth, seeking comfort?”

Li Weiyi’s chest felt like it was stuffed with a large, damp, heavy sponge. She answered, “I don’t know.” I also don’t know if that’s how you feel.

Zhang Jingchan laughed once—that kind of self-deprecating laugh that treated everything as insignificant. He thought to himself that he didn’t understand Li Weiyi well enough after all. She seemed innocent, soft, and emotionally rich, but when you truly tried to reach her heart, she became both sensitive and hard, guarding herself impenetrably.

So it was only him alone whose feelings had stirred and grown, unwilling to resist.

Li Weiyi truly couldn’t bear this atmosphere any longer, nor could she stand seeing that expression on his face. She lowered her head and said, “How about we stop talking about this and discuss business instead. This rewrite was successful, and our problems are all resolved. Next, shouldn’t we find that perpetrator, prevent the car accident, and end the loop?”

Zhang Jingchan was quiet for a while, all his exposed emotions now withdrawn, returning to that restrained person he had been. He no longer looked at her. Though the two sat very close, it was as if they were separated by eight hundred meters.

“The loop hasn’t ended. I still need to go back once more,” he said.

“Why?”