Forced Me to Regress, Huh?

“Hello, amazing voice actress. I’m Cheng Zhu, an amazing… high school diploma holder.”

Cheng Zhu thought for a few seconds before coming up with a title for himself.

Currently, he was like a blank slate and couldn’t even find a proper title for himself.

Amused, Lin Lu laughed. “I know who you are. I followed Ningning’s lead and bet on 0-0. Thanks to you, I won some money.”

Cheng Zhu looked at her and thought, A big-eyed girl with dimples does look cuter when she smiles.

She was so cute that if he looked up the definition of cute, her picture would be there.

He was a little interested.

For now, the conversation revolved around soccer.

Although Lin Lu had only seen this one game, she talked about it more excitedly than anyone else.

This left Shen Qingning, the only one who hadn’t watched the finals, completely out of the loop.

Her naturally cold and aloof demeanor meant she didn’t mind at all. But she was actually quite a good listener. When others were chatting happily, she would listen quietly by the side.

Shen Minglang still felt that Cheng Zhu’s decision to be 12,000 on a 0-0 outcome was awesome. He asked sincerely, “Cousin, what were you thinking when you made that bet?”

“I dreamed about it. Someone told me in my dream.”

“Who did you dream of?”

“Myself a few years in the future,” Cheng Zhu said with a serious expression.

Shen Minglang immediately wore a speechless expression, while Lin Lu found the words of this bad-boy-looking guy quite interesting.

What was the saying?

—Humor is man’s best cosmetic.

At this point, the dishes started arriving.

Since they were all young people of similar ages, they had plenty of common topics, so there was no awkward silence during the meal.

As they chatted, the conversation gradually shifted to college life.

After all, there were two campus goddesses about to enter their second year after the summer and two soon-to-be college students.

Shen Minglang had just graduated two years ago, and he still fondly remembered the carefree days of driving his Panamera to school with a constantly changing cast of girls in the front passenger seat.

Suddenly, a thought came to him, and he asked, “By the way, Lin Lu, Ningning mentioned that you two are planning to rent a house off-campus in your second year?”

“Yeah, we’re going to live together, hehe,” Lin Lu replied with a smile.

“Why do you suddenly want to live off-campus?” Shen Minglang started probing, wanting to get some insight into his sister’s actual college situation.

Listening from the side, Shen Qingning knew he had ulterior motives but chose not to expose him.

“It’s nothing. We just wanted to live together. Plus, there’s this girl in our dorm room who speaks in such a passive-aggressive way that Ningning and I can’t stand her,” Lin Lu said.

“Oh, I see. That makes sense. Dealing with a difficult roommate in college can be a headache.” Shen Minglang responded understandingly.

“Right? It’s so annoying to see her all the time, and arguing with her never gets anywhere. It’s infuriating!”

After venting, Lin Lu pouted angrily and added, “I wish there was a way to deal with people like that. I often get so worked up that I can’t sleep at night, constantly replaying the arguments in my mind and feeling like I didn’t handle them well.”

Hearing this, Cheng Zhu turned his gaze towards Jiang Wanzhou.

Seeing him staring, Jiang Wanzhou immediately said, “What?! Why are you looking at me?”

Cheng Zhu ignored him and continued to look at him.

Jiang Wanzhou felt a bit flustered under his stare and cursed, “What do you mean? Are you implying that I talk too much?!”

After everyone’s eyes gathered on Cheng Zhu, he said leisurely, “Of course not. I just feel everyone can learn your way of speaking sometimes.

“If you want to respond with a passive-aggressive tone, you can just add the words ‘you know’ at the end of many sentences,”

“Hmm? For example?” Lin Lu immediately became intrigued.

Cheng Zhu switched to a different tone and said, “You really have a point, you know!

“Really, you know! So impressive, you know! Thank you for your trouble, you know!”

Lin Lu’s eyes lit up. She mimicked Cheng Zhu’s tone and flashed a cute dimpled smile at him. “I understand, you know!”

Cheng Zhu nodded and continued eating.

Jiang Wanzhou, who had been ignored, refused to give in and stared at Cheng Zhu resentfully. “I don’t talk like that! What nonsense are you learning?!”

Cheng Zhu, savoring the famous braised pork belly from Jin Sha, replied, “Sorry, I learned it wrongly, you know.”

The exasperated Jiang Wanzhou felt like tearing his mouth apart.

In contrast, Lin Lu found this boy more and more interesting.

As the conversation went on, they started discussing college classes.

Shen Minglang said that he slept most of the time in class, and the professors didn’t care about him at all. It was much better than in high school.

“Cousin, you can sleep without worry,” said Shen Minglang, who had been through this before.

Shen Qingning, rarely one to chime in, finally spoke up. “What nonsense are you teaching blindly all day?”

Cheng Zhu followed this topic and deliberately said something for Jiang Wanzhou to hear. “If it’s a good university, some professors’ classes would be a pity to miss.”

“What do you mean?” Shen Minglang asked.

Cheng Zhu replied, “I once read a saying. Your university professors may be some of the highest-status individuals you encounter in your life. Without the platform of school, you would never have the opportunity to interact with people at that level when you enter society.”

Shen Minglang initially wanted to refute this, but he suddenly cursed. “Fuck! That perspective is kind of interesting. I have a friend who studies law, and he said that his professor seems to teach criminal law, but behind the scenes, he’s a living Grim Reaper and hands down over six hundred death sentences a year.”

For a rich second-generation heir like him, he could encounter many high-status people in his life, so the examples that came to mind were those he didn’t want to meet in his life.

But in reality, this was often the case for many ordinary people. You might complain about your professors every day during school, but you wouldn’t even be qualified to speak to them in society.

Perhaps one day, one of those professors could be the specialist whose appointment you couldn’t even get when you needed medical help.

Perhaps the classes you were taking were worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands outside of school.

Perhaps outside, their consultation fees were thousands of yuan per hour.

Perhaps the textbooks you used were written by them.

Perhaps when they told you about a case they were working on, they still had a two million yuan payment pending and were sharing it with you as a learning example.

Even your professors’ ideas might be considered policy locally.

Cheng Zhu wasn’t planning to attend college and ignore classes. He didn’t want Jiang Wanzhou to just drift through school either, so he specially brought this up.

This made Shen Qingning glance at him.

Lin Lu felt that this boy was quite contradictory. Sometimes, he seemed playful and smiled mischievously, and other times, he felt more mature than the average high school graduate.

This voice actress felt what he said made sense, but she sighed and said, “Alas, it’s a pity that I’ve always had a hard time staying awake while studying.”

Cheng Zhu looked at her and said, “Is it because you often did your homework until midnight when you were young?”

“Yes, that’s right!” Lin Lu immediately became excited. “I was very slow at doing my homework when I was young. While others finished quickly, I would take forever.”

“Exactly.” Cheng Zhu smiled as he recalled something he had seen while watching the debate variety show I Can I BB in his past life.

It was a segment from Chen Ming, which was very applicable right now.

Coincidentally, Chen Ming was also a university professor.

“Behavioral psychology tells us that if you always study when you’re feeling sleepy, in the future, you’ll feel sleepy whenever you study.

“You should know about Pavlov’s dogs, right? Ring the bell, get food, salivate. Ring the bell, get food, salivate. Eventually, when the bell rings without food, they still salivate.

“This is what we call classical conditioning.

“Similar to this experiment, studying late at night and feeling sleepy becomes conditioned. Studying, late nights, feeling sleepy. Eventually, you won’t just feel sleepy at night while studying.

“This is how the stimulus for conditioned reflexive is formed.”

With that, he smiled at Lin Lu and said kindly, “Actually, it’s not your fault. It’s all those late nights from childhood.”

Jiang Wanzhou and Shen Qingning: “???”

Shen Minglang thought, Damn, I learned something here. How come when I talk about this topic with girls, all I ever say is that I feel sleepy too?

Lin Lu was stunned at first, but the more she listened, the more she felt it made sense. By the end, she was completely convinced and felt that she had encountered a brilliant doctor who had identified the cause of her problem.

Seeing the astonished expression of the voice actress, Cheng Zhu said earnestly, “So if you have kids in the future, take this as a warning and don’t let them study too late.”

“Okay, got it!” Lin Lu nodded in agreement. “I’ll remember.”

Then she added, “Having kids is still a long way off, so if I ever forget how serious this matter is, you have to remind me.”

Cheng Zhu, who seemed to have never initiated a topic but was always in control of the conversation’s flow, smiled upon hearing her words.

—He had achieved his goal.

He grinned, looking at the energetic girl with dimples who looked especially cute when she smiled. Revealing his ‘fangs’, he said, “I don’t have your contact information.”