Forced Me to Regress, Huh?

Wang Anquan felt a profound impact on his soul. “Don’t let down good girls, don’t… waste bad girls.”

Brother Zhu actually saved that in his notes?!

The bus arrived at the neighborhood where Cheng Zhu and Wang Anquan lived.

Cheng Zhu got off the bus with a casual stride, and Wang Anquan quickly followed.

The two of them parted ways at the neighborhood entrance, as their homes were in two opposite directions.

It’s four in the afternoon now. There’s probably no one at home, Cheng Zhu thought.

His family owned a small restaurant called Yunlai Restaurant, located on the street across from their neighborhood.

The restaurant wasn’t big, with only two rooms.

These days, private kitchens had yet to gain popularity, and the food delivery industry was still in its early stages. Therefore, this kind of small restaurant mostly earned money from dine-in customers.

Cheng Zhu’s father, Cheng Donglai, was the owner and chef of the restaurant.

Overall, the restaurant’s business wasn’t exactly booming, but it wasn’t struggling either.

Because of this, while Cheng Zhu’s life was far from luxurious when he was young, he had no worries about his basic needs.

Old Cheng might not be particularly skilled, but he had never let Young Cheng go hungry.

Speaking of which, running a restaurant was quite arduous. Every day, they had to deal with smoke, heat, and occasionally difficult customers.

I’ll go home, change clothes, and take a shower first. Then I’ll go to the restaurant for dinner around five-thirty, Cheng Zhu thought.

Once home, he went straight to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.

Why is my hair so long, and why did I get such an ugly perm? Cheng Zhu criticized his reflection.

These days, it seemed center or side-parted perms were all the rage. Right after graduating from high school, many students started letting loose and splurged on extravagant haircuts at salons.

But this perfect hairline… I kinda missed it.

Before showering, Cheng Zhu went to his wardrobe to find a change of clothes.

After rummaging for a while, he found that his pants were either cropped or long enough to mop the floor.

Oh, right, I remember now. Showing your ankles is in style these days. You either wear cropped pants or roll up your cuffs. Cheng Zhu smiled.

He vaguely recalled a special technique for rolling up pants legs to make them look like fitted joggers.

In the end, he settled on a pair of black sweatpants.

After showering, he didn’t rush out but sat at his desk and picked up his phone to check his current finances.

“12,312 yuan total,” Cheng Zhu murmured.

After the college entrance examination, it was customary for older relatives to give red packets.

And in Zhejiang Province, people were fairly generous with red packets.

Given his family’s financial situation, this amount was more than he expected.

The main reason was his grandfather, an elderly man with some money tucked away, who always believed that since he couldn’t take it with him when he passed away, he might as well be generous with his grandchildren. His grandfather alone had given him 5,000 yuan.

Cheng Zhu had already spent a small portion of this money during the summer break, leaving him with just over 10,000 yuan.

If I remember correctly, I’ll spend most of this money on Li Xinyue during the summer.

From having more than six million yuan in a single account to only a little over ten thousand as my entire net worth now. Tsk, what a difference… Cheng Zhu sighed.

But the strong never complained about their circumstances.

Forced me to regress, huh? Cheng Zhu mused. If I don’t take this chance to make more money, it’ll really be a waste.

With just over ten thousand in 2014, what can I do? he wondered.

He looked at the date. July 13th. He went online for a bit, familiarizing himself with the times. Soon, a plan began forming in his mind.

In twenty-four hours, I can multiply this money several times!

The thought made him realize just how big of an advantage regression could be.

Cheng Zhu recalled a person whom netizens jokingly called a man with a system and thought his life was like a wish-fulfillment novel brought to reality.

This man was Lei Blue Jeans. (Nickname for Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, for giving presentations in jeans.)

Boss Lei once said, “Standing in the wind, even a pig can fly.”

Now that he was back in his youth, he felt he had to seize more opportunities. Otherwise, his regression would be in vain.

Go, young man. Go meet the winds of fate.

* * *

Tonight, Cheng Zhu would step into the first opportunity of his regression.

But before that, he had to go to Yunlai Restaurant for dinner.

Oddly enough, on his way to the restaurant, he felt… nervous?

In addition, there was excitement and anticipation.

Mom and Dad are much younger than they were then. And Little Youzi is still in kindergarten.

Little Youzi was his younger sister, Cheng You, five and a half years old.

His family was a typical example of favoring daughters over sons. They raised their daughter like a princess, while their son was at best a sword-bearing guard.

After arriving at the restaurant, Cheng Zhu took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

As soon as he entered, he spotted his mother, Xu Yun, busy working in the kitchen.

Many people might share this feeling. Ever since they could remember, their mother was a middle-aged woman.

How many people could clearly recall their mother’s appearance when she was young?

Xu Yun was forty years old this year, undeniably a middle-aged woman, but compared to the image Cheng Zhu had in his memory, she looked much younger.

“What’s wrong?” Xu Yun asked, puzzled when she saw her son staring at her in a daze.

“Mom, you’re so young. No, I mean, you look really young today,” Cheng Zhu blurted out.

“What nonsense are you saying?!” Xu Yun, who was always gentle, frowned and immediately turned to grab a bowl of chilled mung bean soup from the fridge for her son.

In this generation, mothers often asked their sons if the food they cooked was delicious, but rarely did they ask their sons if they looked pretty.

Similarly, children seldom complimented their mothers on looking young or attractive.

Cheng Zhu’s thinking was quite simple. If you showered praise on women outside, they might think you were a licking dog. But if you complimented your mother casually, she would genuinely be happy all day long.

Xu Yun was caught off guard by her son’s unexpected compliment today.

After a long pause, she pretended to be normal and went to the bathroom, where she shyly looked at herself in the mirror over and over again.

At first, she didn’t see anything special, but as she kept looking…

“Maybe… there is something different?” she murmured softly, feeling joy spreading in her heart.

Meanwhile, in the small family restaurant, Cheng Zhu sipped his mung bean soup with feigned nonchalance. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for a small head to pop out from behind the cashier’s counter and roar like an evil dragon, trying to scare him.

He looked at the little girl with two little hair buns and exaggeratedly pretended to be frightened. She immediately giggled.

He scooped her up effortlessly. Looking at her round, chubby cheeks, bright black eyes, and cute hairstyle, he felt as though he had been hit by a cuteness overload from his sister.

Little Youzi is only five years old this year. She’s still at her cutest now, Cheng Zhu thought.

He always felt nostalgic for his sister during this period of her life.

At this stage, his sister, Cheng You, was especially close to him and always clingy to him.

Later, when he moved from Hangzhou to Wucheng to start a business—first in an e-commerce company and then in livestream sales—he spent less time with his family and barely saw Cheng You a few times a year.

After giving her a few playful lifts, Cheng Zhu set her down beside him. “Little Youzi, want me to feed you some mung bean soup?”

“Wait!” Cheng You raised her tiny hand, acting all grown-up.

“What’s wrong?” Cheng Zhu was taken aback.

“Big Brother, I want to ask you something,” the little girl said, her voice serious.

“Go ahead,” he replied with a smile.

“I was out all day today. Did you miss me?!” Little Youzi asked, tilting her chubby little face up at him.

“Of course I did,” Cheng Zhu answered without hesitation, his words carrying a double meaning.

It’s not that I haven’t seen you for a day. It’s been years since I’ve seen you at this age.

Little Youzi immediately placed her hand over her chest and let out a dramatic sigh of relief like a tiny adult. In her soft, childish voice, she said, “That’s good. I thought I was the only one secretly missing you at the restaurant.”

===

Little Youzi is the cutest character~