Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Stupid Kid
1998, early summer.
Cicadas on the banyan tree outside the window screeched themselves hoarse, as if venting their resentment against the sweltering weather.
In the senior class classroom of the Agency Kindergarten, the air was sticky—a mixture of sweat and baby powder from dozens of children, along with the musty smell of wooden floorboards wafting from the corners.
"Give me back the building blocks! WAAAH—"
"Teacher! Wang Hao peed his pants!"
"I wanna go home! I want my mommy..."
Screams, sobs, the scraping of tables and chairs being dragged—the cacophony converged into a wave of sound that ricocheted around the cramped classroom.
To any sane adult, this was a catastrophe.
Chen Zhuo sat in a corner in the back row, feeling like his brain was about to explode.
He sat on a small, red plastic stool, cupping his chin in his hands and staring intently at the air just inches from his nose.
There was a beam of light.
The afternoon sun shone through the window, a straight pillar of light that pierced the dim classroom at a slant.
Within the beam, countless tiny dust motes tumbled up and down.
Some collided and bounced apart, while others drifted lazily downward.
’Brownian motion...’
The term from his high school physics textbook popped into Chen Zhuo’s mind.
But that was it.
He wasn’t calculating any fluid dynamics formulas, nor was he building any three-dimensional models...
In his past life, he was just an ordinary graduate from a second-tier university. He’d long since returned his advanced mathematics to his professors and had no idea how to calculate any of this.
He was staring purely out of boredom.
Being reborn as a five-year-old brat sounded awesome, but the actual experience was terrible.
No phone, no computer, no internet.
His daily life consisted of being shoved into kindergarten on time by his parents, cooped up with a bunch of brats who were barely weaned, and forced to listen to the teacher explain brain-dead simple things like 1+1=2.
Even worse was this body.
Chen Zhuo felt like an old 286 computer trying to run Windows 10.
His soul was an adult’s, with plenty of memory, but his brain’s hardware wasn’t fully developed—the CPU was too weak.
If he tried to think about anything remotely complex, like recalling lottery numbers from his past life, his mind would grow fuzzy as if from a lack of oxygen, followed by an irresistible wave of drowsiness.
He spent the better part of each day in a stupor, as if his system had crashed.
"Chen Zhuo? Chen Zhuo!"
A high-pitched female voice pierced his eardrums.
Chen Zhuo didn’t turn around immediately.
It wasn’t that he was trying to be aloof. His brain was just genuinely slow to process the sound.
About two seconds passed.
Only then did he sluggishly turn his head, his face wearing the dazed expression of someone not yet fully awake.
His teacher, Teacher Li, stood before him, holding two Transformers that had been pulled to pieces. Her brow was tightly furrowed.
"Everyone else has gone to the playground for games. Why are you still sitting here?"
Teacher Li was actually a very responsible young woman, but these past few days, Chen Zhuo had really worn her patience thin.
This child was just too listless.
He didn’t cry, didn’t make a fuss, and kept to himself.
He always spaced out during class and always stayed in a corner afterward.
The other children were like mischievous monkeys; he was like a sculpture that could only breathe.
"Teacher..."
Chen Zhuo blinked, speaking in the soft, high-pitched tone of a child whose voice had yet to change.
"I’m sleepy."
It was the honest truth.
Teacher Li sighed, squatted down, and reached out to feel his forehead.
"You’re not warm."
She looked worriedly at this unusually quiet child.
"Chen Zhuo, are you not feeling well? Or is it... you don’t like playing with the other kids?"
Chen Zhuo looked at her.
’Teacher,’ he wanted to say, ’I have the soul of a thirty-year-old. There’s just no way I can play eagle-catches-chicken with a bunch of kids who still wet their pants.’
But he couldn’t.
’That might sound a little too outrageous.’
Besides, he genuinely couldn’t keep up. This body tired far too easily.
"I just want to sit for a bit," Chen Zhuo answered honestly.
Teacher Li stood up, resigned.
"Fine, you can rest here for a bit then... Honestly, this kid, he’s like a little old man..."
Chen Zhuo nodded obediently and laid his head back down on the desk.
He buried his face in the crook of his arm, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, he opened his eyes again and watched an ant crawling near the leg of the desk.
The ant was carrying a cookie crumb, struggling to cross a crack between the floorboards.
Chen Zhuo just watched.
He didn’t need to ponder any profound philosophies; he was just watching.
In his past life, he was the kind of person who constantly scrolled through short videos. Back then, he’d get anxious if he went more than five minutes without looking at his phone.
But now, constrained by this small, young body, he was forced to slow down.
To his surprise, however, he found that when he focused all his attention on a single point, the world seemed to change.
The sway of the ant’s antennae, the drifting paths of the dust motes, even the rhythm of the cicadas’ drone from outside the window...
Everything became exceptionally clear.
This seemed to be the only perk that came with his rebirth:
an adult’s patience, paired with a blank-slate brain that, while sluggish, was absorbing information like a sponge.
...
「That evening, at the Municipal Maternal and Child Health Hospital.」
The smell of disinfectant filled the air.
Chen Zhuo sat on the high examination chair, his two short legs dangling in mid-air, swinging back and forth.
Across from him sat an old doctor wearing thick-lensed glasses.
Chen Zhuo’s parents stood nearby, their expressions tense.
His father, Chen Jianguo, a technician from the machinery plant, wore a faded work uniform. His mother, Liu Xiuying, a textile factory worker, was clutching the registration slip so tightly her knuckles had turned white.
"Doctor, is my son... a little slow?"
Liu Xiuying’s voice trembled slightly, as if she had mustered all her courage to ask the question.
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