Dating Myself - Chapter 1

“Jian Yixi, you are suspected of illegal fundraising. Please come with us.”

It was a day in March. The spring sun was brilliant, and a gentle breeze carried floating willow catkins. In the distance, a crematorium’s furnace burned, sending up a plume of thick white smoke.

Jian Yixi took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air that was much cleaner than the city’s, along with the distinct scent of Xie Maomao.

Xie Maomao, her best friend, was in that furnace. A vibrant life in her twenties, who just a few days ago was complaining that her boyfriend was too busy to see her, had today turned into a wisp of dust.

Xie Maomao’s boyfriend stared blankly at the swirling ashes. The cell phone in his pocket rang incessantly. He slowly took it out and numbly answered the call.

The person on the other end said something that made his eyes instantly turn red and a vein pop on his forehead. He raised the phone, slammed it to the ground with a loud crack, and stomped and kicked it wildly.

“I said a hundred times, goddammit! My girlfriend is gone! Gone! I’m not working! Not working!!! F*ck you!!!”

Jian Yixi calmly shifted her gaze. Her serene eyes reflected the pure white clouds in the sky as she looked at the two police officers in front of her.

With her dark eyebrows and red lips, and a long, graceful neck, she held her chin slightly high, looking both proud and elegant. The grotesque scar on her jawline did nothing to detract from her beauty. She looked like a young woman dancing barefoot on the shore of a heavenly lake, wearing a floral wreath. Her black hair was like a cloud, her skirt flowing in the wind. The lake reflected her graceful figure, and the blue sky and water seemed to be her backdrop—a sacred and tranquil presence that the world’s chaos could not disturb.

She spoke softly, her fair face expressionless.

“May I ask how you knew I was here?”

The officer responded in a businesslike tone, “You can say whatever you have to at the police station.”

Jian Yixi lowered her eyes, tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, and a gentle smile touched her lips.

“My apologies, but I’m in the middle of a funeral. Can we perhaps do this a little later?”

It was the first time the officers had been dispatched to a place like this. Out of a sense of humanity, they nodded.

“We’ll wait for you at the entrance, then.”

Jian Yixi watched them leave and waited quietly for Xie Maomao’s family to bring out her ashes. Their hearts were utterly broken as they placed them in the columbarium.

A young deceased person cannot be immediately buried in a tomb, as it’s believed that older spirits might bully them. They must first be placed in the columbarium until they turn 30, a symbolic age for a person to stand on their own. Once they reach this age, they are no longer considered a “young ghost” and won’t be bullied.

It was an old superstition, and even though many people no longer believed it, they still honored the custom. It may not have helped the deceased, but it offered some small comfort to the grieving, as if a person’s soul truly continued to exist after death.

Did it? No.

A person’s death is like a lamp going out. There is nothing left.

After the service, the crowd began to walk toward the main gate. Jian Yixi’s assistant and a mutual friend of both her and Xie Maomao, Fang Yunna, came up and asked in a low voice, “What did the police want with you?”

“Nothing. Where are the car keys?”

Fang Yunna pulled out the car keys and handed them to her. Jian Yixi clutched them and walked out of the crematorium gate with an air of composure.

The police officers were leaning against their car, smoking. When they saw her, they quickly put out their cigarettes and walked over.

“Get in the car.”

Jian Yixi smiled faintly. “I have a few things in the car. Just a moment, please.”

The car was parked nearby. She opened the door and got into the driver’s seat, then motioned for Fang Yunna to get in the passenger seat to help her look for her phone.

“Isn’t your phone in your pocket? I thought you had it.”

Suddenly, the car doors automatically locked. Fang Yunna looked up in surprise and saw that Jian Yixi had turned the key, sharply turned the steering wheel, and forcefully merged into the departing traffic.

The police officers behind them realized something was wrong and shouted loudly. But with so many people and cars on the narrow road, they couldn’t get through and could only follow along with the traffic anxiously.

After they rounded a corner, the traffic dispersed. Jian Yixi floored the gas pedal and sped recklessly forward, causing Fang Yunna to scream.

“Are you insane?! Slow down!!!”

Jian Yixi ignored her. She didn’t slow for the red light and paid no mind to the police sirens. Her pale face had lost all its previous gentleness. Her eyes were cold and menacing, and her voice, chilling and sinister, sounded as if it came from the depths of hell.

“At the crematorium just now, weren’t you scared at all? After all, it was your first time helping to kill someone, wasn’t it?”

Fang Yunna’s pupils trembled. She clung desperately to the car door, her voice shaking as she watched the scenery flash by outside the window. “W-what are you talking about? I… I don’t understand.”

Jian Yixi turned to look at the woman who was once her best friend. The curve of her lips was strange and cold.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re all atheists. Even if you kill someone, you’re not worried about a ghost’s revenge. So let me ask you this: for 50 million and a green card, to sell out ten years of our friendship—do you think you lost? Or won?”

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jian Yixi tossed a file folder to Fang Yunna. “Go on, open it.”

Fang Yunna’s hands trembled as she untied the string. Inside was a thick stack of papers with one clear purpose: to grant Fang Yunna two percent of the company’s shares as an employee bonus. The company seal was already on it, and Jian Yixi had signed her name. All that was missing was Fang Yunna’s signature.

“Two percent is worth at least 500 to 600 million yuan, and that’s not even counting the annual dividends. Don’t you feel a little bit of regret?”

Fang Yunna clutched the agreement, her hands, her arms, and her entire body shaking in disbelief.

She suddenly fumbled through her purse, pulled out a pen, and signed her name in what felt like a second. Then she cherished the paper, giving it a big kiss. The lipstick stain on the crisp white A4 paper was a dark crimson, like blood.

“I’m rich! I’m rich!!! Hahahahaha!!!!!”

“Rich?” Jian Yixi turned to glance at her, her smile sinister. “Illegal fundraising, excessive harmful substances in products, unfair competition, illegally buying commercial spies, illegally stealing commercial secrets… You pinned so many crimes on me that I can’t even remember them all. Guess how many days the company will last after I’m locked up?”

Only then did Fang Yunna remember these things. Her hands and feet turned icy cold, as if she had fallen into an ice cave.

“Y-you… how did you know?”

Jian Yixi was still smiling. “Otherwise, why do you think you were able to take me down so easily?”

“You knew but didn’t stop it?!”

“Why would I? Isn’t it fun to watch the Jian family get destroyed by the Jian family themselves?”

Fang Yunna couldn’t accept it and shook her head desperately. “That’s impossible! Those crimes are all in your name! They have nothing to do with the company!”

“Really? You can go ahead and call them and ask if those crimes belong to me alone or to the entire company.”

There was no need to call. Fang Yunna knew the woman in front of her. She was smart, clever, and decisive. She never believed she could have framed her so easily. If the Jian family hadn’t offered such a tempting reward, she wouldn’t have even gotten involved.

But now…

She was no match for this woman after all.

Even though she had considered that this day might come, she was still unwilling. She was so close to succeeding, so how had she suddenly lost? All this money, all this money, just gone?

“My money! My 500 million! You crazy woman! If you want to die, why are you dragging us down with you?! You btch! Btch!!!”

Fang Yunna went berserk, frantically punching and hitting Jian Yixi, her heart aching for the 500 million she had just lost.

The Maserati was speeding down a busy city street. Ahead, the yellow light was flashing, and the red light turned on. A group of elementary school students, wearing red scarves, were crossing the road in a neat line, led by their teacher.

Fang Yunna’s frantic shaking and hitting caused Jian Yixi’s feet to slip. She stomped on the brake pedal, but her foot missed. The Maserati sped directly toward the children.

Her life was already ruined. How could she ruin these children’s lives, too?

It was too late to hit the brake. Jian Yixi closed her eyes, a look of relief on her lips. She sharply turned the steering wheel, crashing hard into a small truck parked on the side of the road.

Ugh…

Her head was throbbing.

A cacophony of noise filled her ears: a woman’s crying, a man’s angry shouting, the sound of struggling, and muffled arguments that she couldn’t make out. The noise made her head hurt even more.

Jian Yixi barely managed to open her eyes. She wasn’t in the scene of a chaotic car crash. She was lying in a clean hospital room, surrounded by a group of people. There were yellow-skinned Chinese people and fair-skinned Europeans with blond hair and blue eyes. A woman was kneeling by the bed, clutching her hand, crying her heart out.

Someone with sharp eyes saw her open her eyes and excitedly pushed the crying woman.

“Anan is awake! Anan isn’t dead! Look! Anan is not dead!!”

The exclamation brought all the noise in the room to a halt. The crying stopped, the arguing stopped, and even the middle-aged man with angry, wide eyes who was about to throw a punch turned to look.

Jian Yixi clutched her throbbing temples and managed to sit up. She scanned the group of both surprised and happy strangers.

“Who… are you?”

The news of An Mu’s amnesia spread like wildfire throughout the entire business community of Paris.

No one knew why she had amnesia. They only knew that it was so complete that she couldn’t even speak French anymore and only remembered her native language and English. The An family didn’t seem to be in a hurry to help her recover her memory and didn’t even hire a psychiatrist. Instead, they enthusiastically took her on a tour of Western Europe, saying it was to help her relax.

Travel was such a luxury for Jian Yixi. She had lived a difficult life before. Besides business trips, she had never traveled and had never had a moment of peace.

She got lost at the age of three. Her adoptive parents found her and raised her until she was sixteen.

When she was sixteen, her biological parents found her and brought her back to the Jian family. She transferred to a private high school, thinking it was a beautiful new beginning, but it turned out to be the start of a nightmare.

She endured campus bullying and tried to please her biological parents, who always felt she wasn’t good enough. She even gritted her teeth and endured her fiancé being stolen by her sister, all she wanted was a simple and peaceful life.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans. In order to completely remove her from the line of succession, her sister falsely accused her adoptive parents of abducting her and forced her to willingly give up her right to inheritance.

On the day she was supposed to sign the waiver, her adoptive parents found the original police report from that year, which could prove their innocence. Her sister drove to stop them from telling her, accidentally running them over. She watched them take their last breaths before calling an ambulance.

The accident was ruled a non-criminal incident.

The law has strict legal provisions that must be followed. The ruling was not wrong in a legal sense; it could only be condemned on a moral level.

However, the room for moral condemnation was vast. With a wave of online trolls, her sister was completely unharmed, while Jian Yixi was called heartless.

Her sister haughtily forced her to sign the unfinished waiver, threatening to drown her in online hate if she didn’t.

She refused to sign and told her biological parents that her sister was forcing her to give up her inheritance. Not only did her parents not believe her, but it also enraged her sister. Her sister then cruelly tortured and killed her small yellow dog, Potato, which she had raised since childhood, saying it was her punishment.

She called the police, but how could the case of a dog be considered a real case? Her sister was still unharmed, and she was the one who was scolded by her biological parents.

It was at that moment that she realized that to protect the people she cared about, she had to become powerful herself.

She worked herself to the bone, using all the cunning she had in her life, and finally climbed to the position of the head of the Jian Corporation.

Before she could even take a breath, she was stabbed in the back by her best friend, causing her only remaining friend to meet a tragic end.

After she left the crematorium, her car’s dashcam was on. The words she used to bait Fang Yunna were all recorded. Along with the evidence she had packaged and mailed to the police station earlier, it was enough to send everyone who had harmed her to jail.

In the moment of her death, she had no regrets. She was even happy.

She never expected to open her eyes again and find that everything had changed. She had become An Mu, a life she had never even dared to dream of, and now it was all within her reach.

The An family was incredibly wealthy, far richer than the Jian family, and her adoptive parents, Mr. and Mrs. An, truly loved her.

But so what?

These parents were not her parents, this body was not her body, and the An family was not her An family. None of it meant anything to her.

Everyone she cared about was dead. The world was vast but also very empty. There was nothing that truly belonged to Jian Yixi.

She tried her best to live well, but she just couldn’t muster the spirit. No matter how much she had, she didn’t know who to share it with.

The blue sky and white clouds, the sea breeze on her face, the sparkling ocean under the setting sun—none of it could stir any warmth in her heart.

Standing on a majestic mountaintop, looking down at the mountains below, and shouting into the misty valley—none of it could ignite any passion in her.

She was like a walking corpse, with the features of a living person, but her soul had already died in her previous life.

Until that day, she was standing at the airport, looking at the date on the electronic flight board, and she suddenly realized that she hadn’t just been reborn into An Mu’s body after her death—she had also gone back ten years in time!

She couldn’t understand French and had never lived in France before, and she had been so withdrawn that she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. This sudden discovery left her in disbelief.

She frantically took out her phone and searched for everything related to the Jian family, and she found the news about the Jian family’s missing second daughter being found.

Looking at the photo of her past self, who was smiling so foolishly, completely unaware of what she was about to face, her heart, which had been dead for so long, suddenly started beating again.

She hugged her phone and cried hysterically right there in the airport, in that bustling place, releasing all the grievances of her life.

God, is this the meaning of my rebirth?

In this life, I will definitely protect myself and all the people who matter to me. I will not let anyone, not anyone, hurt them again!