Returning to High School to Save My Wife - Chapter 2

When Liang Qi woke up, she heard voices around her.

The shrill tones of several girls stood out, but among them was one voice as cool as summer shaved ice, instantly clearing her foggy mind.

A dull ache pulsed through her body as she propped herself up on her elbows, her heart still racing with lingering fear. The car accident had come so suddenly, she really.

Right, the car accident!

Memories of what happened before she lost consciousness exploded into her mind like a detonation.

She remembered rushing to a company meeting, distracted by overwhelming grief, when her car collided with another vehicle. After that, everything went black.

Where was she now? In a hospital receiving treatment from doctors and nurses?

Her throat felt parched. Swallowing instinctively, she was about to call for help when she froze at the sight before her.

Lush trees filled her vision this was clearly a small grove in the middle of nowhere! How did she end up in a place like this? Had the hit-and-run driver mistaken her for dead and dumped her here?

She quickly dismissed this absurd thought.

Because she realized she didn’t have a single injury. Her skin was unbroken except for some dirt smudges, and all her limbs moved normally nothing like someone who’d been in a car accident.

What was going on?

Was she dreaming?

Breathing shallowly, Liang Qi tightened her fingers around the tree trunk for support. Just as she was about to shake her head to clear her thoughts, that same cool female voice spoke again.

“Then what do you suggest we do?”

Liang Qi’s breath caught.

The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Someone she knew?

Uncertain, she decided to listen more.

“Of course we beat her up. If she dares to provoke us, she’d better be ready to face the consequences. What kind of coward doesn’t take their punishment?” A short-haired girl sneered, her tone dripping with disdain.

“Yeah, we have to teach her a lesson!” another girl with a doll-like voice chimed in viciously.

Liang Qi: “…”

This intense?

Had she stumbled upon some delinquent girls doling out punishment?

“Jiang Yuan, you’re not scared, are you?” The short-haired girl laughed coldly. “If you are, you should’ve said so earlier. But let me tell you being scared won’t help you now!”

The moment that name reached her ears, Liang Qi’s heart clenched painfully, skipping a beat.

Jiang Yuan? Which Jiang Yuan?

Had she misheard? Was it just someone with the same name or ignoring the soreness in her body, Liang Qi abruptly looked up and saw the girl surrounded by a group of high schoolers.

Tall and slender, she wore the same school uniform as the others. Her skin was porcelain pale, and her almond-shaped eyes, reminiscent of a deer’s, seemed to glisten with rain beautiful even in their indifference.

She bore an uncanny resemblance to Liang Qi’s deceased wife.

The difference was, this Jiang Yuan still had long black hair. Though her features and demeanor carried that same cool detachment, there was an added layer of youthful innocence, less of the practiced evasiveness she’d later develop.

Liang Qi’s heart pounded violently.

This was Jiang Yuan from their high school days.

She had gone back in time!

The girls were still arguing. As Liang Qi snapped back to reality, she caught snippets of their malicious chatter, “teach her a lesson,” “finish her off,” “she brought this on herself”

Putting together what she’d heard earlier, Liang Qi began to piece things together.

In that moment, her heart thundered as countless memories from her past life flooded her mind.

Jiang Yuan, who smiled at her. Jiang Yuan, who sighed alone at night. Jiang Yuan, who tried hard to fit into her life. Jiang Yuan, who could never learn to act coquettish. And Jiang Yuan, lying in the emergency room, never to open her eyes again.

Those regrets surged in Liang Qi’s heart, like waves crashing against her consciousness one after another, until they coalesced into a moment of impulse.

Ignoring her own disheveled state, she dashed forward like the wind, stepping in front of Jiang Yuan, and spoke sternly to the group of girls: “High school students not learning proper behavior, huh? Bullying someone behind their backs, do you have a death wish?”

The girls opposite her froze.

Even Jiang Yuan behind her furrowed her delicate brows.

All eyes were fixed on her alone.

The woods suddenly fell silent, the atmosphere turning eerily tense.

Yet Liang Qi remained oblivious. Seeing the girls still standing there, their expressions growing increasingly hostile, her temper flared instantly.

“Can’t you understand human speech? Who gave you the guts to bully?”

Her words were cut off by the voice behind her.

“What are you doing?”

Jiang Yuan’s voice was icy, cutting through the sweltering summer heat and somehow dampening the fire in Liang Qi’s heart.

Liang Qi: Huh?

Something felt off.

“Jiang Yuan, who is this? Do you know her?” one of the girls asked.

“No,” Jiang Yuan shook her head.

“Could she be one of Yue Suxin’s people? That’s exactly the kind of thing she’d pull!”

“Probably not.” Jiang Yuan glanced at Liang Qi, her gaze indifferent but carrying a trace of scrutiny.

From the way she had acted just now, it seemed she thought Jiang Yuan was being bullied and wanted to help. If Yue Suxin had sent someone to get close to them, she wouldn’t have chosen such an absurd method.

“Jiang Yuan, we should still be careful. She doesn’t seem normal.” The girl with the doll-like voice leaned in and whispered a warning.

“Yeah, she looks filthy.”

“And her face is so pale maybe she’s suffering from heatstroke and isn’t thinking straight?”

Hearing them talk about her, Liang Qi finally realized she might have made a huge mistake?

She had assumed these girls were bullying Jiang Yuan, but from the sound of it, they seemed familiar with her?

The gentle, obedient Jiang Yuan she knew, how could she be acquainted with a group of delinquent girls?

Countless questions flashed through her mind, but the current situation left no room for contemplation.

This was bad. How could she salvage this awkward predicament?

Wait, what had that girl just said? Heatstroke?

Right in front of them, Liang Qi suddenly clutched a nearby tree, swaying unsteadily. “Sorry, I feel so dizzy.”

The doll-voiced girl blinked. “No way? She really has heatstroke?”

“Heatstroke? More like she’s trying to fake it and pin it on us!”

“But she doesn’t look like she’s faking.”

“What do we do? The hospital’s far from here.”

Liang Qi panted heavily, casting a pleading look at Jiang Yuan. “Help me, please!”

Jiang Yuan frowned and quickly stepped forward to support her. “How are you? Can you hold on?”

Liang Qi: “I need water.”

Jiang Yuan: “I don’t have any.”

Liang Qi: Ah, miscalculation.

Clutching Jiang Yuan’s uniform weakly, Liang Qi murmured, “Please, help me. I feel awful.”

Jiang Yuan looked around, then back at her. “If you can hold on, my place is the closest. Come with me.”

“Jiang Yuan,” one of the girls advised, “are you sure she…”

Jiang Yuan gave her a cool glance. “Don’t worry. She’s suffering from heatstroke, she can’t do anything.”

Seeing the other girls about to help Jiang Yuan refuse, Liang Qi quickly spoke up first. “Thank you. I think I can still manage.”

Noticing Liang Qi swaying unsteadily, Jiang Yuan bent slightly, wrapped an arm around her, and helped her up. Before leaving, she reminded the other girls, “I didn’t agree to the earlier suggestion. No one is to go looking for trouble with Yue Suxin on their own.”

The short-haired girl clearly wanted to say more, but the doll-voiced girl stopped her with a look.

Jiang Yuan glanced down at Liang Qi, her gaze as indifferent and emotionless as her voice.

“Let’s go.”

On the way back to Jiang Yuan’s place, Liang Qi learned that the girls from earlier were Jiang Yuan’s classmates and also her friends. The short-haired one was Mu Zhizhi, and the doll-voiced one was Liu Jiayao. These two were the closest to her. Mu Zhizhi had a fiery temper but was fiercely protective of those she cared about, while Liu Jiayao was far more level-headed.

In Liang Qi’s memory, Jiang Yuan had always been alone. During their two years of marriage, she had never heard Jiang Yuan mention these two names. Had they lost touch after graduation, or ?

“They were just standing up for me. They meant no harm. But they wanted to confront Yue Suxin directly, and I didn’t agree,” Jiang Yuan’s voice interrupted Liang Qi’s thoughts.

“Yue Suxin?” The name sounded vaguely familiar to Liang Qi, as if she’d heard it somewhere before.

“Mhm,” Jiang Yuan replied flatly, unaware that Liang Qi had no idea what she was talking about.

Not that Jiang Yuan could be blamed. Yue Suxin was the undisputed campus belle of Shengjiang No. 1 High School, coming from a powerful and influential family. The incident a few days earlier, where Yue Suxin had targeted Jiang Yuan, had become common knowledge throughout the school. This girl was wearing the same uniform clearly attending the same school so how could she not know about it?

“What’s the issue between you two?” This was the first time Liang Qi had heard that Jiang Yuan had any conflicts with anyone.

Given Jiang Yuan’s straightforward yet tactful nature, if she had a problem with someone, it was absolutely the other person’s fault. One hundred percent, no exceptions.

Jiang Yuan didn’t answer. In her mind, Liang Qi was just feigning ignorance. Everyone had a taste for gossip, but she had no obligation to satisfy anyone’s curiosity.

Since Jiang Yuan wasn’t talking, Liang Qi didn’t dare press further. Her wife was deeply guarded, once she distanced herself from someone, rebuilding closeness was nearly impossible. Liang Qi didn’t want to risk the fragile connection they’d just established.

What she never expected, though, was that Jiang Yuan had attended the same high school as her.

Back then, Liang Qi had been severely unbalanced in her studies excellent in STEM subjects, top of her class in every field, but her humanities grades often hovered just above passing.

It was only because she’d been exceptionally admitted to a prestigious overseas engineering university that she managed to squeeze into one of the school’s advanced classes.

As for her overall grades, well, best not to mention them.

Looking back on her high school life a decade later, Liang Qi realized there were very few memorable moments. Aside from befriending Tan Zhiyan and her troublemaking crew, her days had been consumed by competitions.

Back then, she had wanted for nothing, her family was happy, and she hadn’t yet weathered any major storms. Her dreams of the future had been filled with nothing but happiness.

The name Jiang Yuan was the first scar etched into her heart after fate had bestowed upon her twenty-eight years of boundless grace. Her smooth-sailing life, once untroubled by worries, was no longer calm because of this attachment. Yet she embraced it willingly, ready to spend a lifetime tenderly kissing the wounds and holding love close, becoming an eternal, blazing light in that person’s icy existence.

Jiang Yuan lived in the old residential area of Chengnan New Village nearby, not far from the woods just a five-minute walk away.

She stopped at the door and took out her key.

With a gentle twist in the rusty lock, the door clicked open.

“Come in,” she said.

Jiang Yuan’s home was on the first floor, Unit 101, easy to remember.

This was Liang Qi’s first time stepping into Jiang Yuan’s former residence. The shabby house and rusted door seemed like keys to a hidden past, leading her to uncover the untold stories of her wife’s life, buried beneath the mottled traces of time.

When Liang Qi first met Jiang Yuan, she had long since moved out of this place, renting a single apartment near her company instead. She lived alone, spent holidays alone, never returning home not even for the Spring Festival.

Liang Qi knew Jiang Yuan had no living relatives.

Jiang Yuan pushed the door open and called inside, “Mom, I’m back.”

A woman’s voice came from the kitchen, “Why are you back so early today? Didn’t you say you were going shopping with Mu Zhizhi and Liu Jiayao?”

“Ran into a classmate who got heatstroke, so I brought her back with me,” Jiang Yuan replied.

“Oh? You brought a classmate home?” A woman’s figure emerged from the kitchen.

This was Liang Qi’s first time meeting Jiang Yuan’s family.

Jiang Yuan’s mother, Xu Chengyu, had a gentle appearance, her features bearing a seventy percent resemblance to Jiang Yuan’s. However, her complexion was unnaturally pale, and she was noticeably thinner than most.

When she saw Liang Qi, she smiled warmly. “Yuan Yuan, is this your classmate?”

“Yeah,” Jiang Yuan answered indifferently.

“Hello, Auntie,” Liang Qi greeted politely.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Liang Qi.”

“Liang Qi, what a lovely name. Since it’s your first time here, Xiao Liang, why not stay for lunch?”

Jiang Yuan had only brought Liang Qi back because of the heatstroke, it was just ten in the morning, far from lunchtime. They were practically strangers, and Liang Qi likely had no intention of staying.

“Mom, there’s no need. I’ll take her back home later.”

Before Jiang Yuan could finish, Liang Qi chirped sweetly, “Sure!”

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