Time Travel Begins the Moment I Divorce My Wife - Chapter 9.1

Ji Xunchi was hurrying to school.

She had almost overslept that morning. Fortunately, the night before, she had set multiple alarms, from 6:50 to 7:10 five alarms packed into just twenty minutes.

Ji Xunchi had thought that with an alarm every five minutes, it would surely chase away her drowsiness.

In reality, she had crawled out of bed at 7:20, barely eaten any breakfast, and was now speeding to school on her electric scooter.

Classes officially started at 8:00, but seniors were required to arrive before 7:50 because they had morning reading sessions.

Catching her breath, Ji Xunchi adjusted to being a high school senior again something she wasn’t entirely used to yet. Clutching her backpack, she jogged into the classroom.

Normally, someone rushing in late wouldn’t attract much attention unless it was a particularly conspicuous moment. But the moment Ji Xunchi stepped into the classroom, she sensed something unusual.

She slowed her pace and glanced around at the more obvious stares.

Those who met her clear, sharp gaze quickly averted their eyes, as if pricked by needles, and busied themselves with their own tasks.

Only then did Ji Xunchi lower her gaze and find her seat based on memory.

Her deskmate looked at her with a complicated expression. “Ji Xunchi, you’re really something.”

Ji Xunchi: “Maybe you could explain exactly what I’ve done to earn that title?”

A mix of bewilderment and surprise flickered across her deskmate’s face. “You don’t know? Someone posted on the confession wall calling you a two-timing cheater.”

Wait, what?!

Wasn’t the original owner of this body just a flirt who never committed? How did she end up accused of two-timing?

And wasn’t she only that bold online?

Ji Xunchi paused, then, under her deskmate’s judgmental gaze, pulled out her phone. “Cover for me if the teacher comes. I need to see what’s going on.”

Seeing her seemingly clueless reaction, her deskmate began to doubt the accusations. Still, she dutifully kept watch.

Ji Xunchi unlocked her phone, quickly glanced at the WeChat notifications at the top sending a “good morning” message to Strawberry Tip before switching to QQ and opening the confession wall account her deskmate had mentioned.

She found the post after a couple of scrolls.

First, Ji Xunchi skimmed the comments, noticing many guesses about who the accused might be. Unconcerned, she tapped into the image to read the accusations in detail.

The lengthy post was packed with dense text.

It took Ji Xunchi only two minutes to read it from start to finish.

When she looked up again, her deskmate was pretending to read while stealing glances at her. Ji Xunchi smiled. “I think they’ve got the wrong person.”

Her deskmate was stunned. “Huh? But the details they gave—”

“—are so vivid it really seems like me, right?” Ji Xunchi finished for her.

Her deskmate hesitated. “Yeah, kind of.”

As someone who interacted with Ji Xunchi daily, it was easy to pick out the key details in the post and match them to the most fitting candidate Ji Xunchi herself.

Ji Xunchi shrugged casually. “That’s why everyone was looking at me like that when I walked in. But it’s fine, I’ll just clear things up later.”

Relieved to confirm that the original owner hadn’t actually two-timed anyone in real life, Ji Xunchi felt a weight lift off her shoulders.

Seeing her confidence, her deskmate began to waver between belief and doubt.

After struggling for a while, she muttered, “How can they spread such baseless rumors?”

In the end, she chose to trust her deskmate.

For some reason, Jiang Yu felt that Ji Xunchi today was even more beautiful than yesterday.

She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and it had only been a night since they last saw each other, yet somehow she seemed even more radiant.

Glancing sideways at Ji Xunchi’s flawless, translucent skin, Jiang Yu averted her gaze.

Ji Xunchi held her English vocabulary book, still pondering the earlier incident.

She couldn’t quite figure out why those two would spread rumors about her.

Yes, after reading the two accusatory posts on the confession wall and piecing together fragments from the original host’s memories, Ji Xunchi could roughly deduce who was deliberately painting her in a dubious light.

While most people assumed it was two boys complaining about a heartless girl, Ji Xunchi immediately recognized the two individuals from the key details in the posts. They were girls the original host had chatted with a few times, and it was through them that the original host had first encountered the world of queer women in real life.

If the social progression here mirrored that of her original world, then the current societal climate was akin to that of a decade ago in her world not conservative, but not entirely open either. It hovered somewhere in between, with many people still grappling with conflicting mindsets.

Apart from mainstream heterosexual norms, other identities existed but were far from being as openly discussed as straight relationships.

Thinking of this, Ji Xunchi curled her lips slightly. It’s fine ten years from now, things will be different. She lowered her head, found the contact information of the two girls, and arranged a meeting time.

During the break, while Jiang Yu went to the restroom with her friends, she explained that Ji Xunchi might have been the victim of baseless rumors.

Gossip spreads faster than anything. By the time the first two classes ended, Ji Xunchi who had been staring blankly at the mathematical derivatives on the blackboard had already noticed countless notes being passed around under her nose.

After the two classes, she observed that most of her classmates now regarded her with much calmer expressions.

Ji Xunchi’s mood improved slightly.

But then she glanced at her phone and saw another message from her girlfriend. Her relaxed expression froze.

[Girlfriend: The weather is so nice this morning. Doesn’t it feel like the air is fresher today? (Picture of the track field)]

Checking the time, she realized the message had been sent nearly an hour ago.

Ji Xunchi scrutinized the photo of the running track.

Did she notice something? Is she hinting that I should hurry up and develop abs?

After staring for a couple of seconds, Ji Xunchi chose to ignore the implication.

[It does feel fresher. But don’t you have morning classes?]

She remembered that universities often had early classes.

[Girlfriend: Not today.]

Hua Jiangyu lowered her head to send the message, her desk cluttered with scratch paper from her calculations.

To maintain her cover as a college student, Hua Jiangyu had previously found a class schedule online and sent a screenshot to “Paradise.”

According to that schedule, there were no morning classes today though in reality, Hua Jiangyu had already sat through two math lectures.

Did she not bother to remember? Hua Jiangyu wondered.

Ji Xunchi didn’t suspect a thing. How could she have guessed that the vibrant college girl on the other end was, like her, a high school senior slogging through the gauntlet of college entrance exams?

The class bell was about to ring. Ji Xunchi quickly sent a message saying her supervisor was coming for an inspection and stuffed her phone away.

On the other side, Hua Jiangyu pouted unhappily at the message. She wanted to say something, but class was about to start.

After a hurried lunch, Ji Xunchi headed to the agreed meeting spot.

A girl in a school uniform was already waiting there.

When she saw Ji Xunchi arrive, she frowned. “What do you want?”

Ji Xunchi raised an eyebrow at the pretty girl. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? You deliberately steered the conversation toward me, making sure I’d understand wasn’t the whole point to get me to come find you?”

The girl’s expression shifted slightly. “What are you talking about?”

Ji Xunchi shrugged, unimpressed by her act, and cut straight to the point. “Trying to blackmail me, huh?”

The girl’s face instantly changed, as if she hadn’t expected Ji Xunchi to call it out so bluntly.

Ji Xunchi acted oblivious. “Saw that I suddenly came into money and thought you could extort me? Using my sexual orientation as leverage?”

As she said this, Ji Xunchi felt utterly baffled.

She was genuinely confused. “Why on earth would you think my sexual orientation is something you could blackmail me with?”

Such an absurd “weakness”, how had the other girl even come up with it?

On the confession wall, the post had seemed like an anonymous exposé of a “scumbag girl,” carefully omitting names while dropping hints and keywords only Ji Xunchi would recognize all to lure her here and then extort her?

Using the threat of exposing her sexual orientation as blackmail material?

Ji Xunchi found it utterly ridiculous.

When she combed through the original host’s memories, she realized how they had first met back then, the original “Ji Xunchi” had overheard some bizarre comments.

At the time, this girl had been chatting with someone else.

They were discussing how lesbians often got scammed out of money, which caught the attention of the then-broke “Ji Xunchi.”

“Ji Xunchi” had listened for a while before the other two noticed her.

All three were struggling financially, and since they attended the same school and had crossed paths a few times during P.E. class, “Ji Xunchi” joined the conversation. That was how she learned both girls were lesbians.

Back then, “Ji Xunchi” was already scheming about playing the field online, so she casually admitted she was a lesbian too but asked them to keep it quiet because she “wanted to keep a low profile.”

Support Time Travel Begins the Moment I Divorce My Wife