5 Do You Remember This Fatty?

Xi Chen's mind blanked out as his body froze at the loud voice echoing from the doorway of the room. With jerking movements, his head arose from its original, slumped position towards the opened hallway door of his suite, and onto the figure standing in a glorious pose.

"Fang Man…? What… are you doing here?"

The words finally left his lips, and the tone was exceptionally hoarse to Xi Chen's ears. The student standing in all of his glory and fame in front of the suite's entrance shrugged his shoulders, and a blaming set of words swatted Xi Chen all over his body.

"What am I doing here? My brother Xi Chen, have you finally gone mad over your summer break?" he berated with a mild tone.

"The first day of the semester's classes are already finished – what are you doing here? You do know that our general courses are all over and its only a few of us per classroom, and that the professors are already fuming and cursing your lack of attendance, ah?"

"Er…"

Xi Chen could only release an odd sound in response. Having received an unrecognizable reply from Xi Chen who, albeit certainly not vocal of his feelings, didn't fail to respond to a question with some degree of honesty and sincerity, Fang Man could only furrow his brows and step into the room.

The large mass of lipids and saturated fats stomped into the suite, and faint plumes of dust and scattered trash leapt into the air with each vibration that left Fang Man's feet. Xi Chen watched in silence as one of the university's famous 'fatties' marched his way towards him, arms plunged deeply into his hips.

"Brother Chen, are you alright? Nothing traumatizing happen over the summer?"

"Summer?" Xi Chen dully echoed, and his mind quickly dragged itself into reality.

"My summer was fine, but to find the room completely trashed and smelling as though Diyu had descended purely onto this suite, my mind can't help but be a little traumatized, no?"

"Oh, the trash and the smell? That��s because of Brother Shitou – he's been slowly becoming crazy after receiving the grades for his final examinations of last semester," Fang Man's lips curled in mockery and distaste.

"Every day, he's been sobbing with a cup of beer and a bag of chips clenched in his hand, and with his habits – they never get cleaned up afterwards. We'll just leave the cleaning to him!"

"Right… Oh, speaking of summer break, how has it been for you?"

Xi Chen muttered as he slowly arose, his mind threatening to lapse between reality and memory. As Fang Man began into over-exemplified narration, he continued to stare at Fang Man in momentary absentmindedness.

"Summer break? Nothing short of boring, ah – oh, right, there was a moment where Brother Kong, I, and Uncle Cheng all went to have some fun at the Paradise Resort in Huilian City. We didn't win anything, and Uncle Cheng almost got us all kicked out, but it was still an enlivening experience – hey! When did my fat face become so beautiful, for you to continually stare at it!?"

"Hm?"

Xi Chen blinked at the slightly amused and irritated Fang Man. Urging his heart to completely return to reality and diverge from the past, he raised a snarky jab towards Fang Man's pleased expression.

"When did I stare at you? I was considering how much we should extort from Brother Shitou for completely trashing the room. It's not like the smell's going to disappear after a single round of cleaning."

"Tch. And here I thought that someone would finally appreciate this countenance's hidden charm."

Fang Man flicked his middle finger towards Xi Chen, and hastily stomped off towards his room. Once he heard the sound of the lock clicking into place, Xi Chen heaved a sigh of relief, and his countenance crinkled into one of lingering sorrow.

"To think that memories could hurt so much…" he whispered with his hand over his heart.

"Returning back in time might not be such a good idea after all…"

Xi Chen shook his head and returned to his room, triggering the locking mechanism in place to ward off any unsuspecting intruders. Once he trained himself to ignore the abhorrent odor seeping from underneath the gap separating the wooden door from the floor, he crouched down to ensure that the secret panel underneath the bed was securely fitted into place and inconspicuous as before.

"There's going to be hell raining down if anyone – especially the Zhang Family – gets wind of this…"

However as unsecure it was to shove a highly compromising binder in a secret compartment hidden underneath his bed in a college dormitory, Xi Chen knew it was much safer than storing it in a professional warehouse or safe. The world was heavily stained with corrupt bureaucracy, and his experience screamed at him that the moment he dared store this binder in a safe, someone within the government was bound to obtain an 'anonymous tip' one way or another.

Admiring his work for the final time, Xi Chen slotted the matter of the marriage booklet and contract into the back of his mind. As he sat on the edge of his bed, he laced his fingers for his head to rest upon, and slowly began to sketch a plan for the future.

"The matter with the Zhang Family is bound to occur, but will only become ever-so-present after a few years had settled. Thus, I should primarily aim towards graduation in mind, although I should try to change my future… slightly?"

When he had accepted the offer from the Zhang Family, he wasn't mired so deeply within poverty to be completely desperate for additional income or recognition, but there equally wasn't any other option for him to select. However, just because he faced such an ending after selecting an offer promising luxury and fame, didn't mean that he could avoid the same ending by replacing the offered status by one gained from his own efforts…

"Do I remain as a pauper who earns enough to live in comfort and fulfills his needs, or do I seek towards the skies in hope of a greater ambition?"

Xi Chen drew the question out in his mind. After a brief moment of thought in his bed, he leapt and seated himself in his chair, drawing forth a piece of paper from a stack neatly placed at the right end of the table.

"As of now, I am nothing more than a university student and a villager's boy. Though my experiences in life prior to… reincarnation would definitely allow me to create a booming business empire given appropriate circumstances, there's little reason as to why or how I should begin."

The words were imprinted onto the paper in the form of seemingly meaningless and incomprehensible jumble of numbers, symbols, and mathematical functions. A single glance was enough to deter even Xi Chen from ever looking at it for a second time, had he not specially developed the algorithm for the bizarre compendium of numbers before him.

"If the events follow those of my memory, then there will be an exploratory period during which students enrolled in either economics or business will be endorsed by the university to become employed in the numerous small businesses throughout Jiangbei. If I'm not going to do anything special or explosive in this life, then attending the period won't be an issue as long as my luck isn't particularly awful. However, should I want to do anything fameworthy or astounding, then I have to avoid being employed by a small business here at all costs."

"Nonetheless, there's an anomaly in the shape of a bowl… I believe the being of the void stated that it was capable of hosting the power of Heaven. I'll just call it the Bowl of Heaven. The real question is… since I have a world-breaking artefact capable of bending reality to my will, should I still focus on making a villager's living in an industrial city?"

"Regardless of the path I choose, for the time being, my sister and mother will still face the same circumstances. However, of course, if I were to use the Bowl of Heaven to change their fate, that could be avoided – but then new circumstances would arise, those that I cannot predict. How much should I actively interfere using the bowl?"

"What are the repercussions of using the bowl's power here on Earth? I will need to confirm with several experiments sooner or later. The main question still stands – should I live in comfort using what my experiences once dictated as leverage, or should I try to venture anew?"

Xi Chen withdrew the pen and released a light sigh, massaging the stiff muscles of his neck and shoulders. He glanced outside to determine that not much time had passed since Fang Man had intruded – well, it was beginning to touch upon the evening.

The paper that now contained his thoughts for the time being had been populated by fluid-state mechanics and momentum formulas, incomplete Laplace and Fourier transforms for certain bizarre and inconsequential problems, as well as a few customary complex residual formulations. It represented the wet dreams and miseries of a mathematics major – or anyone taking higher-level mathematics courses in a university format…

"I suppose that nobody has figured out the code to break this yet?" Xi Chen chuckled with a smile on his lips.

"Whatever I decide to do in the future, the matter I need to consider tomorrow… is to change my major!"