Investment Life

Chapter 9

9 - Blind Spot

　　Two days later, school started. No matter how bad the expressions on his parents' faces were, it was impossible for him to continue to be under confinement, and Chen Yuanming once again returned to his normal, everyday life. However, when he put on his schoolbag and sat down at his new seat, what he felt wasn't contentment or satisfaction, but instead a deeper sense of disobedience.

　　Over a year of ostracisation and self-isolation has caused his image in the class to fall to the very bottom. Ma Zhiqiang didn't come to make trouble anymore, but the fearful look on that guy's face whenever he faced Chen Yuanming made all the students in the class associate Chen Yuanming with it. Along with the class teacher's still very specific, targeted fault-finding and the endless amount of homework that was assigned in the third-year, his school life could only be described as dull and tedious.

　　Of course, if he were to actively engage in forming interpersonal relationships with his classmates, it's not as if the current situation couldn't improve, but Chen Yuanming didn't have these intentions. Even if he could pretend to be well-behaved and act cute in front of Liu Yun and Sun Lang, he could never really, truly integrate into the lives of these 14-15-year-old kids. The naivety and innocence that should belong to this age group had already been wiped out by his other memories. The games and topics that they were interested in, their confusing feelings, all were too distant for Chen Yuanming to reach. Without even being conscious of it, he has already stopped doubting the things in his memories, and instead has been assimilated, engulfed, and evolved by those memories into another soul.

　　This kind of change occurred silently, but the sensitive middle school students were able to detect these abnormalities. In the face of Chen Yuanming's increasingly erratic behavior, they have adopted the most direct approach. Chen Yuanming's surroundings became more and more desolate and lonely, and like a weirdo who had broken into the class by mistake, he was excluded by his classmates from a safe distance.

　　Chen Yuanming was not concerned about such attitudes. Instead, for a few days his gaze was only focused on the hands of those little girls, and he observed with cold eyes as the amount of half-fingered gloves present increased from only a few pairs to more than a dozen pairs, and eventually spread around the entire school. In less than a month's time, those kinds of woolen gloves became a new fashion trend, but of them all, the ones that had been made by Liu Yun were only a few.

　　He was right again this time.

　　However, this accurate prediction did not bring him much joy. In these days, Chen Yuanming has gradually developed a habit. Aside from the daily schoolwork that he needed to complete, he also had an extra notebook bound with waste paper on hand, and rows of plans had been written out on the back of the book. From foodstuffs, small commodities, and postage stamps to scrap iron ingots from the steel mills, partnerships for reselling good and supplies, and investing in □□ type game halls, etc., he had listed all the means of profit-making that he could think of, but in the end, each one was left with a huge black X beside it.

　　Capital, funds, time, connections, partnerships... All the possible businesses from which he could earn a profit required some level of investment, but he had no advantage other than his memories. His family, his situation with making friends, and his own age could only restrict him and lead him to dead ends. It was impossible to achieve any success in such an environment.

　　Chen Yuanming's line of sight once again fell to the bottom of the piece of paper. There was a date there, a critical turning point that would be enough to change anyone's life, so easy to obtain, yet at the same time so out of reach.