Chapter 49: The Weight of a New Identity

Ming Hai finished her honey water, then leaned back on the sofa, closing her eyes to rest.

The atmosphere in the room settled into a profound silence once more.

I cautiously took a seat on the sofa.

Ming Hai had been gone for a full three days. Initially, I assumed she had gone home to explain the drastic change in her gender. Had she truly clarified things with her family, there would have been no reason for her to return to my place.

However, the current situation suggested otherwise. She didn’t appear to have simply visited home; it was more as if she had embarked on a distant journey to handle some pressing matters.

I felt that her constantly leaving without a word wasn’t ideal. While I didn’t sense she was in any immediate danger, her physiological gender was now, after all, female. Society wasn’t entirely peaceful, and malicious individuals could pose a threat. Such things were entirely possible.

After a moment of silence on the sofa, I softly ventured, “Um, Ming Hai?”

Ming Hai maintained her reclined posture, her body still. She merely opened her eyes slightly, her gaze flicking towards me.

I offered a smile and said, “Next time, don’t just leave without a sound. What have you been doing these past three days? I thought you’d gone missing and was almost about to call the police. Even if you have urgent matters to attend to, you should at least let me know, right?”

Ming Hai remained in her previous position, slumped back on the sofa. Her dark, unreflective eyes tilted slightly downward, fixed on my face.

I maintained my smile, meeting her gaze for a moment before touching my nose and looking down. Her complexion was terribly poor, a bloodless pallor. With her glasses removed, the dark circles around her eyes were even more pronounced, making her look almost spectral at first glance.

After a long pause, Ming Hai quietly said, “Programming.”

I was startled. “…Huh?”

Ming Hai laboriously sat upright, picked up her glasses from the table, rubbed them on her shirt, and put them back on. She stared at the screen, roughly rubbing the mouse wheel, producing a harsh scratching sound. Her eyes scanned the screen from bottom to top for a long time before she finally sighed and murmured:

“It’s the X University’s campus attendance software. I recently took on this freelance programming job, which needs to be completed and tested within two weeks. Since my quote was relatively low, I secured the opportunity, and now I’m rushing to meet the deadline.”

“I also handled some identity-related matters. My identity is a bit sensitive, so it took a lot of effort to take the self-study university entrance exams. Now, the tuition and accommodation fees for enrollment are a problem. General part-time jobs don’t seem to meet the requirements, so I’m looking for freelance gigs with higher single payments. In other words, I’m a short-term programmer.”

I listened intently for a while, realizing I understood every word she said individually, but strung together, they left me rather bewildered.

After pondering for a long time, I asked, “Um, you need money?”

Ming Hai’s eyes remained fixed on the screen, her lips twitching, as if she was smiling.

This expression was quite rare. She turned her head, looking into my eyes, and calmly stated, “How interesting. Did you think that during the month and a half I’ve been at your house, I’ve just been eating, sleeping, and acting like a pig in bed?”

“Money? Of course, I need money.”

“Lu Ren, do you remember the day I arrived at your house a month and a half ago? The day I became a woman? Do you know what I wanted to do? Do you?”

As she spoke, her body leaned towards me, a half-smile playing on her face.

As she drew nearer, I involuntarily shivered, sinking deeper into the sofa. Swallowing hard, I asked, “What did you want to do? Blow up the Pentagon?”

Her half-smile remained, and her leaning body stopped. She stared directly into my eyes and softly said, “I wanted to kill someone.”

I swallowed again.

She recoiled, slumping back lazily onto the sofa, her eyes closed and body motionless.

She said softly, “Just think about it. There was once a person named Chu Minghai. Starting from high school, he self-studied economics, then humbled himself, earnestly seeking business experience from his father. He borrowed his first capital from his father with a five-year repayment period.”

“Though the process was unpleasant, he ultimately managed to open a small company under his father’s name, without affecting his high school studies.”

I nodded; I was aware of this. Ming Hai had started a small company in high school. *Holy hell*, just think, a high school student opening their own company! Although the outcome wasn’t great, and it seemed only I knew about it, I already thought he was incredibly brilliant.

“You know the result. Due to being dragged down by fools, the company went bankrupt. His father was deeply disappointed and ceased his financial support, telling him to fend for himself from then on. He then realized that starting a business was still too early. To compensate for his lack of professional knowledge, he used his remaining savings to return to school and was exceptionally promoted to university with excellent grades.”

“He did his utmost to support himself. Then, just as he had mastered his specialized knowledge, ordered expensive textbooks, and was preparing to apply for a master’s degree in finance after graduation to make a comeback… *Bang!*” She closed her eyes wearily, placing her hands on her chest and making an outward swelling motion.

At this point, I dared not speak, maintaining a serious expression as I stared at my feet. But in my heart, I silently grumbled:

‘And then, from no bust to an A-cup, right…’

“Lu Ren, and then I became a woman.”

“In your eyes, I merely changed gender. I’m still Chu Minghai; my personality, my thought patterns, my attitude toward people and things haven’t changed. But to put it another way, on the day I became a woman, the person Chu Minghai died. Everything he had fought for ceased to exist. His past identity, the savings he accumulated to prove himself, his degree, all his struggles, everything under his name, became null and void with his death.”

“And this current Chu Minghai, she has nothing. She appeared out of thin air in this world; she doesn’t even have a primary school diploma. And now, everything has to start over. Everything from before must be overturned and redone.”

“To use an analogy you can understand: imagine you played an RPG game for about ten years, neglecting sleep and food. One day, the plot reached a critical juncture, and you were gathering your strength to face the upcoming challenges. At that moment, the console suddenly deleted your save file.”

“You tried every method imaginable, but you couldn’t recover the save. The previous save was invalid. In despair, you had no choice but to accept this reality and restart the game. Then you discovered that the game’s difficulty adjustment button was locked, and you could only choose ‘hell difficulty.’ What would your feelings be at that moment?”

I was speechless.

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