My Childhood Friend Who Died Has Come Knocking

Chen Nuo dreamed countless times of that summer. Qiutian, with his crew cut, stood on the rocks and showed off the crab he'd just caught. His soaked school uniform hung over arms tanned in distinct bands, and Qiutian grinned, eyes crinkling, as he held the crab above his head and shouted that he'd won.

At the time, Chen Nuo thought it was just an ordinary day in their lives. Then, all at once, a nauseating purple tentacle covered in eyes sprouted from that ordinary day and dragged the still-smiling Qiutian into the water.

In the year 3011 of the Yuanji era, pollutants invaded across the globe.

That day, Chen Nuo scrambled over those rocks. The shallow water in the sandy hollows turned pale pink with the blood from his feet. He threw himself into the sea again and again, until he nearly drowned and someone rescued him.

But Qiutian disappeared into that sea forever.

Many years later, long after the pollutants had been successfully contained, long after humanity had grown used to sharing the planet with them, and long after Chen Nuo had passed the civil service exam and settled into the nine-to-five grind as an office drone,

the boy who had been missing for years suddenly appeared by the sea. He was still wearing his school uniform, still had his crew cut, and was still smiling as he told Chen Nuo, "You've got the wrong person. Qiutian is dead. I've been reborn, and I'm the strongest esper on Earth."

Chen Nuo calmly addressed the smug boy. "Let me start with the bad news."

"What?"

"The university you got into back then has shut down. You're registered as dead, and your old enrollment is void. You'll have to take the college entrance exam again."

"What?!"

His resurrected childhood friend cried out and turned to jump right back into the sea.

Chen Nuo grabbed him and reassured him, "The good news is that espers can get in through special recruitment. Go to training now, and you'll still make next year's recruitment. You graduate straight into a government job. You're one lucky guy."

Qiutian clearly remembered Chen Nuo being a pollutant. So why, when he opened his eyes again more than ten years later, did he find Chen Nuo was a famous esper at the Esper Bureau?

Something seemed off.

Could Chen Nuo have forgotten that he was a pollutant too?

Qiutian thought it over and decided to keep that secret buried forever.

Gloomy, devoted pollutant gong x obedient, resurrected childhood-friend shou

Theme: Work, study, and live diligently