Xu Kangning just smiled a little and didn’t argue. There was no point. From where he sat, it was pretty clear no one in the room was richer than him. Well, except maybe Yu Mo. It was hard to tell with him.
Xia Sihan noticed the tension between the two guys had finally gone away. She blinked her big eyes and asked softly, “Kangning, how old are you?”
Her voice was really nice—low and soft, with a gentle rhythm that just made you want to listen.
Xu Kangning narrowed his pale eyes a bit, like he was trying to remember. “Hmm, probably 26, I guess? I don’t really keep track. My housekeeper usually reminds me.”
Ugh. He did it again. Everyone groaned inside. He just had that way of being charming without even trying.
After answering a few more questions, Xu Kangning suddenly brightened up. “It’s my turn to pick the next person, right? Let’s go with Yu Mo.” He casually looked at Yu Mo’s face, an amused smile playing on his lips.
Yu Mo’s expression didn’t change. “My job has to do with writing.”
“Are you a magazine editor?” Xia Sihan asked with a smile. “Looks like you stayed in today.” Her tone was light, but everyone got the hint: she’d spent the day with him, and there was definitely a story there.
As expected, everyone except Mu Fu tensed up a little at that.
Xu Kangning frowned slightly, his mind racing. Did I get it wrong? Is Yu Mo actually into Xia Sihan?
“No,” Yu Mo replied after a moment. “It’s related to magazines, but I’m a freelance writer.” He didn’t say which publication.
Everyone was curious and started asking him questions. Mu Fu, too, leaned in, really interested. She was paying closer attention to Yu Mo than anyone else.
“What do you write?” she asked. “Is it romance?” It was hard for her to imagine Yu Mo writing sweet, complicated love stories full of “I love you, but you don’t love me” kind of stuff.
Yu Mo was quiet for a bit. “No. I write horror.”
Mu Fu’s eyes practically shook. “H-horror?”
Her voice wavered a little. Just moments ago, she’d been thinking about asking Yu Mo for his book titles so she’d have an excuse to talk to him about the stories.
What Yu Mo didn’t know was that Mu Fu hated horror stories. She was terrified of ghosts.
Yu Mo found her reaction surprisingly cute. He smiled and looked at her, nodding slowly under her reluctant stare. “Mm-hmm.”
Mu Fu felt like she needed to just lie down. Okay. New plan. There had to be other ways to get close to Yu Mo that didn’t involve ghost stories.
“How old are you, Yu Mo? You look thirty,” Xu Kangning asked, as blunt as ever. He was the only one in the group with the guts to say it out loud.
Yu Mo’s eyes drifted off for a second. “Twenty-eight.”
He was two years older than Xu Kangning, and honestly, Xu Kangning wasn’t wrong. Yu Mo was getting close to thirty. He frowned a little and, almost without anyone noticing, glanced at Mu Fu next to him. Would she think he was too old?
Thanks to Xu Kangning’s comment, the mood had gotten a bit awkward.
Rong Yongxin chuckled, trying to lighten things up. “Yu Mo, is there anyone here you’d like to get to know better? You can ask about the women too, you know—we only know about one of them so far.”
“Mu Fu.”
The moment he said her name, everyone looked at her. Being the center of attention like that made her visibly nervous. She managed to speak up, though it came out a bit stiffly. “Wanna guess what I do? My job involves blueprints.”
“Something in architecture?” Wu Qingyi guessed with a smile.
Mu Fu shook her head. “Nope.”
“Fashion designer?” Xia Sihan piped in.
Mu Fu nodded, a gentle smile on her face. “That’s right. I’m twenty-five.”
“No way!” Wu Qingyi gasped. “You look so young—I would’ve believed you if you said you were eighteen. Can’t believe you’re only two years younger than me. You have to tell me your skincare secrets sometime!”
Mu Fu blushed. “It might just be genetics.”
After losing weight, her once-round face had become soft and youthful again, full of that bouncy collagen. Her friends even joked she could pass for a high school student. Seriously, just one look at her face, and no one would doubt she belonged on campus.
“So modest, aren’t you?” Xia Sihan said, though her gaze held a hint of something else. She was twenty-four—only a year younger than Mu Fu—but somehow she looked older.
Then Mu Fu turned to another guest. “Ningran, I’m curious—are you a student?” Her clear eyes sparkled with curiosity.
Feng Ningran nodded openly. “Yep, you got it. I’m a sophomore at Xiangjiang University.”
She wasn’t even a little annoyed that Mu Fu had guessed right. Instead, she smiled playfully. “Wanna guess my age too?”
Mu Fu hesitated. “Twenty?”
Feng Ningran’s smile got wider. “Close, but I’m actually twenty-one.”
Now only Xia Sihan and Ding Binbing hadn’t shared anything yet. Without skipping a beat, Feng Ningran looked over. “Ding Binbing, you’re up. What do you do?”
Ding Binbing didn’t bother with the guessing game; he just got straight to it. “I’m a surgeon. I’m 29.”
His words actually sparked a little interest from Feng Ningran. She hadn’t expected someone as quiet as Ding Binbing to be a surgeon—that was definitely a respectable job. And honestly, he wasn’t bad-looking either. Sure, he didn’t grab the spotlight like Yu Mo or Xu Kangning, but he held his own. A quiet thought started to form in her mind.
Meanwhile, Mu Fu noticed that Wu Qingyi had started looking at Ding Binbing more often after he introduced himself.
At the back, Xia Sihan didn’t even need to be picked. With everyone else out of the way, it was her turn by default. She shrugged slightly and said with a casual smile, “Looks like I’m the last one. I’ll tell you after you all guess.”
Rong Yongxin jumped in first. “Sihan, are you a teacher?” Her gentle and calm vibe definitely gave off a teacherly feel.
Xia Sihan gently shook her head. “Nope.”
Wu Qingyi guessed next, “Are you an actress?”
“Close,” Xia Sihan smiled. “I’m a dancer. I’m 24.”
“Ohhh, no wonder you’re so slim and have such a graceful figure,” Wu Qingyi exclaimed.
Xia Sihan just gave a polite smile and didn’t say anything else.
And with that, everyone in the villa had finally shared their ages and what they did for a living.
Once the group broke up, the production team gathered the four male guests in the living room of their suite. A crew member handed each of them a card.
Mission: Your first date is coming soon! Please choose one of the four restaurant vouchers in front of you. Once all the male guests have made their choices, each of you will get the name of your date—and she’ll get yours too. The date will be this Saturday. Get ready!
Laid out in front of Yu Mo and the others were four dining vouchers, each with a restaurant’s name and location. From left to right: Qiqi Grilled Fish, Little Tang Hotpot, Buche Bistro, and Junzhao Sushi. They each picked one up to look at the details and get a feel for the place. Soon enough, it was time to pick.
Just as they were talking about how to fairly decide who picked first, one of the crew members casually added, “By the way, these are restaurants the female guests used to visit with their exes—so the idea is to avoid picking the one you’ve personally been to.”
Of course, that little bit of information wouldn’t make it into the show.
While the guys were busy picking their date spots, things were totally different in the girls’ room.
Mu Fu was chilling with a face mask on when she heard a robotic voice in her head.
[Host, I’m back.]
The moment the system spoke, all her memories came flooding back.
[Wait, weren’t the new rules supposed to block our memories starting with this world?] she asked, a little confused.
[That was the plan. But after the announcement, several top hosts complained. They argued that remembering past missions gave them an advantage, and the main system’s decision took that away. Eventually, the system updated the policy: Hosts can keep their memories—but if they use them to carelessly break the world’s rules, they’ll get penalized. Even worse, they’ll lose access to their memories in future missions.]
Mu Fu quickly got it. This was a one-time shot. If she messed it up, she’d be back to square one. Even though she’d felt pretty confident working without her memories, now that they were being handed back to her, she wasn’t about to say no.
[Alright, send me the memories for this world.]
A moment later, everything hit her.
The original host had died just as Mu Fu entered this world. In those final moments, she only wished for Mu Fu to lose weight and live a full life for her. She had no last words for her family—she’d given up on them a long time ago. Whether she did well or struggled, she didn’t want them involved, nor did she want to go back to them.
So far, Mu Fu had kept that promise: she’d lost weight, she was living well, and finding the right partner was just another part of that deal. She also realized something else: her taste in men hadn’t changed. Memories or not, she was still most drawn to Yu Mo.
As for Xu Kangning? That jerk wasn’t getting off easy. He had once pretended to like her—well, now he could live with the regret of never having her again. She would shine brighter, find someone better, and no matter how desperately he chased after her, she wouldn’t even give him a second look. Mu Fu felt that was the most satisfying punishment he could get.
Judging from his expression these past two days, he wasn’t entirely over her, either. In the previous timeline, after the original Mu Fu died, Xu Kangning didn’t even join the show. The producers had to scramble to replace him with a new couple.
From her recovered memories, Mu Fu now knew who the exes were: Feng Ningran and Rong Yongxin had been together, which she already suspected. Xia Sihan and Ding Binbing were also a former couple—she’d been picking up on that too. The last pair was Yu Mo and Wu Qingyi.
Yet in the end, not a single couple in the villa got back together. Most of them didn’t even leave as a pair. Yu Mo had left alone. Even though he was Wu Qingyi’s ex, his feelings for her had ended the moment she broke things off. Wu Qingyi later tried to win him back, but he wasn’t interested.
During the show, Yu Mo kept his distance from her, treating her no differently than the other women. So when the show revealed everyone’s past relationships, the audience was shocked. Yu Mo never gave Wu Qingyi any special treatment, not even out of politeness.
And he didn’t find anyone else in the villa that caught his interest either. So in the end, he left the same way he came—all by himself.
Axolotl Translations 
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