Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I was a washed-up actress.

After fighting tooth and nail for a role, I had it snatched out from under me by a rookie actress named Ye Shi’er.

The investors were the ones who changed the casting.

“Nothing we can do about it. Who told her to have a big shot backing her?” my agent said as she drove. “The investor is her biological brother, right?”

Outside the car window, Ye Shi’er’s face filled a massive luxury billboard.

That face had once been mine.

“Not her biological brother,” I said.

“How do you know?” my agent asked.

I knew better than anyone.

Because I was the real Ye Shi’er.

If only I hadn’t failed the mission to win him over.

I had been fostered by the Ye Family since I was little.

Between me and my brother in name, Ye Qingshi, there had never been the ordinary closeness of siblings.

I was careful in everything I did, terrified he would dislike me.

He was guarded in everything he did, terrified people would misunderstand.

He would not allow me to touch his things or get too close to him.

He said that without blood ties, there should be distance.

But he also would not allow anyone else to touch my things or get too close to me.

He would stand in the rainy night holding an umbrella, waiting for me to come home.

All because, when school let out, he had caught a glimpse of someone slipping me a love letter.

His gaze was indifferent, but his jaw was tense, the knuckles around the umbrella handle standing out sharply. “You’re home late, little sister.”

“A classmate treated me to milk tea.”

“What classmate?”

“Just… a girl from class.”

He took one step closer. I took one step back.

I nearly scraped myself on an iron nail in the door.

Sharp-eyed and quick-handed, he shielded me, but the back of his hand was slashed bloody.

“Brother…”

I wanted to touch him, but he would not let me.

He put his hand behind his back and ignored the bloody mark. “You lied to your brother for him.”

“I didn’t.”

His hand reached past my shoulder, trying to pull that love letter out of my schoolbag.

He was too close, too forceful.

Yet there was no physical contact at all.

He got the letter, then quickly pulled away and put distance between us again.

“I’m not against you dating early.”

His fingertip smoothed the love letter flat, his tone cold. “It’s just that some piece of trash who thinks one cup of milk tea is enough to have you won’t do.”

After that, no one ever gave me a love letter again.

Between him and me, we still maintained the safest possible polite distance.

At school, we never greeted each other.

At home, we never met each other’s eyes.

Until the day a thunderstorm rolled in, when Mom and Dad were both away, and I was curled up under the covers reading a novel.

An electronic, mechanical voice suddenly sounded in my mind.

[Congratulations, Host. You have unlocked the PO Novel System.]

“There is no way I can win him over.”

I rejected the System on the spot.

He might fall for anyone else, but never me.

[Host, you should give it a try.]

The System’s mechanical voice rang out.

[No pseudo-sibling couple can hold the moral line in a PO novel.]

I opened the door to his room in the dark.

For once, Ye Qingshi froze.

“Something wrong?”

With my back pressed to the wall, I felt a little panicked. “Brother, Mom and Dad aren’t home tonight.”

“So?”

His expression was wary.

Lightning flashed outside the window.

“I’m scared of thunder.”

He pressed his lips together and looked steadily at me.

“Ye Shi’er,” he said, rarely calling me by my full name, “you’ve never been afraid of thunder since you were little.”

Ye Qingshi understood me better than anyone.

“Yes. I’m not afraid.”

I lifted my eyes to him. “So that was an excuse, Brother.”

The moment our eyes met, he understood what I meant.

“Get out,” he said.

I reached back and shut the bedroom door.

Slanting rain had dampened the sheets on the bed by his window.

His expression darkened further. He got up, pulled the door open, and repeated, “Get out.”

“Brother…”

“Ye Shi’er.” He grabbed my arm. “I’m going to pretend you weren’t in your right mind tonight.”

I was driven back to my own room.

In the empty room, I took a deep breath.

“See? I was right,” I said to the System.

[Host, you can try a few more times.]

“What if I refuse?”

[If the mission fails, you will be replaced.]

The System said, [There will always be someone who can succeed.]

Outside, another muffled roll of thunder sounded.

It was on a rainy night just like this that I had been brought from the orphanage to the Ye Family.

Back then, Ye Qingshi had given me a clean, warm blanket.

I had never slept in a bed that soft before.

In truth, more than love and desire, I wished he and I had been bound as close family by blood.

Because the former could part and scatter so easily, while the latter was hard to sever.

I should have understood long ago that I could never hold on to anything beautiful.