Chapter 1

Chapter 1

[Hello. I’m your System.]

[Watch out! Move!]

Zhao Xiuming reacted the instant he heard the warning, jerking backward and narrowly avoiding the palm whipping toward his face.

The System’s voice in his head had a nasty edge. [Plot delivered. NPC awakening confirmed.]

[Come on, cannon fodder. Let’s give them a humiliating reality check.]

[Your girlfriend’s brought the male lead she’s cheating with to throw five million in your face.]

The System was clearly enjoying the show. His clear, youthful voice held a hint of eager anticipation.

Sure enough, a man came over, put his arms around the woman who was now crying with her head bowed after her failed slap, and held a bank card out to Zhao Xiuming.

“Five million for your emotional distress. Take it and leave Yaya alone. You’re the one who cheated first. Don’t push your luck.”

The System goaded Zhao Xiuming from inside his head. [They’re going too far.]

[Go on. Tell them… tell them…]

The System stalled for several seconds, his tone turning peculiar. [Say, thirty years on one bank of the river, thirty on the other. Never look down on a young man for being poor…]

The confusion in Zhao Xiuming’s eyes deepened. He was a university student from the countryside. He and Zhang Xueya had grown up together and gotten into the same university.

Unfortunately, their reputations were worlds apart. He was the toad who had lucked out, while Zhang Xueya was the lovely, innocent campus beauty.

The plot the System had just delivered revealed that all this was because Zhang Xueya was far more than she seemed.

Zhang Xueya was the heroine of a melodramatic romance novel. Zhao Xiuming, meanwhile, was her scumbag ex-boyfriend, disposable cannon fodder whose sole purpose was to be a prop in the lead couple’s games.

[Show them you’ve got some backbone. We don’t want his filthy money.]

If things followed the usual formula, Zhao Xiuming would put them in their place right now. Ideally, he’d throw the card back in the other man’s face and slap him a few times for good measure.

None of that happened. Instead, Zhao Xiuming complained silently, [My memories tell me I couldn’t earn five million in thirty years.]

The System said, [Um…]

Why did he have to go and say something so true?

Wait, why wasn’t he following the script?

The other man (the so-called male lead, Li Zhehan) lost patience. Putting the card away, he seized Zhao Xiuming by the collar and tried to throw him to the ground.

One second passed. Two seconds. Half a minute, and he still hadn’t managed it.

There was no helping it. Zhao Xiuming was taller than him.

His hair was long enough to cover his eyes. He had a straight, prominent nose, fair skin, and a clean, sharply defined jaw.

Even in the cheap apron he wore for his job at the hot pot restaurant, he held his own against the man half a head shorter than him.

Especially now, with his eyes lowered and his expression mild, a little of a working man’s exhaustion showing in his gaze.

Suddenly, Zhao Xiuming smiled gently and punched Li Zhehan in the stomach.

Li Zhehan stumbled, pitching into Zhao Xiuming’s arms in a thoroughly ridiculous heap.

Zhao Xiuming gave him a little heft. This male lead…

“Quite a slender waist,” he remarked amiably.

Someone in the watching crowd couldn’t hold back a snort. Several odd chuckles followed.

The lead couple had only themselves to blame for choosing the wrong place to start trouble. This hot pot restaurant stood near several universities.

Most of its customers were students, and there were always a few university students who enjoyed a bit of drama and laughed whenever they felt like it.

Some students from their university were even muttering, “Ha! Doesn’t Li Zhehan go to the gym every day? How come he can’t take a single punch?”

“What do you know? Zhang Xueya said Zhao Xiuming’s family raises pigs. He’s probably used to farmwork.”

“She also said he used to be a thug. Really good at fighting, always bullying people at school. He even forced Zhang Xueya to be his girlfriend. Disgusting.”

Zhao Xiuming heard every word of the slander around him. Past events seemed like flowers glimpsed through mist, hazy and unreal.
He felt nothing for his so-called “girlfriend,” or even for his family. It was as though he were watching someone else’s life.

Now the mist had cleared. Stepping outside his past, he could see every inconsistency with startling clarity.

Zhao Xiuming kicked the man out of his arms and picked up one of the hair ties the restaurant provided for female customers.

He tied his hair back, revealing his eyes, and looked at his “girlfriend,” Zhang Xueya, at once familiar and strange, and at the male lead, Li Zhehan, who still couldn’t get up.

Zhao Xiuming’s gaze settled on Zhang Xueya’s stomach. His expression grew peculiar.

Apparently, the System in his head wasn’t the only new problem. Something was wrong with his memories and his eyes, too.

He could actually see a bloody mass clinging strangely to Zhang Xueya’s belly, black vapor pouring from it.

Zhang Xueya hurried over in a panic to help Li Zhehan up. “You’ve gone too far!” she snapped at Zhao Xiuming, her bluster betraying her fear. “How could you hit him?”

Zhao Xiuming swept his gaze over the growing crowd again. Something he saw made him frown. “You said you came here to break up with me? And that I cheated first? Do you have any proof?”

Zhang Xueya seemed to find her confidence. “You’re messing around with my best friend. I saw you kissing her just now.”

She took out her phone. On it was a secretly taken photo of Zhao Xiuming standing very close to a pretty young woman with rosy lips and white teeth.

The murmurs around them grew louder. The best friend in question had been hiding in the crowd all along. She was certain Zhao Xiuming had spotted her when he looked around, and a bad feeling came over her.

Zhao Xiuming had never said much before. He hardly made an impression, and he was always working, leaving no time to socialize. He had no friends at university.

Zhang Xueya had complained more than once that her boyfriend was a spineless scumbag, and plenty of people believed her.

But with his eyes uncovered, Zhao Xiuming did look a little easy to push around, just… not spineless.

Still, she had promised to help Li Zhehan set him up. She would deliberately get close to Zhao Xiuming, Li Zhehan would secretly take photos, and they would use those photos to make Yaya give up on the scumbag and leave him.

For the sake of their plan, she steeled herself. “Yaya, Zhao Xiuming lied to me, too. He said he’d wanted to break up with you for ages because you wouldn’t get intimate before marriage.”

“He forced that kiss on me. He’s harassed me more than once. I was too scared to tell you.”

She spoke through tears and sobs, making it sound as though it had really happened.

“What a scumbag. How does someone like that even get into university?”

“Absolute trash. I’m ashamed to go to the same university as him.”

“Anyone get a video? Put it online and expose him.”

“Has anyone called the police? He just assaulted someone!”

Faced with the accusations, Zhao Xiuming looked helpless, starting to speak and then stopping.

The System laughed. [What are you planning?]

Zhao Xiuming found this amusing. [The plot doesn’t match my memories.]

The System was more than happy to see the drama escalate. His boyish voice brimmed with delight. [Then of course you should trust your memories.]

Zhao Xiuming felt there was something off about the System, but it didn’t matter.

First, he had to deal with the problem in front of him. The story was supposedly a melodramatic romance, yet he was being told to start by humiliating his campus-beauty girlfriend.

There was a lot going on here. After a moment’s thought, Zhao Xiuming blushed. “Zhang Xueya, I’ve never… touched you. Your best friend just confirmed that.”

“And I’ve never harassed her, either. That photo was taken at a misleading angle. She came close because she was telling me an enormous secret.”

At the mention of a secret, not only Zhang Xueya but the onlookers grew curious.

Zhao Xiuming displayed the same trait as the System: neither of them minded stirring up more trouble.

“She said you and Li Zhehan were already together, and that you’d conspired to frame me.”

“You’re lying!” Zhang Xueya snapped. “You’re twisting everything!”

Her best friend loudly protested her innocence, too. Li Zhehan was even more brazen. “You just demanded proof from Yaya. Do you have any proof of what you’re saying?”

Zhao Xiuming rubbed his eyes, sore from working the night shift. “Yes.”