After coming out of the audition venue for 《Heart-Pounding Idol》, Jiang Mian, who had fallen into a state of blind confidence because her own assumptions had been completely validated, was just about to get up and walk out when her vision suddenly went black.
If she had not instinctively grabbed onto a pillar beside her, tomorrow’s news headlines might have read: “Woman Loses Control of Her Excitement After Passing Auditions, Does Something Unthinkable in Public?”
It took quite a while for the dizziness and blurred vision to finally subside. Leaning against the pillar beside her, Jiang Mian slowly steadied her breathing. She turned her head and glanced at her own pale face reflected in the mall’s glass, then connected it with her current condition: her heart racing, short of breath, and her hands and feet trembling uncontrollably.
Good grief. This was obviously hypoglycemia brought on by starving herself for too long.
Earlier, the sensation had not been this intense. Perhaps she had not fully adapted to this body yet. Now that she had adjusted, the symptoms came rushing in immediately.
Jiang Mian was actually quite puzzled. Fine, she died, but how did she inexplicably end up inside the female lead’s body? And where had the female lead gone?
Now the case was solved.
The original female lead, nine times out of ten, had starved to death.
Jiang Mian tried hard to search through her memories, attempting to understand how a normal person could possibly starve themselves to such an extent.
Then she discovered that it seemed it was the night before last when the aunt from the female lead’s hometown had once again called her.
The purpose was very simple: money. She wanted the female lead to hand over the money she earned by handing out flyers, doing promotions, and working part-time during her spare time from classes.
After a whole performance of emotional manipulation, it was as if the family would be unable to put food on the table without those few hundred yuan from the female lead, as if three able-bodied adults would be starved to death on the spot.
The female lead heard this and thought, how could that be acceptable? At a height of 165 centimeters and a weight of only 42 kg, it was fine if she herself ate two fewer meals. But if that cousin who looked like a pig and the aunt ate two fewer meals, would they not lose 1 kg of flesh?
No, that would not do. She had to make the transfer.
So, in a rush of hot-blooded impulsiveness, she transferred all the money in her bank account, 809.67 yuan, to her aunt, not even leaving herself a single decimal point.
Because her relationship with her dorm roommates was not very good, she did not have a single person she could ask for help. For a full day and a half, she ended up drinking only a few bowls of the free tomato and egg drop soup provided by the cafeteria.
She held on until just now, and the female lead, who had been malnourished since childhood and frequently suffered from hypoglycemia, was gone.
After reading through all the memories, the veins on Jiang Mian’s forehead throbbed violently.
Toward the original host, Jiang Mian, she truly felt both heartache and anger. Her heart ached for a young girl who, day after day, was either being bullied or on the way to being bullied, without even a moment to catch her breath. In the end, for such suffocating and miserable reasons, she inexplicably lost her life.
She was angry that the girl had truly left herself no room at all. Even leaving a few yuan behind to buy some steamed buns and fill her stomach would have been better.
Huff.
Letting out a forceful breath of stale air surging up from her chest, Jiang Mian braced herself against the wall and stood up again.
This body had gone hungry for a full day and a half. She felt like she was so hungry now that she could chew through an entire cow.
There was no cow for the moment, but there happened to be a newly opened supermarket on the first floor of the mall next door. Ignoring the white-eyed glares from a crowd of promoters, Jiang Mian went through the free samples in one go. Only then did that sensation of her calves trembling after every two steps, as if she might keel over at any moment, finally fade.
After swiping her bus card, Jiang Mian, still unbearably hungry, finally set off on the road back to Yanjing Film Academy.
Touching her flat stomach, Jiang Mian could not help feeling that the female lead’s living conditions were even worse than those of some people living in the post-apocalyptic world. After all, even after the apocalypse, Jiang Mian, whose combat power was off the charts, had never been so painfully hungry.
Dragging her starving body along, the moment she got off the bus, Jiang Mian ran straight toward the dormitory. Her memories told her that each of the other five people in Jiang Mian’s dorm had borrowed money from the original host. Added together, it was no less than eight hundred, if not a full thousand, yet not a single one of them had ever paid her back.
Who could blame the female lead for being such a thin-skinned, soft-hearted pushover? Before she even managed to ask them to return the money, she would already feel embarrassed herself. The moment someone said they had no money to repay her and complained about why she kept urging them, she would immediately apologize in panic, as if she had committed some terrible wrongdoing.
Jiang Mian: …
A heart attack.
*
“Hahaha, this is way too funny. Quick, look at the computer!”
“Ah! You guys eat way too fast. I just spaced out for a second and the crayfish are already gone. I did not even get my fill!”
“There’s none left? Well, it is because this place’s crayfish is just too good. Worst case, we order again tomorrow. You can eat some skewers for now!”
“Order again tomorrow? I have already spent all my living expenses for this month. What am I supposed to use to order?”
“What are you afraid of? If it’s not enough, just borrow some more from Jiang Green Tea[1]“Green tea” (绿茶) is modern Chinese internet slang used to describe a person, usually a woman, who deliberately presents herself as innocent, gentle, kind, and harmless on the surface while … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1648983_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1648983_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. You know how she is. She always likes to pretend to be kind, generous, and gentle. ‘Oh, if you’re short on money, you do not have to pay it back for now. I am not in a hurry, really!’ How was that? Did I imitate her well?”
“Hahaha, the future Oscar Best Actress is definitely you, Yufei.”
Bang!
Before the laughter inside could fade, the dormitory door was suddenly kicked open violently from the outside.
The loud crash made the group of girls huddled together watching a variety show fall completely silent. All of them turned to look toward the doorway at the same time.
When they saw Jiang Mian standing by the door with an expressionless face, not only was there no trace of embarrassment at being caught red-handed gossiping behind someone’s back, the curly-haired girl at the lead immediately stood up. She frowned deeply and looked toward Jiang Mian. “Jiang Mian, what are you doing? Do you have any upbringing at all? Is this how your mother taught you to enter a room?”
Hearing this, even Jiang Mian, who was used to big scenes, could not help being stunned by this person’s sheer shamelessness.
Because she was truly too hungry and tired from standing, she leaned her body sideways against the doorframe, the corner of her lips lifting slightly.
“My mom only taught me this: someone with real upbringing would never gossip about others behind their backs, flapping their tongues like a bunch of busybody shrews!”
As she spoke, Jiang Mian’s gaze swept quickly around the dorm room.
With just that one look, she nearly laughed in anger.
It was a six-person dorm with bunk beds above and desks below. The other five girls’ desks were all empty and spotless. Yet those five were crowded around her desk together, watching a variety show while eating crayfish, skewers, and snacks.
It would have been bad enough if sunflower seed shells and snack wrappers were just scattered all over the floor. On the desk itself, including the white knitted cardigan the original host had draped to one side, everything was splattered with red chili oil from the food.
Digging through her memories made it even worse. This kind of thing was something those five did as a matter of course.
Anytime they bought something soupy or oily, they always ate it at the original host’s desk. Making a mess of her desk was nothing new, and the trash they created on the floor was never cleaned up either.
They always waited for the original host to come back from her part-time job to clean everything herself. If she asked even a couple more questions, they would say she was petty and overly calculative. And there had never been such a thing as dorm duty. From freshman year until now, the only one who ever cleaned was the original host. If she did not clean well enough, she would still be criticized.
No. She could not think about it anymore. If she kept going, Jiang Mian suspected she would no longer be able to control the fists that were itching to move.
Perhaps sensing that the look Jiang Mian cast over was far too cold, the other four girls subconsciously stood up as well.
Before they could say anything, the curly-haired girl standing at the front seemed to finally realize what had just happened. Jiang Mian, that fake, green-tea-act, soft pushover of a Jiang Mian, had actually talked back to her just now.
In an instant, a surge of indignation rose sharply in her heart.
“Jiang Green Tea, are you looking for death? Fine then. I knew it. All that kindness and generosity you put on every day was fake! Look at you now, your true colors are exposed just like that. Saying I have no upbringing? Ha! Even if I have no upbringing, I am a thousand times better than a green tea like you who deliberately seduces other people’s boyfriends!”
As the curly-haired girl unloaded on Jiang Mian, one of the girls standing beside her probably felt her words were getting too harsh and hurriedly reached out to tug at the hem of her clothes.
“Why are you pulling me? Am I wrong? Who cannot tell that she likes Xu Xingming? Every single day she sticks to him under the excuse of being an old classmate, shamelessly clinging to his side, even choosing the same elective courses as him! Xu Xingming has long had the campus belle Lin Qian already. Yet this Jiang Green Tea just keeps clinging to him, refusing to let go, dreaming every day of becoming a mistress. Just being in the same dorm as her makes me sick!”
Hearing this, Jiang Mian raised an eyebrow.
Xu Xingming, the male lead of the novel 《A Galaxy of Ten Thousand Miles》.
Lin Qian, Xu Xingming’s on-and-off ex-girlfriend.
These two alone took up nearly three quarters of the entire plot, with half of that devoted to scenes of the two of them flaunting their affection.
Heaven knew how many wild ideas the author had stuffed into that little brain, to make the male lead and the supporting female character be lovey-dovey together for a full half of the book.
Yes, the original host had liked Xu Xingming since middle school.
But judging from both the plot and the original host’s memories, she truly had not shamelessly clung to him. Almost every time she appeared around them, it was Lin Qian who had taken the initiative to message her on WeChat and ask her to come along. If the original host did not go, Lin Qian would immediately question whether she was unwilling to consider her a friend.
Even the elective courses had been chosen directly by Lin Qian for her, under the nice-sounding excuse that good friends should always stay together.
Everyone knew that the original host, Jiang Mian, was a girl who had no concept of refusal whatsoever and was especially afraid of making others angry.
As a result, her frequent appearances beside Lin Qian and Xu Xingming, and her taking the same elective courses as them, became proof in her classmates’ eyes that she was a so-called green tea.
These messy, infuriating matters could not be sorted out clearly in a short time anyway. More importantly, Jiang Mian was far too hungry and had no mood to argue with these irrelevant people.
“Oh, since you, Chen Yufei, are so well-mannered, then please, well-mannered Classmate Chen, hurry up and clean my desk properly. The floor, the chairs, and the desk, please restore them to how they were when I left this morning. Oh right, my white jacket also got splashed with oil. Remember to wash it clean. My clothes are not expensive, but it is best to hand-wash them. Do not use the washing machine. My family is not well-off, and this is my only decent piece of clothing. If it gets ruined in the washing machine, I will have nothing to wear!”
Leaning against the doorframe, Jiang Mian’s slender fingers pointed from the floor to the desk, her tone sounding utterly matter-of-fact.
Was this really the same Jiang Mian who, the last time she showered, had nearly been livestreamed by Chen Yufei on her phone, yet did not even dare say a single word of reproach?
The other four girls failed to react for a moment and stood there, completely stunned.
They were stunned, but once the leader, Chen Yufei, came back to her senses, she was so angry she practically exploded.
The girl was so furious that she laughed instead, the corners of her mouth curling up maliciously. “Isn’t it just cleaning up for you? Sure, no problem.”
Hearing this, the other four girls had not yet figured out why Chen Yufei, who was usually domineering and savage, was being so easy to talk to this time.
The very next second, they saw Chen Yufei, right in front of Jiang Mian, flip over the packaging boxes of the leftover skewers and crayfish straight onto Jiang Mian’s desk.
Food scraps and bright red oily sauce instantly spread across Jiang Mian’s desktop. Some of it even seeped through the gaps in the drawers. Anyone could tell without thinking that whatever was inside had almost certainly been contaminated by the broth.
Had Chen Yufei gone a bit too far?
Seeing this, the other four subconsciously exchanged glances.
Almost at the same time, Chen Yufei looked at Jiang Mian’s desk, textbooks, and clothes that she had all but destroyed. A look of satisfied triumph slowly rose in her eyes. She then turned to meet Jiang Mian’s pitch-black gaze, showing not the slightest restraint.
With the corners of her lips slightly raised, the girl theatrically covered her chest. “Oh dear, I am really just too clumsy. I accidentally made such a mess. I originally wanted to help you tidy up your desk, Jiang Mian, but…”
“Jiang Mian, you are such a good person, you would not mind, right? We are friends after all!”
Chen Yufei’s tone was fake and deliberately sweet.
For some reason, the word “friend” carried enormous power for Jiang Mian. No matter how much she was toyed with, as long as those two words were thrown out, it seemed that even the biggest issue could be forgiven.
It was truly fake to an impressive degree.
She hated this kind of hypocritical, affected, and pretentious white lotus[2]“White lotus” (白莲花) is Chinese internet slang for a person, usually a woman, who deliberately presents herself as pure, kind, gentle, and morally upright, while in reality being … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1648983_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1648983_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); the most.
Sure enough, the very next second, she saw Jiang Mian, who had been leaning by the doorway, move.
With a gentle smile on her face, she walked toward her.
Seeing this, without even using her brain, Chen Yufei already knew how things would develop next.
First, Jiang Mian would blush and bow to her while apologizing. Then she would immediately get to work, quick and diligent, enduring everything without complaint as she cleaned up the mess. After that, she might even buy snacks to curry favor with them, begging them not to be angry with her.
She had to admit, bullying this kind of spineless idiot was really far too lacking in any sense of achievement.
Tsk.
References[+]