Yin Shuwei: “Landed a job in the autumn recruitment today?”
Xia Yan: “Driving an Audi A8 tomorrow!”[1]A common joke about manifesting wealth/success. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2041799_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2041799_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Yin Shuwei suddenly changed the subject: “The reason why red dates are planted on a large scale in the northwest region is?”
Xia Yan recited purely from muscle memory: “Because red is festive.”[2]A meme mocking students who write ridiculously simple answers (like “red is festive”) on complex geography exams when they don’t know the real answer. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2041799_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2041799_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
Yin Shuwei suddenly glanced to the side, then placed her hands slightly crossed in front of her, leaning back a little bit.
Xia Yan’s eyes lit up. Perfectly replicating Yin Shuwei’s movement, he pinched his voice and said excitedly, “Scaring~ yourself~ huh——”
Great, everyone transmigrated around the exact same time.
After the two of them confirmed each other’s identities, both thought in unison: I’m not the only unlucky bastard here. Their hearts suddenly achieved a bizarre sense of balance.
Yin Shuwei had read many novels, so she was well-informed and relatively calm, though still confused. “Do you realize you’ve entered a novel? This is the female demographic! A female-oriented, dual male lead book! How did you get in here? Don’t tell me you’re a sister? Biologically or psychologically?”
“A man! Me! I’m a man! I don’t love men, I am a steel-forged straight man!” Xia Yan emphasized over and over again. If they weren’t still in the police station, he probably would have smashed a boulder on his chest just to prove his sheer masculinity.
“Oh.” Yin Shuwei didn’t buy it. How could he find such a niche book otherwise?
The grievance on Xia Yan’s face almost materialized into physical form. “I was scammed! At the time, I just wanted to find a novel to read with no female lead, violent aesthetics, and a resilient, unstoppable male protagonist. I happened to scroll past this one and clicked on it!”
Yin Shuwei gave him a look that clearly said: I’m listening to your excuses.
“It’s true! Nowadays, web novel titles are so long, who has the patience to read them all? I just clicked on the first chapter and started skimming.”
“But this book is called A Lifetime of Wrong Love. It’s only four characters.”
“Titles can be deceiving too! It looked like a male-demographic growth novel! The male lead is in the entertainment circle, which isn’t completely unreadable. The comments section said he beat the other guy into the ICU multiple times. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this bro is fierce, awesome!’ But fuck me, why did that supporting character surnamed Shen get so much screen time? And he actually took the guy’s clothes off!”
Xia Yan’s eyes lost their focus. “By the time I realized what I was reading, it was already too late. For the first time in my life, I felt an inferiority complex about my fast reading speed.”
Yin Shuwei: “…”
This novel really was like looking at a mountain range from the front and a peak from the side[3]A famous line from an ancient poem by Su Shi. It means that something looks completely different depending on the angle you view it from—referencing how Xia Yan somehow read a tragic romance novel … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2041799_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2041799_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. The main POV was Yu Xingzhi, yet in Xia Yan’s eyes, he had somehow managed to read it as a shōunen growth arc!
Xia Yan covered his face with his hands. “Thank goodness for the ‘Clean the Internet’ censorship campaign[4]A real-life, ongoing government censorship sweep in China that strictly bans any explicit sexual content in web novels, hence Xia Yan’s joke about “everything below the neck being … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2041799_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2041799_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Anyway, everything below the nose was strictly indescribable. I also have to thank the author for being so obsessed with them mutually beating each other up that it ended up just being one-sided Platonic behavior. The author really seems to love the ICU; I always felt like there was some kind of obsession there.”
It was true. The plot of A Lifetime of Wrong Love was pure torture, yet the author stubbornly insisted on passing it off as deep, angsty romance.
If the events in the book counted as love, the criminal investigation squad would have to be renamed the matchmaking squad.
Perhaps because it had been a long time since he met someone he could truly communicate with, Xia Yan completely opened his chatterbox. “Transmigration is one thing. If you let me become the protagonist so I could stab that guy surnamed Shen twice, that would have been fine! But how did I become a character never even described in the book? If I didn’t check the news on my phone, I wouldn’t even have known where I was.”
“You have no idea! The police station was practically forgotten. I’ve been here for a long time, and every day I was just slacking off with absolutely nothing to do. It only started to become ‘normal’ about five days ago. Thank goodness there’s actually a fellow transmigrator here.”
“By the way bro, who did you transmigrate as? You look much better off than me. Don’t worry, with that idiot teacher of yours, I’ll definitely help you follow up on the case to the very end! Why are there so many psychos in this book? If we actually did our jobs, they’d all be locked up.”
“I am Yin Shuwei,” Yin Shuwei said, crossing her arms.
Xia Yan scratched his head. “I know, I just wrote your name down for the statement.”
Skipping over the names of supporting characters when reading web novels was standard operation. Xia Yan genuinely hadn’t remembered.
Yin Shuwei: “I am Yu Xingzhi’s unlucky bastard of a wife. The opening kill.”
Xia Yan: “Holy shit, you’re actually alive?!”
Realizing the plot had gone completely off the rails, Xia Yan literally jumped in place. “You’re alive, you’re fine, and you can even call the police! Would that old, sinister bastard surnamed Shen really let you go? He’s a complete pervert!”
Fortunately, Xia Yan still knew how to control his volume.
“Then right now, aren’t you…” Xia Yan thought of something else.
“Weiwei, are you not done chatting yet?” A clear, cold male voice drifted in from the doorway. The other party knocked three times before turning the doorknob.
Seeing that face—which was even more exquisite than described in the book—Xia Yan immediately backed up many steps until his back hit the corner of the wall.
It was clearly just a normal action of opening a door, and Yu Xingzhi even wore a polite smile on his face. Yet Xia Yan felt his scalp go numb under the man’s gaze, as if he had just seen a glamorous, deadly male ghost crawl straight out of hell.
“Done chatting, we’re done chatting.” Xia Yan didn’t dare get close. In the book, the man in front of him knifed people with incredible speed, accuracy, and ruthlessness.
His male intuition was telling him that this guy was a bit pissed off.
Yin Shuwei stood up. She didn’t notice anything amiss and just assumed Yu Xingzhi was worried after waiting too long. She explained, “He’s an old classmate. We chatted for a bit, and he said he’ll help me keep an eye on the progress of the case.”
Yu Xingzhi nodded noncommittally. He stepped toward Xia Yan and extended a hand. “A pleasure to meet you. I am Yu Xingzhi, Weiwei’s husband.”
Xia Yan gave it a very shallow, brief shake. “Xia Yan, my name is Xia Yan.”
“Sorry to trouble you,” Yu Xingzhi said politely.
Xia Yan forced a dry laugh.
Yu Xingzhi looked at Yin Shuwei with some confusion. The latter waved her hand dismissively. “He was hurt by a man before. He’s homophobic.”
Xia Yan: “…”
Sob sob, suffering in silence with no way to explain!
Yu Xingzhi: “…”
Does that mean he’s only interested in women? What kind of strange excuse is that?
Inexplicably, Xia Yan’s survival instincts allowed him to perfectly read the unspoken meaning in Yu Xingzhi’s silence. Giving up on saving face, he blurted out, “Actually, I’m also a bit afraid of people. I’m an introverted ‘I’ personality. I feel like I’ve reached my absolute limit for socializing with humans today.”
Yin Shuwei reluctantly bought the excuse. After adding his contact info, she left with Yu Xingzhi. She had a feeling she would be dealing with the police station quite a bit in the future, and having an acquaintance on the inside made things much easier.
“Are you very close with him?” Yu Xingzhi suddenly asked. He could detect a subtle difference in Yin Shuwei’s attitude toward Xia Yan—an indescribable sense of deep familiarity.
It wasn’t exactly intimacy, but it still made him feel a bit knotted up inside.
“Not close. But an extra friend is an extra path,” Yin Shuwei replied, not exactly lying.
Meeting a fellow transmigrator was indeed a pleasant surprise, but that was all it was. It was just a chance encounter; there was no need to pour her heart out to him. It wasn’t even as close as the relationship between her and Yu Xingzhi, this “seemingly harmonious but secretly divided” married couple.
Yin Shuwei wasn’t naive enough to think that a single Xia Yan could solve any major problems. If anything, Yu Xingzhi would probably be far more reliable.
Yu Xingzhi gazed into Yin Shuwei’s beautiful eyes, finding nothing but sincerity within them. His tense spine finally relaxed, and he suggested, “Since we finally managed to get out, how about we go to a nearby night market?”
Yin Shuwei seemed to really love eating.
Sure enough, the moment Yu Xingzhi made the suggestion, Yin Shuwei perked up completely. “I want fruit tea! With double coconut jelly! And I want fried chicken tenders and egg-filled pancakes!”
T/n: The New Chapter is Up! Stay tuned for more craziness. You can support the original author here. Please Vote up on NU here. If you’re enjoying what I am doing you can buy me a Ko-fi for extra support. Happy Reading 💅 🙃.
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