[Sweetheart, wouldn’t you love to feel up a gorgeous man with an eight-pack every day? A different one each time, including the joy of squeezing a firm, perky butt, biting on broad pecs, and toying with a sexy Adam’s apple!]
"I do! I do!"
[Congratulations, Host. You have successfully bound to the "Play the Vicious Female Counterpart" System. Now transferring to the mission world!]
...
"This is a scam! A scam! I wanted men with eight-packs, not to come here and be the vicious female of a Beastman school!"
Jiang You’s whole world came crashing down after she finished receiving the script. ’What happened to the promise of feeling up men with eight-packs every day? How did I end up becoming the villainess?!’
[How is this a scam? Look at the plot. Didn’t you touch F1’s abs, pinch F2’s delicate little face, smack F3’s firm, perky butt, and bite F4’s broad pecs?]
Jiang You gritted her teeth. "In the plot, I touch F1’s abs and get my head shoved underwater and brainwashed! I pinch F2’s little face and nearly get strangled to death! I smack F3’s perky butt and get humiliated! And don’t even get me started on biting F4’s pecs—all of it leads to a horrible death!"
"None of them consented! And they’re all the boyfriends of the poor, scholarship-student heroine! I’m just some villainess who’s in love with the male leads and, after shamelessly failing to seduce them, flies into a rage out of humiliation!"
"Aaaah! I’m not doing it! Unbind me! Unbind me! I want to go bind with a different system!"
Hearing his host’s words, the System’s tone turned utterly cold. [Unbinding is impossible. You already agreed. This system promises to block any pain you receive while performing missions. An auxiliary system will assist you from here on out. After you complete the task of playing the vicious female at the Beastman school, this system will reward you with thirty billion.]
"Aaaah! System, you’re a scammer! This is a forced transaction!" Jiang You wailed in anguish within her mind.
*
In the back kitchen of a coffee shop, a Beastman wearing a coffee-colored employee uniform nudged the young man beside him.
"Xiao Yu, you’ve been stealing so many glances at that girl. Do you like her? This is the coffee she ordered. You should take it to her." The middle-aged Beastman smiled, placing the serving tray in the young man’s hands.
The young man was also dressed in a coffee-colored staff uniform. He had short black hair, with long bangs that partially hid his eyes. His dark, chilly eyes were lowered, but the visible half of his face couldn’t hide its stunning beauty, with full red lips and pearly teeth.
The aura around him was too cold and gloomy, so he had no friends. Since starting his part-time job at the shop, he would simply work in silence. Apart from Uncle Ji next to him, who showed him some concern, no one else interacted with him.
Zhou Yu accepted the serving tray. The coffee on it was hot, and steam swirled upwards. His dark, intense eyes seemed to stir along with it.
He glanced at the young woman by the window, who was bathed in sunlight, then lowered his eyelids. Unable to resist, he lifted them for another look. He did this again and again.
It wasn’t until Uncle Ji beside him urged him to hurry and deliver it.
Only then did Zhou Yu seem to come to his senses and slowly walk over.
As he carried the tray to Jiang You’s side, he could smell the cloyingly strong perfume on her even more clearly.
His fingertips felt faintly hot just from holding the coffee cup.
A little boy suddenly charged over, crashing right into Zhou Yu.
The impact made Zhou Yu stagger. The coffee in his hand instantly tipped, falling from the tray and landing on the young woman’s lap. The scalding liquid spilled onto her legs.
It all happened so suddenly, catching everyone off guard.
Jiang You didn’t have time to react before the coffee cup hit her. A searing pain shot through her thigh, and she scrambled to her feet, flustered, backing away a few steps.
Zhou Yu quickly grabbed some napkins and offered them to her, his voice hoarse and tense. "I’m sorry, are you okay?"
Jiang You took the napkins and started dabbing at her leg. Seeing how nervous the young man was, she offered a comforting word. "I’m fine. You don’t need to be nervous."
A jolt of electricity shot through her.
All her strength drained away, and Jiang You had to brace herself against a nearby table to keep from falling.
[OOC. First warning: minor electric shock.]
[Ding! Mission 1: Slap the young man, curse him for being blind, then humiliate him.]
The two mechanical voices echoed simultaneously inside both Jiang You’s and Zhou Yu’s minds.
For a moment, Jiang You was frozen.
[Auxiliary System Reminder: Mission failure will result in a one-minute electric shock.]
Jiang You’s body went rigid. ’This isn’t an auxiliary system, it’s a kill-me-now system!’
Zhou Yu heard it too, but he couldn’t process what it was.
Not until the young woman’s palm struck his face.
The same girl who had just said she was fine had abruptly slapped him. The young man was too stunned to even react.
Jiang You’s tone shed its earlier warmth, turning cold as she spoke. "Are you blind? My leg is red from the burn."
But even after she said that, the auxiliary system still hadn’t announced the mission’s completion.
Jiang You could only bite the bullet and continue, "Do you have any idea how much this outfit costs? You broke loser! You could work here your whole life and never be able to afford it!"
Zhou Yu’s gaze fell to her pleated skirt, and to the large, red splotch on her thigh where she’d been burned. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking such things, but her legs were healthy, shapely, and long. The patch of red against her skin was just incredibly provocative.
His chilly, dark eyes seemed to sting as if they had been burned themselves. He averted his gaze, his voice raspy. "I’m sorry. Your leg is burned. We should go to the hospital to have it checked."
He had even forgotten the slap Jiang You gave him; his mind was completely filled with the image of her beautiful legs.
[Mission 1 Complete.]
Jiang You assumed her insults had finally been effective, but she had no idea that the auxiliary system used the boy’s intense emotional fluctuations as the metric for mission completion.
When a young man is humiliated, his emotions will naturally fluctuate intensely.
So, the auxiliary system’s detection method was not, in itself, wrong.
However, the auxiliary system was far too mechanical; it didn’t understand the complexity of human emotion. That intense fluctuation might not have been caused by humiliation, but rather by a racing heart and the thrum of secret excitement.
When the system’s voice faded, it wasn’t just Jiang You who heard it. Someone else did, too.
Zhou Yu had heard that mechanical voice again.
’Mission 1 Complete?’
He instinctively shifted his gaze to the girl’s soft, lovely face and saw that she, too, seemed to have heard the voice. A faint sigh of relief escaped her.
Zhou Yu vaguely sensed something was afoot, but for now, he suppressed all the thoughts swirling in his mind.
"Let me take you to the hospital." Zhou Yu lifted his eyelids to look at Jiang You, his long bangs partially obscuring his eyes. His voice was youthful and hoarse. "I’ll pay for the medical fees."
He was still worried about Jiang You’s burn.
Having relaxed for a moment after completing the mission, Jiang You came back to her senses and her gaze instinctively fell on the young man.
That’s when she saw the clear print of her hand on his cheek. Her heart started to tremble with guilt.
Jiang You wanted to cry, but on the outside, she had to maintain her persona.
"And who are you to be worthy of accompanying me to the hospital?" Jiang You sneered, her tone imperious—the perfect picture of an arrogant young heiress.