“You shameless slut! You’re so cheap and degraded. Who else would ever like you besides me?”
Tang Shiman glared fiercely at the man in front of her and casually pinched the soft flesh on his chest.
“Li Zhiqing is prettier than me, isn’t she?”
The man was a head taller than her, yet he stood before her with his head lowered and his eyes full of submission. Tears threatened to spill from his eyes, making him look like a wronged little wife.
“I didn’t look at her,” he said.
Tang Shiman grew irritated whenever she saw him acting like such a spineless coward who could barely utter a few words.
Song Changling had just finished working when she dragged him over to interrogate him. Sweat soaked through his sleeveless undershirt, which clung tightly to his broad chest.
He had a large chest and a slim waist, yet he insisted on dressing so provocatively. Wasn’t he just trying to seduce people?
Tang Shiman sneered and lowered her voice.
“Meet me at our usual place tonight.”
A faint blush quickly spread across Song Changling’s fair, jade-like cheeks. He cautiously glanced around, afraid someone might notice them. He stammered but did not dare say anything.
Does she really like me that much?
Their usual place was actually the backyard of Song Changling’s home.
After all, he lived alone with no one else in the household except his mother, who was bedridden and barely clinging to life.
Song Changling lay on the clean bedsheets, his face flushed. He bit his arm hard to keep himself quiet, but he still could not help letting out a soft whimper.
He was terrified that his mother in the main room might hear them. Yet he did not dare resist Tang Shiman. He could only plead softly with her, promising that he would never go outside wearing so little again.
“Big Sister Xiao Tang, could you be gentler?”
“What are you supposed to call me?”
“Mas… Mm.”
His eyes grew misty, and he looked so pitiful that he resembled a little puppy.
His face was as red as a ripe peach. He looked delicate and alluring, his eyes filled with reproach.
Tang Shiman wore a wicked smile.
“Are you still afraid someone will hear us? Your mother isn’t deaf. Do you think she doesn’t know that her precious son has been played with by me so many times?”
“You dress like a little seducer during the day, then pretend to be innocent at night?”
Song Changling shed tears from the overwhelming physical sensations.
He felt as though he had died and come back to life several times over.
Although this was not their first time together, he was still too embarrassed to look at her. His heart was filled with sweetness.
He came from a single-parent family, and his father had died long ago. He knew little about relationships, but Ergou had told him that a wife was supposed to keep her man in line. If she bothered to control him, it meant she loved him.
Big Sister Xiao Tang really loved him so much!
Her hand was still resting on his chest, making his heart itch with longing.
“Stop touching me, Big Sister Xiao Tang.” Song Changling lightly bit his rosy lips before finally asking, “Will you marry me?”
A trace of gloom flashed through Tang Shiman’s eyes. She answered jokingly, “Then would you be willing to marry into my family?”
“As long as you don’t abandon me, I’m willing to do anything for you. I promise I’ll never go out dressed like that again.”
“Good boy.”
Tang Shiman stood up and praised him without agreeing or refusing.
“Big Sister Xiao Tang, let me walk you home!”
He hurriedly scrambled out of bed and followed her, just as he had every other time. He did not feel at ease until he watched Big Sister Xiao Tang enter her home.
Humming a little tune, Tang Shiman pushed open the door to her room. To her surprise, Li Huaihua was still awake. She was sitting beside the bed with a candle burning nearby, staring at Tang Shiman with a dark expression.
The room was small, with two beds separated by a curtain to provide the family with what little privacy they could afford.
“Where have you been fooling around again?” Li Huaihua demanded, frustrated that her daughter refused to mend her ways. “You’re a young woman, yet you go running outside every single day. Don’t you care about your reputation?”
“If I were you, I’d find a rope and hang myself rather than continue disgracing myself in this world!”
“Can’t you listen to me for once and marry a rich man? That Song Changling is uneducated, and he has a sickly old mother at home who needs him to look after her. What makes him good enough for you?”
“Then go die yourself,” Tang Shiman snapped angrily, smashing a ceramic cup against the floor.
Did her mother really think all rich men were blind?
Li Huaihua stared at her in shock, too frightened to say another word.
“You wish I were dead, don’t you? As long as your precious son is alive, that’s all that matters! Daughters are nothing but money-losing burdens, right? Why don’t all the women in the world just die, then? Come on, let’s go jump into the river together right now!”
Tang Shiman was still not satisfied. She grabbed the woman by the wrist and dragged her toward the door like a madwoman.
The lights in the courtyard came on.
“What are you two shouting about in the middle of the night? Just because your second branch of the family doesn’t need to sleep doesn’t mean the rest of us should stay awake too! We have work tomorrow!”
Hearing the angry scolding from outside, Li Huaihua fought back her tears.
“I’m sorry, Sister-in-Law. We won’t argue anymore!”
She watched as her own daughter shot her a cold, disdainful glance before climbing angrily into bed. Unable to hold back any longer, she burst into tears.
What sins had she committed in a past life to deserve giving birth to such an unfilial daughter?
Other girls in the village were already married and having children at Tang Shiman’s age.
Why was Tang Shiman the only one who insisted on going to school, despite being lazy and greedy? Whenever her mother asked her to do anything, she would talk back, saying that if her younger brother did not have to do it, neither would she.
How could a daughter possibly compare herself to her younger brother?
Tang Shiman heard the muffled sobbing in the darkness and impatiently rolled over. The wooden bed creaked beneath her.
This was her eighteenth year in this world.
In her previous life, she had been a fake heiress from a wealthy family. She had spent her days throwing her weight around and doing whatever she pleased without caring about the consequences. After rejecting her adoptive brother’s confession of love, she had supposedly received her comeuppance in a car accident. She then transmigrated into the body of a vicious supporting female character who shared her exact name.
How could there be so many coincidences in this world? The author was none other than the real heiress herself.
Thinking of the face she had seen during the day, a face identical to Li Xueting’s, Tang Shiman gritted her teeth in anger.
Li Xueting was lovesick and delusional, constantly fantasizing about her own biological older brother. She had written this ridiculous novel, a pampered-wife romance disguised as an empowering story about an independent female lead.
The novel claimed that after being reborn, the female lead, Li Xueting, would give up pursuing the male lead and move to the countryside to build a career of her own.
In reality, after her rebirth, every man fell in love with her, every woman hated her, and the male lead became consumed by jealousy.
The two spent a hundred chapters indulging in romantic and intimate encounters before the female lead reluctantly gave birth to the male lead’s child.
And Tang Shiman? She was the male lead’s most devoted admirer, faithfully chasing after him like a non-player character in a game. She spent every day jumping into the story to stir up trouble, only to end up married to an old bachelor and meeting a miserable end.
It was an utterly clichéd plot. Just thinking about it made her want to throw up.
Tang Shiman had already forgotten most of the specific details.
She was more concerned about what she would eat tomorrow and when she would finally escape the miserable life of squeezing into a house with an entire extended family.
And could the stupid woman in the room please stop crying?
All she knew how to do was play the victim and wait for her daughter to comfort her. She was timid with outsiders but domineering toward her own family.
Tang Shiman continued entertaining these random thoughts until she eventually fell into a deep sleep.
She did not wake up until the sun was high in the sky.
Everyone in the family had already gone about their business. Those who needed to work had gone to the fields, while those who needed to study had gone to school.
She was the only one with nothing to do.
Tang Shiman walked over to the kitchen stove and discovered that, once again, nobody had left any food for her. Furious, she slammed the lid back down.
“You never do a day’s work, yet you certainly have a temper,” Tang Zhenzhu remarked indifferently as she leaned against the doorframe. “Who else can you blame for getting up so late?”
The woman had jet-black hair tied into two braids with red ribbons. Her large eyes were filled with malice.
She was the only daughter of Tang Shiman’s paternal grandparents, born in their later years and spoiled terribly by them. At twenty-five, she still had not married.
“What does that have to do with you? You can spend the rest of your life eating from your parents’ table, you old maid.”
Tang Shiman fired back without hesitation.
“You’re the one who won’t get married!” Tang Zhenzhu retorted furiously. “I’m going to marry a city man someday!”
She hated it most when people said she could not find a husband. It was not that she could not get married. She simply refused to settle for less.