Summer was coming to an end. The door and the windows were all tightly shut, making the spacious room dim and quiet.
Yu Juan tilted his head while lying on the bed, his breathing very light. The rise and fall of his chest was so subtle that it clearly resembled a person on the brink of death due to a serious and lingering illness.
He understood very clearly that he didn’t have long to live.
After Yu Juan inexplicably came to this world, he was tormented by illness and grew weaker with each passing day. At present, he barely even had the strength to open his eyes.
When he was muddled with sleep and barely conscious, he heard a sound at the door. It was as if someone had entered this room.
Yu Juan was a bit surprised. After all, his meals and medication would be delivered at a fixed time– which wasn’t now.
After a car accident, Yu Juan woke up in this room. The entire surrounding was unfamiliar, unlike the world he knew.
There were no visible injuries on his body, but his illness was so severe that he couldn’t get up.
Those people— the ones who both monitor and take care of him, were very uncommunicative. None of the questions Yu Juan had asked was answered, and he also gradually stopped asking. He had no way to prove that he wasn’t the original owner.
Nobody would believe his words.
So who was this person?
Yu Juan spent a great deal of effort to open his eyes and look towards the door.
That person was very tall, with broad shoulders and a straight posture. It was just that there seemed to be an issue with his legs– he was limping slightly and had to use a crutch to support himself, but his actions could still be regarded as steady. He walked towards Yu Juan step by step.
The sounds of the crutch as it hit the wooden floor were light and steady, yet much more powerful than Yu Juan’s trembling heart.
He went over to Yu Juan’s side and paused for a few seconds, then raised his hand to open the window next to him.
Yu Juan was startled.
One day, two days, one month, two months. Yu Juan didn’t know how long he had been here for.
This room was like a prison– sealed off, and with only one window.
However, for a severely ill Yu Juan, that window was too high and too heavy.
So although it wasn’t far from his bed, Yu Juan was destined to forever be unable to reach or open it.
That person easily opened that window.
The rays of the setting sun poured into the room, making it incomparably bright. Yu Juan tried his hardest to raise his head, wanting to look outside the window.
The horizon was covered with dim clouds and the lingering glow of the last rays of the setting sun– like a rose petal that had been tainted with rust, losing its special softness and on the point of withering.
That person stood in the dusk with his body slightly inclined to one side. Because he was standing against the light, Yu Juan couldn’t see him clearly and only vaguely perceived a handsome face with distinct features.
“Yu Juan.”
His voice was low and cold, not carrying the slightest bit of emotion as he called Yu Juan’s name.
Yu Juan felt a bit at a loss.
The same name, a remote manor, a man who had trouble walking due to a leg injury, as well as his own self who was severely ill and on the brink of death…
It was probably because of the sickness that his ability to think had slowed down considerably, but he wasn’t a fool. Yu Juan tried hard to concentrate, to search for the connection between these things, and finally reached a conclusion.
It seemed that he had transmigrated into a novel.
After his college entrance exams ended, Yu Juan was completely relaxed and casually opened a novel on the bestseller list to pass the time.
It was a feel-good novel about a male protagonist taking revenge. Unfortunately, the “Yu Juan” in the novel was an insignificant, vicious cannon fodder with not much screen time. The final outcome should have been the original being sent to the prison, but, because of his serious terminal illness, he was sent to a secluded and desolate manor in the countryside to spend the remaining days of his life instead.
After the car accident, Yu Juan just happened to become that cannon fodder who was on the brink of death and spent the last moments of his life in “his” place.
Yu Juan thought that he was really unlucky.
Probably because there was no reply for so long, the person by his side leaned down. The right hand that wasn’t propped up by a crutch came into contact with Yu Juan’s long hair next to the pillow, and the distance between them shrunk even more.
He stopped his movement.
As they faced each other, Yu Juan noticed that the other’s eyes were like dark overcast clouds covering the sky, as if it would rain the next instant. The feeling was suffocating.
Yu Juan’s eyelashes trembled faintly as he narrowed his eyes.
That person’s– the male protagonist– voice was cold, and he said indifferently, “Yu Juan, after you die, will your relatives spare even a second to mourn your death?”
The setting sun made that person’s shadow appear especially long. Yu Juan was shrouded in it, and his lips that had lost their color opened and closed many times. However, he was still unable to find the strength to say anything.
The silence spread like a tide. Those pupils seemed to reflect an upcoming rainstorm, and Yu Juan caught sight of his own pale face in them.
He was very tired, truly very tired.
Anything he said would be meaningless as the final result was impossible to change.
With this in mind, Yu Juan’s consciousness gradually blurred– until everything became quiet.
He died on this beautiful summer evening filled with the red clouds of the sunset.
. . . . . .
That dream, the one before his death.
Yu Juan’s eyes were closed and his brows knit as cold sweat trickled down his pale face, soundlessly falling onto the soft pillow.
The third day of his rebirth, Yu Juan suddenly woke up from the nightmare, still tormented by the long and endless death.
Nobody could easily forget the experience of death. Yu Juan also couldn’t.
He opened his eyes and gasped for air. For a moment, he thought he was still in that room.
After an unknown amount of time, a voice came from outside the door. It was Auntie Xu, the housekeeper.
She said, “Young master, the madam came back and said she wants to see you.”
Yu Juan was a bit absentminded, turning his head to look out the window.
It was afternoon at present. The outside light was really good, illuminating the dense and thick branches and leaves vividly. Yu Juan stared at the sunlight, unwilling to move his gaze away despite how dazzling it was– because this was the feeling of being alive.
In the few days after waking up, Yu Juan finally confirmed that his initial guess wasn’t wrong– he had indeed transmigrated into the novel <The Count of Baicheng>, right at the ending point. (T/N: Reference to “The Count of Monte Carlo”)
Being reborn meant returning to the past of fifteen years ago– before the plot of the book could begin, and before everything had yet to happen.
And his identity was still that of the cannon fodder.
A moment later, Yu Juan propped himself up and said in a low voice, “Got it.”
After a while, Yu Juan got up and washed his face with cold water. He looked closely at the expressionless face reflected in the mirror and forced a smile– it was exactly the same as his original one.
Across the path, between the shadows of the trees, was the Yu family’s greenhouse.
The madam of the Yu family, Lu Shuicheng, had gone on a business trip abroad with her husband half a month ago and also attended a fashion show on the way. As soon as she came back, she heard that Yu Juan had fallen ill from an unknown disease after the college entrance exams.
The door of the greenhouse was transparent. Lu Shuicheng could be seen leaning on a rattan chair, complaining to Auntie Xu.
“…The one from the Zhou family has been found, but that person is a cripple. A cripple like him can’t possibly inherit the family business, and he also isn’t favored by Zhou Heng. This marriage became a burden instead…”
Auntie Xu was listening attentively, and was about to pour a cup of tea for Lu Shuicheng when she noticed someone outside the greenhouse. She called out, “Young master!”
Lu Shuicheng was startled, and she turned around to look at Yu Juan’s figure. “This child, why are you standing outside without making a sound!”
Yu Juan tilted his head and lowered his gaze as if he had just awakened from a dream, and said, “I just saw a butterfly resting on a flower petal and carelessly lost attention.”
He was actually listening to the idle talk of the minor antagonist, Madame Yu, while also recalling the plot of the book on the side.
The “one from the Zhou family” Lu Shuicheng had mentioned was the male protagonist of this novel. As someone from the wealthy and influential Zhou family, he should have led an enviable life, yet he went missing during his mother’s funeral. Still, a genius was a genius. Despite growing up without parental care and support, he went to the best school and even started a successful business at the age of twenty, securing a means of capital before graduation. The Zhou family eventually identified him as their lost child.
Until a tragic car accident left his body and career in ruins, plunging his life into the abyss.
A car accident. It could only be a car accident.
Ten years later, the male protagonist who had undergone a transformation returned to take back every single thing he had lost.
He had more than what he had originally lost, so his return was purely for revenge. A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, he was a person who wanted to bring everything to ruins.
When Yu Juan was returning home after finishing his college entrance exams, he didn’t want to respond to the false concerns of his relatives. With nothing to do, he turned on his mobile phone and, as luck would have it, he came across this novel.
From the perspective of a reader, Yu Juan could appreciate the male protagonist’s almost cruel treatment of his enemies and feel satisfaction from how the revenge was described in the novel.
That was on the premise that he didn’t cross over and become the fiancé who had been engaged to this male protagonist for over ten years yet broke the engagement overnight.
A butterfly rested on a pink rose, its wings spread out and sparkling in the sunlight.
Yu Juan stared at it intently.
Before his death, his body was so weak that his senses became blurred. After his health recovered, he stood in the sunlight, and those buried emotions also surged back to life.
Yu Juan finally understood what the inexplicable discomfort that had been bothering him ever since he woke up was.
—He had a grudge against the protagonist.
In the original plot, the cannon fodder would immediately cut ties with the male protagonist once the latter becomes worthless and even attempt to steal business documents once the other returns. In the end, he could only suffer the consequences of his own actions.
However, this was no longer the same Yu Juan. He hadn’t done anything wrong at all, and he was just an unlucky person who was caught in this feud by accident yet had to suffer from this kind of treatment.
“Yu Juan, after you die, will your relatives spare even a second to mourn your death?”
That person’s voice seemed to reach his ears once again.
With great difficulty, he clenched his fists.
Yu Juan didn’t have a magnanimous and happy character. Once he had a taste of such suffering and enmity, he would remember it for as long as he lived.
This rebirth was to avenge himself.
Yu Juan’s eyes were half-closed. The color of his skin was very white, looking translucent under the sunlight, and his thick eyelashes cast a faint shadow on his eyelids.
His fingers brushed over the flower petals, and the butterfly’s wings trembled slightly before it flew away in the twinkling of an eye.
Right, what was the name of that protagonist again?
Zhou Huiyue.
Yu Juan raised his brow, seemingly having found something interesting, and silently said that person’s name.
“Zhou Huiyue.”
