Chapter 2

Tang Yiling was deeply grateful that the storage room was pitch-black.

Who could stay calm after running into something like this right after transmigrating into a novel?

What’s more, she had only seen Li Lan once, in a hurry, at the auditorium.

Tang Yiling was almost certain Li Lan was exactly her type.

So when this happened, even she wasn’t sure whether she, as the transmigrator, was taking advantage of Li Lan, or whether Li Lan, as the heroine, was bullying her.

Tang GeYun hadn’t held back when she tampered with the drink.

Li Lan repeated herself over and over. Tang Yiling was leaning in her arms; her neck ached, and her lips gradually went numb.

It dragged on for far too long before she finally shook herself free of that first burst of trembling excitement.

At some point, she had fallen asleep in Li Lan’s embrace, while Li Lan was kissing her.

In just a few hours, Tang Yiling dreamed countless dreams.

She dreamed her aunt called to ask why she still hadn’t gone home after so long.

She dreamed her cousin came holding a huge bouquet of flowers, insisting on giving them to her.

She even dreamed her best friend said she had time off and wanted to travel with her.

The last dream was of her manager slamming a file on the desk and saying it wasn’t good enough, that she had to redo it.

The first few dreams were all rather warm, and it was only the last one that jolted Tang Yiling awake in fright.

In that instant, she thought: transmigrating into a novel really wasn’t so bad.

Before Tang Yiling could even confirm her situation, the door not far away was shoved open hard.

It struck the wall, then bounced back; someone forced their way in again with violence.

Morning sunlight poured in from the doorway.

The light was so harsh that Tang Yiling couldn’t open her eyes. She raised a hand to shield them.

Her nominal elder sister was holding a phone, with a group of strangers behind her.

Tang GeYun was clearly dissatisfied with the scene before her; frowning, she lowered her arm. “What are you all doing?”

Only then did Tang Yiling realize she was still lying across Li Lan’s legs.

She looked up. Li Lan’s shirt was buttoned all the way to the top again, her skirt neat and smooth. She lowered her gaze to Tang Yiling.

“Classmate, if you’re awake, get up.”

Li Lan spoke slowly. “Please help me up while you’re at it; my legs have gone numb from you sitting on them.”

Tang Yiling pulled at the corners of her mouth and gave Li Lan an apologetic smile.

In that sitting position, Li Lan probably hadn’t slept all night.

Tang Yiling didn’t move for a while, and Tang GeYun lost patience first. She came over and tugged at Tang Yiling’s arm.

“Didn’t the senior tell you to get up? Didn’t you hear her?”

“I heard her.”

Tang Yiling used Tang GeYun’s strength to stand up with difficulty. “I’m just... a little numb too.”

She turned around and pulled Li Lan up from the floor.

Their palms touched, and Tang Yiling inevitably thought of what had happened last night.

Li Lan had beautiful hands; the knuckles were defined without being bulky, the nails neatly trimmed.

Because her skin was pale, the blue veins beneath it were faintly visible, like antique white porcelain with dark veining.

It was those very hands that had brushed Tang Yiling’s cheek last night and touched her lips.

Besides that, Li Lan’s hands had also...

Tang Yiling looked down at her own hand.

Her brows were slightly furrowed, as though she were seriously trying to figure out which hand she had just taken.

Her expression was fully captured by Li Lan.

Li Lan let go of her and walked straight out of the storage room.

Only then did Tang GeYun react. “Huh? You’re just leaving like that?”

“What were you two doing in here last night?”

Li Lan paused, turning her head slightly. “Shouldn’t you be the one answering that?”

“Or do you want me to lock you up too? You can think it over at your leisure.”

She didn’t wait for Tang GeYun to reply and left on her own.

Tang Yiling looked at her retreating figure and, almost instinctively, lifted a leg to chase after her.

“Tang Yiling! Where do you think you’re going now?”

Tang GeYun grabbed her again. “You didn’t come home all night; Mom and Dad are waiting for you to explain!”

The Tang family’s car was parked right outside the auditorium.

Half helpless, Tang Yiling was stuffed into the car by Tang GeYun.

Towering buildings flashed past outside the window, and it was clear that Ancheng’s economy was doing quite well.

The two sisters sat in the back seat, both turned toward the window, neither saying another word.

Tang Yiling was a little regretful. She shouldn’t have left so quickly just now; at the very least, she should’ve snapped a photo.

The people Tang GeYun had brought with her today were all important plot characters. The female lead, Chang Yuruo, and the male lead, Gu Feng, were both among them, but Tang Yiling didn’t know them yet.

Li Lan’s legs were hard to cling to.

If she could hug another female lead, or...

As for the male lead, forget it.

For some reason, Tang Yiling felt a little irritated with him.

The car turned a corner and entered a villa district.

In a place like Ancheng, where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, the neighborhood had actually reserved a huge stretch of open space for landscaping and greenery; the class of the development and its price per unit were obvious at a glance.

Tang Yiling’s curiosity seemed to outweigh her worry.

Tang GeYun’s voice was neither soft nor loud. “You stay out all night and you’re still smiling? You have no sense of shame?”

“I’m going to see how you explain this to Mom and Dad later!”

Tang Yiling drew her gaze back and quickly lowered her head, looking as if she was worried.

In truth, she wanted to laugh a little, because Tang GeYun’s words matched the novel exactly, not a single bit off.

Sure enough, novel characters really did just mindlessly follow the plot!

But shouldn’t they at least assign her a system or something to guide her direction?

At last, the car stopped in the courtyard.

Tang Yiling got out of the car behind Tang GeYun and stepped through the Tang family’s front door.

In the living room, a man and a woman sat on the sofa with their backs to the door.

Their backs were straight, their hands crossed over their chests; even when they heard the sound, neither of them turned around.

Tang GeYun’s steps faltered, her movements turning gentle and cautious.

Tang Yiling still wanted to laugh. The two of them looked far too much like NPCs waiting for a plot trigger.

“Dad. Mom.”

Tang GeYun’s voice turned obedient. “I brought Tang Yiling back!”

The room fell into an eerie silence.

About three seconds later, the man turned his head and roared, “You still know—”

Then he cut himself off; his eyes widened even more, and he reached out to grab the arm of Tang GeYun’s mother.

Her mother seemed a little disgusted by him, and after shoving twice without getting him off, could only turn back to look.

With a soft thud, Tang Yiling’s phone dropped to the floor.

Why did the adoptive parents in the novel look exactly like her own biological parents?

And these two faces—Tang Yiling hadn’t seen them for more than ten years.

On her eighth birthday, Tang Fan and He Wenwei had argued fiercely at home over who would take Tang Yiling to her extracurricular class.

Both of them said they were busy, and in the end, they decided to lock Tang Yiling in the house.

She had lain on the windowsill and watched her parents get into the same car and drive away quickly.

Neither of them remembered that day was her birthday.

Two hours later, the door was finally opened.

Little Tang Yiling still had tear tracks on her face, and she hadn’t even had time to put on her slippers.

She wanted to tell her parents that she didn’t want to go to extracurricular class anymore, that they shouldn’t fight.

But at the doorway, all she saw was her aunt.

Her aunt crouched down, took Tang Yiling into her arms, and told her she would live at her place from now on.

Only then did she learn that her parents had been in a car accident and would never come back.

“Dad, I found her in the auditorium storage room.”

Tang GeYun broke the silence in the room. “I don’t know where she was hiding or what she was trying to do!”

“Oh, i-is that so?”

He Wenwei reacted first. “Then, then next time if you’re not coming home, you have to tell your parents. Otherwise we’ll all worry.”

Tang Fan’s gaze was still fixed on Tang Yiling’s face; He Wenwei nudged his arm.

Only then did he come to himself. “Exactly; how completely inconsiderate!”

The harsh punishment Tang GeYun had been expecting did not come.

She was very disappointed and glared at Tang Yiling fiercely. “Then I’m going back to my room first.”

Tang Yiling pressed her lips together, doing her best to restrain her emotions.

She crouched down and picked up her phone.

From yesterday until now, everything that had happened was far too bizarre.

She suspected that maybe because she missed her parents too much, the characters in the story had transformed into the people she had longed for.

Tang Yiling had no idea where her room was, so she could only mechanically follow Tang GeYun upstairs.

Unexpectedly, just after they rounded the stairwell, Tang GeYun suddenly turned back.

Something felt off to Tang Yiling. “W-what is it?”

Tang GeYun said nothing. Hatred surged in her eyes, growing thicker and thicker, before she suddenly reached out and pushed Tang Yiling.

Tang Yiling had already been on guard; almost instantly, she grabbed the handrail and twisted aside.

Tang GeYun lost her balance and fell straight down the stairs.

Inside the huge villa, Tang GeYun’s pained screams echoed and echoed.

He Wenwei and Tang Fan ran up from downstairs. “How did she fall? Where did she hurt herself?”

Tang Yiling looked at the two of them, at their anxious expressions, and felt a sting.

Tears surged up wildly, and she struggled to hold them back until it became hard to breathe.

She remembered the novel’s plot: Tang GeYun had pushed her down the stairs.

Because she had told the truth, her adoptive parents thought she was falsely accusing their biological daughter and drove her to live at the school.

The process had changed a little, but the result would probably still be the same.

Before her tears could fall, Tang Yiling said, “I didn’t touch her. In that case, I’ll go live at school.”

After saying that, she ran out of the front door alone.

She left behind the three baffled members of the Tang family, staring after her in a daze.

Tang Yiling walked through the villa district for a long time before she finally calmed down.

She felt that this novel world might have some special function, where everyone saw the characters with different faces, in order to heighten the transmigrator’s emotions and experience.

If that was really the case...

Then this book was truly outrageous, outrageously cruel!

Tang Yiling took a deep breath.

She hadn’t eaten a thing since last night and was already starving.

With nowhere else to go, the first choice was to return to school.

Fortunately, the subway was right at the entrance to the villa district. She turned out every pocket on her body, and all she found was five yuan.

A disaster start; a hellish ending.

Even though she was only the expendable third female supporting character, wasn’t this role a little too miserable?

Tang Yiling held up her phone, which was down to twenty percent battery, and found the cafeteria.

There wasn’t any money in her phone, and there wasn’t any on her meal card either.

Would starving to death be a little more dignified than jumping off a building?

Tang Yiling sat in a cafeteria chair, preparing to look for a classmate who seemed kind enough to buy her a meal.

Fifteen minutes later, such a person appeared.

Li Lan walked into the cafeteria with a backpack slung over one shoulder.

She had changed into a loose black tracksuit, her hair tied into a simple ponytail.

It was an utterly ordinary outfit, but with her height and looks, she still stood out sharply in the crowd.

Li Lan was one of the few people Tang Yiling knew in this world.

More than that, they could probably be considered comrades in adversity.

Li Lan walked toward one of the serving windows.

Tang Yiling hurriedly stood and ran over to her.

Li Lan’s meal card had money on it; quite a lot, in fact!

The moment Tang Yiling saw the balance, her eyes practically lit up.

She reached out and grabbed Li Lan’s arm.

“Li Lan!”

Li Lan turned around.

Under Li Lan’s cool, faintly displeased gaze, Tang Yiling tried her best to make her voice soft and pitiful.

“Can you treat me to a meal, senior?”

“Please?”