Chapter 3
Li Lan was usually busy.
Besides keeping up with her classes, she also had a company to run.
Other than when she had class, she rarely showed up on campus.
And with her unsmiling personality, she always gave people a sense of distance.
At school, Li Lan almost never made any friends.
Someone close enough to pat her on the shoulder like this in the cafeteria? There was practically no one.
She tilted her head slightly and saw Tang Yiling standing beside her.
Tang Yiling was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Her plump lips were stubbornly curved upward, and her beautiful peach-blossom eyes were damp, catching a little of the scattered lamplight.
Tang Yiling said, “Sister Lan, what a coincidence?”
Li Lan tried to pull her arm free, but failed. After a pause, she asked, “How do you know my name is Li Lan?”
That really stumped Tang Yiling.
She couldn’t exactly say she’d read a novel where Li Lan was the heroine.
Tang Yiling kept smiling. “You’re the campus beauty, aren’t you? Who wouldn’t know the campus beauty?”
Li Lan’s gaze was cool as it settled on Tang Yiling’s face, as if she were looking for something.
Tang Yiling instinctively wanted to let go and put some distance between them.
But thinking of her current situation, she tightened her grip instead.
Li Lan spoke slowly. “You don’t have money for food? Did the Tang family kick you out?”
Tang Yiling nodded, then remembered something. “How do you know?”
“When has the Tang family’s young lady ever come to the cafeteria for a meal?”
Li Lan brushed her hand aside. “What do you want to eat?”
Tang Yiling’s smile widened. Wonderful. At least she wouldn’t starve to death today.
She pointed at the serving window. “Same as you.”
Two meat dishes, two vegetable dishes, and a bowl of rice.
It really was exactly the same.
Tang Yiling carried her tray and followed behind Li Lan, then sat in the chair opposite her.
Li Lan glanced at her, then got up and went to fetch two pairs of chopsticks from not far away.
Tang Yiling was truly hungry. She took the chopsticks and ate a couple of mouthfuls of rice first.
Li Lan still hadn’t moved her chopsticks. Tang Yiling looked up and saw Li Lan take a pack of wet wipes from her pocket, carefully wiping her hands.
Tang Yiling hadn’t even finished chewing the rice in her mouth. “Sister, you have wet wipes?”
Li Lan didn’t look at her. “You want to use them?”
“You had them with you yesterday too?”
Li Lan lifted her head. There was no readable expression in her eyes as they swept over Tang Yiling’s face.
At last, her lashes trembled slightly.
She looked away, picked up her chopsticks, and just when Tang Yiling thought she wouldn’t answer, she said quietly, “I had them yesterday too.”
Tang Yiling gave an “oh” and went back to eating.
That kind of cleanliness habit really hit right where she liked it!
The food was pretty good, and the two of them didn’t speak again.
While she ate, Tang Yiling searched her memory for the plot involving Li Lan.
Li Lan was one of the heroines of this novel, and also the male lead Gu Feng’s white moonlight.
Their parents knew each other, and they had grown up together; you could call them childhood sweethearts.
But Li Lan was much more mature than Gu Feng.
While Gu Feng was still lost in romance, Li Lan’s focus had already shifted to her career.
This year, Li Lan was in her second year of graduate school, and it was also the second year of her startup.
Although the book didn’t clearly state her business direction, it did indicate that she had achieved fairly good results.
If that was the case...
Tang Yiling’s resolve grew firmer: she absolutely had to curry favor with Li Lan; at the very least, it would keep her fed.
Perhaps because she had looked at Li Lan too many times during the meal, the other woman finally couldn’t stand it anymore.
Li Lan put down her chopsticks. “Do you have something to say?”
Tang Yiling didn’t even hesitate. She grabbed Li Lan’s hand resting beside the tray.
“Sister, aren’t you starting a business? You need people, right? I can work for you. What do you think?”
Li Lan gave no answer.
She tilted her head slightly and looked at their joined hands.
Seeing Li Lan’s expression, Tang Yiling didn’t think she would agree. “Then last night, we, we...”
Her voice weakened. “Don’t you need to make it up to me?” She decided to push a little harder. “Take responsibility for me?”
Li Lan’s expression didn’t change. She looked at Tang Yiling again.
Her wrist slowly turned over; from beneath, she took Tang Yiling’s hand in hers.
Palm against palm, fingers hooking around wrists.
Tang Yiling had already been a little uncertain, and now that Li Lan was staring at her, she grew even more flustered.
“You...”
She tried to pull her hand back, but failed; then she looked at Li Lan again. “I...”
“Your request, I can agree to it.”
Li Lan didn’t let go. “Room and board included, and I’ll pay you a salary too.”
Tang Yiling stopped struggling, her eyes widening even more.
“Really?”
Li Lan nodded. “But...”
A corner of her lips suddenly lifted. “Besides working for me, I’ll also need you to do a few other things.”
“A few other things?”
Tang Yiling repeated it, then nodded rapidly. “Okay, anything is fine!”
Li Lan said, “You’re not going to ask what they are?”
Tang Yiling shook her head. Why would she ask? She was afraid Li Lan might change her mind; if possible, she would have signed a contract on the spot.
At that moment, Li Lan’s phone suddenly rang.
“What?” she said as she answered, already heading out. “Okay, I know. I’ll be there right away.”
Tang Yiling reacted quickly and chased after her.
She was deeply grateful that her phone still had battery left. “We don’t have each other’s contact information yet.”
Li Lan nodded, added her with remarkable speed, and left in a hurry.
The friend request had barely gone through when the phone flashed a low-battery warning and shut down completely.
Tang Yiling finally relaxed a little and sat back down in the seat from before.
Her meal wasn’t finished yet; she couldn’t waste this hard-won food.
Today was the weekend, so there was no class.
She couldn’t go back to the Tang family, and she didn’t even know where the dorm was.
How could there be such an absurd transmigration into a novel?
She even started to wonder if she’d gotten it wrong somewhere, if fate had brought her here without giving her any guidance because it wanted her to disrupt the plot?
Tang Yiling sat in the cafeteria for over an hour.
She really couldn’t take it anymore and decided to try her luck in a classroom; at the very least, she could borrow a charger, right?
The afternoon sun was just right, spilling through the leaves.
It should be early autumn now; the roses in the flowerbeds along both sides of the road were blooming brilliantly.
Tang Yiling actually hadn’t gone wandering around like this in a very long time.
After graduating and joining a company, her life had become nothing but work and home; even on holidays, she only slept in at home.
She rather missed her university days.
But because of work and study, she had also missed a lot of experiences; perhaps this time, she could make up for them.
The sun was a little harsh, so Tang Yiling decided to take the small path through the woods.
Just as she turned into it, someone pressed a hand to her shoulder from behind.
“Help—”
Tang Yiling didn’t even get the word out before someone covered her mouth.
She struggled, but unfortunately two people had her pinned from left and right.
“Don’t shout, don’t shout; it’s us.”
This voice sounded somewhat familiar.
Tang Yiling was dragged behind a large tree, and the two of them also took off their masks and sunglasses. “It’s your dad and mom!”
She stared blankly at He Wenwei and Tang Fan.
She struggled to tell whether they were her adoptive parents or something else.
He Wenwei guessed her concern and gently took her hand.
“Mianmian, it’s Mom.”
Mianmian was Tang Yiling’s nickname.
Because He Wenwei had said her daughter was her little cotton-padded jacket, she called her Mianmian.
A flash of surprise crossed Tang Yiling’s eyes, and then her parents had already pulled her into a hug.
They found a secluded corner and poured out their emotions for nearly an hour before they finally managed to speak.
“So, how did you get into the novel?”
“What exactly is going on?”
He Wenwei shook her head. “To be precise, we didn’t enter the novel world.”
Tang Fan picked up the thread. “Or rather, every world contains many novels.”
Tang Yiling listened in a daze and roughly sorted out the relationship.
This world and her original world existed in parallel.
There were many such parallel worlds, and in each one, there were many scripts that were either related or completely unrelated to each other.
In every world, beings with complete scripts were called characters; you could also understand them as NPCs. Their lives would unfold entirely according to the script.
These people were usually the key to keeping the world operating and progressing normally; one could even say they benefited the free people.
Tang Yiling looked at the Tang couple but couldn’t find the right words.
“So what’s going on with you two?”
The Tang couple continued explaining in turn.
Scripted characters might, due to certain accidents, awaken free will.
Awakened characters might be dissatisfied with their fate, or they might use the convenience of their identities to gain benefits for themselves and harm real free people.
So there was a department called the Character Management Bureau, specifically created to handle this.
The Bureau would capture awakened characters, either imprisoning and punishing them, erasing their memories, or finding substitutes, in order to ensure the world continued operating normally.
Tang Yiling said, “Oh.”
“So you’re employees of the Character Management Bureau, and you came here to replace awakened characters?”
Tang Fan nodded. “Yes. The original He Wenwei awakened and affected Tang Fan.”
“They started looking for their biological daughter two years ago. That would disrupt the plot, so we replaced that couple.”
The Tang family of three crouched on the ground, using branches to draw and scratch at the dirt.
Tang Yiling mostly understood the situation now.
Crouching too long made her legs a little sore.
Tang Fan and He Wenwei helped each other stand up.
Tang Yiling looked up at them. “Mom, Dad, do you have money?”
Neither of them had fully straightened yet; they froze halfway bent over.
“Well,” Tang Fan said, his features scrunched up, “yes and no.”
He Wenwei explained further, “Our money is all Bureau currency; it doesn’t work in this world!”
If Tang Yiling hadn’t been looking up, she might have cried again.
She had thought that if her parents had money, she wouldn’t need to curry favor with Li Lan; yet that tiny spark of hope had been extinguished so quickly.
“Aren’t you from a wealthy family?”
Tang Yiling confirmed again, “You don’t usually spend money?”
He Wenwei answered with difficulty. “Mianmian, we’re the kind where...”
Tang Fan slapped her lightly to stop that not-very-pleasant phrase, then took a card from his pocket. “This is a plot-use card issued by the Bureau. Every swipe has to have a specific purpose submitted, and it can’t be transferred.”
That really was useless.
Tang Yiling stood up in disappointment. “Then do you know where my dorm is?”
“We do!”
He Wenwei opened an app on her phone. After entering Tang Yiling’s name, a lot of basic information appeared below, along with the next plot points.
On the way back to the dorm, the Tang couple told Tang Yiling a lot more about the Character Management Bureau.
For example, the Character Management Bureau was like a small town; employees there had vacation time and could go home.
For another example, when they were on leave, they could go to all kinds of wonderful worlds to play.
Also, the salary issued by the Bureau could be exchanged for all kinds of wishes.
Four years ago, the Tang couple had used all their savings to exchange for the chance that their daughter could also come to the Character Management Bureau to work in the future.
The three of them stopped downstairs from the dormitory building, and He Wenwei wrote down her and Tang Fan’s contact information for Tang Yiling.
Then she thought of something. “Mianmian, wait, that’s not right; why are you here already? Shouldn’t it be decades from now?”
Tang Yiling accepted the note and looked at her parents, who were once again disguised beyond recognition. Realizing their relationship couldn’t be exposed casually, she asked, “Do you only get hired after you die?”
Tang Fan nodded. “You don’t really count as hired yet either; you still have a one-month probation period!”
Very strict.
The novel world was strict, and the Bureau was strict too.
At last, Tang Yiling confirmed what was going on on her side.
“I read a novel and got myself angered to death!”
“Ah?”
Tang Fan and He Wenwei were stunned for a long moment. “What novel got our Mianmian so angry?”
What else could it be?
This very book she was currently in!
Tang Yiling felt a little embarrassed.
She waved it off. Better not mention it.
After parting from her biological parents, Tang Yiling finally understood her situation a little better.
She fished a key out of her pocket and entered the dorm address she had just been given.
No one was in the dorm.
Looks like her roommates had all gone out to have fun.
The other three beds all showed signs of use.
Only the one nearest the door had nothing on the desk, and its curtain was open; the bedding was neat and clean.
Tang Yiling locked onto that one.
From the storage cabinet beside the desk, she found her student ID and her charger.
Only those two things.
Before Tang GeYun was found, she had been living at home; she only came back to the dorm occasionally to take a nap.
Tang Yiling collapsed into the chair and turned her phone back on.
Li Lan’s message popped up at once: “I’ll pick you up downstairs from the dorm tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow would be Monday, a workday.
Tang Yiling typed quickly: “I have class tomorrow.”
More than half an hour later, Li Lan finally sent a reply.
“You don’t have class tomorrow morning.”
Tang Yiling pouted.
She didn’t even know her class schedule yet, and Li Lan already did?
She didn’t plan to reply anymore.
Fine, they’d meet when they met; she could just talk about salary and everything else then.
Tang Yiling lay on the desk and stared blankly into space.
About an hour later, she opened her chat with Li Lan again.
She found a cute little cat sticker making a sweet request.
“Sister, I’m hungry.”
Tang Yiling had originally planned to survive the whole day on one meal.
Unfortunately, her body was uncooperative and started shouting for food the moment mealtime arrived.
Especially since she had just been browsing food-delivery apps to satisfy her cravings by looking.
She’d ignored the fact that the saying didn’t quite fit; while plums might whet the appetite, she only got hungrier.
This time Li Lan replied very quickly.
She said nothing; she directly sent over a fifty-yuan red packet.
Tang Yiling accepted it at once.
She typed furiously and sent “stingy” without hesitation.
Fortunately, she was quick enough to send and delete in a flash.
Li Lan only saw the line: “Thank you, sister. Love you.”