Chapter 1: A book?
It was a wintery night. The snow outside had covered the whole city in white. The dark streets were lit up with street lamps and the houses were brightly lit with colourful lights. The lights made the cold night much warmer and cheerful.
Inside a dimly lit room, a young girl was sleeping on a queen sized bed. She didn't seem to have a peaceful dream as beads of cold sweat dripped down her forehead, her furrowed brows showing her discomfort and unease. She seemed to be murmuring something underneath her breath, repeating the same thing.
"R..un! Run-!"
Her breathing became ragged as she shouted softly.
"No-! Please...ru--!"
Her voice suddenly cut off and became louder, and a crystal drop of tear slid down her cheeks.
"No--!! Mom-! Dad!!" Then with a loud shout, her tightly closed eyes snapped wide open and her hand reached out into empty air as if reaching out to hold onto someone.
The girl was still immersed in her nightmare, her chest heaved up and down heavily. Her wide eyes held despair and terror as she unblinkingly stared at the white ceiling above her head. It was only a few minutes later that she regained her senses and her blank eyes showed her confusion about her current situation.
She put down her hand that was hanging in the air and slowly sat up. Her eyes hovered around the dimly lit spacious room which was designed in a modern European style with stylish furniture and soothing wallpapers.
There were even some medical equipments placed at a side in case of emergency. It looked like a room suitable for a patient instead of a young girl in her teenage.
Ji RongXue was stunned at the sight in front of her. She felt like she was in a dream, a dream which looked a bit too realistic to be called a dream. She was perplexed to find herself in an unfamiliar place and cautiously glanced around her vicinity to search for any hidden danger. She stayed still with her body taut from the tension and waited for anything abnormal to pop up but as minutes passed, nothing happened.
She was confused and wary, and her mind was still blurry from the nightmare so she couldn't comprehend her situation until a head-splitting pain caused her to clutch her head tightly. A soft groan escaped her mouth which she quickly repressed and she silently endured the pain in her head. Her breathing became shorter and she felt like she was suffocating when a prickling sensation was felt in her heart.
Numerous fragments of images and unfamiliar memories flooded in her head, from a small child's point of view to the current young girl's vision. Her happiness, sadness, loneliness, the heart-rending pain from her illness that she endured as she grew up and her disappointment and her waning optimism, all these emotions mixed up like a whirlpool and swept over Ji RongXue.
She felt all of it for herself. It was suffocating;sometimes bright, sometimes hopeless, all these emotions made her feel like a drifter in a sea of turbulent water.
Her headache started to lessen but her heart suddenly sped up uncontrollably as the familiar pain she felt in the memories made her grasp the cloth over her chest. She quickly followed her memories and reached out her hand to feel up the bedside table to find the medicine. She grabbed the medicine bottle and with trembling hands, opened the lid and shook out a pill then swallowed it without any hesitation.
Because she swallowed the pill dryly with no water, she started to cough violently and heaved breathlessly. She again reached out to the side and grabbed the glass of water and hurriedly drank it. After finishing the whole glass of water in one breath, she finally calmed down a bit and her restless heart also went back to normal.
Ji RongXue leaned her back powerlessly against the headboard. Although she was still in a state of panic, her calm nature finally clicked in and she slowly began to digest the load of information inside her head.
Apparently, she wasn't dreaming a realistic dream but instead she had somehow ended up transmigrating inside the body of a young girl whose name was also Ji RongXue. And from her memories, she realised that the names, some events and places were slightly familiar to her.
Ji RongXue, Mo JinChen, Ji RuanYu...
These names and the memory of the original Ji RongXue getting ruthlessly rejected by her first love, Mo JinChen, at the end of the first semester in senior high which had the greatest impact in the memories...
They were all too familiar for Ji RongXue, who had an eidetic memory and never forgot anything she saw even if it was just a small glimpse. But it was too baffling for her to accept it as reality immediately.
What first came in her mind when she saw the memories of the original owner was the book title, 'The Lovely Cinderella and Her Prince Charming'. It was a book she came upon by chance while she was hiding inside an abandoned house to avoid the zombies that were more active at night. There was only one room with an intact bed so she had decided to spend the night there.
It was just a habit of hers that she developed while changing hideouts and scavenging for any useful resources so when she was searching the room, she found a book which was actually in a good condition under the bed. It was a book titled 'The Lovely Cinderella and Her Prince Charming'.
From the book title, she could tell that it was one of those teenage romance stories that young girls used to love when it was still the peaceful era.
Although she wasn't fond of such stories, a feeling of nostalgia made her read the book no matter how ridiculous she felt. But when she saw the characters list at the front, she was surprised to find a character with the same name as hers. This caught her interest immediately and she spent the whole night reading the book.
After she finished reading the whole book, she was too speechless to say anything about the whole thing and silently regretted ever reading it.
It was too damn ridiculous! The whole story was just an accumulation of brainless energy targeted towards brainless young girls who were still in the bubbling stage of budding romance.
The story was centered towards the school life and the romance between the main characters.
It was about a girl from a poor family background who transferred to the most prestigious No.1 aristocratic academy as a scholarship student and her roller-coaster school life where she was bullied and ostracised by the students, her accidental meeting with the famous school princes and her frequent association with the four handsome princes which resulted in them falling in love with her. Then after that was a series of face-slapping done by the four princes to anyone who dared to bully and look down on the female lead.
After getting rid of the stupid cannon fodders who only knew how to seek death, the female lead realised her feelings for the male lead and pushed aside all the secondary male leads to get together with the male lead.
After more twists and turns in their relationship and the difficulties brought by the main characters' gap in family backgrounds, the female lead's hidden rich father suddenly came looking for her and her mother which immediately solved the problem. Then they exchanged another few pages of vows of love, finished their studies then quickly held a grand wedding that girls could only ever dream about. And they lived happily ever after.
Ji RongXue:...
Ji RongXue, clapping hesitantly: 'Yay'...?
Just thinking about how she suddenly became one of the characters in that same book made her feel dizzy from the ridiculousness.
And when she thought about what kind of fate her current role had in the original story, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry in anger.
The Ji RongXue in the book was just a cannon fodder whose fate was to act as a fuse that ignited the deep feelings between the two main characters with her death seeking acts.
Ji RongXue was the princess of Ji family. She had a congenital heart disease and had to spend most of her time at hospital when she was small.
As one of the children of the four big families, she was naturally paired with her peers from other rich families to make friends. She was very close to the male lead and other secondary male leads who grew up with her together. Because of her illness, she was given extra care from everyone and everyone worried about her.
Ji RongXue loved Mo JinChen, the male lead in the book, since they were kids. Everyone in their social circle knew how much she loved him and also about how Mo JinChen didn't like her back. But she never gave up her pursuit and did everything she could to express her feelings to him but she was either ignored or driven away in annoyance.
Although disappointed and hurt, she still persisted to love him like a fool. She even used her illness as a tool to gain sympathy from him but it only made him feel disgusted of her.
When the female lead, Li WeiWei, transferred to the No.1 aristocratic academy, the plot started and everything changed. Her childhood friends were all interested in her, even her own brother was secretly in love with her. Even her first love was very close to her. This caused Ji RongXue to become swallowed up in her jealousy and envy.
Together with her minions, she harassed and bullied the female lead in any ways possible. But it never went out of the line and only pulled out small pranks which was meant to scare her away.
But one time, the female lead was locked up inside a toilet stall at school, her clothes all wet, for a whole night which resulted in her catching a severe cold. When she was rescued by the male lead the next day, she was burning hot and unconscious. She was quickly hospitalised. She only recovered after taking medicine and resting for four days.
The male lead and other secondary male leads were very angry about this incident and they blindly placed the blame on Ji RongXue who used to bully her all the time without even investigating anything. The male lead straight up cursed at her at the school entrance while the other secondary male lead's either showed their disgust or cut off their friendship without any hesitation. Even her brother reprimanded her harshly and told her to apologise to the female lead.
But actually, that incident had nothing to do with Ji RongXue. She was falsely accused. But no one believed her. This caused her to finally realise that her childhood friends were no longer the friends she could always rely and place her trust on. Because they no longer believed in her.
When she tearfully went to look for the male lead to explain that it wasn't her who did it, she was again scolded by him without letting her finish talking which gave her a stroke. Mo JinChen thought that she was only pretending to get herself out of the matter as she had done that many other times before so he only scoffed and went back, leaving her alone.
Fortunately, a passer-by discovered her dangerous condition and quickly called an ambulance. She was sent to the hospital and quickly brought to the emergency room to do a heart surgery as her illness had developed into a very dangerous stage.
The Ji family was alarmed by this and quickly found a suitable heart to perform the transplant but unfortunately, Ji RongXue wasn't able to survive and breathed her last under the cold lights of the operating theatre.
This made the male lead and others to finally come back to their senses and realised that her death was directly or indirectly related to them. They were caught up in guilt, especially her brother. He blamed himself for not believing in his own sister and fell into depression. Meanwhile, this guilt only became a bridge for the male lead and female lead to deepen their feelings as they comforted each other.
The Ji family was hit hard by their daughter's death. They weren't willing to let this matter go and fought against the Mo family to give an explanation but they only suffered losses as Ji family's power was mostly centered abroad and didn't have as much strength in the B city where the Mo family was deeply rooted.
So after Ji RongXue's funeral, they moved back abroad and never came back again. And the two main characters were able to get married and live happily with no more hindrances.
Ji RongXue laid back down and sighed as she thought about the plot.
Actually, the original owner of this body was quite pitiful.
She was sick since birth and couldn't mix well with other normal kids. Those who approached her only wanted to form connection with the Ji family through her as a medium. So when she met the male lead who didn't have any ulterior motives and protected her from other children without holding any discrimination against her, she was touched.
She thought she would finally have a friend whom she could truly rely on and play with. Her heart was pure and so was her love. But it was seen as something disgusting by the male lead.
She was just lonely. She just wanted to have someone to rely on.
But no one understood her pain.
They only saw her faults but never tried to see through her fragile heart which was already tattered from the illness and only yearned for someone to truly understand her.
But she couldn't do anything about it as she was nothing but a cannon fodder character inside the book.
And her role was only to die for the sake of the main protagonists under the influence of the so-called story plot.
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