Chapter 1

Jiao Bai crouched under the table, holding his breath, staring in white-faced shock at his own hands—slightly rough, unfamiliar hands—while sweat soaked the black hair at his temples.

The splash of water from the bathroom sounded like a death knell. Jiao Bai snapped back to himself and shrank further under the table, arms wrapped around his knees, face buried in the crook of his elbow, eyes shut tight, lashes trembling. A few seconds later he suddenly snapped his eyes open and cursed at the empty air.

"Fuck!!!"

He had a cold, a fever, and his throat hurt like hell. After swearing, his mouth tasted of blood and salt. Had he done something so unforgivable in his last life that this life had to be folded into so many wrong turns? Orphaned young, he'd been taken in by an uncle who was supposed to hold his parents' assets in trust and act as his guardian—and what greeted him there was his aunt's cold stares and constant nitpicking. Half-dead inside, he'd been introduced by a friend into the world of BL comics, and he'd lived month after month, year after year, on the strength of those comics, his grades always staying above the cutoff for the school he wanted.

Next month, on the 7th, was his eighteenth birthday—and also the day of the college entrance exam. Just as he was about to step onto a new starting line in life, he'd been hit by a car on his way home from school, a new comic tucked under his arm, right at his own front door.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he'd transmigrated into a BE BL comic about a scum gong and a doormat shou he'd read half a month earlier, and become Wang Chuqiu.

The man in the bathroom was the Chairman of the Qi Corporation—a supporting character with no romance arc with either the male lead gong or the protagonist shou, and yet charismatic enough to have his own personal Weibo account and a massive shipper fandom: Qi Yiliao.

Jiao Bai had no idea what had happened between this Chairman Qi and the original body's owner in this room—the comic never explained it. All he remembered was that the author revealed, much later in the story, that the original Wang Chuqiu left this place in the middle of the night, and the moment he stepped outside, a black car came barreling around the corner and hit him. He stopped breathing on the way to the hospital.

So, in other words—

Jiao Bai sucked in a breath—he was cannon fodder about to be killed off at any moment.

He could already smell death in the air.

Jiao Bai scrubbed hard at his eyes, sniffled, sat frozen under the table a while longer, then finally crawled out in a daze and climbed, still dazed, onto the large white bed nearby. He crossed his hands over his stomach, his bloodless face settling into an expression of perfect serenity.

Serenely... waiting to die.

Well, he'd already died once. Dying a second time couldn't be that big a deal. Practice makes perfect.

All of that was complete bullshit!

Jiao Bai bit down on the inside of his mouth until it bled, licked the trickle of blood away, felt it spread across his tongue, and covered his face with his hands, muttering, "I don't want to die..."

He didn't want to die again.

But how was he supposed to get out of this dead end?

Jiao Bai spread his fingers and peered through the gaps toward the door. Outside were Qi Yiliao's bodyguards and confidants—sneaking off was not going to work.

His eyes darted around anxiously, and after a few seconds his gaze landed on the backpack sitting against the opposite wall.

Right, his phone!

Jiao Bai shot up from the bed and lunged for it. The instant his hand closed around the phone, his lips trembled slightly. With Qi Yiliao's power and status, there were no more than three people in all of City A who could go toe-to-toe with him.

And one of them happened to be in Jiao Bai's contacts.

Shen Ji.

And yet Jiao Bai stared at that string of numbers for a long moment without tapping it. Shen Ji was the father of Shen Er'an, the canon scum gong of the comic—which meant, on some level, he was the original body's sugar daddy. And right now, the man was next door. Just one wall away.

But Jiao Bai couldn't ask Shen Ji for help.

The light in Jiao Bai's eyes went out. Because the whole reason he was in this mess right now was that Shen Ji had taken a liking to a hot little Chili Pepper.

That little Chili Pepper belonged to Qi Yiliao—literally credited as "Little Chili Pepper" in the comic. Fiery personality, loved wearing red dresses, a cross-dressing little brother type, very flirtatious, very good at stirring up trouble, and responsible for no small share of the later melodrama.

Right now, Shen Ji was in the next room, having his fill of him.

As for Jiao Bai—when Shen Ji had proposed the partner swap to Qi Yiliao, he'd made it clear he wouldn't be responsible for whatever happened to Jiao Bai tonight.

Jiao Bai paced back and forth across the room. If he wanted to save himself, he'd have to do it alone.

How, though? Jiao Bai smacked himself in the head with the phone. Calm down. He was a man who'd read the comic—he had a golden finger to work with. Think, quick!

Jiao Bai's gaze suddenly snapped to the window.

This place was Diye, the biggest entertainment club in South City, a playground for the upper crust.

Qi Yiliao had a private room here at Diye, and one of his character traits was a fear of heights—so his room was probably on a low floor?

Why not try climbing out the window and jumping down?

Jiao Bai bolted to the window and yanked the curtain aside—no security bars?! He leaned out and looked down. The first floor! It really was the first floor! Perfect, perfect, there was a way out after all!

The next instant, a sharp ache shot through his back teeth, and he silently stepped back.

What was Qi Yiliao's deal? Fine, he'd come here for a good time and posted his men outside the door—but outside the window too?!

And beyond that was an indoor courtyard.

A place as decadent as Diye, and it had a courtyard?? And what was with that huge stretch of tulips out there? The comic never mentioned any of this.

Click.

The bathroom door suddenly swung open from the inside.

Jiao Bai went rigid all over, every pore on his back snapping open at once. He was facing the bathroom door head-on, with no time at all to arrange his expression, and a wave of steam scented faintly sweet hit him full in the face.

The bathroom door swung gently shut behind him. The man in the gray bathrobe walked into the room. He looked to be in his thirties, tall and straight-backed, his black hair still damp, water dripping from the strands at his forehead and running down over his sharply defined brow bone.

Jiao Bai's mouth fell open, his eyes went wide, and he stared, dumbstruck, at the two-dimensional character now walking closer and closer, made flesh.

Qi Yiliao looked exactly like he did in the comic—except now, alive and three-dimensional, he was dazzling in a way no page could capture. The man carried himself easily, warmly, and yet there was an authority and elegance about him that was impossible to resist.

Jiao Bai's heart pounded, blood rushing to his head, his hands and legs going weak—this wasn't attraction. This was pure physiological panic.

His head spun, his vision doubled, and the light-headedness from his fever grew sharper.

"Qi—Qi—" Jiao Bai's tongue tangled, and he nearly choked on his own spit. He coughed a few times, and his voice came out even worse, like some warped, worn-out record player.

Jiao Bai's palms were sweating. He'd been reading comics for a long time, and he'd seen this exact setup play out before—usually, the protagonist would inherit the original body's memories. So why hadn't he?

What had the original Wang Chuqiu even called Qi Yiliao? Jiao Bai found it hard to breathe, on the verge of suffocating, as he mentally pulled out every form of address the comic had used for Qi Yiliao.

Master Qi. Chairman Qi. Uncle Qi. Mr. Qi. Third Brother.

He ruled out the least likely one first. That left four—any of which could work.

Jiao Bai tried tentatively: "Chairman Qi."

A gaze swept across the light and landed on him.

Cold sweat broke out on Jiao Bai instantly. Had he guessed wrong? Just as he was trying to figure out how to bluff his way through, the man walked past him and sat down on the sofa behind him.

"Why are you still here?" Qi Yiliao's voice was low and gentle, laced with confusion.

Jiao Bai's eyes went blank. So—wait, he was allowed to leave?? His head was still spinning, and he couldn't make sense of the situation at all, so he just stood there like an idiot.

"Mr. Shen and... aren't you two..."

"No need to worry about that." Qi Yiliao took a brown towel and ran it through his hair, the sleeve of his robe sliding up to reveal a stretch of forearm, pale wheat-toned, carrying the clean scent of grass after rain.

Was he serious? So he really didn't have to deal with it? Jiao Bai worked himself up for a moment, then put on an act, his voice catching in a fake sob: "Chairman Qi, you should just have me instead." He lowered his head, offering the man a slim, fragile expanse of the back of his neck.

"Don't be ridiculous. Old Shen had too much to drink—why would you take that seriously?" Qi Yiliao's brow furrowed as he spoke, then his stern tone softened. "I only agreed to his proposal because I didn't want the hassle of arguing with him. I have no interest of that kind. It was my people who misunderstood." He set the towel down on the back of a chair, his half-dry black hair slipping loose between his sharply defined fingers. "Go on. Go take a shower and get some proper sleep. Try to look at things clearly, figure out where you actually stand, and you'll spare yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble."

Qi Yiliao's tone carried all the concern of an elder—he was a man whose every gesture radiated warmth.

The room fell silent.

Jiao Bai lowered his head and looked at his own toes. This was nowhere near what he'd expected. In the comic, the original body had stayed here until the middle of the night before leaving and getting hit by a car. He'd been planning to slip out of the room the first chance he got, but there'd been no chance to slip anywhere—he'd run straight into Qi Yiliao. He'd still been trying to figure out how to handle it, and instead the man was telling him to leave, as if he'd expected him gone long ago and was surprised to find him still here. Jiao Bai tested the waters a little more and found no cracks in the story. It really did seem like Qi Yiliao had never intended for him to stay.

So what had happened to the original storyline?

Jiao Bai couldn't pin down where things had gone wrong, and with nothing else to go on, he ran through everything he knew about Qi Yiliao as a character.

Qi Yiliao's backstory was never spelled out. All the comic revealed was that he was a mature, magnetic man, head of a real estate empire in West City, with a string of lovers and never enough panel time—he barely appeared, and every time he did, he had some boy at his side: pretty ones, delicate ones, aggressive ones, plain ones, soft round ones, simple and earnest ones...

All kinds. What they had in common was that unmistakable look of a pet that had been thoroughly tamed.

Qi Yiliao's looks, his methods, his fortune, his worldliness, his sheer personal charisma—all top-tier. Wherever he appeared, he was the absolute center of attention. A man like that had no canon pairing, so the fans ran wild with their own ships, throwing him together with anyone and everyone, every heresy imaginable, even breaking up the official lead couple just to pair them with him instead.

Rumor had it the author's next work would star Qi Yiliao, but that got shot down pretty quickly—she said, in some fan group, that Qi Yiliao would never get a canon pairing. He belonged to the fans.

Jiao Bai felt something indescribable stir in him. He was a BE enthusiast—the kind who lived for "I love you, you don't love me, now you love me, but I don't love you anymore," or "you finally love me, and then I die" storylines, endlessly rewatchable. And on top of that, he was a lead-only shipper, the type who skipped straight past every supporting character's scenes. Back when he'd been following this comic, "Broken Wings," the only reason Qi Yiliao had even registered with him was that the art style had knocked him flat.

And it wasn't just Qi Yiliao—Jiao Bai had never skipped any of the author's supporting-cast panels, period. That face, those legs—god, every single line was doing acrobatics on his G-spot.

Now the 2D had become 3D, a real, living man standing right in front of him, and Jiao Bai had zero mental bandwidth left for ogling. His entire identity and situation had flipped upside down—staying alive came first.

Jiao Bai quietly ran the numbers in his head. Qi Yiliao's territory was West City; he'd only come to South City for Old Madam Shen's birthday, and once that was done, he'd be heading back.

If he could just latch onto Qi Yiliao somehow...

Jiao Bai's mind grew steadily sharper. Sure, there were other supporting characters who also had no stake in the main storyline and no romantic entanglement with the leads—but very few of them could get the Shen family to show them any real respect.

However he looked at it, Qi Yiliao was still his best bet.

If he could find a way to get to West City with Qi Yiliao, then getting free later would be a whole lot easier.

Since he'd landed in this comic world, he might as well live properly, and fight to keep living.

His life's starting line had shifted to this place—time to dream a new dream. Might as well dream big.

—He wanted to live to a ripe old age here, worry-free, for the rest of his days.

The instant that thought crossed Jiao Bai's mind, an electronic chime suddenly exploded inside his head.

[Player's survival-will value has broken through the critical threshold, and conviction in the dream being built has also reached the required standard. Click this link to activate your personal account.]

A link appeared out of thin air before Jiao Bai's eyes. He froze, stunned.

[Auto-activating in five seconds.]

[Five, four, three... latency too high, cache needs to be cleared again, please wait patiently.]

Jiao Bai: ...

This was one garbage server.

[Player account activated. Account: Jiao Bai. Default password: 000000. Logging in...]

Jiao Bai stared at the list now hovering right in front of him.

→ My friends 0/20.

Who could they even be? The thought had barely crossed his mind before the list opened, and twenty friends appeared in his field of vision.

Not a single one he recognized.

A chill crawled over Jiao Bai's scalp. Please don't let this be what he thought it was.

As if to confirm his fear, the very next second, a new line appeared below "My friends": "My Boyfriends 0/0."

Jiao Bai went stiff, staring at the names on the friend list.

Wait. No.

None of these were characters from the comic. Wrong—this was wrong, all wrong!

Jiao Bai screamed internally: System, Assistant, guardian, whatever the hell you're supposed to be, look at this, you've got a bug!!!!

[Warning! Detection complete: Player Jiao Bai's data does not match this world. Transport error. Returning player to the correct timeline immediately.]

[Warning! Warning! Player has already bonded with this world's dying Wang Chuqiu. Unbinding not possible. Return failed.]

Jiao Bai, still shaken, thought, well, at least that was over with.

Damn, at least he hadn't been sent to the world those twenty people came from instead—otherwise he'd have been living a life of complete and total incontinence.

[This world does not fall under the restricted-content category. Player Jiao Bai's account information requires updating.]

[Account updating...]

[Account update complete.]

→ My friends 1/1

- Qi Yiliao

Jiao Bai wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and let out a long breath. Whatever else was going on, he'd deal with it later—for now, having just one name sitting alone on that list put his mind considerably at ease.

[New friend being added...]

Jiao Bai: Bye-bye.