Chapter 2

Jiao Bai watched, helpless, as the friends on his account ticked up from 1 to 8.

→ My Friends 1/8

The protagonist and all the important supporting characters from this comic were in that list. Right now, only Qi Yiliao was showing online.

Whether a friend counted as "online" seemed to be calculated by proximity, and Qi Yiliao happened to be right beside him at the moment.

Jiao Bai swept his eyes over the four grouping categories.

→ Fated Bond 0/0

→ Never Betray This Life 0/0

→ Guardian Through Lifetimes 0/0

→ Unforgettable 0/0

Jiao Bai's head spun; he was starting to forget what the words "life" and "lifetimes" even meant.

This was so much worse than the old grouping name. At least "My Boyfriends" had meant exactly what it said. What was this nonsense now — did those four labels even mean anything different from each other???

Jiao Bai blinked, and his account vanished, replaced by a long block of player instructions.

The gist of it: all of Jiao Bai's friends would be automatically sorted into groups based on how active he was with them. If his progress was too slow, a mandatory task would kick in directly. Once every group in the list had at least one person in it — once it was completely full — Jiao Bai would gain full control over this body and get to live his life exactly how he wanted.

Jiao Bai rolled his eyes on the inside. He'd wanted to get as far from the main plot as possible, as fast as possible, and now look at this — he was thoroughly screwed.

Guess he'd just have to take it step by step.

At least he could still check his friends' profiles, right? That counted as a cheat, didn't it.

Jiao Bai pulled up the account with his mind and found that Qi Yiliao's avatar was made of two panels stitched together. One panel took up two-thirds of the space: a cat, its fur a sickly white with no shine to it, eyes a pure gold, eyelids drooping, a red collar around its neck.

Something about it felt off. He looked closer and sucked in a breath.

That wasn't a collar. It was a thin wire, cinched brutally tight around the cat's throat, and that bright red wasn't dye — it was blood.

Jiao Bai's hand moved on its own, fingertips brushing through what should have been empty air, and he swore he actually felt the cat — soft fur, ice-cold to the touch. He snapped back to himself with a jolt and realized Qi Yiliao's profile panel was locked, a message telling him he'd need an activity value of 50 to unlock it. Right now it sat at 0.

"..." Some cheat this golden finger turned out to be.

Jiao Bai studied the second panel of Qi Yiliao's avatar, but it was too small to make anything out.

Was an avatar supposed to represent what was in someone's heart?

His attention drifted back to that activity value sitting at zero. From the look of things, it wasn't tallied by how many times you talked to someone — maybe it needed something more like a genuine connection, heart to heart?

Jiao Bai took a step back, eyes fixed on the list. The moment he crossed the doorway, Qi Yiliao's avatar went black, same as the other seven friends, along with a notification: Your friend Qi Yiliao has gone offline.

He edged forward a little, and the message flipped back to: Your friend Qi Yiliao is online.

After a few tries, Jiao Bai worked out the rough range — about five meters.

He snuck a glance at Qi Yiliao on the sofa. Thank god it only tracked activity and not something like intimacy — that would've been so much worse.

He did, after all, have a rebellious streak buried somewhere inside him. He wasn't the type to swallow being wronged — all these years his aunt had shot him dirty looks, and he'd always found a way to make her life a little less comfortable in return.

He also wasn't ever going to roll over and bare his belly to someone with zero guard up, just so they could pet him.

Jiao Bai caught Qi Yiliao lifting his water glass, his gaze drifting toward a tea canister sitting not far from him. Jiao Bai shifted his feet and passed the canister over.

Qi Yiliao set the glass down.

Jiao Bai kept his head lowered. He was standing, Qi Yiliao was sitting, and yet he couldn't glimpse so much as an inch of chest — Qi Yiliao wore that bathrobe like some old monk in monastic robes.

"Chairman Qi, if I leave now, Mr. Shen's going to blame me for it." Jiao Bai nearly gagged at the affected innocence in his own voice, then swallowed hard.

Qi Yiliao said, "I'll square things with him on my end."

The words tumbled out of Jiao Bai before he could stop them: "You squaring things with him has nothing to do with whether he blames me. Those are two completely different things."

Even the air brushing his cheek seemed to freeze solid. The consequences of that reflexive bit of back talk...

Was there still time to take it back?

Jiao Bai wasn't an actor; all he had were the survival tactics he'd worked out for himself. He covered his mouth to stifle a yawn, and the reflex tears that welled in his eyes made him look as though he was about to cry. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's good for me. Please don't be angry with me, Chairman Qi."

Qi Yiliao showed no sign of holding it against him, his tone still mild and even. "What's between you two isn't my place to interfere in. You're better off talking it out with Old Shen."

Jiao Bai tried to summon a bitter little laugh, but the emotion didn't land right, and it came out sounding sarcastic instead. He clamped his mouth shut and said nothing more.

"You really are something, kid..." Qi Yiliao shook his head, looking every bit like someone humoring an unreasonable child, faintly helpless about it.

Jiao Bai glanced at the list again — his and Qi Yiliao's activity value still sat at 0, unmoved, dead as a doornail.

A few moments later, his train of thought was cut off by a burst of ringing — a xun flute melody, made all the more mournful and lonely by the silence of the room.

"Answer that." Qi Yiliao, apparently finding the sound grating, spoke up, his expression turning a touch grim as he did.

Jiao Bai steadied himself, walked to the table, picked up the phone, and saw the caller ID: Li Jue, the protagonist shou. Li Jue himself had played the xun melody used as the ringtone.

Most of this comic unfolded from Li Jue's point of view. It opened with his life in the countryside. In this chapter, he got tired while doing his homework, spent a while zoning out at his old desk by the window, then grabbed his jacket and ran all the way to the village chief's house to borrow a phone and call his Brother Xiaoqiu. That was how the story led into the scene of the original owner of this body, Wang Chuqiu, speaking with him from a room at Diye.

That scene took up just one panel.

In the art, Qi Yiliao stood by the window toweling off his hair, while the original body knelt at his feet, one hand holding the phone, the other resting on a half-undone button, listening to Li Jue's voice on the other end, eyes brimming with love and tenderness — as if one word from Li Jue and he'd offer up his life and soul without hesitation.

Now that panel's contents had changed completely.

Qi Yiliao sat on the sofa typing on his laptop. Jiao Bai wasn't kneeling, hadn't undone any buttons — he stood gripping the phone with his back against the wall, eyes darting around, sharp and wary.

Jiao Bai's feelings were a mess. As a dedicated lead-only shipper, whatever comic he read, he always fell for the lead. But listening to that boyish voice on the phone now, he couldn't muster up any love for it at all.

Tonight, the original body would get hit by a car and die. A few days later, the protagonist shou would come in from the countryside to collect the body of this neighboring brother of his, and by sheer chance run into the scum gong, Shen Er'an, falling for him at first sight — kicking off a saga of tragic love and three metric tons of melodrama.

In this comic, the character Wang Chuqiu was, frankly, nothing but a pawn.

"Brother Xiaoqiu, when are you coming back to see me?" Li Jue's voice was small, threaded with muffled sobs, pitiful enough to tug at anyone's heart. "I miss you."

Jiao Bai was too busy fretting over every step he'd have to take next, on top of feeling wretched from the fever, body and mind both worn thin. He had no patience left to coddle the protagonist shou and answered vaguely, "Not sure. I'll let you know when I have time."

Li Jue stopped sniffling and asked, sharp with concern, "Are you working yourself too hard?"

Jiao Bai: "..."

"Brother Xiaoqiu, why do you push yourself so hard? You can never earn all the money in the world," Li Jue's mutter carried a note of resentment. "No matter what I say, you never listen. You're supposed to be in school right now, and instead you insist on working yourself to the bone out of town. You'll regret it someday, I promise you will."

"Don't send me any more money — I don't want it!" Li Jue paused, then let out a short, aggrieved cry.

Jiao Bai's teeth ached at that. The original body had sent every cent he earned selling himself to this little white moonlight of his, splitting it into small amounts and mailing it separately so as not to raise suspicion.

Pathetic.

Jiao Bai gave a silent, cold laugh. Fine, don't want it, then — your Brother Xiaoqiu here was going to start saving up for the day he made a run for it.

A thread of cigarette smoke drifted into the air, and something in Jiao Bai's mind pulled taut. The comic revolved entirely around the lead — the rest of tonight's events would apparently come out later, through Li Jue eavesdropping through a wall in the third- or fourth-to-last chapter, including the identity of whoever had been behind the wheel of that black car.

Jiao Bai hung up the phone and glanced at the wall to his left. Not a sound from next door — the soundproofing here really was excellent. No telling which round Shen Ji was on by now.

He checked the time on his phone — not even nine yet. How exactly had the original body managed to stick around past midnight, given how many times Qi Yiliao had tried to shoo him out?

"Chairman Qi, I'll head out now." Jiao Bai decided to pry himself loose from this passive position, if only a little. He wanted to run a small experiment, to see just what hidden circumstances might be lurking here.

Qi Yiliao, cigarette between his lips, kept his head bent over his work. A faint vermilion mole sat on the left side of the bridge of his nose, sensual and refined all at once. "All right. Be careful on your way."

Jiao Bai pressed his lips together and opened the door. As the saying went, birds of a feather flock together — Qi Yiliao was one of Shen Ji's close friends, and the head of the Qi family of West City. Was he really this easygoing? Yeah, right.

All he could say was that, so far, compared to Shen Ji, Qi Yiliao at least seemed human.

Jiao Bai ignored the bodyguards outside. He merely caught, along with the notification chime of a friend logging on, a glimpse of Qi Yiliao's right-hand man — Zhang Zhen.

This guy was on his friends list too. No telling which group he'd end up sorted into.

Jiao Bai looked a bit longer at Zhang Zhen's avatar — a scatter of colorful blocks, some big, some small.

If you put them all together...

Wouldn't that make candy?

Zhang Zhen didn't spare Jiao Bai so much as a glance, eyes fixed straight ahead, utterly composed, skin smooth enough to squeeze water from, fists hard enough to drop a bull. Jiao Bai thought to himself: here was a gorgeous man walking a knife's edge for a living.

No telling whether Qi Yiliao ever got involved with someone in his own circle.

Jiao Bai quickened his pace, still turning over how he'd dodge the black car waiting for him outside Diye, when a hand suddenly seized him and dragged him into a room.

"Why'd it take you so long to get here — didn't we say eight, back in the bathroom? You did that on purpose to make me wait, didn't you? Get over here and serve me!" The boy sounded impatient, almost frantic. "Screw it, once Brother An's dad finds him a new little stepmom and kicks you to the curb, I'll keep you myself. I've got plenty of money."

Not a shred of that was believable. The kid was riding high on hormones, clearly just wanting to get off as fast as possible.

And what happened after he'd gotten off — well, there was no after. Jiao Bai was just an object to be used.

Fury flared up in Jiao Bai. So this was the hidden part of tonight's events — Qi Yiliao hadn't touched the original body that night because he'd gotten caught here, played with, and then let go...

What was this kid's name, the one with a fistful of his hair? Jiao Bai narrowed his eyes, thinking. Oh, right, it was coming back to him — Liang Dong, Shen Er'an's ride-or-die friend. Later on, Liang Dong would become one of the devoted male supporting characters vying for Li Jue's affection.

Jiao Bai felt his own body temperature climbing even higher. He couldn't keep his footing, hot breath puffing out of him. "Come closer. Look at me."

"What," Liang Dong said, shoving Jiao Bai down, face twisting with disgust the instant he heard that. "You're not thinking about kissing me, are you? Did a donkey kick your brain loose? I'm not putting my mouth anywhere near your nasty spit—"

Jiao Bai grabbed Liang Dong's head and yanked him close, and while the boy was still frozen in confusion, bent his knee and drove it upward, hard, right between his legs.

Then he ran.

Seeing stars, Jiao Bai retraced his steps, only to find Qi Yiliao coming out of the room ahead of him.

Behind him came Liang Dong, legs clamped together, hands cupping his crotch, teeth gritted, face twisted with murder, looking ready to kill him. But the moment Liang Dong caught sight of Qi Yiliao, his whole demeanor flipped — like a mouse spotting a wolf — and he turned tail and bolted, his face awash with fear.

Jiao Bai shut his eyes. Right now, he was nothing but a slab of meat on someone else's chopping block, and everyone got to decide how he'd be cooked. A string of curses ran through his head.

Right at that moment, a flood of memories that didn't belong to him surged into his mind. He staggered, caught himself, and pressed forward anyway.

The original body had been a doormat, the kind who only ever endured, went along with whatever, never fought back against whatever fate handed him — better to let things be than to make trouble, that had been his whole philosophy of life.

But it was Jiao Bai occupying this body now, and Jiao Bai dealt with people differently.

Still some distance away, Jiao Bai swayed and dropped face-first to the floor, then began crawling, inch by inch, toward Qi Yiliao.

The original plan had been to hitch a ride out on the other man's car while he had the chance. Instead, he'd overestimated what this body could handle — he hadn't crawled far before his vision went black and he passed out.

Qi Yiliao rubbed his brow. "Go knock on the door."

Zhang Zhen acknowledged the order, walked to the door next door, rapped on it a few times, and announced in a perfectly measured tone, "Mr. Shen, Young Master Xiaoqiu has fainted."

No response.

Zhang Zhen glanced at his employer, then dug up the number for Little Chili Pepper in the "203508" group, sorted by year and month, and called, asking him to put it on speaker so he could repeat the message.

"Don't bother. Just leave him wherever." Shen Ji's voice came through the phone, cold and flat, edged with a low ragged breath, mixed in with a sickly-sweet, high-pitched moan in the background.

Shen Ji's response didn't strike Zhang Zhen or the bodyguards as strange in the slightest. They'd seen this kind of scene plenty of times before. Old Madam Shen had made her wishes clear — the man lying on the floor was one of the candidates being considered for the position of Mrs. Shen.

Just one candidate among several, at that.

And besides, even if he really did end up as Mrs. Shen, so what.

Just as Zhang Zhen bent down to haul the man off the floor, his hand met a burning heat.

The man was awake, running a high fever.

Jiao Bai clung to Zhang Zhen's hand, mouth working, voice raw and hoarse, grating on the ear. "Brother, are you going to take me home?"

Zhang Zhen met that pair of fever-flushed eyes and felt a jolt of astonishment. Given this person's circumstances, shouldn't he be numb with despair? So why did those eyes seem to radiate an endless well of vitality and hope? Zhang Zhen faltered for a moment, then, without quite meaning to, found himself nodding. "...Yes."

He came back to himself, glanced down at the young man who'd passed out again but was still gripping him tight, and felt a flicker of confusion. Why had he just agreed to that?

And besides — why had this person called him "brother"?

They'd only met for the first time that afternoon, and back then this same man had trailed after Shen Ji with his eyes lowered, not even greeting him.

Zhang Zhen moved to lift the man off the ground.

Beside him, Qi Yiliao looked down from where he stood, his usual refined, gentle expression unbroken. "Ah Zhen, keep your distance from that filth. Don't get yourself dirty."