“No wonder you're still such a useless, good-for-nothing fool after all these years! How could a son of mine, Qin Shaofen, be this worthless?”
“I hear Qingbai topped the college entrance exam even while living in the countryside. Next to him, you're not fit to carry his shoes!”
“You can stop calling yourself the Gu family's eldest young master. From now on, this family has only one heir: Gu Qingbai.”
“Gu Zai'an, get out!”
The chandelier overhead seemed to flicker. Gu Zai'an was thoroughly confused.
Hadn't he been working at the restaurant? A customer had complained that he wasn't turning the food quickly enough and tried doing it herself. Hot oil had splashed her hand, and she had blamed him.
What had happened after that?
Oh, right. Her hulking husband had shoved him over with one hand. The back of his head seemed to have struck the corner of a table.
After that, he remembered nothing.
He tried to make sense of his present situation, but Qin Shaofen gave him no chance.
A forceful grip seized both his arms and dragged him backward through the doorway.
Everything suddenly grew dark. Only then did he realize it wasn't daytime.
He opened his eyes and finally took in his surroundings.
He was in the front courtyard of the Gu villa. Too weak to struggle, he was dragged along like a corpse and dumped outside the gate by the bodyguards.
The well-made gate closed without much noise.
A sharp pain stabbed through his temples. Gu Zai'an raised a hand to press them. The next second, a mechanical voice bursting with delight exploded inside his head.
[Dear host! The system detected that you desperately need money, so we've recruited you to the World Oversight Bureau as a World Inspector!]
[Complete your assignment and receive a ten-million-yuan allowance!]
The inexplicable voice felt as though it was stirring his brains. His vision spun, and nausea doubled him over in dry heaves.
Then a bee no bigger than a fingertip emerged from his head. It circled him several times, saw no improvement, and tapped its front legs together. [Host reluctance detected. Withdrawing host from the world immediately. Host will die at once!]
Gu Zai'an stopped retching. Bracing himself against the wall, he managed to stand. “I never said I wouldn't do it!”
[Then that's a yes! Transferring the original owner's memories... Please wait!]
Gu Zai'an tilted his head suspiciously. An even fiercer pain shot straight through his skull, and suddenly his mind held memories that weren't his own.
The body's original owner shared his name, Gu Zai'an. He had grown up in the Gu family, but his disagreeable nature had earned his parents' contempt. Eventually, he had simply stopped trying, spending his days eating, drinking, and partying without doing anything useful.
Then, when he was nineteen, Shen Qingbai, the Gu family's true son, had been found and brought home.
Today, the original owner had happened to return from a bar reeking of alcohol. It had been enough to infuriate Mrs. Gu, who promptly threw him out.
That was the moment Gu Zai'an entered his body.
Call him unlucky, and heaven had just handed him a chance to earn ten million.
Call him lucky, and the original owner's eventual fate was too horrific to contemplate.
That troublemaking idiot had held such a grudge over being thrown out that he planned to drug Gu Qingbai and have him sexually assaulted.
But before the plan could succeed, the female lead discovered it and drugged him instead. In the end, she flayed him and tore out his tendons, leaving him to die in agony.
Once Gu Zai'an learned how the original owner ended up, he decided to run immediately. He wanted nothing to do with that unhinged heroine.
He opened a booking app and selected a flight to the United States, only to get stuck at the payment screen.
Then came the little bee's merciless warning.
[Intent to leave the storyline detected. Immediate death! Immediate death!]
Gu Zai'an pressed a hand to his forehead. “Fine. I'm not going anywhere. Happy?”
The bee circled him twice and stopped in front of him. A transparent panel appeared behind it.
His first task was written plainly across it.
[Ensure that the female and male leads meet for the first time and develop mutual romantic feelings within three days.]
Remembering his appointed fate made Gu Zai'an's skin crawl. In short, this assignment was asking him to go and die.
Gu Zai'an feared nothing except death.
If he had reacted in time when that customer shoved him, he would have dragged the man down to cushion his fall.
He thought for a while without coming up with anything useful, then looked at the Gu family's gate.
No luxurious villa for him tonight. A hotel it was.
He chose an extremely luxurious hotel and took a taxi over. But when he swiped his card at check-in, the receptionist smiled. “I'm sorry. Your card doesn't appear to be working.”
Gu Zai'an tried another. That didn't work either.
Seriously? He had only just been kicked out. Had Qin Shaofen already frozen every last card?
He opened WeChat. A lonely 0.03 sat on his balance screen.
Wait. The original owner had at least been a rich young master once. How was his balance more ridiculous than Gu Zai'an's own impoverished finances?
What was he supposed to do tonight? Actually sleep on the street?
He wandered aimlessly into a park. It was pitch-black, without a single streetlight. Only a faint yellow glow drifted from the stairwells of nearby residential buildings.
Gu Zai'an sighed, picked a bench, and lay down.
He had barely closed his eyes when he heard rustling in the bushes behind him.
Sitting up, he stared warily toward the sound. That was when he spotted a white shape in the undergrowth.
His heart sank.
A... ghost?
Wasn't he still alive? Had everything that just happened been some hallucination before death?
He swallowed nervously and edged backward.
Just then, a hand emerged and parted the bushes. Through the gap, Gu Zai'an saw a pair of bright eyes.
Beautiful eyes.
He had never seen eyes so lovely. Without meaning to, he lost himself in them.
The hand withdrew. Then a head poked out of the bushes, bringing a fair, boyish, handsome face into view.
Gu Zai'an pointed at him, covering his mouth in alarm. “What are you doing hiding in the bushes and scaring people, kid?”
Gu Qingbai flinched at the shout. He stood up, fidgeting with his fingers, and apologized cautiously. “I'm sorry. I'm lost. I didn't mean to scare you.”
Seeing how pitiful he looked, Gu Zai'an couldn't bring himself to scold him further. He coughed twice and adopted a grown-up tone. “Kids shouldn't wander around in the middle of the night. The police are off duty. I don't even know where to take you.”
“Where do you live?”
Gu Qingbai shook his head. “I don't know.”
“You don't know? Then where did you come from?”
“The mountains.” Gu Qingbai looked innocent.
Gu Zai'an was shocked. Then it all clicked.
He must have been trafficked and escaped from the mountains. No wonder he was hiding in the bushes—he was afraid of being found.
Gu Zai'an patted his shoulder in reassurance. When those especially forlorn eyes met his, his heart softened after all.
“Fine. Worst case, I'll take out an online loan.”
He muttered it under his breath.
Gu Qingbai lowered his eyes in puzzlement. “What?”
“Nothing. Come on. I'll take you somewhere to rest.”
“Oh. Okay.” Gu Qingbai stepped down from the raised grassy bed and stood beside him.
Gu Zai'an realized they were the same height, though that face really didn't look like an adult's.
He shook his head and headed back into the expensive hotel.
One night. A standard twin room. Two thousand yuan!
Rich people could go to hell!
On the verge of tears, Gu Zai'an lay down to make the most of a bed that cost a thousand yuan a night. “I'm going to sleep. I'll take you to the police station tomorrow.”
Gu Qingbai nodded.