"Is Cancan awake? He only just got back from abroad, and it's the middle of winter. How did he fall into the water? He's really going to suffer now." Shen Can woke to a woman's voice thick with worry.
"Cancan, you're awake? Are you hungry? Mom will bring you something to eat right away. Then you can take your medicine." Only when she saw that Shen Can had woken did the woman finally smile. With that, she hurried off to fetch him food.
Before Shen Can could say anything, all he saw was her retreating back. Remembering what he had seen after falling into the water, he pressed a hand against his still-aching head.
He had never imagined that he had actually transmigrated into a novel. Yes, that was right: Shen Can wasn't from this world. He had been a game designer, and after finishing another game design, he had gone skiing in the snowy mountains to unwind.
Who knew that unwinding would turn into the ultimate rest? An avalanche had buried him. Once you were dead, you certainly couldn't get any more relaxed.
He had never expected to open his eyes again, but when he did, he was no longer in his own world. He had become someone else. Although his name and appearance were exactly the same, this definitely wasn't the world he had lived in before.
He had arrived in a hospital overseas. After receiving all of the original owner's memories, he learned that the young man had fallen off a cliff in an accident while camping. Once he recovered, he returned to his studies as normal.
He had arrived during his sophomore year, and by the time he graduated and returned home, he had spent three years here. In fact, ever since receiving those memories, he had felt an indescribable familiarity with this family.
But he had never managed to remember why. Who would have thought that accidentally falling into the water at the welcome-home party the Shen Household held for him would shock him into remembering everything?
Ugh, why did I have to end up in a novel? Fine, transmigrating was one thing, but why did I have to land in the villains' family?
It was a novel he had read in college. He remembered that their group had been assigned to design a small game, and one of the girls had recommended this novel.
She had suggested making a game where players could take on the role of a character in the book and change certain events, essentially making it a story-driven game.
But they hadn't gone through with the plan. It was only a group assignment, after all, and the idea was too ambitious. They didn't have the time or energy for it, let alone the funding.
Still, as the game designer, he had read the entire novel. He was responsible for designing the quests, so of course he needed to know the whole plot.
But once they decided against it, he had put it out of his mind. He had transmigrated into the Shen Household's fifth child, though technically he ought to have called Father Shen and Mother Shen his uncle and aunt.
He was actually the son of Father Shen's younger sister. His parents had died in an accident when he was little, so Father Shen had brought him home, registered him under his own household, and raised him.
Looking back now, Fifth Young Master Shen must have died during his sophomore year, which was why the Shen Household had only four young masters when the story began.
His head was full of game characters' names, and he had been overseas at the time without meeting his older brothers. A few vaguely familiar names hadn't sparked much curiosity. Besides, it had been a long time since he read the novel.
Before falling into the water, he had been standing beside the lake, feeding the fish. There were other people nearby, and two of them suddenly started arguing. The taller man wanted to soothe the shorter man and reached out to pull him into his arms.
The shorter man began struggling. Their argument had already disturbed Shen Can enough that he intended to leave. Just as he lifted his foot, the shorter man shoved the taller one away.
Then the shorter man ran toward him, wiping away tears. Perhaps he wasn't watching where he was going because of that, but he slammed into Shen Can and knocked him off balance. Shen Can's foot landed on a moss-covered rock, slipped, and sent him tumbling backward.
As he fell, he heard a man's voice. "Shen Keke, are you seriously not going to stop? You know I love you. My mom forced me to meet that woman today. Shen Keke, why can't you be a little more understanding?"
"If your family background weren't so ordinary, why would my mom..." He was cut off as Shen Keke shouted through his tears, "Zhou Jingxuan, how could you? I didn't want to come from a family like this either! I wish my family were good enough for yours too!"
At the time, only one thought filled Shen Can's head: Keke, or whatever your name is, damn you! Don't you know you just knocked into someone? Could you two turn around and check on the innocent victim here first? If you want to argue, can't you go home and do it?
Then the shock of falling into the water made him remember everything. He had actually transmigrated into a melodramatic, wealthy-family romance stuffed with every trope imaginable and plenty of sugary pampering-a novel with two male leads, where one ran and the other chased, and escape was impossible.
The top and bottom leads were the two men who had just been arguing. By this point, they had been together for a while, but the top's mother was fiercely opposed to their relationship.
She looked down on the bottom's ordinary family background. The top had been forced by his mother to attend a banquet with another woman, and the bottom had happened to see them. The two had a huge fight, though naturally they made up in the end.
As far as Shen Can was concerned, making up was inevitable. Every time the bottom ran away in this book, he never even made it out of A City. The farthest he got was an urban village within A City, and the top found him in two days, then brought him home for a thorough round of bedroom shenanigans.
It was also during this incident that the top learned of the bottom's connection to the Shen Household. Yes, the bottom was related to them by blood: he was the son of their grandfather's younger brother's son.
Why was their Shen Household wealthy while the bottom's family was merely ordinary? Because their great-grandfather had divided the family assets long ago. Everything they had now had been earned by their grandfather himself over several decades.
Had they been on good terms, the other branch certainly could have benefited. But their grandfather's younger brother had insisted that their great-grandfather's division of the assets was unfair. He felt that since their grandfather had left early to join the military, while he had stayed by their great-grandfather's side and cared for him, he should have received more.
Besides, his older brother was more capable than he was to begin with, so he should have taken less of the inheritance. Capable people ought to spare a thought for those who were less capable. They were family, after all.
But why should their grandfather have had to lose out? He had sent most of his military allowance home. The brothers had fallen out badly, and after their great-grandfather died, the two branches stopped seeing each other altogether.
Even by the time both their grandfather and his younger brother had died, the two families had never reconciled, so naturally the younger generations had no contact at all.
After everyone in the Shen Household was either dead, in a vegetative state, or missing, the Shen Corporation was swallowed up by the top's family. Meanwhile, Shen Keke married into the top's family with another major core project that the Shen Corporation hadn't yet launched, along with two plots of land worth over a hundred million, as his dowry.
Shen Can had seen tragic endings, but never one this tragic. How could they ruin an entire family without leaving even one person alive and well?
Although he hadn't actually spent much time with the Shen family in person, he had spoken with them often during his three years abroad, and every holiday, he had received gifts from the whole family. There was no way he could stand by and let them die.
Besides, he had finally landed a good life where he had money to spend without having to slave away at work. If anyone dared ruin it, he absolutely wouldn't stand for it.
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