"Yi Yi, sign this contract, and you'll be our company's legal representative."
"I'm-not-signing."
"What did you say?" The man stood up, finding it unbelievable.
A slender, cool-pale hand, with smoothly tapered, bony fingers and pink fingertips, gently pushed the contract away.
The café's light fell over the boy's handsome features, as though adding a warm, soft glow, bringing a little life to his cool-pale face.
"Lost your brain, and now you're deaf too? There's a top-tier hospital to the left outside. Neurology's on the third floor. You're welcome."
"Are you messing with me?" The expression of the man in the expensive suit changed abruptly. Under the overhead light, his Yingjun face looked somewhat callous. "Li Yi, you'd better think carefully about what happens if you offend me!"
"Even if you play pitiful again, crying and begging, I won't ever..."
"Pay attention to me again? You keep coming back to the same few lines of bullshit.
"Who do you think you are?
"Go borrow an antenna from the Teletubbies and figure out your place!
"Zhou Xuanze, you're the one begging me right now!
"When I treat you like a human being, please try your best to act like one. Otherwise, next time I'll just call you an animal!"
"How dare you insult me!" Beside himself with rage, Zhou Xuanze pointed at the door and roared, "We're breaking up! Li Yi, we're over!"
"Here's to being single! Cheers!" Li Yi smiled, raised the coffee beside him, and downed it in one go.
Under Zhou Xuanze's stunned gaze, he turned and walked out, brisk and decisive.
At six in the evening, the sunset's lingering glow painted the sky fiery red, and the evening breeze carried a touch of warmth.
This was the setting sun, the light of dawn, and Li Yi's new beginning.
Li Yi had been reborn.
Reborn at the beginning of the con.
The moment he took hold of the pen, fragments flooded his mind.
As it turned out, he was merely a minor cannon-fodder character in a wealthy-family novel with a universally adored protagonist.
The bottom protagonist, Lu Junjia, was the fake young master who had lived with the Lu family in his place for over a decade. He was a pure, kind first love, the Lu family's thoughtful, sensible youngest son, an understanding childhood sweetheart, and a treasure everyone cherished in the palms of their hands.
Everyone who met him was drawn to his kindness and goodness.
The top protagonist, Zhou Xuanze, had liked Lu Junjia since childhood. To help him obtain the shares that belonged to the real young master, the two colluded and played Li Yi for a fool.
In his previous life, Zhou Xuanze had first approached him deliberately and persuaded him to enter a marriage alliance with the Zhou family. Using his position as Li Yi's fiancé to gain his trust, he had started a company with him and had him sign the legal representative agreement.
In the end, the company ran into trouble again and again. As its legal representative, Li Yi was left isolated and helpless, expelled from school, reviled by the public, and facing the risk of prison.
Yet it was then that Lu Junjia offered to find a way to save him, so long as Li Yi handed over the Lu Group shares his grandfather had given him.
To protect himself, Li Yi surrendered the shares and pinned his hopes on Lu Junjia.
The very next day, however, he saw his fiancé, who had said he was working on a solution, kissing Lu Junjia in the kitchen as if no one else were there.
The servants and the Lu family were accustomed to it. Before long, they publicly announced a marriage alliance between the two families: Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia would soon be engaged.
Having finally returned from the police station, Li Yi had wanted to let his family and fiancé know he was safe, only to discover the truth at that moment.
The promised marriage alliance had been with Lu Junjia from the very beginning. Zhou Xuanze had merely used it as a pretext to deceive him all along.
Their goal had always been the shares his grandfather had left him.
On the day Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia got engaged, Li Yi suffered a manic episode, huddling alone in a corner of his bed, crying one moment and laughing the next.
That day, only the elderly butler stayed beside his bed, feeding him a few mouthfuls of water through his tears.
In contrast to Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia's happiness, Li Yi spent a stretch of his life in a daze. The Lu family had intended to send him to a psychiatric hospital, but Lu Junjia stopped them.
Because the mole below the corner of Li Yi's mouth closely matched the eldest young master of the Shi family's description of his cherished first love.
At the time, the Lu family urgently needed to secure a business partnership with the Shi family. And so, the last bit of use was wrung out of Li Yi, and he was packaged up and given to the novel's main villain, Shi Yan, the eldest young master of the Shi family.
"Pah! What a load of shit." Li Yi kicked the wheel of a car by the roadside hard. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. His brain must have been stuffed with paper in his previous life for him to have fallen for a thing like Zhou Xuanze!
Beep, beep, beep.
The car he had kicked beeped, then its street-facing window slowly lowered, revealing a sharply defined, cool face so handsome it was striking.
"The latest Pagani. I haven't even been driving it for an hour."
"What? Do you need me to get you a banner, take pictures, and congratulate you on your new car?" Li Yi glared at him. He couldn't afford a car, but surely he could afford a banner?
"If the tire's damaged, a replacement will need to be shipped from Italy. The tire, shipping, and compensation for my lost working time will run into the millions."
"Heh." He had already died once. Did this man think he would be afraid?
Li Yi spread his hands. "I don't have any money. Go find my parents. You know the Lu Group, right? Absolutely loaded. Step on the gas and you'll be there in ten minutes. Go on."
"You're... Lu Junjia?" The man frowned slightly, seemingly not very fond of the Lu family.
"Don't go spouting nonsense. I'm this good-looking. How could I be that ugly thing, Lu Junjia?"
Li Yi's face was full of disdain. "That ugly thing Lu Junjia is the Lu family's adopted son. I'm their biological son. Didn't you know?"
Hadn't the Lu family always refused to acknowledge him publicly?
Then he would announce it himself!
"No. After all, the Lu family has never said so publicly." A hint of amusement suddenly appeared on the man's previously cold face. "Why does it seem like you're not very fond of the Lu family?"
"How could that be? You have no idea how much I love the Lu family. They're my own flesh-and-blood parents!" Li Yi looked at the luxury car creeping along beside him, displeasure showing on his face. "Why do you keep following me? I already told you I don't have any money. If you want money, go ask the Lu Group."
"I have to confirm whether you're telling the truth. If you aren't actually a member of the Lu family, wouldn't I be making the trip for nothing?"
"Then I..."
"Li Yi!" Zhou Xuanze rushed out of the café and sneered at him. "Li Yi, no wonder you dared to challenge me just now, refused to sign the contract, and couldn't wait to break up. So you'd already hooked up with the Shi family's eldest young master.
"I really underestimated you!"
"You're Shi Yan?" Li Yi froze, looking at the man in the luxury car. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"
"You didn't ask." The man looked entirely innocent.
"Stop putting on an act in front of me, you two. The esteemed eldest young master of the Shi family, stealing someone's fiancé? If word gets out, it'll be the Shi family losing face." Zhou Xuanze snorted.
"Shi Yan, if you keep me now, you can save yourself two years of detours and cut out the middleman's markup. Then it'll be the Zhou and Lu families losing face," Li Yi suggested with a smile.
Before you continue