Gentle Control was an urban ** novel tagged "angsty romance," "taking by force," "a deranged gong," and "a shou too pitiful to behold."
By all rights, a straight guy like Song Yu would never have touched this novel in his life. The trouble was that one of its supporting characters shared his name.
For that very reason, his younger cousin had slyly recommended the book to him.
[Bro, there's someone in this book with the same name as you.]
[Want to try opening the door to a whole new world?]
Song Yu happened to be hospitalized and had nothing to do. He raised an eyebrow and started reading.
The plot of Gentle Control was divided into two parts.
The first part took place in high school, when the protagonist was a pitiful little thing.
The protagonist's mother had been naive and ignorant. In her youth, the scumbag Third Young Master Xie had sweet-talked her into bed, making her his mistress.
When Third Young Master Xie's wife found out, she flew into a jealous rage, had the protagonist's mother disfigured, and drove her out of A City.
Unable to accept reality, the protagonist's mother jumped off a building on her seventh night in the new city, right in front of the three-year-old protagonist.
It was easy to imagine the psychological scars this left on Xie Sui.
In the end, an elderly woman who lived across the hall, with no children or grandchildren of her own, took pity on him and adopted him.
The environment Xie Sui grew up in was full of malice. Brats in the same building bullied him, and women in the neighborhood pointed fingers behind his back. They speculated about his mother with the worst possible intentions, saying she had jumped to her death because she had caught a disease selling herself, and that he probably wasn't clean either.
Old buildings, cramped alleys, a potholed wet market, and all kinds of vicious gossip made up his warped childhood.
These experiences left Xie Sui deeply insecure and fragile, also laying the groundwork for him to keep falling for scumbags over the slightest bit of warmth later on.
The story began when Xie Sui entered high school.
With the highest high school entrance exam score in the city, Xie Sui got into an elite class at Jingcheng No. 1 High School.
There were two types of students in the elite class: those with outstanding grades and those from exceptionally privileged families.
It would have been one thing if Xie Sui merely belonged to the former group. The problem was that he had also inherited his mother's beauty. Aloof and strikingly handsome, he caught the attention of a perverted rich second-generation kid in his class the moment he enrolled. The rich kid found new ways to harass him in class every day, constantly spewing vicious remarks. The others egged him on, and the teachers turned a blind eye.
Xie Sui stayed silent, pretending he heard none of it. Until the rich kid escalated things and brought up his mother one day: "With a slutty face like yours, was your mom a whore?" It was as though someone had touched Xie Sui's reverse scale. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he lashed out viciously, nearly beating the boy to death that day.
He received a schoolwide disciplinary notice over the incident. Humiliated and furious, the rich kid came to thoroughly hate him.
That was when gong one appeared. Gong one was the rich kid's older cousin, a playboy in the capital who would take anyone to bed. He had only come to Jingcheng No. 1 High School to hide from his family's old patriarch, and he took a fancy to Xie Sui at first sight. He found Xie Sui's aloofness particularly seductive and began teasing and flirting with him in every way he could. Putting on a gentle front, he indulged his cousin's wrongdoing, then timed his entrances to play the savior and win Xie Sui's affection.
Xie Sui had received nothing but coldness and malice all his life. This was the first time someone had protected and respected him like this. Gradually, he grew confused and began to fall for him. Without even knowing whether this was love, he was exceptionally docile and did whatever gong one said.
But gong one stayed true to his playboy character. Once the aloof beauty fell for him, he stopped being interesting. Having tired of him, and just about to leave C City anyway, he glanced at his eagerly watching cousin and said with a smile, "You like him? Then he's yours."
At this point, Song Yu's expression froze, and three question marks slowly surfaced in his mind: "???"
And so, the year Xie Sui graduated from high school, gong one tricked him into going to the rich kid's apartment, where he was drugged and nearly □□.
Song Yu: "..." He suddenly felt very thirsty and wanted a glass of water.
Fortunately, Xie Sui was reckless with his own life, and no one could stop him when he turned vicious. He knocked the rich kid unconscious with a wine bottle and escaped home. But when he got there, terrible news awaited him. His grandmother had gone out looking for him because he was so late coming home, and a car had hit her, leaving her paralyzed.
That was the last straw for Xie Sui. In that moment, the seventeen-year-old boy felt as though he had plunged into an abyss.
His grandmother wasn't dead, but her medical bills were astronomical. After starting university, Xie Sui began working part-time day and night. That included working at a club, where he was humiliated and sexually harassed, and where he met gong two.
Gong two was a CEO. He froze the first time he saw Xie Sui, because Xie Sui looked like the white moonlight in his heart...
"..."
His throat dry with anger, Song Yu poured himself another glass of water.
What the fuck was wrong with this bunch of morons-if you're sick, get treatment; if you aren't, go catch something, okay?
He skimmed through what followed, because gong two's routine was much the same as gong one's. In short, Xie Sui was one miserable guy.
Another round of physical and emotional torment followed. During this stretch, Song Yu gulped down two more glasses of water.
The plot began to get satisfying when Xie Sui returned to the Xie Family.
It turned out that Third Young Master Xie had loved Xie Sui's mother deeply all along and felt terribly guilty toward him. To make it up to him, he even gave him the entire Xie Family.
By then, Xie Sui had cut himself off from love completely, abandoned those scumbags, and gone abroad.
When he returned three years later, he had become a true favored son of heaven, the head of the Xie Family.
Distinguished in bearing, outstandingly handsome, and utterly distant and cold, he was the capital's newly risen elite whom society's young ladies flocked after.
That was when gong one and gong two began to regret their actions, gong three appeared, and the trouble started all over again.
These three big shots, now at the top of the financial world, were filled with remorse in the face of Xie Sui's cold indifference. Driven mad, they agreed on a plan-even if they had to destroy him, they would have him. So they joined forces, brought down the Xie Family, imprisoned Xie Sui, and began their forced love affair. That brought things back to the tag "taking by force." The comment section had gone mad along with them: "Waaah, finally!" "I just love seeing gorgeous beauties bullied!" "Dark room! Dark room!"
"Fucking idiots."
Song Yu downed his last glass of water, tossed the crumpled plastic cup into the trash, exited the novel, and opened his chat with his cousin.
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: You're done for. Say goodbye to your summer vacation.]
Song Lan replied instantly.
[Lanlan doesn't like you: ???]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: Wh-wh-what happened, bro? We can joke around all you want, but don't joke about summer vacation, waaah.]
Song Yu scoffed.
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: Don't cry, little cousin. That really doesn't work on me.]
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: I finished Gentle Control. Little Song Lan, I think your way of thinking is very dangerous. You urgently need a set of Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Mock Exams to clear your head. I'll tell your mom. Good luck this summer.]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: [Confused Black Man.jpg]]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: Don't!!!! My dear, dear brother!!!!! What did I do wrong this time?]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: I only read a completely smut-free BL novel!!!]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: There weren't even any blood donations, kidney donations, or womb removals! What gives you the right to say my political thinking is incorrect! Waaah, I think I'm even more miserable than Xie Sui.]
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: Blood donations, kidney donations, womb removals?]
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: Very good. This summer, I'll come to your house specifically to tutor you, so you can experience your older cousin's burning love in the summer heat :)]
Song Lan broke down and sent him a line of text. He could feel her fury through the screen!
[Lanlan doesn't like you: Gu Beiyu! You're so cruel!]
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: Who's Gu Beiyu?]
[Lanlan doesn't like you: ...You. No!!! Your future husband!!!!!]
Having inexplicably acquired a husband, Song Yu didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This little brat was rebelling.
[Brother Song is invincibly handsome: You're still young. Read fewer webnovels and do more math problems. I've arranged a set of Tianli's Thirty-Eight Practice Tests for you too :)]
Song Lan: ...Fuck you, why?
Song Yu closed the chat with a smile.
She would be starting her final year of high school next semester, and the girl still wouldn't let anyone stop worrying about her.
He went out to use the bathroom, then came back and lay down to sleep. Before falling asleep, he recalled the book's plot, shook his head, and scoffed.
The character Song Lan had said shared his name was actually cannon fodder who appeared for fewer than two chapters.
He and the protagonist had been childhood sweethearts before the age of six, after which he went abroad to recuperate. His sole purpose was to reunite with the protagonist overseas, tell him a few things about the past, and say, "Your mother loved you very much. Don't hate her," allowing Xie Sui to let go of the past.
He had thought this was nothing more than a minor interlude in his life of recuperation.
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that when he woke up the next day, he would have transmigrated into the book as this sickly Song Yu, who appeared in no more than three chapters and died young.