Xu Yan refused to accept reality.
He stared at the student ID for nearly a minute before setting it back down on the bedside table, his hands still trembling. Then he picked it up again, as if a second look might change what was printed on it.
The name hadn't changed.
[Xu Yan.]
"..."
[Maybe it's a prank?] Though even as the idea formed he knew it didn't hold up. [Who spends this much money on a prank?] [If this is Chen Yu, I'm suing.]
A knock came from outside again.
"Young Master Xu? You've already delayed breakfast by ten minutes."
Xu Yan went rigid.
[Breakfast? Young master?]
His brain finally caught up with the room around him, and he practically threw himself out of bed. The space was nothing like his cramped dorm — warm-toned walls, furniture that looked expensive just sitting there, a bookshelf running the length of one wall, and a desk so spotless it might never have been touched.
He drifted to the window and pulled the curtain back.
A garden sprawled below. A fountain. A long driveway lined with cars that probably cost more than his old apartment building.
He closed the curtain again, quietly.
[Even the trees here have money,] he thought, a little dazed. [No wonder the ceiling looked rich.]
Then his eyes landed on the full-length mirror in the corner, and something in his chest tightened. He hesitated for a moment before crossing the room toward it.
The young man staring back had soft black hair, pale unmarked skin, and features so fine they almost didn't look real. His eyes carried a faint, sleepy heaviness that made him seem harmless rather than striking, and the oversized pajamas only added to the effect, making him look younger than he probably was.
Xu Yan blinked. The reflection blinked with him.
He leaned to the left. It leaned too.
"...Huh."
He pinched his own cheek, hard enough to hurt, and yelped.
It hurt.
He was really here.
He looked at the mirror one more time — closer this time, then closer still, studying the face like it belonged to a stranger. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wanted very badly to have a word with a certain author.
[Author.] [Come here.] [I just want to talk.]
Because the novel had described Cannon Fodder Xu Yan in exactly eight words: plain-looking, easily forgotten, almost ugly.
He looked back at the mirror.
"...Ugly?" He pointed at his own reflection, incredulous. "Me?"
He turned his face slowly from one side to the other, weighing the evidence, and arrived at a verdict.
"The author needs glasses." A pause. "No — the author needs an entire ophthalmology department."
He wasn't being vain. He genuinely wasn't. Even in his old life, if he'd passed someone with this face on campus, he would have turned around for a second look without meaning to.
"So this," he murmured, "is what passes for ugly around here. Understood. The beauty standards in this novel are completely broken."
He was still admiring the unfair miracle of his new face when a flood of memories that weren't his own came crashing in without warning.
"...!"
He grabbed the edge of the desk to keep his knees from buckling.
This body. This family. This university. Every detail slotted into place with the precision of something he'd read a hundred times — because he had. It was all [Crimson Hearts].
His expression went very still.
"...Wait."
He stopped breathing for a second.
Another memory surfaced, uglier than the rest: a traffic accident. Paparazzi swarming. The two leads of the story screaming at each other in the middle of the road. A car, coming in fast.
And a background character named Xu Yan, standing in exactly the wrong place.
Dead.
"..."
"...I'm dead," he said out loud, to no one. Then, quieter, "No — I'm *going* to die."
He slid down the side of the desk until he was sitting on the floor, all the strength gone out of his legs.
He remembered the line from the book almost word for word: *The bystander, Xu Yan, died on the spot.* That was the whole of it. No funeral. No one mourning him. No follow-up, ever. Three paragraphs, and then the story simply moved on without him.
He hugged his knees to his chest.
[Brother.] [No.] [Me.] [Our life is so cheap,] he thought, and for once there wasn't any humor in it at all.
He sat like that for a long while, saying nothing, before finally tipping his head back to look at the ceiling.
"...Author." His voice came out small. "I can explain. That one-star review — that wasn't really me. I was emotional. I'll change it. Five stars. Ten reviews. I'll even tell my friends to read it."
He waited.
"...Can you send me back now?"
Nothing answered him. Of course nothing did.
"I knew it," he muttered, lowering his head.
Outside, the butler knocked again. "Young Master, if you don't come down now, you'll miss the opening ceremony."
Xu Yan's head snapped up.
[Opening ceremony?]
The memories clicked into place a second time. Today was the first day of university. And tomorrow — tomorrow the two leads would have their very public, very messy breakup, right on schedule.
He got to his feet slowly.
"...Wait."
Then something shifted behind his eyes.
"I know the plot," he said, almost to himself, and the fear that had been sitting on his chest for the last ten minutes began, very quietly, to lift. [I know exactly where all the gossip is going to happen. Every single beat of it.]
A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.
"...Maybe," he said, "being alive isn't so bad after all."