TFS | Chapter 1

Lin Ruan had transmigrated into a romance novel set in a modern school setting. The story was simple. It told the love story between the male lead, Qi Yue, and the female lead, Jiang Mian.

They went from school uniforms to wedding dresses, from youthful innocence to maturity. Along the way, they faced all kinds of setbacks and difficulties, and in the end, they achieved a happy ending and reached perfect fulfillment.

The male lead was the school tyrant, and she… was the male lead’s ex-girlfriend.

The timing of Xu Linruan’s arrival was a little unfortunate. Seven days had already passed since she and Qi Yue officially started dating, and today was the last day. The young master had already grown tired of his game of chasing women.

Before long, the novel’s male lead Qi Yue would ask her to meet him in the woods next to the library, then tell her goodbye. The two of them would break up for good, bringing this absurd and brief love game to an end.

The relationship had begun with a bet.

At some gathering with friends, the arrogant and proud young master lost a wager. As punishment, he was required to spend a month pursuing the campus goddess Xu Linruan, then dump her a week after getting her.

From confession to breakup, everything had been arranged in one smooth sequence. The male lead was trash, clear as day.

After that, the young master dated a few more girlfriends one after another. It was only after the female lead Jiang Mian appeared that he finally settled down. This kind of reformed playboy trope was cheesy, but it never got old.

The female lead was lively and cute, a little absent-minded at times, and completely unlike the flashy young master.

And yet it was exactly this girl who completely conquered the young master’s heart. In this love game called romance, Qi Yue had fallen hard, utterly and completely. From then on, he kept himself pure in body and heart, loving only the female lead.

Looking at the novel as a whole, supporting character Xu Linruan had always been used by the author as a tool, cast in the role of someone pitiable and hateful, her jealousy put on full display.

In the early part of the story, after Xu Linruan was dumped, she was unwilling to accept it, but she did not dare go head-to-head with the male lead. So she secretly tripped up the female lead, bullied her, and kept digging her own grave, transforming from victim to perpetrator. The scheming supporting female lead had been bad with perfect confidence.

It was a pity that in the end, the male lead found out. Qi Yue flew into a rage on behalf of the beauty, and Xu Linruan’s ending was extremely miserable.

When Lin Ruan read the book, she identified with the female lead’s perspective. Her girlish heart had been completely blown apart. The young master, arrogant and overbearing, turned into a domineering little wolfdog when facing the female lead, flirtatious and sexy, and he had won over a lot of readers. Even though he really had been bad and trashy in the beginning, he still held the only male lead spot in the hearts of many devoted readers.

Now that she had transmigrated into the scheming supporting female lead and was going to be tormented in both body and heart by the male lead, the feeling was naturally completely different.

Xu Linruan closed her eyes and slowly pushed away the images belonging to Xu Linruan in her mind.

“Xu Linruan!”

During lunch break, Xu Linruan was sitting in the classroom reading. Someone patted her on the shoulder. She slowly turned around and looked calmly at the boy who had spoken. “What do you need?”

The boy across from her froze for a moment. Under the goddess’s gaze, he scratched the back of his head a little awkwardly. “Uh… Qi Yue said to tell you to go to the woods by the library.”

As soon as he said that, the boys around them immediately looked at her with ambiguous expressions. Back when Qi Yue was pursuing her, he had been extremely high-profile, with nonstop love letters and gifts pouring in. Right under the teachers’ noses, he had managed to take down this proud and aloof campus goddess.

Students from other classes might not have known, but most of the students in Class One knew that Xu Linruan was dating the school tyrant Qi Yue.

Now that Qi Yue was calling her to the little woods, it did not take much guessing to know what the two of them were going to do. After all, they were a couple, and they were both so good-looking. It was normal for a handsome boy and a beautiful girl to be closer.

But high school students had simple thoughts. At most, what they imagined was just holding hands and kissing.

“Okay, I got it.” Xu Linruan nodded and answered with a soft hum, then turned back and slowly reopened her poetry collection, showing no intention at all of going to keep the appointment.

The boy who had spoken froze. Something was off. This was completely not the normal reaction of a girl in the honeymoon phase, was it?

Could they have broken up?

Xu Linruan’s gaze fell on the poetry collection on the desk. Her fingers brushed the loose strands of hair by her ear, and a faint halo of light settled over her fair profile. Wearing a clean white shirt, the girl looked even more strikingly elegant and beautiful.

The boy awkwardly looked away.

Honestly, Xu Linruan had plenty of admirers at school. If Qi Yue’s starting point had not been so high, there should have been quite a few competitors.

It was not until the class bell rang that Xu Linruan went nowhere. The phone in her desk drawer had been bombarded with texts for quite a while. She put down her textbook, took out her phone, and glanced through a few messages. One of them read:

“姓许的，你给本少爷等着！”

The tone was pretty cocky.

As she was reading, a call came in. The caller ID showed Qi Yue.

Xu Linruan raised a brow.

Her slender finger swiped down, rejecting the call. Then she held the screen down for a few seconds and decisively powered off the phone, her movements crisp and clean.

Her deskmate beside her stared in shock. “Xu Linruan, tell me the truth. Did you break up with the school tyrant? Otherwise, why would he call you and you wouldn’t even answer?”

The other girl tilted her head and gave a light laugh. “You guess.”

The deskmate blinked, looking a little dumbfounded.

The last class ended very quickly.

After Xu Linruan finished her duty cleaning, most of the people in the classroom had already left. Once she packed up her bag, she caught sight out of the corner of her eye of a tall, straight figure standing by the doorway, storming toward her with great force.

“Hey, Xu Linruan!”

When Xu Linruan heard his voice, she finally looked up at the newcomer.

It had to be said, the boy in front of her really was very good-looking. His face was exquisitely handsome, his brows and eyes were bold and unrestrained, and especially those eyes, dark and bright like stars. Every part of him radiated a rebellious, untamed air.

“What do you need from me?”

The girl’s eyes shifted, just in time to meet the boy’s intensely furious gaze.

Thinking about how he had spent all of noon sitting in the damn woods like an idiot, feeding a whole swarm of mosquitoes, the young master felt anger surge from the bottom of his heart. “Do you fucking still have the nerve to ask me what I wanted? Do you know how long I waited for you today?”

Xu Linruan deliberately put on an expression of confusion. “You waited for me for what?”

The young master almost wanted to rush over and kill her. “I had someone tell you to go to the woods. Why didn’t you come?”

Xu Linruan immediately showed an enlightened expression. She covered her forehead with her fingers. “Oh, that? I had someone tell you I didn’t have time at noon and asked you to leave early. What, you didn’t receive the notice?”

Notice my ass!

If he had received the notice in advance, would he still have been stupid enough to stay in the woods for a full half hour and get bitten all over his head by mosquitoes?

Although the young master was a poor student, that did not mean he had no brain. “Even if that was the case, why didn’t you answer when I called you? And those texts, why didn’t you reply to a single one?”

Xu Linruan looked puzzled. “You called me? How would I know?”

She took her phone out of her pocket and poked it a couple of times. The screen gave no response. Then she casually stuffed the phone back into her pocket and wore an apologetic expression. “No wonder it didn’t react all afternoon. So it ran out of battery and shut off. I’m really sorry.”

Xu Linruan slightly lifted her chin and gave the other person a gentle, apologetic smile.

This was too fucking coincidental!

Qi Yue barely suppressed his anger, thinking that there was absolutely no way this person would dare lie to him. But that damn woman had actually made him wait for nothing for so long. When he said the breakup later, his eyes had to be fierce, his tone had to be cocky, and he absolutely could not leave her even a shred of room to turn things around!

While the young master was imagining the moment she would be slapped in the face later, he stared at her coldly.

Xu Linruan put on a hesitant expression, as if she felt both apologetic and a little embarrassed. After hesitating for a moment, she let out a long breath and looked at him calmly. “Qi Yue, I have something I need to tell you.”

The young master raised a brow and said disdainfully, “That works out. I have something to tell you too, but I’m generous, so ladies first. You go ahead.”

The girl slowly let a little smile appear. Her slender fingers lightly brushed the loose hair at her temple, then she stepped back and said gently, “Qi Yue, let’s… break up.”

What?

The young master staggered, nearly losing his footing. “What did you just say?”

“I said, let’s break up.”

Damn it, take that back. I was the one who was supposed to say it first!

Xu Linruan silently glanced at him. “You… are too awful. You have a bad temper, you like fighting, and even though you’re only a high school student, you smoke, drink, and get your hair permed, and you still don’t take the teachers seriously. Most importantly, your grades are too terrible. You can’t even be taken out in public…”

As she spoke, the girl even carried a faint note of complaint in her eyes. “You know my cousin, right? Forget it, you probably don’t. My cousin’s grades have never been as good as mine, but her boyfriend is top of the class. A few days ago at a family gathering, she even asked whether I had a boyfriend. I didn’t dare say anything, after all, you’re so awful, you’re just not presentable…”

“I thought about it and thought about it, and I still feel that breaking up is better. I’m going to Peking University, and you’re too terrible. You probably don’t match me.”

Holy shit, Qi Yue was so angry he could practically fly.

Break up and break up, why the fuck are you also insulting my whole family?

What’s wrong with my grades? Did I eat your family’s rice or waste your family’s fabric? What right do you have to look down on me?

The young master was furious, furious to the point of madness. In all his life, he had never been insulted like this before. He had not even looked down on her for being a bookworm who only knew how to study all day, and yet she actually dared to despise him for bad grades and still wanted to break up with him. Dream on!

Even if they were going to break up, it had to be him dumping her.

The young master took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing his rage. His expression was awful as he stared at her. “You say break up and we break up? On what basis? You were the one who agreed to be my girlfriend in the first place. Even if we’re going to break up, it has to be me dumping you first.”

The girl nodded completely unconcerned. “That works too. Then you can break up with me. I was the one with too high of standards, and I’m not good enough for you. From now on, we won’t interfere with each other. I’ll take my Peking University entrance exam, and you can take your Royal Brewster. Is that okay?”

She said it so casually, with not the slightest hesitation in her tone.

Qi Yue felt even more stifled. He had lived this long and had never been looked down on by a girl like this before. What the hell kind of nonsense was this!

No.

Absolutely not.

If that group of deadbeat friends found out about this, how was he supposed to keep his face in the future?

The young master was so angry that his teeth clenched, and a few words spilled out between his lips. “Xu Linruan, you really think that’s going to happen. You say break up and we break up? Then where would that leave my face? I’m telling you, no way.”