Xu Yan stood in front of the mirror for a long time. The longer he looked, the less he wanted to leave.
"...No wonder mirrors are expensive," he muttered, reaching up to touch his own face again. Soft skin, no dark circles, not a single pimple in sight. Even his hair looked effortlessly, unfairly good.
He sighed. [This face.] [If I'd looked like this in my previous life, I would've walked slower on purpose, just to give people time to notice.] Another sigh followed it. [The author really wrote "plain-looking" with a straight face. Were the protagonists celestial beings or something?]
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
"Young Master, breakfast is getting cold."
Xu Yan finally pulled himself away from the mirror. "...Coming."
The dining room alone was larger than his entire apartment from his previous life. The table was already set — steamed buns, porridge, fresh fruit, a pitcher of milk — and even the tableware looked like it cost more than his old rent. He sat down quietly, then glanced at the butler, then at the food, then back at the butler.
[Do rich people really eat like this every morning?] [How many people are they feeding?]
The butler smiled politely. "Young Master, is something wrong?"
Xu Yan shook his head immediately. "No. I was just... appreciating carbohydrates."
Halfway through breakfast, more memories kept surfacing. The Xu family was wealthy — very wealthy. His parents were almost always overseas for work, which meant he'd grown up alone in this house with a staff of housekeepers instead of anyone who actually lived there with him. Plenty of money. Almost no warmth to go with it.
Xu Yan paused mid-bite.
[Wait.] [If I'm rich...] [Does that mean I can buy unlimited milk tea?]
He nearly laughed out loud. Just like that, the quiet dread of waking up inside a novel improved by a solid thirty percent.
---
Back in his room, Xu Yan grabbed a notebook off the desk, flipped to the first page, and wrote across the top in large letters: *Survival Plan Version 1.0.*
He nodded to himself, satisfied, and got to work on the first rule.
**① Stay away from the protagonists.**
"Simple enough."
**② Stay away from major plot events.**
"...Mostly." He frowned at it, then crossed it out and tried again.
**② Watch major plot events from a safe distance.**
That one he approved of. [Much more realistic.] [Life without a little gossip isn't worth living, honestly.]
**③ Never get hit by a car.**
He stared at that line for several seconds before underlining it three times, hard enough to nearly tear the page.
The more he thought about it, the more uneasy he felt. He closed his eyes and tried to dredge up everything he could remember about the novel — the protagonists, the villain, the supporting cast, the major beats of the plot. Some scenes came back crystal clear. Others were simply gone.
"...Why can't I remember anything past chapter three hundred?"
He slapped his own forehead.
"Oh, right. I skipped the business arc." [Who reads fifty chapters of corporate meetings?] [Not me. Never me.]
He kept digging anyway, and the results were mixed at best. Some memories were sharp as photographs; others had blank, frayed edges where entire scenes should have been.
His stomach dropped. [...I'm finished.] [I didn't even finish remembering the story before I got dragged into it.]
He grabbed his phone and opened the memo app before the rest of it could slip away too.
**Things I Remember**
- Lu Yichen is not actually a villain.
- The protagonists create disasters wherever they go.
- Stay away from roads.
- Public breakups usually happen near the fountain.
- Cafeteria = gossip hotspot.
- Student forum = mandatory daily reading.
He read the list over once. "...Good enough." [Future me can figure out the rest.]
---
After changing into his school uniform, Xu Yan slung his bag over one shoulder and paused at the door to glance back at the notebook still sitting open on the desk.
*Survival Plan Version 1.0.*
He smiled, confident. "As long as I don't interfere with the plot, I'll definitely survive."
The notebook, unsurprisingly, had nothing to say to that.
Somewhere outside, a crow cawed once into the silence.
Xu Yan's eyes narrowed. [That doesn't feel like a good sign.] He shook his head a second later, brushing it off. "No. I'm overthinking this."
He had no idea that before the day was even over, he would meet the one person his entire plan had failed to account for.
Lu Yichen.