BUZZ—
The cell phone next to Gu Shishi vibrated.
BUZZ! BUZZ!
It vibrated two more consecutive times and finally Gu Shishi was woken up from her deep, pitch-black sleep.
She opened up her eyes groggily. The room was pitch black except for a sliver of light shining in through a crack in front of her.
Gu Shishi rotated her sore neck a little bit and slightly moved her legs that were still crossed.
Did she dozed off while she was reading again?
Picking up her cell phone that was next to her thigh, she squinted her eyes and looked at the screen.
After the strong light from the screen hit her eyes, her face darkened.
She was still alive?
She distinctly remembered dying in a multiple-car accident.
Recalling the gruesome scene from the accident, painful memories flooded back to her, she turned pale and broke up into a cold sweat.
While she frowned and sorted out her memories, her cell phone buzzed a couple more times.
[Young Master Cheng is on his way up!]
Gu Shishi paused for a second.
Who was that?
And what were they talking about?
Before she could figure out what was going on, she felt a cold breeze on her. She looked down at herself. Under the dim light of the screen, she saw that the only thing she had on was a spaghetti-strap chemise.
She was stunned. A slight movement of her arm, and she hit the wooden board in front of her!
It made a small banging noise and she was even more confused.
“What... is this? A closet?”
Gu Shishi felt up and down, then left and right around herself. This was getting more bizarre.
She was sitting inside a small and narrow wooden chest and on both sides of her were rows and rows of man’s suits.
Which was to say that right now she was sitting inside a man’s closet with its doors closed.
She was just about to open up the closet door when she suddenly heard a man’s voice from outside the room.
Gu Shishi froze in mid-action.
The next moment, with a creaking sound, the room door outside of the closet was opened.
“Mmm, Shuangshuang, I need to talk to my brother about something and I will be downstairs shortly,” came a male voice that was gentle like jade.
Gu Shishi’s groggy brain finally had it all strung together from that line.
Young Master Cheng.... Brother.... Shuangshuang..... closet.....
BOOM! And all the memories flooded her brain.
That was the cliché novel that she was reading in the taxi.
Gu Shishi, the cannon fodder in the story, was born into wealth, but was accidentally switched at birth with the fake young mistress Gu Wushuang, the daughter of a peasant family.
The Gu’s and the Huo’s were to form an alliance through marriage and the Gu’s didn’t want the fake young mistress with heart disease to live a hard life. So, after a few days of Gu Shishi returning to the Gu’s, it was decided that she was to marry the boss villain Huo Sishen, the very unfortunate, lonely, wife-cursing First Young Master of the Gu’s.
Further, she was sent to live in Huo Sishen’s mansion after the engagement ceremony.
The one she was fond of, however, was the Huo’s second young master Huo Wencheng.
Abruptly, Gu Shishi reached up and covered her face with her palms.
No way! Did she really transmigrated to become the female supporting character who has the same name as her?
“Ge, you asked me to come over to discuss the Gu’s, but where are you?” Again came Huo Wencheng’s gentle voice from the other side of the closet.
(T/N: Ge – how one addresses one’s older brother.)
Gu Shishi opened her mouth.
As the story would go, the female support character really wanted to become a couple with Huo Wencheng, which was why she bribed the servant to help trick Huo Wencheng into the room when he came to visit while she hid in the closet and jump into his arms when the time was right.
How in the hell did she end up transmigrated into such a cliché novel?
What could she do?
She definitely couldn’t go out right now, but....
Gu Shishi touched her spaghetti strap on herself and was a bit lost. Should she get out after Huo Wencheng was gone?
“Ge? Was that you in the bathroom?”
She then heard the rustling sound of the shower curtain being pulled open.
The sound of Huo Wencheng’s footsteps continued throughout the room; obviously, he was still looking for the missing person.
Squinting her eyes, Gu Shishi thought about the rest of the story in the book.
Gu Shishi, the cannon fodder, was betrayed by the servant and her plan was discovered by Huo Wencheng. He, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in her at all. Worst so, he was a vicious one – he had the servant waited outside the room and go get Huo Sishen as soon as Gu Shishi jumped out.
Which was how her fiancé was right there when she professed her love for his brother. And, the servant who pretended to be serving tea also witnessed the scene. Her poor reputation spread among the upper class overnight.
The cannon fodder female support character’s engagement was called off, and she was booted out of the Gu’s and she ended up killing herself at the start of the story.
So.... She became the cannon fodder who didn’t make it through three days?!
“Ge? Are you not in the room?” Huo Wencheng’s voice was getting closer. He was slowly but steadily getting closer and closer to where the closet was.
With a softer voice, Huo Wencheng suddenly switched to calling out for her, “Miss Gu?”
Gu Shishi felt goosebumps instantly.
She held her breath right away and didn’t dare to move a muscle. She worried that any small noise from her would give away her whereabouts.
As soon as he opened up the closet doors, she would come face to face with this asshole hidden under the appearance of a morally upstanding man!
How would she explain why she was hiding inside the closet?
STEP! STEP!
Huo Wencheng stopped in front of the largest closet in the room within a fraction of a second.
With only the closet door between the two of them, Gu Shishi thought she could even heard the steady breathing sound coming from him.
The distance between the two was less than the span of an arm.
Gu Shishi’s heart was about to stop.
She lifted her head.
Through the very narrow crack between the closet doors, the light that seemed to have come from outside the window flicked quickly and a shadow casted down on her.
Huo Wencheng’s hand was on top of the handle of the closet door!
With a slight creaking noise, the door opened up a little bit.
The stream of light widened by two folds!
She clutched her chest. Pale and ready to accept her fate, she closed her eyes. Suddenly, she then heard a cold and impatient voice, “What are you doing in my room?”
Contrary to the tender voice of Huo Wencheng, this coarse voice immediately gave people the creeps, and a feeling of impending danger that should not be taken lightly.
Every single hair on Gu Shishi’s skin stood up. Was she so nervous earlier that she missed his footstep?
This was the original owner’s fiancé, Huo Sishen?
She never jumped out of the closet, so theoretically the maid never reported her to him,, so would the storyline continue on like it should?
She gasped.
The tragic ending of the original owner made her body freezer, and all her blood rushed into her brain!
“Ge....”
As though he was shocked by electricity, Huo Wencheng immediately pulled his hand back from the closet door.
Gu Shishi’s heart was about to bounce out of her throat. She worried that he would tell on her.
“Ge, I heard that you were looking for me,” explained Huo Wencheng quickly.
“That was not true.”
The voice was still cold and the impatience in the voice more so than before, “Get out.”
“Ge, I....”
“Get out, and send people in to disinfect.”
Whatever Huo Wencheng was going to say, he swallowed the rest of his words.
Gu Shishi listened as attentively as she could and finally heard footsteps getting farther and farther away. She gathered that Huo Wencheng was finally gone and let out a big sigh.
Her possibly wife-cursing fiancée was a severe germaphobe and that had just worked to her advantage.
The disinfecting team probably wouldn’t pull open the closet door right away? She should be safe then.
But, right before she could relax herself, her left eye started twitching like mad.
(T/N: It’s a bad omen when your left eye twitches.)
Immediately she squatted there motionlessly like a quail.
Sure enough, almost a whole minute had passed before she heard noises from inside the room again. She could smell cologne, the scent of sandalwood, in her nose.
Her legs, which had been crossed this entire time, were already starting to get numb, yet she still didn’t dare to move a muscle.
Her instant fiancé seemed to have stopped right in front of the closet, like he was observing the closet?
He was still here?
Feeling extremely nervous, Gu Shishi grabbed the sleeves of the suits closest to her and balled them up in her palms.
Holding her breath, she listened intently to any noises from the outside.
It sounded like her fiancé was now flipping through a book on the outside, the sound it made was crisp and clear. It seemed like he’d be here for a while.
Gu Shishi bit down on her lips. She had no choice but to continue to kneel inside the closet and tried to remember more about this man.
In the story, Huo Sishen seemed to have cursed his father and his grandfather to death.
(T/N: “Curse” in this context was not that he voluntarily putting a spell on anyway, but that his “luck” was so bad that people die around him. Same meaning when referencing to him cursing his wives earlier in the story.)
He had been treated like a virus and isolated by his birth mother since he was a child. He was a cold and proud individual whose personal net worth had well exceeded that of the entire Huo’s Corporation a long time ago.
In the novel, his only role was to facilitate the relationship between the male and female leads. It wasn’t a big role, and he also died quite early on.
Gu Shishi wrapped her arms around her knees. She, too, was someone who was supposed to die....
While she was thinking, Gu Shishi carefully remove a man’s jacket from the hanger under the cover of the sound of pages being turned and put it over her own shoulder that was getting cold.
And, what should her next move be?
Gu Shishi bit down on her lips and clenched her fists. To live!
Now that she was able to have a second chance in life, she would do anything within her power to stay alive for as long as she could!
Death was too painful. It made her shudder just from thinking about it. She didn’t want to experience that again casually.
Gu Shishi made up her mind from inside the closet.
Yet, from the stuffiness of the closet, the lack of food, and from being tense the entire time, she started passing out shortly thereafter...
***
The sun was starting to set, and the room was getting dark quickly.
“Young Master, we will take off now.”
“Mmm.”
A coarse voice and a simple but powerful response.
Huo Sishen waved his hand and dismissed the butler and the maid that was following behind him.
His cold, dark eyes swept passed the guest room at the end of the hallway, and a sliver of impatience flashed through his eyes. Another fiancée that was pushed onto him; did these people really think he has unlimited patience?
“Throw that woman out tomorrow!”
“Yes, Sir.” Neither the butler nor the maids dare to argue with him. All they could do was to lower their heads and bowed.
After he had taken a cold bath and wrapped a towel around himself, Huo Sishen walked in front of the closet and opened its doors.
When the doors were just half opened, a big ball with a hint of sweet fruit fragrance rolled out with a loud noise and fell right into his chest!
Huo Sishen reflexively reached out to block this object that was coming at him. When he pushed forward, what he felt was a girl as soft as snow. His face darkened and his action froze!
He looked down and saw a girl with black hair down to her waist, a small face elegant like in a painting, wrapped up in one of his custom suits.
His clothes were so much bigger and darker than her delicate body that, when wrapped around her, made her look even more petite and white.
Gu Shishi’s red lips were opened slightly. She was dreaming about happy days when she was counting money and she thought she was sleeping with a big, yellow dog in her chest. Happily, she reached out to pat the dog’s fuzzy head and drooled.
Huo Sishen, about to explode and with his eyes filled with the calmness before the storm, didn’t expect to be patted by that small hand of hers. Immediately, he froze.
Gu Shishi, on the other hand, was jerked awake from the fall. She focused her limpid eyes and saw the close up of the cold man’s handsome face.
At this very moment, she heard an electrical chime:[Orange alert!]
[Life remaining: 9 minutes and 1 second!]
Gu Shishi: “!?”