GV – Chapter 1

Qinglin High School was the most renowned private high school in A-City. Of course, rather than the somewhat official title of “private high school,” the capital’s residents preferred to call it an elite academy.

People subconsciously assumed that anyone attending Qinglin had to be either rich or noble. It seemed they only saw the conspicuous “elite” part of “elite academy” and completely ignored the “academy” part.

And Ye Yuhuan was the part of Qinglin that symbolized the “academy.”

Her score on the high school entrance exam was nearly perfect. As a result, every high school in the city was vying for her, offering all sorts of incentives.

Ye Yuhuan didn’t let this rare advantage go to waste, choosing the most generous offer from Qinglin.

Ye Yuhuan joked that she was getting paid to attend school, and it was essentially true. As long as she maintained her rank in the city’s top ten, not only would her living expenses be covered for all three years of high school, but she could even build up some savings by graduation.

However, earning that money wasn’t easy. The difficulty wasn’t in maintaining her grades—academics had always come naturally to Ye Yuhuan. The real challenge was surviving three years at Qinglin, surrounded by the sons and daughters of the elite, without becoming a mere plaything to spice up their lavishly materialistic lives.

Ye Yuhuan had a slender figure, delicate features, and a pair of sparkling, almond-shaped eyes. Combined with her status as an academic ace, she possessed a captivating charm. Back in middle school, her desk was constantly overflowing with love letters that took her ages to sort through.

But at Qinglin, things were far more complicated. Even if Cinderella had no desire to marry the prince, the prince would still arrive at her doorstep in his royal carriage. Ye Yuhuan had no intention of playing out some cliché drama involving midnight pumpkin carriages and glass slippers. All she wanted was to get through these three years peacefully, and then live the rest of her life freely and on her own terms.

The reason she’d chosen Qinglin, after all, was a grim one. While mourning her mother, she discovered that her father had been having an affair while her mother was gravely ill. Disgusted, Ye Yuhuan couldn’t bear to stay in that house a moment longer. Qinglin’s scholarship was generous enough to support her after she cut ties with her father, so she had come to this breeding ground for the upper crust all on her own. In other words, she had very little room for retreat.

Fortunately, the year she had already spent at Qinglin had been relatively comfortable and peaceful.

As long as no arrogant, second-generation heir cornered her and declared, “Woman, you’ve successfully captured my attention,” the elegant campus and diverse extracurricular activities at Qinglin were enough to soothe the unease she felt after such a major upheaval in her life.

Of course, the reason Ye Yuhuan’s life was so comfortable wasn’t that Qinglin, as a premier elite academy, was filled with well-mannered, new-money scions. The reason was ridiculously simple: she had someone watching her back.

The person watching her back was named Song Zhiqing. Contrary to her delicate and lovely name, she was, in fact, a campus tyrant of sorts.

At a place like Qinglin, where you could throw a stone and hit a family with at least ten million in assets, Miss Song’s status as campus tyrant wasn’t because her father was the richest man in the country or some high-ranking government official.

Neither was her mother, of course.

But her father was Song Chen, the CEO of Shen Lan, the second-largest film and media company in the nation.

And her mother was the internationally acclaimed actress Gao Yiren, hailed as the “Beauty of the Century.”

While these wealthy heirs lived lives beyond the imagination of ordinary people, their fundamental desires weren’t all that different.

For instance, they were also celebrity fans.

As the little princess of Shen Lan and the daughter of Gao Yiren, Song Zhiqing had grown up in the arms of a generation of film stars now considered legends. The connections she commanded alone were enough to make most celebrities in the entertainment industry greet her with a warm smile.

This undoubtedly gave Song Zhiqing a larger-than-life image among her peers. Coupled with her generosity toward her own circle—arranging meetings with idols or getting a few autographs was a trivial matter for her—she naturally amassed a following of loyal underlings. Though she didn’t hold the official title of campus tyrant, she certainly acted the part.

Ye Yuhuan was a product of this very behavior.

Shortly after she enrolled, like any girl who was both pretty and perceived as an easy target, she became the subject of jealousy from other girls and unwanted attention from boys. Drowning in a sea of malice, Ye Yuhuan was so miserable she even considered dropping out. It felt less like she was attending school and more like she’d stumbled into the plot of a cheesy eight o’clock prime-time drama.

Just then, Song Zhiqing descended like a heaven-sent benefactor from one of those dramas and, with all the dramatic righteousness of a teenager, declared that Ye Yuhuan was under her protection.

Of course, this protection came at a price. Miss Song had her standards for who she’d save, and Ye Yuhuan, for instance, was perfectly suited to be her academic “buff” and personal strategist.

While “academic buff” and “strategist” sounded like two different roles, they both served a single purpose: helping Song Zhiqing woo someone.

That’s right. Song Zhiqing was also the type of wealthy heir to declare, “Woman, you’ve successfully captured my attention.” Unfortunately for her, the woman who had captured her attention was Shangguan Xianxian, the sole daughter of the city’s wealthiest man, who had no patience for campus tyrants. This rendered Song Zhiqing’s usual persona useless, forcing her to pursue Shangguan Xianxian the old-fashioned way.

Shangguan Xianxian liked intelligent people, so Song Zhiqing hit the books.

Shangguan Xianxian admired kind people, so Song Zhiqing turned her “Cosmic Beauty Garden” club into a veritable do-gooder squad.

Shangguan Xianxian… Ye Yuhuan couldn’t come up with anything else. Fine, the points above were the result of half-educated guesses and half-observation on her part. Song Zhiqing, ever the campus tyrant who got dizzy at the mere sight of a math problem, only knew that Ye Yuhuan’s perennial first-place rank in the city meant she had a high IQ. She completely overlooked the crucial fact that Ye Yuhuan had been single her entire life and that her parents’ relationship was a total disaster. Consequently, after a year of painstaking effort, their romantic progress was practically zero.

Still, thanks to Ye Yuhuan’s efforts, Shangguan Xianxian’s animosity toward Song Zhiqing had at least diminished. Romantically, however, the development was pathetic. Shangguan Xianxian hadn’t even realized Song Zhiqing was pursuing her.

From this, Ye Yuhuan confidently deduced: Shangguan Xianxian had to be hopelessly straight.

Song Zhiqing believed her. Therefore, rather than trying to get Shangguan Xianxian to notice her charms, she decided she should focus her efforts on “bending” her. After all, it would be horrifying to pour her heart and soul into this pursuit only to have her crush finally see her as a “sister.”

Unfortunately, Ye Yuhuan’s career as a love strategist—a gig that, while not glamorous, was at least stable—was about to meet its Waterloo just one year in.

Just last night, she had discovered that Shangguan Xianxian was not straight.

In fact, she was very, very gay.

It all started with a dream.

After the evening self-study session, Ye Yuhuan returned to her single dorm room, one of Qinglin’s special perks. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day. The sky was blue, life was uneventful, and Song Zhiqing was still spamming Shangguan Xianxian with yuri novels and manga from one of her burner accounts.

After washing up, Ye Yuhuan lay in bed and reviewed the day’s lessons. Drowsiness soon overtook her, and she drifted into a deep, sweet sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, or perhaps in the early hours of the morning, her dark dream was suddenly flooded with a kaleidoscope of colors. These colors coalesced to form the story of a person’s life, a life that revealed an absurd truth: the world Ye Yuhuan inhabited was actually the setting of a novel.

The novel was titled 《After Rebirth, I Got Together with the Fake Daughter》. It told the story of the protagonist, Shen Wei, who had been deceived by villains in her past life. After her rebirth, armed with knowledge of the future, she went on a rampage, not only building a business empire that surpassed the Shangguan family’s but also finding happiness with the lover she had lost in her previous life—her “false daughter” older sister.

When she woke up, Ye Yuhuan paid the bizarre dream no mind. She figured she’d just been a little too obsessed with picking out yuri novels for Shangguan Xianxian lately, to the point where she was now dreaming that Shangguan Xianxian was the protagonist of one.

How ridiculous. In the dream, Song Zhiqing was actually the villainess.

I guess I must still resent her for exploiting me, she thought.

Still groggy from a lack of sleep, she left her dorm. After the comfort of a hot bowl of noodle soup, Ye Yuhuan pushed the absurd dream to the back of her mind.

When she got to the classroom, Song Zhiqing was hunched over her desk, playing on her phone. Her eyes lit up the moment she saw Ye Yuhuan enter, and she immediately waved her over.

Qinglin’s uniforms were British in style. Perhaps it was simply in the nature of high schoolers to never wear their uniforms properly, because even though Qinglin’s uniform was far more stylish than the tracksuits worn at other schools, the students still insisted on customizing them.

Today, Song Zhiqing was wearing the ninety-eighth different style of necktie Ye Yuhuan had seen on her. The cardigan she wore over her uniform shirt had delicate, obviously custom, embroidery. A matching bracelet on her wrist complemented her hairstyle.

Even Ye Yuhuan, who wasn’t particularly fashion-conscious, was impressed by Song Zhiqing’s meticulous attention to aesthetic detail.

Ye Yuhuan walked over to Song Zhiqing’s desk. She wore the standard, unmodified uniform, but with her slim waist, long legs, and fair complexion, the prim and proper British style only served to accentuate her natural flair. Song Zhiqing glanced enviously at her height, wondering how two people the same age could have a six-centimeter height difference.

Remembering why she’d called Ye Yuhuan over, Song Zhiqing quickly reined in her wandering thoughts. She held up her phone and announced excitedly, “Yesterday, Shangguan Xianxian blocked my burner account!”

Ye Yuhuan remained noncommittal. This was the ninth burner account Shangguan Xianxian had blocked. But Song Zhiqing, having grown up immersed in marketing culture, always managed to craft a friend request that seemed just plausible enough for Shangguan Xianxian to accept.

But seeing how excited Song Zhiqing was, perhaps this time was different.

And indeed it was. Song Zhiqing continued, “This time, before she blocked me, she actually replied! She said, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’”

Ye Yuhuan caught her meaning. Fulfilling her duty as strategist, she analyzed with a serious expression, “That means she definitely read what you sent. That’s a huge improvement over being blocked instantly.”

Song Zhiqing nodded eagerly. It was a good thing she’d had the brilliant idea to rename the novel’s file to look like the study materials she’d claimed to be sending.

According to the “How to Bend a Straight Girl” guide Ye Yuhuan had compiled from reading countless works of yuri fiction, the first and most crucial step was making the target aware that “bending” was even a possibility. Thus, the two had devised this devious plan to virally disseminate yuri culture.

Thank the heavens. After nearly half a month of effort, Song Zhiqing had finally taken the first arduous step. She patted the back of Ye Yuhuan’s hand, her Bambi-like face contorted into a solemn, Godfather-esque expression. Only the twinkle in her eyes betrayed her girlish delight. “Once I win over Shangguan Xianxian, I’ll buy you a car. Or a house, if you prefer. Don’t you dare refuse. You’re helping me solve one of life’s biggest problems.”

The corner of Ye Yuhuan’s mouth twitched. A year in, and she still wasn’t used to Song Zhiqing’s periodic slips into a “mafia boss” tone, promising her underlings a life of riches. But as said underling, she could only express her thanks and pledge to continue doing her utmost to fulfill her boss’s wishes.

Satisfied, Song Zhiqing patted Ye Yuhuan’s hand again. It felt quite nice, she had to admit. As expected of her underling. Only the best for Song Zhiqing.

As the morning reading period approached, Ye Yuhuan returned to her own desk. She sat just two seats away from Song Zhiqing, close enough to often catch her various animated expressions.

She really was trying her best to be a campus tyrant.

Ye Yuhuan thought, a little disrespectfully, of her boss.

The morning reading period passed without incident, and the dream from the previous night had all but faded from Ye Yuhuan’s mind. Just then, Song Zhiqing came over, phone in hand. As usual, when Song Zhiqing sought her out, it was about Shangguan Xianxian. She got straight to the point. “Shangguan Xianxian brought a girl to complete the school transfer process today. Rumor is, it’s her sister. Should I try to get on the sister’s good side first?”

This was step three of their “Operation Bend Her” plan: befriend the people in Shangguan Xianxian’s orbit.

Song Zhiqing was conflicted. She hadn’t even managed to complete step two—getting closer to Shangguan Xianxian herself. But the fact that Shangguan Xianxian was personally escorting this sister showed how important she was to her. The period right after a student transfers is the easiest time to build a connection, so she had come to ask for Ye Yuhuan’s advice.

But Ye Yuhuan found the scenario strangely familiar. Before offering any romantic advice, she asked curiously, “What’s the new girl’s name?”

Song Zhiqing gave her a surprised look, wondering why she was so interested in a complete stranger.

Suppressing a flicker of annoyance, Song Zhiqing replied, “Shen Wei. Someone said she went to a rural high school before this. Probably a relative from before the Shangguan family struck it rich.”

Shen Wei. The name was so familiar.

Where had she heard it before?

Ah, right. In last night’s dream.

Ye Yuhuan dug her nails into her palm to keep from screaming.