How Did I End Up Here? (Ming'er)

The shrieking girl immediately grabs her white plastic basket, which was filled with three mysterious liquids in cylindrical plastic bottles and a small, weird bristled brush and tube-looking thing before taking off.

"Why are you running?" Ming'er calls out after her in Chinese, "Why are you running!"

"I was just trying to wash my face, is there a problem..."

Just then, Ming'er catches a glimpse of his reflection again.

"This is scandalous," he chides disapprovingly under his breath.

/Why are these clothes so ridiculous looking?/

/Why am I wearing so little?/

/Why am I showing so much skin?/

Ming'er pulls at the hem of the loose black piece of fabric that he's wearing and attempts to cover his exposed legs.

His attempts are thwarted as releases the hem of the clothes and it flies back up. Ming'er flushes again at the sight of his new slender legs. He desperately tries to use his new dainty hands to cover them up.

Ming'er eventually resorts to sitting on the floor with the loose black piece of fabric stretched over his knees.

Now that his knees were fully covered, Ming'er tries to find a way to cover his exposed arms. He shudders at the thought of one of the palace maids exposing their pale, skinny arms.

Ming'er tries to use his new shoulder-length hair to cover his arms. However, his hair is so short that it simply falls back to the sides of his head. Ming'er grits his teeth as he tugs at the ends of his hair repeatedly as though his hair would magically grow longer with this motion.

"This is scandalous," he murmurs under his breath.

"Scandalous, scandalous, scandalous..."

Just then, Ming'er has another thought.

He immediately flushes at it.

Ming'er's face, along with the tips of his ears, were getting red all over again.

/No, don't./

He scolds himself.

/Stop it, Ming'er./

/Don't do it./

/Pull yourself together.../

But he's curious.

So, so, so curious.

Ming'er felt as though his devil and his angel were having a heated debate inside his head.

After much dispute, the devil emerged victorious.

And so, Ming'er takes a deep breath.

He remains in his position, seated on the floor with his loose clothes over his knees, as he slides his hand down to the side of his rear.

Ming'er's fingers brush gently over where his manhood should be...

"Yuying, what the heck are you doing?"

Ming'er doesn't even have the time to process his shock at the lack of his manhood.

He snaps his head up and sees the girl who'd been sleeping in the bed next to his standing at the door.

The girl is speaking in English just like before.

/It's that girl again!/

/Can she stop speaking in English already?/

/And she called me Yuying again.../

Ming'er is caught so off-guard that he splutters out the default response that he'd given earlier.

"Yes...?"

It sounded more like a question than an actual answer.

The girl furrows her brows. She didn't look satisfied by the response.

/Oh no! I think I have to come up with something better.../

/C'mon, Ming'er, try and recall what you learned during English lessons.../

/Ugh, I've going to start studying hard for English from now onwards if I want to survive here./

After thinking for about ten seconds, Ming'er makes out a response.

"I...water...face...?"

He instantly regrets the words that leave his lips when he sees the girl's face change. She looks even more confused than she did before.

"Yuying," the girl says calmly, "Why did Sarah come knocking at the door saying that you were trying to wash your face using the toilet bowl?"

The girl spoke so quickly that Ming'er couldn't catch a single word except for 'Yuying'.

Then again, he wouldn't have caught any word aside from 'Yuying' even if she was speaking slowly.

/Yuying?/

/That must be my name in this world.../

/Wait a minute.../

Just then, Ming'er gets up from the floor at looks at his reflection in the mirror once again. He widens his eyes at a realization that he didn't have before.

/Yuying.../

/I'm Yuying now.../

/I look just like.../

"Yuying?" the girl asks again. She sounded concerned rather than confused this time. "Is everything alright? You're acting strange this morning."

Ming'er immediately detects the concern on the girl's face. It's a look that he's been given way too often, be it from his parents, the palace maids and the eunuchs at the Imperial Palace, two of his four brothers, Mingyi and Mingsan, his teachers and the headmaster at Qilin Academy, or his best friends, Chen Jun and Ruofei.

Ming'er has a standard response when he's given this look, but he doesn't know how to say it in English no matter how much he racks his brains.

And so, he gives up and says it in Chinese.

"I'm fine."

The girl blinks. He's not sure if she understood what he said.

To Ming'er's delight, she does.

"Why are you speaking in Chinese?" she replies in Chinese. "We don't usually speak it to each other."

Ming'er furrows his brows slightly at her reply.

/What?/

/Chinese people who don't speak Chinese?/

/What kind of weird world is this...?/

"I just feel like speaking Chinese today," Ming'er shrugs. It's something that Ruofei would say, but in a sassier and more sarcastic manner.

"Are you alright, though?" the girl asks again, "Your intense staring contest with the laptop screen really took a toll on you today, huh?"

Ming'er doesn't understand what the girl's last sentence means. And so, he simply replies to her first one.

"Yes, I'm alright, just a little tired," he reassures her, "I just need to sleep a little more, I think."

"It's a good thing that you have no classes today," the girl hums, "Yes, please catch some sleep, girl. You've been stressing out over your webnovel the entire week."

Ming'er doesn't understand what she means, but he nods along.

"Anyway, I've got to go off for my morning lecture soon. There's some Panadol on the top shelf of my closet if you need it."

Once again, Ming'er doesn't understand what she means. Still, he continues nodding along.

"Take care, okay?" the girl says.

"Don't worry, I will." Ming'er promises.

...

Ming'er springs out of bed as soon as the girl was gone. He takes a look at his surroundings.

He's in a room with floor that looked like it was made from some sort of glossy-looking wood. There are two beds on either sides of the room, along with two closets and two tables. They're a lot more minimalistic and less fancy-looking than what he's used to.

The room looks more like his shared room with Chen Jun and Ruofei back at Qilin Academy than it looks like his room at the Imperial Palace.

His room at the Imperial Palace is a good ten times bigger than this rather cramped space. Heck, even his shared room with his best friends is bigger.

Ming'er walks past the table and goes over to the closet. He wrinkles his nose at its plain and dull-looking design.

/This place is seriously poor-quality.../

Ming'er opens the closet and is immediately appalled.

Many of the clothes inside were...short.

Very short.

There weren't any robes inside the closet at all. All of the clothes look like they'd been split into half, for the torso and for the lower body.

Many of the clothes for the torso had short sleeves, and some of them even had no sleeves at all. There was only about two or three clothes inside that had sleeves. Even so, they weren't flowy and looked like they would be tight around the arms.

While there were a few pairs of long pants, many of the pants were so short that Ming'er swears it'll stop just right below the bum.

Ming'er flushes as he imagines what one of the palace maids would like in such a short outfit.

Just then, he remembers what he's wearing and immediately stiffens. Ming'er then proceeds to take the longest and thickest-looking outerwear that he can find, along with the longest and thickest-looking pants that he can find, before wearing them over without even taking his clothes off.

Ming'er doesn't even think about taking them off even when the room seems to get significantly hotter than it already was before.

After closing the closet, Ming'er walks over to the table. He observes that it's propped up with legs and what looked like an extension to it. The extension appeared to function as some sort of drawer.

Just then, Ming'er notices that there are paintings- no, wait, they don't look like they're painted on- what do you call them then...

Ming'er thinks about it for a moment before he decides to dub the mysterious square and rectangular-shaped things paper with people's faces on them.

There's a square paper with Yuying's and the girl's faces on it. Underneath were a few words that were, to Ming'er's relief, written in both English and Chinese.

/What's up with these Chinese people and their obsession over English?/

Ming'er squints at the words.

"Yuying and Jiawen," he murmurs under his breath, "Best friends forever..."

/So that girl's name is Jiawen./

/She's Yuying's best friend./

/And her roommate, obviously.../

There are more squares and rectangles with Yuying's and Jiawen's faces on them, along with squares and rectangles with that of faces of people whom he did not recognize.

Just then, Ming'er spots a grid on a paper. There are dates, timings, and words written on it.

Ming'er is only able to make out the Chinese words.

"Introduction to Chinese Linguistics," he murmurs under his breath, "Literary Prose and Poetry from the Tang and Song Dynasties..."

/These are a piece of cake./

/We study way more extensively and broadly./

/Even so, I'm way ahead of my game./

/After all, I'm the top student at Qilin Academy.../

/By the way, why aren't there any cultivation classes.../

Just then, Ming'er remembers about his cultivation abilities.

/Hold on.../

/Cultivation.../

/.../

/Does it have something to do with how I ended up here?/