The true face of the schemer?

"Can we exchange contact info?"

"Eh?"

"It's not for anything bad…I-I thought since we're doing the same course…" Probably feeling more embarrassed by her surprised looks, Feng Xinyuan stammered while trying to explain herself, her face so red that it looked like it would drip blood at any moment.

"Ah…"

After exchanging phone numbers and QQ account information with her in a hurry, the young girl ran off, leaving a flummoxed Xu Jiao to stare after her disappearing back.

[She's rather… different from how she looks and acts from the outside..]

Shaking her head, she pushed this matter to the back of her mind and went about her business as usual. It's good to make a connection with this type of person who seems to be from a good background, but she wasn't in a hurry. This body of hers is still young and there's ample time to slowly establish herself. Besides, she isn't even as sure if this girl is from a good family as she thought her to be.

Later that night, seeing the new number displayed in the missed calls log, under which a message had been sent to her phone, Xu Jiao suddenly remembered what happened in the morning. Trying to stifle a laugh at the extremely polite tone of the text, which somehow looked like what a middle schooler would say in front of his class when introducing himself to the new classmates, she logged into her QQ account and accepted the oncoming request; and in the next instance, unceremoniously spat out the not-so-tasty mouthful of instant coffee and started coughing nonstop.

"... We-went down the wrong pipe."

[So that's why…] Xu Jiao finally remembered who this girl was, after seeing the information on her account profile.

Feng Xinyuan– a young genius and later a researcher in their language department, and the daughter of an internationally acknowledged professor of history and culture department of H university and a famous traditional-style painter. But more importantly, she was the abandoned fiancee of Yu Min's husband in the last life, the only son of a cooperate business giant in H province who also owns the writing platform Xuri.

Xu Jiao stared at the wall in stunned silence, much to the worry of Wu Man who started thinking that maybe her friend had finally lost her marbles due to worrying too much about her writing career. After assuring her roommate that it's not the case, she yet again fell into another daze while a feeling of wonderment took over her heart.

[What kinda coincidence is this!?]

Even being Yu Min's best friend in her last life, she couldn't meet this evasive creature that the other person contemptuously labeled as the aggressive third party who tried to break the love between her and her partner. And remembering Feng Xinyuan's face which was the epitome of politeness and elegance with nary a sign of the supposed scheming and bitchiness that she was expecting since long ago, Xu Jiao felt her mouth starting to twitch involuntarily.

[So much for trusting that woman's words… But then again, who'd believe her lies wholeheartedly except for a naive shut-in like me?]

But, this meeting between Yu Min's past rival and herself is truly too coincidental that it's simply bordered on the level of unnatural; out of all the tens of thousands of students at H University, she actually managed to meet this particular person not more than two months after her rebirth. And she never saw her, even once in all those years in her past life! What miracle is this?

Could it be that the Godly entity who sent her here was actually expecting her to take revenge on these shitheads after all?

***

Yang Jian had been feeling jittery all over the past few days ever since that rather unpleasant encounter he had with Xu Jiao at the library. Even after turning each and every sentence uttered by the other over and over in his mind, the resulting conclusion he drew had been anything but pleasant.

Unable to fall asleep even though it was already past three o'clock in the morning, he got up from the bed while cursing Xu Jiao in his mind; Why did she have to bring up this kind of issue?

These past few days, he had thought back to everything that happened in the past and after a lot of careful analyzing, had to admit that the words that girl said contained some truth in them. His memories of Yu Min had always been very clear and precise because he was always so conscious of her, or so he thought.

But was that really the case? Or did his almost obsessive love for her made him gloss over the ugly parts while glorifying the rest? Because, now that he was looking back at everything that happened objectively, he realized that it really was like what Xu Jiao said.

[No… no, it's not like that! She'd call or chat with me from time to time without asking for anything.]

[Plus, it's normal for friends to ask for help from each other, right?]

Feeling an uncharacteristic chill that seemed to creep all over his body, Yang Jian rubbed his arms rather vigorously and looked at the time displayed on his phone.

It was already nearing six in the morning; after wavering for another half an hour, he finally made a decision and firmed his mind to dial the number displayed under contacts.

"Can I meet you today? I already talked with her."

***

Baby goldfish: No romance still *sigh*

Camellia fragrance: Right? I can't see any male character in the novel so far good enough to be ML!

I have a glass heart: There's one… That high school senior she met after moving ^_^

Little mushroom: Anyway, romance or not this novel is really promising. Actually, I kind of like it that there's no romance to muck it up. Just hope that our lord author won't turn it into a reverse harem midway!

Camellia fragrance: What's wrong with reverse harem? Men can have harem but women can't?

Little mushroom: ….

Baby goldfish: Actually, a novel should have some love and ecchi stuff to spice things up *snickers*

Another keyboard warrior: A traitor is here… two traitors actually!! You ask what's wrong with the reverse harem! Don't you know that it's all kinds of wrong, just like the harem itself?

Camellia fragrance: ….

Baby goldfish: are you stalking me?

Another keyboard warrior: You wait… I'm keeping an eye on you! If you just want romance and spice, go read somewhere else! Traitor!

Baby goldfish: ….

Xu Jiao giggled watching the battle of words taking place under her novel's comment section; it was funny watching how these readers picked all sorts of faults with her book, but still persisted in reading to the end and then start crying for more releases.

[Pretty cute..]

Of course, there are also two or three people who had started attacking her work, pointing out all sorts of awful mistakes -their definition, not hers-, but Xu Jiao was all too happy about these black fans, so much so that if anyone who didn't know better saw her behavior, they might start thinking of her as a masochist.

But the truth is that the popular belief is that you only get black fans when your book is starting to get popular ah! She knew how true this was, from the experience of her past writing career after all.

Exiting the novel page, Xu Jiao opened a new document to start the next chapter. Her book had been going really well recently and the story was slowly starting to take shape. Her MC had already dumped the cheating boyfriend, then resigned from that company and moved to another town, and even managed to start her small dessert shop business; all of these things were done quite assuredly and in the manner of a domineering lady boss! Our dear aspiring (not)young author would assure everyone of that…

All in all, the story was going really well, as well as a story based on such a cliché trope could do. But as of now, this idea is considered rather novel and refreshing, instead of being something that had been overused so much that even a five-year-old would know it at first glance; that was how much the domineering lady boss novels would manage to saturate the web novel market in the future, but that's a problem for another time, right?

Xu Jiao sagely nodded her head but then paused mid-action, a slight frown marring her features.

[What to do about this romance thing? Can't it get popular without any romance or smut or whatever in it?]

[Would I have to cater to what my readers like how I did in my past life? But then… what about what I want to write?

It wasn't that she was reluctant to write about love and stuff like that. But after everything that happened in the past, she had begun to question herself. Is this so-called love what she really thought it to be? Or is it something entirely different? Is there even any real emotion called love in this world, in the face of riches and power?

[I just– I just don't want to write about something that I don't even understand! Is it too much to ask that?]