I Can’t Be This Protagonist

St. Peter’s Hospital.

The only designated medical facility in the book. 

Whether it’s kidney or cornea transplants, the technology here was quite top-notch.

It was also the hospital where scum gong #3, Qi Feiyun was employed.

According to the timeline, Qi Feiyun was still abroad right now. Otherwise, this would’ve been a good opportunity to get to know him first.

That’s why Yan Shuang really didn’t want to go to the hospital. 

As a slag shou who challenged five scum gongs consecutively, Yan Shuang’s physical recovery ability was very strong, aka the fabled ‘steel chrysanthemum’. There really was no reason to cart him off to the hospital.

Second, this wasn’t a part of the plot in the original book, meaning he couldn’t grind any character’s relationship plot line or story line. This was a basically just a waste of time.

In the original book, on the night the contract was signed, Yang Shuang did get screwed by Qin Yubai. You could imagine how tragic the scene was with two virgins. Qin Yubai just took Yan Shuang’s first time before calling it a night, meaning Yan Shuang was only slightly injured the next day. He had Wei Yichen send him back to the convenience store, and the phone call from Qin Yubai never happened.

That was supposed to be the end of the plot of night one.

The next time Qin Yubai contacted Yan Shuang was three days later. He sent his people to Yan Shuang’s school and directly called Yan Shuang away from class. It was a move that served to greatly embarrass Yan Shuang and deal a devastating blow to his mental defenses.

Yet after entering the world, Yan Shuang rolled around in the sheet with Qin Yubai for basically an entire day and night.

Yan Shuang did it deliberately.

The [redacted] plot couldn’t be skipped or grinded at the same time. If he wanted to complete Qin Yubai’s plot in three months, he had to grind through all the [redacted] scenes as well as the abuse ones and make every second count. 

But did Qin Yubai wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something? Why would he have Wei Yichen send him to the hospital?

Was Beast Qin actually going OOC?

Because he hadn’t ‘used his fill of everything’?

“Mr. Yan, please get off.” 

Wei Yichen’s cold expression showed how he had no intentions of helping him.

Yan Shuang swung his legs out of the car. His face pales and his legs were trembling, but he still stubbornly grit his teeth and refused to make a sound.

Wei Yichen watched coldly. As long as Yan Shuang was silent, he would not help.

This was a plaything bought by Qin Yubai, no different than a famous painting bought by the man. Without Qin Yubai’s permission, no one would risk their skin to touch it. 

What happened at the entrance of the orphanage was already a big mistake.

Wei Yichen followed Yan Shuang and watched Yan Shuang wrestle with the steep steps in front of the hospital.

Yan Shuang still didn’t ask Wei Yichen for help. He struggled step by step, pausing on the very last one. With his back to Wei Yichen, he coldly stated. “Now that we’ve gone to the hospital, can we leave now?”

Qin Yubai’s order was to escort Yan Shuang to the hospital. Nothing about what happens afterwards. 

Standing on the stairs of the hospital, Wei Yichen looked up at Yan Shuang’s thin and slender back. Ensconced in a large white T-shirt, he seemed especially fragile.

Wei Yichen swallowed dryly.

“Suit yourself.”

Wei Yichen sent Yan Shuang back to school. 

They had wasted too much time in between so it was already too late to go work at the convenience. Thus, Yan Shuang could only make a call and temporarily transfer to another class as he hurried back to school.

In the car, Yan Shuang took out an orange from his canvas bag.

The orange was perfect in appearance. One look was enough to know that it grew up soaking in plenty of sunlight. As Yan Shuang peeled back a section of skin, the car immediately filled with the strong aroma of oranges.

This is one of the reasons why Yan Shuang liked this job. 

In the real world, the Transmigration Bureau only supplied essential food items. They didn’t provide fruits, which were indulgences meant to please people’s taste buds. Only if you bought a private planet that could produce fruits could you enjoy fruits as you wish.

Planet GKD43, which Yan Shuang had his eyes on, was rich in fruit production.

With a grateful heart, Yan Shuang perfectly peeled the orange before carefully separating each section. He lowered his head every time he took a bit, eating with focused intent.

Wei Yichen looked at Yan Shuang in the rearview mirror. 

Yan Shuang seemed to be very religious when it came to food.

Whether it’s the Western food from their first meeting, the porridge back in the hotel, or these fruits he took with him.

Yan Shuang ate like he savoured every bite.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Wei Yichen knew all the details about Yan Shuang. 

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Because he had been starved as a child, he grew into an especially greedy adult.

“We’re here.”

By the time Yan Shuang polished off an orange and three strawberries, Wei Yichen had driven up to the side gate of the university, a relatively sparse location. 

Large sycamore trees lined up here, casting heavy shadows.

Yan Shuang got out of the car and said to Wei Yichen, “Thank you for sending me back.”

Wei Yichen’s expression was cold and distant.

Yan Shuang didn’t head through the school gates after getting off. Instead, he stood by the driver side window. “What I said before still stands.” 

Wei Yichen: “What?”

Yan Shuang bent forward, his arms folding gently on the half-open car window. He smiled at Wei Yichen from up close with broken lips and pale cheeks, somehow managing to invoke a sense of sensuality. “Whether it’s Mr. Qin or Mr. Wei, I welcome you all the same.”

Wei Yichen’s expression remained unchanged. He pressed the button to raise the window without saying a word. The dark brown car window slowly rose. As Yan Shuang let go, Wei Yichen sent him an undecipherable look through the glass, his eyes dark and unreadable.

Yan Shuang caught Wei Yichen’s gaze just before the car window closed. “There are still ninety-eight days.” 

Wei Yichen didn’t move.

“I only sold him a hundred days.” Yan Shuang smiled. “If you want, you can book in advance. I suggest you do so soon. I am a very hot commodity, after all.”

Prostitute.

Wei Yichen spat coldly in his heart. 

The vehicle made a u-turn and left without further ado.

Yan Shuang could finally stand up straight and not pretend to be lame.

Yan Shuang analysed the best methods of grinding favorability with the five scum gongs according to the plot.

Qin Yubai? Sex. Ji Yao? Flourishing under his care. Qi Feiyun liked to play the teacher. Sheng Guangming yearned for pure love. 

And Wei Yichen, who was an observer the entire time?

Yan Shuang gave him an easy-to-understand and friendly nickname– ‘Green Hat Slave’.

The more depraved Yan Shuang became, the more he was tossed between the other men, the more he was able to arouse Wei Yichen’s urge to obtain and redeem him.

More than anything, Wei Yichen was like the caretaker who swept the stage after everything was done. 

In the plot of the original book, Yan Shuang was almost entirely swept away into the love games of those scum gongs. It wasn’t until Sheng Guangming struck the last blow and Yan Shuang self-destructively went to drink at the bar that the silent observer Wei Yichen jumped out.

Yan Shuang didn’t have time to wait that long.

Here’s the simplest of math problems. If it takes 30 second to cook one egg, what’s the least amount of time five eggs could be cooked? It’s still 30 seconds.

Just boil them together. 

The [redacted] plot could be queued up slowly, but the sooner the relationship plot lines were grinded out the better.

Yan Shuang turned onto the boulevard.

Yan Shuang’s role was set to just be a month into his freshman year.

Qin Yubai would only appear three days later, so Yan Shuang could just attend classes in the meantime and quietly wait for the second character, Ji Yao to appear. He’s planning on taking advantage of the three day gap to get the second egg in the pot as well. 

Ji Yao was Yan Shuang’s roommate.

The dorms were six-person rooms, divided into upper and lower bunks. Currently, there were only five people living in this dorm. Yan Shuang’s upper bunk was still empty.

Ji Yao didn’t live in the dormitories the first month after school started. It wasn’t until he had a fight with his family that he moved in.

If he was asked about Ji Yao and Yan Shuang’s plot, Yan Shuang would say that he felt the angst in Ji Yao’s route was of a higher quality that Qin Yubai’s. 

Yan Shuang and Qin Yubai started their relationship with a contract. There was no pretence that they were anything else. As the abuse and sex scenes piled up, the two went their separate way eventually without any real feelings.

But Ji Yao was different.

Actually, the first person Yan Shuang fell in love with was Ji Yao– even before he ended up falling for Qin Yubai.

Yan Shuang’s poor family and timid personality set him up to be an inconspicuous figure in the school by the plot. 

Qin Yubai sent his people to pick him up from class and bring him to a hotel where he was tormented all night. The next day, Yan Shuang would be late for the counsellor’s morning assembly. Seeing that the one late was Yan Shuang, a poor student and a nobody, the counsellor decided to make an example of him and punished Yan Shuang by making him stand outside during the assembly.

Yan Shuang was pushed to his limits all night by Qin Yubai. His waist, legs and the unspeakable part of his behind were almost intolerably sore. The one hour he had to stand outside almost made him collapse.

It was when Yan Shuang dragged his exhausted body back to the dormitory that he met Ji Yao, who had just come to school.

The two had already met the day before. 

Ji Yao was cold and aloof, with looks to match. He almost seemed like an ice sculpture. This coupled with his powerful family background meant that everyone in the dormitory was afraid of him.

When Ji Yao arrived, he didn’t greet anyone. The only person he spoke to was Yan Shuang, who was on the lower bunk. “Get out of the way.”

That was the only interaction between the two.

After running into Ji Yao, Yan Shuang hurried to avoid him. Because he felt so uncomfortable, he fainted as soon as he got in bed. 

Yet when he woke up again, someone had tucked him in. There was also a warm wet towel on his forehead. Before his lost eyes, a cold and aloof youth gave him warm water and medication to reduce fever.

Yan Shuang’s heart skipped a beat.

Ji Yao was the first person to treat him well after he fell into deep trouble.

But what Yan Shuang didn’t know was that the only reason Ji Yao helped him was because of his resemblance to Ji Yao’s childhood sweetheart. Yan Shuang had been groaning so much while unconscious that Ji Yao lost his patience and got out of bed to tell him to shut up. Yet when he saw that face that looked strikingly like Qin Qing, he couldn’t help but feel compassion. 

Yan Shuang knew nothing of this. The only thing he knew was that from the first day they met, Ji Yao had been kind to him.

While he lived in the dormitory, Ji Yao was the only one to occasionally pay attention to Yan Shuang, who might as well have been invisible. Although his words were cold and harsh, he would give Yan Shuang some daily necessities at times.

The Ji family and the Qin family were friends, meaning that Ji Yao inevitably crossed paths with Qin Yubai frequently. When Qin Yubai publicly humiliated and embarrassed Yan Shuang at a banquet, Ji Yao stood up and helped Yan Shuang out.

You could say that, for a very long time, Ji Yao was the only bright spot in Yan Shuang’s gloomy life. 

It was more than natural for Yan Shuang to fall in love with Ji Yao.

It wasn’t until Yan Shuang fell in love with Qin Yubai after being involved with the man for so long that this faint love for Ji Yao gradually faded.

After that, Qin Yubai deliberately lost Yan Shuang to Ji Yao at the gambling table.

Being given to someone he once had feelings for as a trophy of sorts in a gambing game, by his current lover at that, sent Yan Shuang into a very deep depression. 

Yet Ji Yao’s treatment of Yan Shuang became gentle. Ji Yao changed his major, saying that this way, he wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of his classmates because he missed so many classes. Ji Yao personally taught him piano, saying that he had the artistic talent for this. Ji Yao respected him, loved him and made him feel like a real person.

That once-dimmed love began to blossom again under Ji Yao’s care.

Yan Shuang thought Ji Yao was different from Qin Yubai. He thought that Ji Yao had genuine feelings for him.

For a cold, aloof youth like Ji Yao who was so removed from normal society, he had no need to please anyone he didn’t like. That’s why Ji Yao’s love wasn’t feigned. 

Ji Yao treated him differently than anyone else.

Yan Shuang sank deeper and deeper into this delusion.

Even if Ji Yao told him to donate a kidney to Qin Qing, Yan Shuang still deluded himself, saying Ji Yao was just worried for a childhood friend, a playmate. Ji Yao felt nothing but affection for Qin Qing.

And for Ji Yao, he would save Qin Qing. 

A dose of anaesthetics made his love sink into the abyss.

It turned out that Ji Yao…was just using him as a substitute too…

If you asked Yan Shuang to comment on the plot line between the two, Yan Shuang would sum it up as: ‘Easy-peasy’.

Everything was Yan Shuang acting by himself, so it would actually be hard to mess up. Easy-peasy, little comrade Ji really was a good and filial son! 

“This is way too hot. Has the school gone insane? Why aren’t they letting us turn on the air conditioner when it’s already 30 degrees?!”

At eight o’clock in the evening after night classes had ended, the once empty dormitories were filled with angry male university students. The entire building seemed to be sweltering, and everyone who came back had the same thought in mind– to quickly take a shower.

Every dormitory has its own bathroom, but hot water wasn’t included, meaning it couldn’t be used in the winter. None of the boys cared since it was summer now. A quick rinse wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Everyone was also lining up to take a shower in Yan Shuang’s dormitory. Yan Shuang, of course, was last in line. 

“Ah. So refreshing–”

The fourth person emerged from the bath naked except for his big underpants, roughly rubbing his wet hair with a towel. He walked past Yan Shuang, who was holding a washbasin, without even sparing him a glance.

Yan Shuang was also very accepting of this.

Don’t ask, it’s the glasses’ buff. 

A pair of must-have magical glasses in any novel world, the buff being: whoever wears this pair of glasses would immediately become practically invisible.

Pushing open the bathroom door, Yan Shuang took off his glasses and put them on the sink before running the water to take a bath.

The traces of his body had almost disappeared after two days, and the area that was injured healed even quicker. As expected of the main shou’s body in an angsty novel.

Except for his lips. 

The wounds on his lips healed especially slowly. Fortunately, it didn’t look too bad. In fact, the broken rose-coloured lips better attracted the attention of others.

Of course, everything vanished without a trace when the debuff glasses were on.

Yan Shuang took the cold water and slowly took his bath. Since he was the last one to go, no one would be banging on the door.

The bathroom door was very thin. Yan Shuang could still clearly hear the chattering and laughter in the dormitory. Being male university students, the topic was either ball games, video games or girls. 

The boys didn’t even hear the door opening at first because they were so engrossed in arguing which girl had the most beautiful leg. It wasn’t until the door slammed shut that all discussion stopped abruptly.

The original lively dormitory went silent.

The young man at the door wore a well-tailored shirt, his straight trouser legs having no folds at all. At night, he was still meticulously dressed and out of place in this chaotic boys’ dormitory. There was no expression on his face, but people still got the feeling that he was someone above them. The low air pressure system he brought into the dormitory was more than stifling.

Ji Yao’s expression was gloomy. Without greeting anyone, he set down his suitcase and headed for the bathroom. The door opened just as his hand came to the handle. 

For an instant, Ji Yao thought that he saw Qin Qing. A wet, fairy-like Qin Qing.

“Is it you, Zhang Shuai?”

The other party was timid.

“I think I forgot to get my glasses. Could you get them for me?” 

Peach blossom eyes narrowed uncertainly. The other party seemed to be trying to figure out who he was. He even took a light step forward because he couldn’t see clearly, almost exposing himself to the sight of everyone in the dormitory.

His body reacted before his mind caught up.

Ji Yao pushed this unfamiliar, yet strikingly similar to Qin Qing, boy back into the washroom. He locked the bathroom door behind him.

Hearing the sound of the door closing, the boy backed away in shock, causing him to kick the protruding baffle behind him in the small washroom. The moment he was about to fall, Ji Yao reached out and caught him. 

Yan Shuang fell forward, his head bumping into Ji Yao’s chest. He was safely caught and embraced by a pair of dry, warm hands.

Yan Shuang glanced at the progress bar.

His relationship plot line progress with Ji Yao was 10%.

See how pleasant this good man was to deal with, how deep his love for Qin Qing was? He’s willing to give 10% progress even if he’s only similar in appearance! 

Not like Qin Yubai, that damned Beast Qin.

After sleeping with him for an entire day and night, his relationship plot line progress was just 1%!

He’s so fucking stingy!

“Be careful.” 

Ji Yao’s voice matched his character settings. It sounded cold and crisp like shattered jade.

“Ah, I’m sorry. Thank you… You’re not…Zhang Shuai, are you? I’m so sorry, I couldn’t see clearly because I wasn’t wearing my glasses…” Yan Shuang flushed bright red as he explained incoherently. He looked down, like he was very ashamed to have recognized the wrong person.

Ji Yao glanced at the glasses on the vanity table. He picked up them up, unfolded them and set them gently on the ears of Yan Shuang, who was still trying to explain himself with his head down. The explanation came to an abrupt end  like he had been cut off. The two thin ears Ji Yao could see were red to the point of dripping blood.

“Th-thank you…” Yan Shuang was stunned. He picked up the basin from the side and pushed his glasses up his nose before remembering to introduce himself. “H-hello. My name is Yan Shuang” 

There was silence for a while before a cold response finally came.

“Ji Yao.”

Yan Shuang nodded. Biting his lower lip, he unlocked the bathroom door and darted past Ji Yao like a rabbit.

When Yan Shuang passed by, Ji Yao smelled a faint citrus-like fragrance. 

Probably from the cheap shower gel placed in the bathroom.

Ji Yao frowned.

Such a similar face, but the body perfumed by such an inferior scent.

To that face, it was almost– blasphemous.