Chapter Text
The first thing you noticed was the smell.
Not antiseptic. Not the faint chemical tang of laundry detergent that always clung to your sheets no matter how many times you washed them. Not even the stale, slightly burnt odor of an overworked computer fan that had been running for twelve hours straight while you rage-quit an otome game at three in the morning, muttering curses at a screen that had just shown you the same miserable ending for the fifth time.
Sandalwood.
It lingered in the air, warm and rich, mixed with the faint fragrance of burning incense—something expensive, the kind that cost more than your monthly rent and left a soft, lingering sweetness on the back of the tongue. Underneath it floated a quieter note of polished wood and silk, the scent of a room that had never known dust or neglect or the particular despair of a late-night instant-noodle dinner eaten over a keyboard. The air itself felt different. Cleaner. Heavier. As though it belonged to a place where time moved more slowly and every breath carried the weight of centuries.
Your eyelids felt strangely heavy, as though someone had pressed warm coins against them while you slept. The darkness behind your closed eyes was soft and absolute. You forced them open anyway, fighting the strange reluctance of muscles that did not quite feel like your own.
An elaborately carved ceiling greeted you. Dark wooden beams stretched overhead in perfect symmetry, painted with coiling golden dragons whose scales caught the morning sunlight filtering through half-drawn silk curtains. The dragons seemed almost alive. Their eyes—tiny chips of darker gold—watched you with the quiet arrogance of creatures that had outlived dynasties and still found the living faintly amusing. Beyond the curtains, somewhere far below, you could hear the distant splash of water against stone and the soft, irregular chime of wind bells stirred by a breeze that smelled of wet leaves and distant mountains.
You blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The dragons did not disappear.
“…Where am I?”
This definitely wasn’t your apartment.
Your tiny one-bedroom place had peeling wallpaper the color of old tea stains, an overworked fan that rattled like it was preparing for takeoff whenever the temperature climbed above twenty-five degrees, and a computer whose graphics card sounded like a jet engine every time you launched anything more demanding than a browser. The mattress sagged in the middle from years of the same sleep posture. The floor was permanently cold. The only “decor” consisted of empty instant-noodle cups stacked into increasingly unstable towers and a single dying pothos plant you kept forgetting to water until its leaves turned the color of regret.
This room looked like it belonged to royalty.
The bed beneath you was wide enough to sleep four people without anyone touching. The sheets were silk—actual silk, cool and smooth against skin that somehow felt more sensitive than it should, as though every nerve ending had been tuned to a higher frequency. A carved wooden screen stood to one side, inlaid with mother-of-pearl cranes mid-flight, their wings catching the light in soft flashes of iridescence. A low table nearby held a porcelain tea set so delicate it looked like it would shatter if you breathed too hard. Everything whispered wealth, power, and the kind of quiet authority that made servants lower their eyes without being told. Even the air seemed to know its place.
Before you could sit up properly, an unfamiliar weight settled across your chest and shoulders. It was soft. Heavy. Moving slightly with every breath you took.
“…Hm?”
Looking down, you found a long curtain of black hair spilling over embroidered robes. The strands were thick, glossy, and far longer than anything you had ever grown in your life. They caught the light like ink poured across dark water, sliding over the fabric with a quiet, liquid sound. The weight of it was real. The way it tangled against your collarbone was real. The faint pull against your scalp when you shifted was real.
Your robes.
Your hair.
“…Wait.”
You grabbed a loose strand between two fingers and stared. It wasn’t dyed. The color ran true all the way to the root. It wasn’t a wig. When you gave a careful, experimental tug, a sharp sting ran across your scalp and down the side of your neck.
It was attached.
“…No.”
A polished bronze mirror stood on a stand near the window, its surface so clear it reflected the dragons on the ceiling with almost perfect fidelity. You swung your legs over the edge of the bed—and nearly face-planted when the hem of the robes tangled around your ankles like living things determined to keep you horizontal. The fabric was heavier than it looked, layered and formal, the kind of clothing that required servants and time and a complete lack of urgency to put on properly. The inner layer was soft against skin that still felt wrong. The outer robe carried the faint stiffness of expensive embroidery.
You stumbled toward the mirror, one hand catching the edge of the stand to keep from falling. The bronze was cool under your palm. Your reflection waited.
The face staring back at you was not yours.
Refined features. High cheekbones that caught the light with aristocratic precision. Pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun for longer than was fashionable, or perhaps had simply never needed to. Long black hair tied loosely with a jade hairpin and a matching clasp at the end of a thick braid that hung over one shoulder. A black robe embroidered with silver cranes in flight, the kind of intricate work that took months for a master artisan and cost more than most people earned in a year. Sharp phoenix eyes that carried an arrogance you had never possessed in your life—cool, assessing, faintly contemptuous even in stillness, as though the world itself had already been judged and found slightly lacking.
You knew that face.
You knew it far too well.
You had spent the last three weeks screaming at it on your computer screen. You had watched that same mouth curl into cold smiles and final, bitter laughs. You had seen those same eyes close for the last time on an execution platform while the rain fell and the heroine’s companions stood in judgment.
“…Xie Zhenyu?”
The reflection copied every movement perfectly. When you raised a hand, so did he. When you leaned closer, the same sharp eyes narrowed in mirrored disbelief. When your breath fogged the bronze for half a second, his did the same.
Your stomach dropped so hard it felt like the floor had vanished beneath the expensive rugs.
No, no, no…
There had to be another explanation. A prank. An extremely elaborate dream brought on by too little sleep and too much caffeine. An incredibly realistic VR game that had somehow bypassed every safety protocol and dumped you into the character model without a logout button. Maybe you had finally snapped from sleep deprivation and stress and were hallucinating in spectacular, high-budget fashion. Maybe the last thing you remembered—falling asleep face-down on your keyboard after the fifth bad ending—had simply continued into this.
You slapped your own cheeks.
Hard.
The sting was immediate and very real. Heat bloomed across skin that still didn’t feel like yours. Your reflection’s cheek reddened in exact time with the pain. The phoenix eyes watered slightly.
“…Ow. Definitely not a dream.”
A bright chime echoed through the room, soft and crystalline, like a silver bell struck underwater. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Ding!
A translucent blue window materialized in front of your face, floating without any visible support. The edges glowed with a soft cyan light that painted faint highlights across the embroidered cranes on your sleeves. Text scrolled across it in clean, modern font that looked completely out of place against the ancient wooden beams and silk curtains—like a smartphone notification dropped into a historical painting.
[Loading…
Synchronizing consciousness…
Player authentication successful.
Welcome to Blooming Lotus: Fate of the Phoenix Maiden.]
“…”
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Another window appeared before you could process the first, stacking neatly beneath it like browser tabs from hell. The text was calm. Clinical. Completely unconcerned with the fact that your entire sense of reality was currently dissolving.
[Loading Original Story…]
Your surroundings dissolved into darkness.
It happened without warning and without mercy. One moment you were standing in the bedroom, hand still braced against the mirror stand; the next, the floor vanished beneath your feet and the world rebuilt itself around you with the smooth, inevitable logic of a loading screen you could not skip.
A palace courtyard.
Rain poured relentlessly onto white stone already stained crimson with blood. The drops were cold, heavy, the kind that soaked through robes in seconds and turned the air into a grey curtain that blurred the edges of everything. Thunder rumbled somewhere far off, but the sound felt distant, muted, as though the storm itself was holding its breath out of respect—or anticipation. The smell of wet stone and iron mixed with something darker, something that clung to the back of the throat.
Thousands of people knelt in silence across the vast open space. Officials in formal court robes, their headdresses drooping under the weight of water. Generals with armor still dusty from the road, rain tracing clean lines through the grime. Commoners who had been herded in to witness the spectacle, their faces blank with the particular numbness of people who knew better than to show emotion in front of power. Not one of them spoke. Not one of them moved. The only sound was the rain and the soft, occasional clink of metal as soldiers adjusted their grips on spears and swords.
Soldiers lined the execution grounds in perfect ranks, their faces blank beneath rain-darkened helmets. Water ran from the tips of their weapons in thin, steady streams.
At the center of it all…
A man knelt with his hands bound tightly behind his back.
He wore torn white robes soaked scarlet from a dozen wounds that had not been allowed to close. Messy black hair hung in wet strands across his face, hiding most of his expression. His shoulders were straight despite the ropes, his posture unbroken even at the end. Rain plastered the fabric to his body, outlining the shape of someone who had once been powerful and was now simply finished.
Then he slowly lifted his head.
You.
It was you.
Or rather… the body you were currently inhabiting.
The same phoenix eyes, now dull with exhaustion and blood loss. The same refined features pale beneath streaks of rain and dirt. The same mouth that had, in every route you had ever played, twisted into a final, bitter smile before the blade fell.
A decree echoed across the courtyard, spoken by a eunuch whose voice cracked with the strain of projecting over the rain and the weight of the moment.
“Xie Zhenyu, eldest heir of the Xie Clan.
For treason against the Empire, conspiracy with rebels, attempted regicide, and the murder of innocent civilians…
His crimes are unforgivable.
The sentence is death by beheading.
May the heavens witness justice.”
The executioner stepped forward. He was a large man, expressionless, the kind of professional who had performed this duty so many times that the weight of a life no longer registered on his face. The blade in his hands was long, heavy, and already gleaming with oil and rain. Water ran down its length and dripped from the tip onto the stained stone.
Nearby stood five men.
Each one radiated a presence so overwhelming they drew the eye immediately, even through the downpour.
The Crown Prince stood with perfect posture beneath a dark canopy held by attendants who looked as though they would rather be anywhere else. Rain did not dare touch the hem of his robes. His hand rested lightly on the hilt of a longsword whose name every citizen of the empire knew: Heaven’s Mandate. His eyes were cold, distant, the eyes of a man who had already weighed the cost of this death and found it acceptable. There was no satisfaction in them. Only the quiet finality of duty completed.
A broad-shouldered general rested one hand on the shaft of a scarlet spear, jaw set in grim resolve. Water ran down the scars on his face without softening them. He did not look away. He watched the bound man with the steady gaze of someone who had lost friends to the villain’s schemes and intended to see the debt paid in full. The rain plastered his hair to his forehead. He did not blink.
A scholar in elegant pale robes stood a step further back, head slightly lowered. His usual gentle expression was gone, replaced by something quieter and far more painful. He could not watch the final moment, yet he could not leave either. Rain darkened the ink-stained edges of his sleeves. His hands, usually so steady with a brush, were clenched tightly enough that the knuckles had gone white.
A smiling envoy from the Southern Court folded his hands neatly into his sleeves as though this were merely another political affair that required polite observation. His smile never reached his eyes. It was the same smile he wore at banquets and negotiations—pleasant, empty, and impossible to read. Water beaded on the elegant lines of his robes and slid away without staining.
The fifth place…
Was empty.
A strange distortion rippled through the air where someone—or something—should have been standing. The rain bent around the empty space in unnatural arcs. The light warped, folding in on itself like heat haze over summer stone. For half a heartbeat you thought you saw the outline of a tall figure in black, a blade longer than any ordinary sword, and eyes that burned with recognition rather than condemnation. The shape felt familiar in a way that made something deep in your chest tighten.
The image flickered.
Static crackled across your vision like a corrupted video file, tearing the courtyard into jagged strips of light and darkness.
Then everything returned to normal. The empty space was simply empty again. No one else seemed to notice. The rain continued. The soldiers remained still. The bound man on the platform waited.
You barely had time to process the glitch before the executioner raised his blade.
The bound Xie Zhenyu laughed.
It wasn’t triumphant. It wasn’t hysterical either.
It was tired.
A soft, weary sound that somehow carried over the rain and the silence of thousands. It was the laugh of someone who had already lost everything that mattered and found the final moment almost amusing in its inevitability.
“So this is how it ends…”
The sword fell.
Everything went black.
You gasped as the vision vanished.
The bedroom returned in a rush of sandalwood and silk and morning light so bright it hurt. Your knees hit the floor hard enough to send a jolt up your spine. Your pulse hammered so violently in your ears that for a moment you couldn’t hear anything else—not the wind bells, not the distant water, not even your own ragged breathing. Your hands were shaking. Your lungs couldn’t seem to remember how to take a full breath. The taste of rain and iron still lingered at the back of your throat even though the courtyard was gone.
“…That… That was my ending?”
The blue window blinked once, polite and clinical, as though it had simply shown you a weather report.
[Correct.]
“Correct?! You just showed me getting beheaded!”
[That is the conclusion of Xie Zhenyu’s route.]
“I don’t want Xie Zhenyu’s route!”
Your voice cracked on the last word. The phoenix eyes in the mirror—still visible from where you knelt—looked back at you, completely unmoved by the panic currently rewriting your nervous system.
[Request denied.]
“What do you mean, denied?!”
[Your previous physical body has entered an unrecoverable state.
Soul successfully transferred.
World synchronization complete.]
You pressed both hands against your temples hard enough that your nails dug into skin that still didn’t feel like yours. The jade hairpin shifted, digging a small, precise point of discomfort into your scalp. Long strands of black hair spilled between your shoulders, cool and heavy and wrong.
“Okay. Fine. This is one of those transmigration stories.”
The words came out thin and strained, as though saying them aloud might force the universe to agree. “If I change the plot, I survive.”
Simple.
Right?
The screen remained suspiciously silent. The cyan glow painted soft highlights across the embroidered cranes on your sleeves. Outside, a bird called once and fell quiet.
“…Right?”
A pause stretched long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable.
Something small and furry suddenly landed on your shoulder with an indignant squeak.
“Eep!”
You nearly launched yourself backward. The only reason you didn’t crack your head on the floor was because the heavy robes tangled around your legs again and forced you into an undignified half-sprawl that left one knee pressed against the cold floor and one hand braced against the low table. The porcelain tea set rattled. A single cup tipped, rolled, and would have shattered if something hadn’t moved faster than your eyes could follow.
Perched comfortably atop your shoulder was…
A hamster.
No.
A suspiciously fluffy white hamster.
It was about the size of your palm, round enough to resemble a steamed bun with tiny ears and a stubby tail that flicked once in irritation. Its fur was pure white, almost glowing in the morning light, soft enough that you could feel the individual strands against the side of your neck. Bead-like black eyes blinked at you with perfect clarity before it puffed out its tiny chest in a gesture of pure self-importance.
“Hello!”
“…”
“The hamster talked.”
“I did.”
“I’ve finally lost my mind.”
“I get that reaction a lot,” the hamster said, voice high and clear and far too articulate for something that should have been squeaking. It sighed dramatically, a tiny huff that made its whole body rise and fall like a very small, very fluffy bellows. “I’m not actually a hamster.”
“…”
“I’m the System Avatar!”
Silence stretched. Somewhere outside, the wind bells chimed again, soft and completely unconcerned with the existential crisis currently unfolding on the floor of a royal bedroom.
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
The little creature hopped into your hands without asking permission, landing with a soft thump against your palms. Its paws were warm. Its fur was softer than anything you had ever touched—softer than the silk sheets, softer than the expensive robes, softer than the last remaining scraps of denial you were still clinging to. It weighed almost nothing. It felt completely, impossibly real.
“My name is Xiao Bai!”
It spread its tiny paws proudly, as though presenting itself for inspection by a particularly slow-witted audience.
“I’ll be taking care of you from now on!”
“…Can I refuse?”
“I don’t think you can,” Xiao Bai said, ears drooping just a fraction. The cheerful tone faltered for half a second. “The binding is already complete. Soul synchronization, avatar assignment, the whole package. You’re stuck with me.”
“Figures.”
Before Xiao Bai could answer further, every floating screen in front of you dissolved into thousands of blue particles that drifted upward like glowing ash caught in a slow current. The air trembled. A faint pressure settled over the room, as though the space itself had taken a breath and held it. A far larger window slowly descended from above like a divine decree, its edges shimmering with gold instead of ordinary cyan. The light it cast was warmer, heavier, and somehow more absolute.
[Romantic Fate Correction System Version 8.6
Initializing…
Current World:
*Blooming Lotus: Fate of the Phoenix Maiden
Current Identity
Xie Zhenyu
Role
Primary Antagonist
Survival Probability
0.04%]
“…Zero point zero four?”
Xiao Bai coughed awkwardly, a tiny sound that somehow managed to convey embarrassment and the desire to be anywhere else.
“It used to be zero.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the improvement. Look—four hundredths of a percent! That’s… something.”
“I don’t.”
Another line of text appeared beneath the first block, crisp and merciless, as though the System had been waiting for the exact right moment to deliver the next blow.
[Original Fate
Public execution.]
The screen flickered. Words began filling the space one by one, as though the System were reading from a script it had recited a thousand times before and no longer felt the need to soften.
[Original Story Summary
The villain, Xie Zhenyu, attempts to seize control of the imperial court through manipulation, blackmail, and assassination.
He is ultimately defeated by the heroine and her companions.
Sentence:
Execution.]
“…No.”
[Correction.
Yes.]
“No, I mean no.”
The words came out sharper this time. Your hands had curled into fists around Xiao Bai without conscious decision. The little hamster made a small, startled sound but did not try to escape.
[Player confusion detected.]
Then—
Your head exploded with pain.
“Ah—!”
Images flooded your vision without mercy or warning, slamming into the back of your eyes with the force of a physical blow.
A grand estate rising against mountains, its gates carved with the Xie clan crest in deep, unyielding strokes. Servants bowing so low their foreheads nearly touched the ground, their faces carefully blank. Sword lessons in a courtyard where the stones were permanently scarred by practice strikes that had never been allowed to miss. Cold expressions practiced in mirrors until they became second nature, until the muscles of the face no longer remembered how to form anything softer. Court politics whispered behind silk screens, every word a blade wrapped in courtesy. A younger girl—your half-sister—smiling brightly as she ran through gardens you were never allowed to enjoy the same way, her laughter carrying across spaces you were expected to cross in silence. The whispered words of nobles following you down corridors like shadows that never quite left.
“Young Master Xie…”
“What a frightening child…”
“Stay away from him.”
“The Xie heir is cruel.”
“Better the younger sister than the elder brother.”
“Heaven favored the wrong child.”
You saw yourself—him—standing on a high balcony, looking down at the world with eyes that had learned early that kindness was a liability and softness a wound waiting to be opened. You felt the weight of expectations that had never been kind. You felt the slow, quiet corrosion of a life lived as the obstacle rather than the protagonist, the necessary villain whose existence made the heroine’s light shine brighter by contrast.
The memories ended as abruptly as they had begun, leaving a hollow ache behind your eyes and the faint taste of blood where you had bitten the inside of your cheek.
You stumbled forward, catching yourself on the low table. The porcelain tea set rattled again. One cup tipped, rolled, and would have shattered against the floor if Xiao Bai hadn’t scrambled across the surface with surprising speed and steadied it with both tiny paws. The little hamster’s ears were flat against its head. Its black eyes were wide.
“Those…”
“They’re his memories,” Xiao Bai said softly. The cheerful tone was gone entirely. “No. They’re yours now. The transfer includes residual memory integration. It’s… standard protocol. Helps with immersion. And survival.”
Silence settled over the room like a second set of silk curtains.
Outside, somewhere beyond the paper windows, birds chirped in the kind of bright, thoughtless joy that belonged to creatures that had never watched themselves die. Someone laughed in the distance—a bright, carefree sound that belonged to a world still moving forward without you. Life continued as though nothing had happened. Servants would be preparing breakfast. Officials would be preparing for court. The heroine—your half-sister—would be waking to a day that still belonged to her.
Inside…
Your entire world had collapsed into a single, cold fact.
You looked down at your hands.
Long fingers. Calloused palms from years of sword training you had never performed. Pale skin that had never known the cheap fluorescent lighting of your old apartment or the particular exhaustion of a life lived paycheck to paycheck. Not yours. Not really. And yet every line, every faint scar, every callus was now yours to carry.
“So…”
Your voice came out quieter than expected, stripped of the earlier sharp edges.
“I’m trapped here?”
Xiao Bai lowered its ears. The fluffy white fur seemed to deflate slightly, as though the little creature had shrunk under the weight of the answer.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Until the story ends.”
“And if I die?”
The little hamster looked away, staring at a corner of the room as though the answer might be written in the wood grain if it looked hard enough.
“…Your consciousness will be permanently erased. No reset. No second transfer. No return to your original body—because that body is already gone. This is the only one you have left.”
“…”
“…That’s a terrifying way to say I’ll die.”
For the first time since waking up, Xiao Bai didn’t sound cheerful. It sounded guilty. The silence that followed was heavier than the robes still tangled around your legs, heavier than the jade hairpin still pinned in hair that did not belong to you, heavier than the knowledge that the men who had stood on that rainy platform were somewhere in this same city, living their lives, completely unaware that the villain they had already killed once was currently having a quiet breakdown on the floor of his own bedroom.
You let out a long breath.
Panic wasn’t going to help.
Thinking would.
“Fine. If I’m really inside this game…”
You looked up at the floating System window, still hovering with its golden edges and clinical text, waiting with the infinite patience of something that had all the time in the world and none of the mercy.
“...How do I survive?”
The interface shimmered. One final window slowly unfolded before you, larger than the others, descending with the gravity of a verdict. Unlike the previous displays, its letters glowed crimson—deep, arterial, impossible to ignore.
MAIN QUEST
Rewrite Your Fate
Avoid your scripted execution.
Reward:
Continued existence.
Failure:
Permanent death.
Below it…
A second objective appeared.
You read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, certain the characters had rearranged themselves into something less absurd while you weren’t looking.
Secondary Objective
Steal every romance target from the heroine.
Current Progress:
0/5
“…Excuse me?”
[Objective Accepted.]
"Hold on— I didn’t accept anything!”
Your voice rose. Xiao Bai flinched on the table.
[Acceptance recorded.]
“I object!”
[Objection denied.]
“You can’t just—”
[To survive, all five romance targets must experience significant affection toward the Player.
Failure to achieve sufficient affection across all designated targets will result in reversion to original route conclusion.
Original route conclusion: Public execution.]
You covered your face with both hands. The crimson text burned against the insides of your eyelids even with your eyes closed.
“So, let me get this straight. I’m the villain. I’m doomed to die. And the only way to avoid that…”
“…is to make five men fall in love with me?”
Xiao Bai nodded once. The motion was small and solemn and somehow worse for its sincerity.
“…Correct.”
Silence.
A very long silence.
Somewhere outside, a servant called to another in a language that was both familiar and not. Footsteps passed the courtyard—measured, unhurried, belonging to people who still believed the world made sense. The ordinary sounds of a great household beginning its day continued, completely unaware that the infamous young master inside this room was currently having a quiet existential crisis involving a talking hamster, a floating blue window, and a reverse-harem quest with permanent death as the failure condition.
Finally, you lowered your hands and looked up at the ceiling, at the painted dragons that still seemed to be watching with their tiny chips of darker gold.
“…Game over.”
The System chimed pleasantly, the sound bright and utterly at odds with the weight of the words still glowing crimson in the air between you and the rest of your life.
[Correction.
Game Start.]
Xiao Bai scrambled up your arm and settled into the crook of your neck, warm and soft and far too real. Its tiny voice was almost apologetic when it spoke again, close enough that you felt the faint movement of air against your skin.
“Welcome to the game, Player.”
You closed your eyes.
The sandalwood still hung in the air, warm and rich and completely indifferent. The silk sheets still rustled when you shifted, cool against skin that still felt borrowed. The long black hair still brushed against your wrists when the breeze from the open window stirred it, carrying the distant sound of wind bells and water and a world that had already written your ending in blood and rain.
Everything was real.
And according to the crimson text still floating in front of you, the only way out was to steal the hearts of the five men who, in every other version of this story, had stood on that rainy execution ground and watched you die without looking away.
You opened your eyes again.
The dragons on the ceiling stared back, patient and eternal and unmoved.
“…This,” you muttered, the words quiet enough that only the hamster on your shoulder could hear them, “is going to be a disaster.”
Xiao Bai’s ears perked up. The fluffy white fur brushed the side of your neck as it shifted.
“Probably!” it said, far too cheerfully for the circumstances. “But at least the survival probability is higher than zero now. That’s progress! Sort of. Mostly. A little.”
You did not find that comforting.
Outside, the morning bells of the capital began to ring, marking the start of a new day in a world that had already decided how your story ended. The sound rolled across rooftops and courtyards and the quiet room that smelled of sandalwood and expensive incense, where the newly awakened villain of Blooming Lotus: Fate of the Phoenix Maiden sat on the floor in robes that did not belong to him, with a talking hamster on his shoulder and a System window that refused to close.
The game had started.
Whether you liked it or not.