After three seconds of inner debate, he couldn't hold back and sent Su Si a message.
Qi: Little Si, what's going on with your WeChat name?
Su Si had been holding his phone, eagerly awaiting a reply from his dear husband, when he saw who the message was actually from. His expression went cold in an instant.
Oh. The scumbag.
The obedient little wife of the world's most handsome man, Chu Weirang: Boohoo, Ah Su! I'm so sorry — Chu Weirang made me change it, he forced me into it, I didn't want to either, but didn't you say we can't let anything slip? So I had no choice.
Chu Weirang: "???"
Qi Su had been on the verge of demanding he change it back no matter what, but hearing this — and remembering all of Chu Weirang's tactics, not to mention last night — he felt an inexplicable tenderness creep into his chest.
Qi: I'm sorry, Little Si, I shouldn't have brought up something that upsets you. Keep the name for now. If you find what we discussed, come back and tell me.
Su Si was speechless. The man was still on guard — he hadn't said anything outright about confidential matters, so if anyone saw the message, he could always wriggle out of it.
Something like: "I was talking about the Chu family's pastries — who told you to bring me classified information?"
That sort of thing.
Then he'd turn it around and play the victim. And with a brain like the original owner's, how would anyone ever argue back? It would just get swept under the rug.
He couldn't be bothered dealing with him. He went back to waiting for his husband's reply.
His patience was finally rewarded.
Husband: Mm.
Su Si: "???"
That was it?
Nothing else?
The little Omega was furious. He stormed downstairs, grabbed a few fried dough sticks from the housekeeper, and tore into them with savage satisfaction.
Just you wait, you high-and-mighty lotus blossom. He refused to believe he couldn't win this man over.
But as he chewed, he remembered something important.
This month's allowance hadn't come through. The original owner — that absolute fool — had handed over every last cent to Qi Su. So how was he supposed to get through the rest of the month?
Sure, he could wheedle money out of Chu Weirang with a bit of charm, but he couldn't be the one to make the first move.
Going out of his way to ask for money would make him look cheap — like some kind of penny-pinching miser.
He had far too much dignity for that!
Besides, even if he were a miser, he would only ever maneuver the other person into willingly handing the money over himself.
Right then. Time to get to work.
Question: How does one survive in this villa until allowance day?
Su Si looked around, and a few viable ideas began to take shape.
Option One: Sell off some of the household items that looked expensive — and were, in fact, even more expensive than they looked.
Pros and cons, with the cons far outweighing the pros.
Pro: fast cash, and lots of it.
Con: if discovered, he would be absolutely finished. Besides, sneaking around and pilfering things was beneath him.
Option Two: Return to his roots. Begin his creative career.
Before crossing into this novel, he had written fiction and drawn comics. That was actually why he'd taken the whole situation so calmly at the start.
After all… he'd left a great many storylines unfinished, all of them absolutely brutal. He'd put his readers through the wringer repeatedly, and plenty of them had chased him down in the comments swearing he'd be reborn as cannon fodder in his own novel someday.
Well. Here he was. Reborn in his own novel.
He let out a long sigh, imagining his readers' reactions — slapping their knees and crowing: "Serves you right for torturing us!"
What they hadn't anticipated, though, was that he hadn't been thrown into suffering at all. He was living rather spectacularly.
Ha! The tables had turned!
Readers: "…Damn."
No time to waste. Su Si got up, asked the housekeeper where he could find a computer, and soon settled himself in front of a machine he hadn't sat at in what felt like ages.
He stared at it. It looked extraordinarily expensive. He nearly drooled.
Su Si looked up at the housekeeper standing nearby, genuinely curious. "How much did this computer cost?"
The housekeeper blinked. He had not expected the much-discussed new spouse to ask such a question, but he answered honestly. “Including the computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and accessories, it cost about a hundred thousand yuan.”
O-one hundred thousand!
Su Si's eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Was this really what the ultra-wealthy considered a dull and ordinary existence?
This single machine cost as much as a decent car.
He hugged the computer and stroked it reverently, his eyes gleaming with unconcealed longing.
Unable to stop himself, he cradled the keyboard and planted two loud, enthusiastic kisses on it.
Roughly speaking, he had just kissed the equivalent of two or three thousand yuan in banknotes.
So this is what money smells like. He inhaled deeply.
The housekeeper standing beside him: “…”
Why was Madam embracing the master’s keyboard with such intoxicated devotion?
The housekeeper did not understand. He was, however, profoundly shaken.
Stifling his bewilderment, he raised his phone and quietly took a photograph of Madam’s extraordinary behavior.
“Sir… Madam really does seem very fond of you.”
Chu Weirang, upon receiving the photo: “…”
He looked down at his phone — at the boy clutching a keyboard he himself had pressed thousands of times, kissing it with such abandon that the camera had blurred — and fell into a deep, contemplative silence.
For the life of him, he couldn't tell whether the affection was genuine or an act.
He could only instruct the housekeeper to continue watching.
Housekeeper: “?”
The master wasn’t going to intervene?
…Ah. He understood now. This was apparently what passed for romance between the newlyweds.
He was the clown. He had been all along.
Having kissed the keyboard to his heart's content, Su Si finally lifted his head and graciously turned his attention to the computer — and by extension, the metaphorical stack of banknotes it represented.
He casually opened the machine, downloaded a writing app, then pulled out his phone to look up the most popular novel platforms in this world. One glance at the charts told him everything he needed to know.
The fiction market here was absolutely barren.
Every single title followed the same formula: muscular Alpha meets sweet, soft Omega; muscular Alpha meets sweet, soft Beta; muscular Beta meets sweet, soft Omega.
Every last one. Without exception.
What was the point?
That simply would not do. He would change the status quo.
He would write a story about a sweet, gentle Alpha and a muscular, dominant Omega!
An explosive premise from the very first page!
And he'd base it loosely on Chu Weirang and himself!
It would definitely go viral.
Fired up with ambition, he had just started filling in the submission form when a message arrived from the scumbag.
Qi: Little Si, are you free tomorrow?
Su Si deflated immediately, as though three buckets of ice water had been poured over his head.
The obedient little wife of the world's most handsome man, Chu Weirang: Ah Su, what's the matter?
Actual meaning: I suggest you not go looking for trouble if there isn't any.
Qi Su still flinched internally at seeing that display name, but he forced himself to look past it.
Qi: A friend of mine is coming back to the capital tomorrow — he's been away a long time and doesn't know the city well anymore. You're familiar with the area, and after what happened last night you should be resting anyway, so I thought I'd arrange for the two of you to go out and have a good time. I figured you'd be the best person for it.
Qi: Just remember not to mention anything about our situation. You're married now, so as far as anyone's concerned, we're just friends.
Su Si's interest was piqued.
Who could possibly warrant this much effort from him?
He'd only asked out of idle curiosity, but the answer lit a spark of recognition.
Qi: His name is An Zhiyue.
Su Si understood at once. An Zhiyue was the other male lead—the Alpha protagonist’s cherished beloved!
No wonder the man was going to all this trouble.
He turned the original plot over in his mind, and it all fell into place.
The protagonist's precious first love was no simple figure. An Zhiyue was the illegitimate son of the An family, brought home at around eight or nine years old — an arrival that had immediately enraged the legitimate eldest son, who eventually succeeded in engineering An Zhiyue's departure abroad after considerable effort.
Qi Su had met An Zhiyue before he went abroad. From then on, he had cherished him as an unattainable first love, longing for him without any sense of his own standing. Without the original Su Si’s help, Qi Su back then would not even have been worthy of carrying An Zhiyue’s shoes.
Qi Su’s family circumstances had been difficult, and An Zhiyue’s were even worse. That was precisely why Qi Su needed someone like the original Su Si to serve as a bridge into influential circles.
So. The plot had reached the arc where the male lead's beloved was returning from abroad.
The reason Qi Su wanted the original Su Si to welcome him was obvious.
The newlywed Omega belonged to the Chu family, one of the capital’s most powerful households. He was now the legitimate spouse of the Chu heir, and word had already spread that his husband doted on him. If a person of such standing personally welcomed An Zhiyue, the An family would certainly regard their returning illegitimate son in a new light.
Quite the strategy.
According to the original novel, the gullible original Su Si had believed An Zhiyue was simply Qi Su’s close friend and had devoted himself to helping him. When An Zhiyue fell out of favor with the An family, Su Si pleaded with Old Master Chu on his behalf and raised money for him. An Zhiyue had even treated him like a personal errand boy; once he got away with it, his demands only grew more outrageous.
An Zhiyue was clever, too. Every conversation with the original Su Si had been carefully calculated to flatter him and keep him obedient. Someone who had failed even to see through Qi Su had no chance of resisting An Zhiyue’s manipulations.
In time, word got out that the Chu family had taken an interest in An Zhiyue, and his fortunes soared. No one ever knew the name of the person who had quietly made it possible.
Su Si had absolutely no intention of playing the role of the devoted fool. So… he had come up with a plan.
