Spare me. I don’t want to go to the group dinner!
The little person inside Lin Cimian’s heart had dropped to his knees and was wailing his lungs out, but outwardly Lin Cimian pretended to be perfectly calm. Wearing a numb expression, he pushed open the door to the private room.
The lights inside were dim and the music was deafening. Members of the gaming club packed the sofas, sitting shoulder to shoulder as they gathered to chat or play games, animated and completely absorbed.
Just as Lin Cimian walked in, the microphone let out a piercing screech. The room suddenly fell silent, and everyone turned to look at him in unison, as though Lin Cimian’s arrival had destroyed the lively atmosphere.
Dozens of gazes made his scalp go numb in an instant. His smile froze at the corners of his lips, and he stood helplessly in the doorway.
“Cimian’s here. Come on in.”
The club president was the first to break the silence, greeting him warmly. The others also gave him friendly hellos.
Several older students were very good at looking after people. They came over on their own initiative, displaying formidable social skills as they asked after him with warm concern. They had only known one another for three days, yet acted as though they had been close friends for more than three years.
“Cimian, what do you like to drink? Is Coke okay?”
“Come on, come on, make some room for Cimian.”
“Cimian, do you want to sing or play games?”
Lin Cimian was slow to warm up to people and had severe social anxiety. Suddenly caught in the middle of everyone, he entered a state of social stress. His brain crashed completely, leaving him able to answer questions only through the most basic language functions. It felt like being trapped in a dream, everything hazy and unreal.
“N-no, I—I’ll just sit at the side. You guys keep playing.”
He nearly bit his tongue. The ends of his words were trembling, his voice grew weaker and weaker, and he even stammered by accident.
It was practically the trumpet call announcing the arrival of Awkwardness itself. Lin Cimian could only force out a dry smile, lower his head slightly, and avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.
“All right, then. Rest for a while first.”
The older students did not force him. They let him sit to one side and watch them play.
They were playing the King’s Game. The king’s orders were absolute and could not be resisted; the person who drew the king card could randomly designate two or three people to do something.
The people who drew the king card came up with increasingly wicked antics. Everyone else crowded together to watch the spectacle, egging them on from time to time. The people ordered to carry things out were generous about it too, sometimes increasing the difficulty themselves and pushing the atmosphere to an even greater fever pitch.
Just watching was enough to make Lin Cimian feel as though he could barely breathe. He fought to control the terrified expression on his face and wished desperately that he could find a crack in the floor and crawl into it.
Yet he happened to be sitting right beside them, as though an invisible barrier separated him from everyone else. He was utterly out of place amid the lively atmosphere on the other side.
Lin Cimian realized the problem too. To give himself something to do, he picked up his Coke and slowly took a few sips.
But getting another one after he finished would draw too much attention, so he restrained himself, drank only a little, and set it back on the table.
He continued sitting there stiffly. His two cold hands rubbed together unconsciously before he pretended naturally to smooth the hem of his shirt, trying to make himself look a little less bored.
He had planned to shrink his presence as much as possible and simply endure until the gathering ended, but people kept looking at him.
Lin Cimian was one of the most talked-about freshmen that year. He had flooded the school forum with posts the moment he enrolled. His looks were striking, like a beautiful young man who had walked straight out of a comic, and he had entered the mathematics department with the highest score, instantly acquiring the halo of an academic genius. Yet he himself was astonishingly low-key. In the more than two months since school began, this was the first group gathering he had attended.
Now he sat quietly in the noisy private room, his features delicate and beautiful, his gaze clean and clear. The beauty mark beneath his eye glittered like a diamond under the light, drawing people’s eyes and making face-cons lose control of their pounding hearts.
A boy sitting on the far edge finally worked up the courage to come over and strike up a conversation. Like a peacock spreading its tail, he did everything he could to display his personal charm. Lin Cimian barely managed to cope, answering his questions stiffly while silently weeping inside over his own miserable social skills.
After three people in succession had tried to talk to him and every conversation had become painfully awkward, Lin Cimian could no longer sit still. Wearing a smile that had already gone stiff, he fled to the restroom.
Only after the cubicle door closed did he finally let out a long breath. He covered his burning face, his eyes—watery from shame and embarrassment—peeking through the gaps between his fingers.
Who could possibly understand how suffocating it was for a socially anxious person who did not know a single person at a party?!
Who could come save him?!
After wailing internally for a while, Lin Cimian finally managed to calm down, only to become dejected again.
University was a fresh start. He had wanted to do well and avoid exposing the fact that he had social anxiety, but he had not expected to give himself away this quickly.
What a failure.
He sighed and shut down on the spot, his whole body wilting.
Rather than stay in the crowded private room, he would have preferred to hide in the restroom for the entire gathering and play some mindless little game on his phone.
But staying too long would make people suspicious, and if someone came looking for him, that would be even more awkward.
After an intense internal struggle, Lin Cimian sighed and reluctantly left the restroom. He looked completely wilted.
Having social anxiety is really so hard o(╥﹏╥)o
He had not done any physical activity, but the overly intense mental activity had still drained all his energy.
Only solitude could recharge him. After returning to the dorm, Lin Cimian slept like the dead.
He had no idea how long had passed before he finally woke up.
His head felt heavy as though he were hungover, his tongue was dry, and he was so sleepy he could barely open his eyes.
Another ten-odd minutes passed before he half-opened his eyes and floated down from the bed like a wandering ghost, instinctively searching for water.
Lin Cimian could not find his cup, but he saw a full-length mirror. He stared blankly at himself in the reflection, feeling as though someone had struck him over the head. For a long time, he could not recover from the shock.
It was still his face. Even the beauty mark beneath his right eye was in exactly the same place. But when had he dyed all his hair… white?!
His hair color was not the only thing that had changed. His cheeks were slightly hollow, his chin so pointed that it resembled the exaggerated V-shaped face of an internet celebrity. His shoulders were thin, his T-shirt hung loosely on him, his wrists were slender, and he was so skinny he looked like a paper cutout that a gust of wind could blow away.
There was no way this could have happened in a single night. Only then, amid his shock, did Lin Cimian belatedly realize that he was not in his dormitory at all, but in a room decorated with a touch of luxury.
He nearly called the police on the spot from fright, but at that moment, related memories suddenly surfaced in his mind.
He had actually transmigrated into a novel!
The original owner of this body had the exact same name as him and was the vicious supporting male character in the book. The protagonist was his younger brother, though they were not related by blood.
The protagonist had been adopted by the Song family. Through his kindness and sincerity, he gained the Song family’s recognition and affection, truly integrating into the household and becoming one of them.
The original owner was their biological child, but he had been switched at birth. By the time he returned to the Shen family, he was already fourteen. He had dropped out of school early, and because of what he had experienced in childhood, he was gloomy and malicious, with a nasty personality, causing his biological parents and older brother to despise him.
Later, the protagonist entered the entertainment industry. Ignoring his family’s objections, the original owner participated in a talent-survival variety show. He repeatedly stirred up trouble during filming and was disliked by the audience, yet despite his very low popularity, he occupied the final debut slot. Fans cursed him for having manipulated the results behind the scenes and refused to acknowledge him as a member of the boy group.
This was the boy group’s second year together. All ten members lived in the same villa. The original owner had an awful relationship with them, was ostracized and despised, and even the manager frequently made things difficult for him.
The original owner’s role in the book was that of the universally hated character. Practically everyone hated him… What kind of hellish starting point was this?
Lin Cimian’s pupils trembled. Yet compared with being universally hated, what truly suffocated him was this:
Ten members in the boy group! Living together in the same villa!!
Men to the left, men to the right, men piled on top of men—altogether enough men to circle the earth three times… This was absolutely going to kill a socially anxious person!
Just thinking about it made Lin Cimian anxious. He subconsciously backed up several steps and stared fearfully at the door, as though it led straight into hell on earth.
His instincts screamed at him not to go out, but he was thirsty and hungry, and there was not a single thing to eat in the room.
Five more minutes. In five minutes, I’ll definitely go out and find something to eat…
N-no, maybe another ten minutes…
J-just three more minutes…
Fifteen minutes later.
Lin Cimian was so hungry his eyes practically glowed green. His legs trembling, he finally realized that if he did not eat something soon, he might actually die. Only then did he stiffly walk to the door and peer around through the crack.
Seeing no one on either side, he sighed in relief and slipped quietly out of the room.
His room was on the villa’s second floor, while the kitchen was downstairs. He had to take the stairs down.
It was far too quiet around him. The doors on both sides were tightly shut, and not a single person could be seen.
Lin Cimian assumed the other members had all gone out. He relaxed, his steps growing lighter, but just as he turned the corner of the corridor, he unexpectedly saw two men walking straight toward him.
!!!!!
“Running into someone face-to-face” and “greeting people you don’t know well” could absolutely rank among the Top Ten Things Socially Anxious People Fear Most, let alone when those people were familiar-looking strangers.
Lin Cimian immediately panicked, flustered beyond belief. His eyes darted around as he instinctively searched for somewhere to hide, but there was a wall on one side of the corridor and a railing on the other. Unless he could crawl into a crack in the floor, there was nowhere to go.
But he could not crawl into one.
Lin Cimian reluctantly withdrew his gaze. The little person inside his heart was already collapsing and wailing, while outwardly he struggled to look calm and forced himself to keep walking.
What do I do? When we meet, should I smile and make a little small talk? But if I say the wrong thing, I could expose myself. If I don’t say anything, that’ll be too rude… Why are they walking so fast? Give me more time!
The barrage of comments inside Lin Cimian’s head grew denser and denser as the distance between them shrank. He did not dare look them in the eye, yet he could almost feel their gazes on him. His entire body became unnatural, his walking posture stiffened, and even his knees seemed to forget how to bend.
Just as he took a deep breath, summoned his courage, and looked toward them, the two boy-group members turned their heads away and deliberately ignored him.
They brushed past one another without so much as their eyes meeting.
Lin Cimian: ???
Before he had even recovered, another boy-group member appeared at the end of the corridor.
Caught off guard, Lin Cimian nearly snapped to attention on the spot, but the other person very deliberately turned his head aside and ignored him in exactly the same way.
Lin Cimian was completely dumbfounded. He stood at the top of the stairs for a long time without moving.
He was being treated like he was invisible… Did that mean he would not even have to greet them when they crossed paths from now on? There was actually something this wonderful in the world!
He took it back. What hellish starting point? This was clearly heaven for someone with social anxiety.
