The Gloomy Cannon Fodder's Thoughts Were Read After He Started Gossiping by Qiyue Youyun
Gu Yang discovered that the world he lived in was a novel.
A ludicrously padded, ten-million-word masterpiece that somehow crammed in the life stories of every major and minor character: The Tyrannical Young Master's Long Road to Winning Back His Wife.
And he was the cannon fodder who opposed the male lead at every turn, only to meet a miserable end as his entire family fell into ruin.
After briefly mourning the eccentric relatives he had so many of they practically had to be counted by the herd, Gu Yang made his peace with that ending without the slightest difficulty. Then he turned his attention to everyone else's juicy secrets.
*Overnight, Gu Yang's classmates suddenly gained the ability to hear his thoughts.
At first, they thought they were hallucinating. Until—
"Ha. Shen Mingjun, that stone-faced bastard, acts so superior at school. Turns out he's the illegitimate son of a woman who knowingly became someone's mistress and drove the lawful wife to her death. Impressive."
The classmates who had been dozing through the lesson jolted awake.
#NowThat'sSomethingWorthStayingAwakeFor.
A certain model student who had been anonymously spreading sexual rumours about Gu Yang in the class group chat abruptly changed colour under everyone's searching stares.
"The school's goddess, Xia Chun, is actually a boy dressed as a girl? And apparently he's bigger down there than most other guys. God, that's hilarious. How can you even gossip about something like that? I wonder if I can arrange to run into him in the toilets sometime and see for myself."
A certain unfortunate soul who had only just managed to get close to the goddess went pale in the middle of his budding romance.
"That younger 'twin' the Lu family just brought home, the one they claim was too sickly to live at home and has been recuperating elsewhere all these years—he's actually their real son, who was switched at birth? They couldn't bear to give up the boy they'd raised, so they invented the twin story?"
"Hahaha! And those two actually end up together? The victim and the one who benefited from it? I've seen everything now. Forget class. I'm going to watch the drama. Who knows, I might even catch them coming out."
The classmates: Wait, if you leave, who's going to feed us the gossip?
From that day onward, the students at the elite school lived on an emotional roller coaster: desperate for the most scandalous revelations, yet terrified they might turn out to be the subjects.
They also had to endure the frankly astonishing state of Gu Yang's mental health and his occasional serene resolve to bid this world farewell for good.
Once, a classmate threatened to jump off a building right in the middle of a gossip session.
In his mind: [Maybe I should go with him. That would make quite a spectacle.]
His sheltered classmates: Hahaha. He's just talking, right?
Then someone discovered Gu Yang appeared to be standing on the roof himself.
After several seconds of silence, chairs scraped back in a frantic clatter throughout the classroom.
Someone stop him, aaaaaah—!
—Song Yinxing was the bottom protagonist of that outrageous masterpiece, The Tyrannical Young Master's Long Road to Winning Back His Wife.
A gambling father, a sick mother, a younger brother still in school, and a boy already broken by life: that was Song Yinxing's background in a nutshell.
With such a disastrous hand dealt to him, he had expected life at an elite high school to be full of hardship.
He had never imagined someone would reach out a hand to him when he needed it most.
He thought he was simply extraordinarily lucky. Then, one day, unfamiliar and unbearable memories began surfacing quietly in his dreams.
Notes:
1. A wild, purely-for-fun gossip story: school life, wealthy families, and thoughts overheard.
2. The bottom protagonist is in a rather spectacular mental state, has pretty questionable manners, and is a little self-destructive. He sometimes wants to smash everything in sight.
3. Only Gu Yang's classmates can hear his thoughts. Song Yinxing will be reborn.
4. Both leads are each other's first romantic and sexual partners. P.S. There are no secondary couples in this story.
One-sentence summary: Spoilers in advance, and everyone gets to enjoy the gossip.
