"Mr. Xia, is it? I do have a few small questions I'd like to confirm with you."
It was a summer afternoon in the coffee shop, with only a few customers scattered about. Most of them weren't even there for the coffee.
Su Yuhan pushed up the black-rimmed glasses on her nose—one of the legs was broken and held together with tape—and looked at the person across from her.
Sitting there was a subculture lover in his early twenties, sporting a head of colorful, spiky hair. From a distance, he looked just like a rainbow-colored sea urchin that had fled from the ocean and accidentally stumbled into the human world.
Xia Xuyang was lounging with one leg crossed over the other, a look of impatience on his face. "What questions?"
"Regarding the contract, it states that as long as I accept your offer to act as Miss Jiang's stand-in until she returns to the country—to satisfy your longing for her and feed your own sentimentality—I'll receive a monthly salary of two hundred thousand. Is that two hundred thousand before or after taxes? And does it include the five social insurances and one housing fund?"
Xia Xuyang's eyelid twitched. "That's what you want to ask?"
"Of course. To me, this is extremely important!"
'Skimming off a worker's hard-earned money is like taking their life, isn't it?'
'To her, this was the most important thing of all!'
Xia Xuyang's face darkened, but he said nothing.
Su Yuhan raised an eyebrow and said meaningfully, "It seems, then, that Mr. Xia's feelings for Miss Jiang aren't all that much, after all."
As expected, the man's defenses crumbled on the spot. Even his sea-urchin hair seemed to stand on end, as if he'd use it to stab her to death if Su Yuhan dared say one more word.
"Nonsense! My love for Qianqian is witnessed by heaven and earth, proven by the sun and moon!"
'Oh, is that so?'
Su Yuhan scoffed internally.
'If his love was really that deep, how could he find a stand-in and insult her like this?'
Su Yuhan had only transmigrated into this world last night.
Before this, she had been a senior executive at a publicly traded company, with a seven-figure annual salary and a successful career.
She had just been waiting to submit her final project and collect her bonus. Then, with the savings she'd accumulated over the years and future stock dividends, she could have happily coasted into an early retirement.
Unexpectedly, on the eve of her retirement, she'd worked herself to death for several days and nights straight, suffered a sudden stroke, and kicked the bucket. When she woke up, she had become the stand-in supporting female character, who shared her name, in a modern "group-pampered" novel that her best friend had recommended to her.
Strictly speaking, this supporting character, much like her, was an unlucky soul.
According to the novel's setup, the female lead, Jiang Yuxi, was gentle, intelligent, kind, considerate, and highly capable—the "white moonlight" of A City's entire high society.
It was no exaggeration to say that while her suitors couldn't circle the globe, they could certainly loop a park a few times.
The original owner of this body was an ordinary person with no family connections or background. A recent graduate with little experience of the world, she should have had absolutely nothing to do with this high-society lady. Yet, she was targeted simply because her face bore a strange resemblance to her.
In the original novel's words: "Fifty percent looks, fifty percent aura. While not exactly identical to Jiang Yuxi, when she stood there quietly, she would inexplicably bring the other woman to mind."
Because of this, while Jiang Yuxi was studying abroad, the original Su Yuhan was forced to sign contracts with the five male leads from the novel—the ones with the best family backgrounds and the closest relationships to Jiang Yuxi—to become the female lead's stand-in.
"..."
Reading up to this point, Su Yuhan's expression was a picture of disbelief.
'The female lead just went abroad, not to outer space or another dimension. If you miss her, is it that hard to just fly over and see her?'
'Are the private jets and airport VIP lounges of you domineering CEO-types and rich young masters just for show?'
'Do you all have to be so pathetically desperate that you hire a stand-in to ease your lovesickness? And you all happened to pick the exact same person?!'
'Your taste in women is so ridiculously uniform. You're all so in sync, why don't the five of you just get together?'
'The five of you living happily ever after is more important than anything!'
There was so much to roast, she didn't know where to start. Su Yuhan was bursting with unspoken curses, yet she had to maintain a proper smile on her face.
The man before her was one of those five crazy male leads, the female lead's most loyal follower, and the young master of the Xia family, one of the four great families.
Perhaps feeling inexplicably guilty under the gaze of those fox-like eyes, which were so similar to Jiang Yuxi's, Xia Xuyang grew flustered and angry. "What will it take for you to finally sign the contract?"
"I just wanted to confirm again, that two hundred thousand salary..."
"After taxes!"
"The five social insurances and one housing fund..."
"I'll pay for them!"
"Alrighty then!"
Having successfully secured the best possible deal for herself, Su Yuhan briskly signed her name.
After signing the contract, Su Yuhan decided to strike while the iron was hot, asking sweetly, "Mr. Xia, may I ask you for a favor?"
"What is it?"
"Could I possibly get a one-month advance on my salary?"
Xia Xuyang stared at Su Yuhan with dark eyes for a long moment, feeling like he'd finally won a point back.
"Heh. Asking for an advance before you've even started working. Do you think that's appropriate?"
With that, he snatched up the contract and left, leaving Su Yuhan in stunned disarray.
"Are rich people these days all this stingy?"
The words had barely left her mouth when her phone vibrated twice.
In her inbox was a text message from the hospital, demanding payment.
As a cannon fodder character just passing through the main characters' world, the original owner of the body had the complete setup of a villainess.
A mother who died young, a gambling-addicted father, a grandmother recently hospitalized with severe uremia, and herself—saddled with a mountain of debt that her deadbeat dad had taken out using her ID before skipping town, forcing her to take on loans worth several "small goals"!
If Su Yuhan had transmigrated two days earlier, she might have put up a fight, stayed away from those crazy guys, and avoided getting involved in the dramatic love lives of the rich.
But at the point in time she arrived, several of the stand-in contracts had already been signed.
Overwhelmed by her seemingly hopeless situation, the original owner got all "emo," accidentally overdosed on sleeping pills, and croaked.
To avoid making things worse for this precarious and already impoverished family, Su Yuhan had no choice but to bite the bullet and deal with the mess she'd inherited.
Getting a salary advance was a dead end, and the hospital was pressing for payment, so Su Yuhan had to find another way to make money.
Just then, one of the local part-time job groups Su Yuhan had stayed up all night joining the previous evening suddenly started blowing up with notifications.
Su Yuhan tapped into it and saw a group admin posting a job notice.
[Urgently hiring a batch of online shills. Those with multiple accounts get priority. Daily pay. DM if interested.]
The two words "daily pay" dazzled Su Yuhan, and she immediately scurried over to message the person.
[Sister Zhi, what's the pay for the online shills you're hiring in the group?]
[Priority to those with multiple accounts. Pay is per comment. Half a cent for a copy-paste, and two cents for an original one over fifteen characters. If you want in, I can add you to the group now.]
Su Yuhan was stunned by this cheap labor, immediately recalling a popular internet meme she'd seen before.
[Is it really that cheap? I always heard people say (five cents a post), delete the part in parentheses...]
[You think money is that easy to make these days? That price might have been possible a few years ago, but with the economy going down these last two years, you're lucky to get two cents. In a little while, it'll probably drop to one cent.]
Su Yuhan: "..."
'This is so damn realistic. With inflation this bad, the price of everything is going up except the wages of us working folks.'
'Not only are they not rising, they're actually falling. I'm totally triggered, but I won't say who!'