Chapter 1: A Deadly Joke – Candy

“Hey, are you okay?”

Jiang Shulan suddenly opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was the smell.

A heavy stench of diesel, rust, sweat, and a faintly indescribable sweet metallic odor, like something that had rotted for a long time and then been steamed at high temperature.

All of it mixed together into a thick, almost tangible filth, as if an invisible hand were tightly covering his mouth and nose.

He was choked by the overwhelming stench and started coughing violently. His consciousness felt as if it had just been pulled out of ice water, suddenly exploding awake.

Sweat-damp black strands at his hairline stuck to the corners of his eyes, and his raven-feather lashes trembled slightly, a fleeting, delicate motion.

“Do you want some water?”

The young man sitting in the front of the car handed him an unopened bottle of water.

Jiang Shulan took it slowly, took a sip, and his mind finally cleared a little. At the same time, a cold mechanical voice rang in his head.

[Player has successfully entered the movie Final Destination.

Role: a gamer who knows the protagonist Louis in-game and is sponsoring his trip; plans to travel by road with Louis after he confesses to the heroine Vina;

Mission: be killed by the antagonist BOSS during the rescue process.]

Jiang Shulan rubbed his head and only then remembered something tragic.

He tossed the water aside and stared blankly ahead.

He, Jiang Shulan, a wage s*ave at work and a socially anxious shut-in in life, had finally won a 2-million lottery ticket during his suffocating daily grind.

And then, because he got too excited and couldn’t breathe properly, he died on the spot.

Now, in order to return to reality and claim that 2 million lottery prize, he had been forced into becoming a corporate drone in a transmigration system, playing doomed NPCs in horror movies and experiencing various ways of dying at the hands of death itself.

Thinking of this, he clenched his teeth and angrily asked, [What if I die early or die late?]

This was the basic professionalism of a worker who didn’t want to do the job but still wouldn’t miss a single cent of attendance bonus—complaining while complying.

[Because the player is assigned a high-risk cannon-fodder role, as long as you die by the BOSS’s hand, the mission will be considered complete.]

The system added,

[There are no restrictions on personality or behavior. Major characters will automatically push the plot forward. In other words, as long as you die by the BOSS’s hand, you can do whatever you want.]

Jiang Shulan complained, [So this is end-of-life hospice care, huh?]

The system had no response.

While Jiang Shulan was talking with the system, Louis’s brother Fuller leaned over and teased Louis in a low voice, “Who’s he? Your boyfriend?”

Louis seemed startled. With a sharp screech, the car abruptly stopped.

“Don’t talk nonsense! He’s just a university classmate I met while gaming. He’s only coming with me on this trip to help me confess to Vina! I like girls, Vina is the one I like! A girl!”

“Just kidding.” Fuller shrugged, but his gaze lingered meaningfully toward the back. “Still… he’s really-”

At that moment, Jiang Shulan finished speaking with the system and looked up, his eyes meeting Fuller’s.

His appearance was the kind of beauty that was difficult to define.

His mother was Russian and his father Chinese. The two bloodlines merged on his face into a rare kind of harmony.

His skin was very fair, but not in a sickly way, rather a porcelain-like ivory white with a faint warm undertone, like fine bone china under light.

But what was most striking were his eyes.

They were blue, not gray-blue, not blue-green, but a pure, crystal-clear sky blue, like a piece of autumn sky after rain had been plucked out and embedded in his eye sockets.

Around the iris was a deeper, richer navy ring, like the deepest part of a lake, making those eyes both clear and unfathomably deep.

At that moment, those blue eyes were fixed on Fuller.

“What are you looking at?”

When he was young, Jiang Shulan was often stared at and pursued because of his appearance. Some people even followed him, spied on him, and wrote letters to his parents saying they wanted to marry him when he grew up.

His parents fought because of it, moved repeatedly, and grew exhausted from the constant disturbance.

Because of that, in daily life, he always wore thick black-framed glasses and long bangs to cover most of his face, hoping to become an unremarkable background character, someone no one would notice, someone no one would talk to.

Only online, where no one knew his real identity, could he safely express his true self.

But now he was inside a horror movie world, where the daily routine was protagonists and villains outsmarting each other on the edge of life and death. In such a place, there shouldn’t be anyone with time for creepy obsessive behavior… right?

Jiang Shulan let out a long breath of relief.

The system didn’t understand the player’s struggles. As a higher-dimensional entity, it couldn’t comprehend why Jiang Shulan would say something so illogical.

[Please speak normally, Player.]

[I just wanted to ask why he’s looking at me.]

[…We already have the capability to translate Chinese into English. You don’t need to force yourself.]

“…”

Fuller scratched his head.

“Nothing, I just wanted to ask, you got a boyfriend?”

Jiang Shulan pressed his lips together, a little unhappy.

“I like girls. I’m not gay.”

Most of the people pursuing him were guys, and that was exactly what annoyed him the most.

Fuller awkwardly cleared his throat.

In truth, he was a rather bad-tempered person, skipping school, getting into fights, doing drugs, and just last week he had been jailed for drunk driving. He only got out yesterday after Louis bailed him out.

Yet seeing the clearly displeased expression on Jiang Shulan’s face, he inexplicably felt a bit guilty.

Who knew this pretty Asian boy had only been picked up by Louis while he was asleep today? They had barely known each other for ten minutes…

“You know what?” Fuller deliberately brought up something amusing, trying to make Jiang Shulan laugh.

“Actually, Louis was raised as a girl when he was a kid. He’s really good at acting cute, want to hear it?”

Jiang Shulan glanced at Louis.

Louis looked like a very typical American college student, tall, well-built, academically solid, and fairly popular on campus.

‘A guy like that… could actually use a cutesy voice?’

He became a little interested and leaned forward slightly, blinking.

“Really?”

“Of course! Before you got in the car, Louis even used his cute voice to hook a guy!”

Fuller eagerly pulled out the car radio, almost like a peacock spreading its feathers.

“Come on, bro, let Jiang hear it.”

Jiang Shulan frowned.

“I meant you could just say it in the car. You don’t have to broadcast it on the radio. That’s not very appropriate.”

“It’s fine, Jiang.” Fuller didn’t care at all.

“We’re just joking with nearby drivers. They’re all a bunch of creeps anyway, who knows how happy they’ll be hearing my brother?”

“Let’s not.” Jiang Shulan shook his head again. “That’s deceiving them. What if someone gets angry?”

Fuller was suppressing a surge of irritation.

He swore, if anyone actually got mad and came looking for trouble, he’d beat them so badly they wouldn’t even recognize their own mother.

Did Jiang Shulan think he was that weak?

He patted Louis on the shoulder.

“Hurry up. Go on. What, are you scared someone’s going to get mad and come hit us? Don’t be ridiculous—we’ve got two people.”

“I didn’t mean that…”

Before Jiang Shulan could finish, Louis had already given in to Fuller’s urging and picked up the car radio again.

“Rusty Nail, I’m your little sweetheart. I miss you so much, where are you?”

“D-y… d-y. Come on.”

The voice on the other end was low and deep, carrying a sandpaper-like rasp. Each syllable was enunciated clearly, unhurried, like someone who never rushed, and never needed to.