Gu Ge stood up from the sofa and looked at the flustered Jiang Ran in the kitchen.
She spoke helplessly, “Really? You look quite busy. If it’s someone important, I’ll give the phone back to you.”
Seeing Gu Ge actually about to come over, Jiang Ran hastily pressed the end-call button.
The annoying ringing finally stopped.
She tucked the phone back into her pocket and pretended nothing was wrong.
“I don’t really know many people. It was just school stuff. They were probably asking when I’d be back for classes.”
Even as she said this, the moment Gu Ge sat back down, Jiang Ran scurried to a blind spot in the kitchen.
She quickly typed a reply to Su Nian:
‘I’m cooking right now, so I can’t answer the phone. Is something wrong?’
The messages went quiet for a moment before a new one popped up.
‘Okay. But, what should you be calling me right now?’
Below the message was a landscape emoji of the type favored by the older generation.
Jiang Ran swallowed hard and looked up to cautiously observe her surroundings.
Seeing that Gu Ge hadn’t followed her, she struggled to type back:
‘President Su?’
Jiang Ran held her phone gingerly.
She remembered that the manual hadn’t specified what she should call Su Nian.
Great families like this usually had many rules; it was better to be cautious.
She constantly felt that the people in this world were all a bit crazed, never giving her a moment to catch her breath.
In the day since she had transmigrated, she hadn’t truly relaxed once, always on guard against yanderes and the damned plot.
The phone screen flickered on and off.
While waiting for a reply, Jiang Ran reached out to stir-fry the vegetables in the pan.
The aroma of the food drifted into her nose, but Jiang Ran’s mind was entirely focused on the message.
After a long silence, a new symbol finally appeared.
It was a brief question mark.
‘?’
‘My dear daughter, what should you be calling me (smile)?’
Jiang Ran’s hand tightened around the phone for a second.
She reluctantly edited her response on the virtual keyboard several times before finally closing her eyes and hitting send.
On the stark white message interface, her little Penguin avatar sat quietly next to the word:
‘Mom.’
The sliding door to the kitchen was pushed open at that moment.
“Jiang Ran, what are you doing? Why do you look like you’re about to cry while cooking?”
Gu Ge’s voice reached her ears.
Jiang Ran was so nervous she nearly crushed her phone on the spot.
Clenching it tightly, she looked up and met Gu Ge’s confused gaze.
The distance between them slowly closed, yet Jiang Ran couldn’t find even a hint of impatience in Gu Ge’s smiling eyes.
Jiang Ran scrambled for an excuse, whispered in a very low voice, “It’s because… I’ve fallen behind on my studies. I’m scared I won’t do well on my assignments and might not be able to graduate.”
Her heart beat faster and faster.
With every lie she told, her pulse quickened more than the last.
Perhaps it was just as Su Nian had told her by the hospital bed—she couldn’t go back…
As she told the lie with a sense of total despair, she didn’t even notice that lying was becoming increasingly natural to her.
This was clearly a bad start…
“Is that so? You care about your grades so much because you’re worried about not graduating?”
Gu Ge rested her chin on her hand with great interest.
She seemed fascinated by the topic, as if she had caught a little tail that Jiang Ran cared about, which made her incredibly excited.
“Yes. If I don’t graduate, I won’t find a job. If I don’t have a job, I can’t support myself. Then I’ll just be all alone, picking up trash for a living.”
Gu Ge stared at Jiang Ran’s visible fluster.
She pursed her pale pink lips and leaned down inch by inch.
“Then would you like to skip straight to the final step? You said all that just because you’re afraid of picking up trash, right?”
Jiang Ran swallowed.
What she said actually made sense!
No, wait—that was just a lie to get her out of trouble.
She just didn’t want to be the center of attention.
How did it get twisted into an invitation to give her a home?
‘Heroine, save me!’
Jiang Ran felt like she was the most pathetic Yellow Hair in existence.
Instead of stealing someone else’s girl, she was about to be forced into a corner herself.
If there were a ranking for Yellow Hairs, she would definitely be in the ‘bottom tier.’
Facing Gu Ge’s questioning gaze, Jiang Ran bit her bright red lips until they turned white.
“It’s not entirely for those reasons. I… I want to study hard… and… and the food is going to burn!”
Jiang Ran brushed past Gu Ge and went to the iron wok.
She poured the finished shredded potatoes onto a plate and slipped her phone into her pocket.
After serving the potatoes, Jiang Ran tossed the wok into the sink and immediately went to grab the cold-dressed tomatoes, giving Gu Ge no opening to continue the interrogation.
Once the meal was ready, Jiang Ran quickly pulled out a chair and pointed her chopsticks at the seat opposite her.
“Come on, let’s eat.”
Seeing how fast Jiang Ran was moving, Gu Ge wasn’t angry.
She picked up her chopsticks and took some food.
“Do you plan on… just eating like this?”
“Well… do you want something to go with it? I still have a steamed bun. Look, there’s only one left. I’ll give you half.”
Jiang Ran reached out to hand over her half of the bun.
“I want the piece in your hand.”
Gu Ge reached out to take it, leaving the half Jiang Ran had offered hanging awkwardly in the air.
“Aren’t they both the same…?”
Jiang Ran nibbled on the bun, confused.
The buns in this world were quite sweet and chewy, unlike the ones she used to buy that would turn as thin as paper when bitten.
During the meal, the phone in her pocket vibrated incessantly.
She hadn’t turned off the vibration.
Once or twice was fine, but as it continued, even Jiang Ran couldn’t keep up the act.
Yet she didn’t dare take the phone out.
If Gu Ge caught a glimpse of something she shouldn’t see, wouldn’t it be impossible to explain?
“Jiang Ran, it seems your classmates really care about you.”
“Ah… I guess so. It might be about the school’s orientation party. I haven’t had time to mute the class group chat yet, so it’s a bit noisy…”
Jiang Ran offered one excuse after another.
Midway through, she couldn’t take it anymore.
Pretending she needed the bathroom, she put down her bun and ran off.
Once inside the bathroom, Jiang Ran’s fists tightened.
Who on earth was sending her so many messages?
‘Was this person a dictionary in their past life? Why so many strokes?’
Licking her dry lips, Jiang Ran unlocked her phone.
Just to be safe, she even locked the bathroom door.
She pulled the phone from her pocket and opened her message list, only to find that the person sending the most messages was Kesong.
A quick scroll revealed a bunch of meaningless questions, all of which centered around having no money or wanting to borrow some.
Jiang Ran was annoyed.
She simply sent her a link to a recruitment app.
Kesong was an adult and perfectly capable of working.
Besides, doing this wouldn’t break her character’s personality.
After all, she was “kindly” solving the root of Kesong’s financial problems.
It could be called a conversation with warmth and care with impact.
As for the rest, two messages each had come from Su Nian and Su Wanqing.
Jiang Ran scratched her head.
She couldn’t understand why these two were messaging her at the same time, as if they had planned it.
Jiang Ran opened Su Nian’s chat window and found that Su Nian had sent her 10,000 yuan for living expenses and asked why she wasn’t picking up.
On the other hand, Su Wanqing’s side was simpler.
She just asked if Jiang Ran was free to play games, as the room invitation had already expired.
After thinking it over, Jiang Ran typed a message:
‘Sorry, I was busy just now.’
She then copied and pasted the same message to Su Nian.
As for the money, she accepted it all.
Her empty VX balance suddenly became plump.
But Jiang Ran didn’t feel good at all.
She felt uneasy taking this money…
Just then, Su Wanqing sent a new message.
‘It’s fine, go ahead and be busy. By the way, was that… Pin-something food you ordered for lunch good?’
‘Pin Hao Fan.’
‘Right, right, that’s the one. Send me the app. I want to try it too.’
‘?’
‘She doesn’t even know what Pin Hao Fan is? Are rich people really this scary?’
Jiang Ran sent links to several common food delivery apps and even included a simple ordering guide.
She taught her how to order relatively clean takeout and how to claim Expansion Coupons.
Watching Su Wanqing exclaim over how she could suddenly save so much money, Jiang Ran felt her heart finally settle.
It seemed yanderes weren’t that scary.
She just needed to keep playing the role of an invisible nobody.
Maybe she could actually bypass the crisis of the plot peacefully?
Closing her phone, Jiang Ran pressed the flush button on the toilet.
She turned to wash her hands, then opened the door and walked back toward the dining table.
However, as she drew closer, she scratched her head in confusion.
Where was the half-eaten bun she had left there?