Chapter 1: The Story That Begins with a Confession

“Huff—huff—”

Xu Feng stood at the rooftop door, taking deep breaths for a full thirty-seven times.

His phone screen lit up, then dimmed, then lit up again, displaying the time… around 5:23 PM.

At this hour, school had been out for almost an hour.

And at this time, there was always one person on the rooftop…

Ye Lingyue would come up to the rooftop for a while every day after school.

This was a pattern he had observed over the three months since joining the Student Council.

“I can do this.”

“I can definitely say it.”

“At worst, I’ll just get rejected. It’s not like… I’m not used to it anyway.”

Xu Feng kept psyching himself up like this, then took another fifteen deep breaths.

There was no helping it.

After all, this was Ye Lingyue!

The number one campus belle of the whole school! Student Council President!

Top ten in her grade academically! The legendary rich young lady whose family owned mines… She had so many protagonist-level buffs stacked on her.

And as for him… he had a father at home who abused him and his mother daily, and at school, he was frequently bullied… leading him to constantly think about how to kill them and get revenge on society… but he could only ever think about it.

School bullying, domestic violence—these two god-tier negative buffs were both on him.

If it weren’t for her saving him once when he was cornered and inviting him to join the Student Council, giving him kindness, he probably would have been so depressed by now that he’d have become a “sunny day doll.”

Over these three months, she had been far too good to him.

Helping him deal with the bullying… teaching him how to handle Student Council work… and occasionally even bringing him snacks, saying with a smile, “Xiao Feng, you’ve worked hard~”

That kind of gentleness made him, someone who had been beaten up since childhood, realize for the first time that warmth existed in this world beyond his mother.

He knew he wasn’t worthy of her, but he still wanted to say it.

“Even if I die… I want to die knowing!”

Gritting his teeth, Xu Feng pushed open the rooftop door.

—

The setting sun dyed the entire rooftop orange-red.

Ye Lingyue stood by the guardrail, her side facing him, a few strands of her smooth long hair lifted by the evening breeze.

She was wearing her school uniform, with a pair of slender, fair legs visible below the skirt.

She looked like a female lead straight out of an anime… no, even better than an anime heroine.

Hearing the door open, she turned her head and asked, a bit surprised, “Hmm? Xiao Feng, what brings you here?”

Xu Feng’s mind went completely blank in that instant.

The confession lines he had prepared for three whole hours… things like “President, I like you,” “I’ve liked you since the day you saved me,” “I know I’m not worthy, but please give me a chance”—all of it was forgotten.

“I, I, I…” He stood there with his mouth open like an idiot.

Ye Lingyue tilted her head and asked with a smile, “What’s wrong? Is there something with the Student Council?”

“No!”

Xu Feng blurted out.

“I came to…”

But the words caught in his throat just as they reached his lips.

“To do what?” Ye Lingyue took two steps closer.

Xu Feng watched her approach, his heart threatening to leap out of his throat.

Closer… even closer… close enough to see her eyelashes… close enough to smell the faint fragrance on her…

“President! I… I like you!” Then, he shouted it out.

It’s over.

He still said it… now he’s done for.

The rooftop was quiet for three seconds.

For Xu Feng, those three seconds felt like three centuries…

He closed his eyes, waiting for that sharp or tactfully worded rejection.

Then, he heard a light laugh.

“Pfft—”

Xu Feng opened his eyes. Ye Lingyue was covering her mouth, laughing happily, even with a bit of tears at the corners of her eyes.

“W-what are you laughing at?” Xu Feng was completely bewildered.

“Sorry, sorry. I just didn’t expect you to choose the rooftop for a confession~ Isn’t that location a bit too cliché? Read too many light novels, hm?”

Xu Feng: “…”

“But… are you serious?”

Ye Lingyue asked seriously.

Xu Feng nodded frantically.

Then, Ye Lingyue fell silent for a few seconds… and in those seconds, Xu Feng had already started writing his own epitaph in his heart…

‘Here lies an ignorant fool who overestimated himself, actually daring to reach for the unattainable flower.’

Cause of death… let’s write it as ‘self-delusion.’

“Hmm, okay~”

“I know I’m not worthy of you, so just pretend I never said… wait, what did you say?” Xu Feng’s eyes widened instantly.

Ye Lingyue just looked at him with a calm expression and said, “I said, I accept.”

“You, you, you… you’re not joking, are you?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Ye Lingyue tilted her head and countered.

Xu Feng scrutinized her expression wildly.

No mockery, no teasing.

She was just looking at him calmly like that.

“Why? Uh… I mean… how could you possibly accept? So many people chase after you. What am I compared to them…”

“Because of what… because you’re sincere~” Ye Lingyue said with a smile.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She took a step closer and straightened his crooked tie.

“And besides, your grades are good, you’re diligent with Student Council work, and you’re also quite cute.”

Cute?

She said he was cute?

That Ye Lingyue?

Xu Feng instantly felt like he was about to float away.

“So, so what are we now…” he asked cautiously.

“Lovers~ What, do you want to back out right after confessing?”

“No! Absolutely not! I’d rather die than back out!”

He declared loudly.

“That’s good then~ Come on, let’s go to my place today.”

“Huh? To, to your place?”

Xu Feng was stunned once again.

“Otherwise? Don’t you want to go?”

“I do! I want to go! Very much! Super much! Very super incredibly much!”

—

And so, Xu Feng really followed Ye Lingyue out of the school gate.

At first, he was quite excited, thinking: ‘Damn, going to her place on the first day of dating? Is this the prelude to something happening…’

Moreover, various indescribable scenes were already playing out in his mind.

Then he realized he was overthinking it.

Because Ye Lingyue led him to the bus stop.

“Where does the President live?” he asked.

“It’s a bit far. The bus takes about an hour.”

“Oh, oh, that is a bit far.”

After they got on the bus, Xu Feng rushed to pay the fare.

But the bus was quite crowded, with no seats available, so the two stood near the back door…

Ye Lingyue held onto a handrail, and Xu Feng stood beside her.

He stole glances at her… her profile was so pretty… her eyelashes were so long…

“What are you looking at?”

Ye Lingyue suddenly turned her head and asked.

Xu Feng was startled and quickly averted his gaze, saying, “N-nothing!”

Ye Lingyue let out a light laugh and didn’t say anything else.

The bus drove for forty minutes… the scenery outside the window changed from tall buildings to suburban fields, then from suburban fields to mountain roads.

Xu Feng looked at the increasingly desolate scenery outside and was a bit confused. He asked, “President, do you live on a mountain?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Uh… the mountain air is good, that’s nice.”

Another twenty minutes passed, and the bus stopped at a bus stop sign in the middle of nowhere, with no village in front and no shops behind.

After getting off, Xu Feng looked around and found mountains in all directions, not a single soul in sight.

“This way.”

Ye Lingyue turned onto a small path.

Xu Feng followed her all the way.

However, the further he walked, the more something felt off… this path clearly wasn’t a proper road, just a dirt trail trodden out by people.

After ten minutes, there weren’t even any streetlights anymore, and they could only rely on the last remnants of the sunset to see the path.

So he asked again, “President, where exactly is your home?”

“Soon,” Ye Lingyue replied.

Then they walked for another ten minutes.

It was almost dark by now.

At this point, Xu Feng started to panic.

In these deep, old mountains, what if a wild boar or something charged out?

“We’re here.”

Ye Lingyue finally stopped.

Xu Feng looked up and saw only a mountain wall covered in vines and moss in front of him, looking no different from the surrounding mountains.

“We’re here? Where?”

Ye Lingyue didn’t speak.

She just reached out and parted a cluster of vines…

Behind it was… a cave?

The entrance wasn’t very big, only about the height of a person, and it was pitch black inside, impossible to see what was within.

“Damn? President, your home… is inside a cave?”

“Let’s go in.”

Ye Lingyue walked in first.

Standing at the cave entrance, Xu Feng’s mind flashed through the plots of a hundred horror movies.

“What are you standing there for?”

Ye Lingyue’s voice came from inside the cave.

Xu Feng had no choice but to grit his teeth and follow her in.

—

The cave was incredibly dark…

Xu Feng had to take out his phone and turn on the flashlight to barely see the path at his feet.

After walking for about five minutes, a bit of light finally appeared ahead.

After a few more steps, Xu Feng could see everything in front of him…

It was a massive underground space, so large that his phone’s light couldn’t reach the ceiling… nor the edges, of course.

And in the center of this space…

“Damn!!!”

Xu Feng uttered his third “damn” of the night.

Because he saw a mansion.

No, that was a freaking castle!

A three-story European-style building with white marble exterior walls… and there were Roman columns, arched windows, a spire, and… a moat? Wait, what?

Xu Feng rubbed his eyes hard.

He wasn’t mistaken.

There really was a small river encircling the mansion, with a small bridge leading to the front.

“President, is your family some kind of royalty or nobility?”

Xu Feng couldn’t help but ask.

Ye Lingyue looked back at him and smiled.

“You guessed right.”

“Haha, President, you’re such a joker.”

Xu Feng forced a dry laugh, then followed her across the small bridge to the front door.

Ye Lingyue pushed the door open…

Inside was a hall with a ceiling at least two stories high.

A huge crystal chandelier hung right in the center, and the walls were adorned with many oil paintings that looked extremely expensive at first glance.

“Come in.”

Ye Lingyue walked inside.

Xu Feng followed cautiously…

Really, he felt like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden…

The most luxurious place he had ever seen in his life was the mall in the city center.

And compared to this place, that was practically a slum!

“President, what exactly does your family… do?”

He asked again.

“Just business. Have a seat, I’ll go get some water.”

Xu Feng then sat down on the sofa.

“Here.”

Soon, Ye Lingyue handed him a glass of water.

Xu Feng took it and drank half in one gulp, then said, “President… your home is really…”

But just as he was halfway through his sentence, he suddenly felt a bit dizzy.

His eyelids felt like they were weighted with lead, dragging downwards.

“P-President…”

He struggled to keep his eyes open and saw Ye Lingyue standing in front of him, looking down at him.

“Sleep,” Ye Lingyue said softly.

Then, Xu Feng’s vision went black, and he completely lost consciousness.