[Fasten your seatbelts, gogogo~ We're setting off~]
The sound of thunder outside the window rolled in from afar, the muffled rumbling sounding like a giant beast thrashing in the clouds.
Immediately after, a purple-white bolt of lightning suddenly slashed across the sky, tearing the oppressive night apart.
"Ah——!!!"
A miserable scream suddenly rang out from the third floor of the magnificent European-style villa.
The maid, who had been wiping the table, acted as if she had seen a ghost. The bucket in her hand slipped from her grasp.
It crashed onto the marble floor with a loud clang, the crisp impact sounding particularly piercing in the empty villa.
"A ghost... there's a ghost!" The maid's face was deathly pale, her footsteps unsteady as she backed away repeatedly.
The housekeeper, standing on the second floor, was drawn over by the scream, her brows furrowed tightly.
"Klee, who allowed you to come up to the third floor? Hurry up, clean this up and go downstairs."
Klee's fingers trembled as she pointed at the blue-eyed doll on the desk, her voice distorted and out of pitch from the terror she just experienced.
"That doll... she, she just moved! I saw her blink, she really blinked!"
She cried out incoherently while shivering and shrinking behind the housekeeper.
"What craziness has gotten into you? If the young master finds out you trespassed on the third floor, you will definitely be kicked out of the villa."
Bella was also startled by the girl in front of her. Realizing something was wrong, she immediately straightened her back and didn't dare to move a muscle.
The housekeeper followed the direction of Klee's finger, her gaze landing on the doll.
At this moment, the room was so quiet that only the lingering echoes of the muffled thunder outside the French windows could be heard.
The doll on the desk sat upright, its sapphire blue eyes gleaming with a lifeless, cold luster under the lights.
Its thick eyelashes were completely still, and not even a single strand of hair was out of place.
The housekeeper withdrew her gaze, her heart tightening a bit, but she adjusted her cuffs with a normal expression, her tone so flat it lacked any fluctuation.
"You must be too tired and hallucinating. The young master hates it most when people in the villa shout and make a fuss. If you disturb him, even as your aunt, I won't be able to protect you."
She bent down and immediately picked up the scattered mop and bucket from the floor. Glancing at the splashed wet floor, she hurriedly cleaned it up.
"Go to the back kitchen and rest for a bit. Pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa to calm your nerves."
Klee wanted to argue, but looking at those emotionless sapphire eyes, she only felt a chill run through her entire body.
She bit her lip hard, lowered her head, and while shivering, dragged her weak legs out of the room.
The housekeeper looked around, her eyes sweeping over the doll on the desk, and finally closed the door with a slight sense of panic.
The moment the door closed, all the noise and footsteps were isolated outside.
Only the sound of the rain outside the window continued to tirelessly wash against the glass.
After confirming that the housekeeper and the maid had completely walked away, Bella's tense back finally slumped down.
Her shoulders drooped, and her chest heaved violently.
"Hoo—Hoo—Hoo—"
I almost suffocated myself.
After exhaling a long breath of stale air, Bella greedily gasped for oxygen.
The most uncomfortable part was her eyes. Just now, in order to maintain that dead, motionless appearance, she felt like she was back in military training.
At this moment, those originally hollow blue eyes began to blink crazily. Physiological tears instantly welled up, blurring her vision.
Bella sat paralyzed on the spot, taking a long while to recover before she began to think about what exactly had happened.
She remembered very clearly that it was a Friday.
The teachers for her two major classes that day had something come up temporarily, so they assigned online homework and let the students go early.
It was already noon when she returned to her dorm room, which was filled with the mixed scent of Luosifen and gardenia flowers.
Her roommate, Chen Xiaoxiao, was scrolling through her phone and brought the screen right up to her face, shouting:
"Bella, look! There's a cannon fodder character in this book 'After the Ruthless Big Shot Lost His Memory, Did I Successfully Train the Dog?' who actually has the same name as you!"
At the time, Xiaoxiao even joked, "According to the laws of novels, when a character with the same name appears, you must memorize the whole text, just in case you transmigrate into it one day and need to rewrite your destiny."
Bella was a staunch materialist. In high school, she had even debated with her best friend about the topic "whether animals are no longer allowed to become spirits after the founding of the nation."
But as if possessed, she still searched for that book after the dorm lights went out.
After opening it, she realized it wasn't a proper story at all. The whole text was filled with all sorts of blush-inducing, heart-racing plots that tested the boundaries of the rules, things that shouldn't even be allowed on the reading platform.
She stayed up late, forcefully finishing the entire book with a mindset of "not believing in the supernatural," and then immediately closed her eyes and fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes again, the world had changed.
"So... I have... transmigrated?"
If this was really that novel, Bella held her forehead, the little person in her mind banging its head against the wall: "The heavens want me dead!"
Who wants to transmigrate into a book? And even if she had to, why did it have to be a book where three-fifths of it was describing down-and-dirty bedroom scenes!!!
Thinking of this, she began to recall the plot:
Bella was the private collection doll of the third male lead, Ye Jinzhi, in "After the Ruthless Big Shot Lost His Memory, Did I Successfully Train the Dog?".
They called her a doll, but the things Ye Jinzhi did to the doll were hair-raising.
The book described Ye Jinzhi as seemingly aloof like a flower on a lonely peak, but in reality, he was paranoid, psychologically twisted, and an ultimate yandere on the inside!
He treated Bella as a "person" who would never leave him—feeding her, bathing her, and even holding her tightly in his arms when sleeping.
Bella remembered a small scene from the book.
It was when Ye Jinzhi was nine years old.
Demanded by his father to attend school, he insisted on taking his doll with him.
At that time, Bella was dressed exquisitely and dazzlingly by him. On the first day of school, she became the focus of the whole class's attention.
A blind little boy was attracted by Bella's seaweed-like curly hair and laughingly tried to reach out and grab it.
Ye Jinzhi, the "perfect child" in everyone's eyes—with a prominent family background and excellent upbringing, even buttoning his school uniform shirt to the very top.
It was at this moment that Ye Jinzhi, who had been bidding farewell to everyone a second ago, gently turned his head, still maintaining a mild smile on his face.
He reached out his fair and tender hand and firmly grasped the boy's wrist: "This hand is very nice."
The smile in his eyes didn't reach the bottom; it was replaced by a flash of madness. The words he spat out instantly made the little boy opposite him burst into tears out of fear:
"It's just that... if you touch things randomly without the owner's permission, your hand might just break off."
The next day, the little boy transferred schools. That very day, the boy's parents received a shockingly thick sum of "accidental medical expenses" sent by the Ye family.
Recalling this scene, Bella couldn't help but shiver.
The thought that she was about to face this almost perverted, 24/7 clingy desire for control made her feel more despair than if she had just been killed directly.
Just as Bella was still recalling the plot, a mechanical voice suddenly rang in her ear, and a highly futuristic, semi-transparent screen appeared before her eyes.
Time: June 1, 2023.
Location: Ye Family Manor
Escape Method: Make physical contact with the male lead, Ye Jinzhi. The higher the life points obtained, the longer vital signs can be maintained.
Current Lifespan: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 52... 51... 50...
The time was still counting down.
Bella tentatively poked the screen with her finger and found that it actually scrolled.
Before she could read the content below, a bunch of garbled characters suddenly popped up on the screen.
▖▜▖▖▜▗▗▖▜▖
Then, the screen vanished.
"Hey, wait a minute, I haven't finished reading yet."
In a moment of panic, Bella called out in a hushed voice, "System? Master God? Screen? Dimension?"
Seeing no movement around her, she thought for two seconds. "Anybody at home?"
The room was dead silent; she could only hear her own breathing.
It was over. She was doomed. There was absolutely nothing left now.
Meanwhile.
Ye Jinzhi returned home from school.
He had a remarkably handsome face, breathtakingly flawless, with a cool pale complexion and deep, exquisite features.
His dark eyes, especially those slightly upturned fox-like eyes, should have been affectionate and seductive, but right now, they exuded nothing but barrenness and dead silence.
He casually draped his dark blue jacket over his arm. The collar of his shirt remained meticulously buttoned to the very top, tightly pressing against his Adam's apple.
He walked straight to the kitchen island, carelessly opening the fridge to take out a bottle of iced water.
As he tilted his head back, his sharp, chiseled jawline was fully exposed, his Adam's apple bobbing rhythmically beneath his pale skin.
Just then, a maid's hushed gasp came from the kitchen:
"Auntie Yang, I'm really not lying to you! When I was cleaning just now, I saw that 'doll' blink with my own eyes..."
Ye Jinzhi paused his drinking, the curve of his lips silently widening.
Those originally dead fox eyes actually flushed with a terrifying hint of red due to extreme excitement.
Ye Jinzhi didn't listen any further. He turned and headed straight for the third floor.
Inside the room, Bella forced her weak body to stand up, planning to rummage through the desk herself to see if there were any useful clues.
She carefully memorized the exact angle and position from which she had gotten up, but before she could even take a single step, she vaguely heard footsteps approaching from outside. Step by step.
Terrified out of her wits, she practically snapped back to her original position in an instant.
She fixed her posture, adjusted her breathing, and stared straight ahead.
She tried her absolute best to make those sapphire-blue eyes look completely lifeless.
Sure enough, barely three seconds into her act, the door lock made a faint clicking sound.
Don't be nervous, you can do this! Bella frantically gave herself mental pep talks.
The footsteps drew closer, accompanied by an extremely faint scent of gardenia.
The fragrance was originally elegant and subtle, but for some reason at this moment, it felt like fine silk threads, tightly and suffocatingly binding her heart.
A deep male voice, carrying an imperceptible hint of amusement, sounded right above her head:
"Bella, come here."
