Chapter 3 — Rewriting the Villain's Script: My Daughter's Journey to Save Him

Fu Qiyan suddenly burst into laughter. His smile was chilling, carrying an unmistakable edge of mockery. "Before the results are in, I will not hand Zhezhe over to you," he said indifferently. "I suggest CEO Gu turn back now; otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave." Gu Cui seized my hand. "She is my flesh and blood, and I am taking her with me." The two men locked horns, the air thick with tension and the smell of gunpowder. The pretty neighbor hurriedly stepped in to mediate. "There’s no need for either of you to rush. This concerns Zhezhe, so we should really hear what she has to say. Right now, she only recognizes Mr. Fu... as her father. So why don't we wait for the DNA test results, allowing Zhezhe to see for herself who her real father is? Because if Mr. Gu forces her to leave right now, I'm afraid she'll just find a way to sneak out again."

Her sensible and well-reasoned argument finally made Gu Cui stare at me for a long beat before he let out a cold laugh. "Fine. Waiting for the results is for the best, if only to cure someone of their delusions." I quietly gripped my father's hand. Fu Qiyan looked slightly startled before gently patting my head. Gu Cui pulled out a chair and sat down. "Until the results are out, I'll stay right here with Zhezhe." The neighbor forced an awkward smile. "Well... having a whole crowd sit around waiting for results is a bit... awkward, isn't it?" She patted my head, sat down, and asked softly, "Is there anywhere Zhezhe wants to go play? It's a rare occasion, so everyone can take you out." I squeezed my father's hand tighter and chimed excitedly, "I want to go to Disneyland!"

And thus began a rather comical expedition of three adults and one child. I held my father's hand in one and the neighbor's hand in the other, while Gu Cui trailed behind with a face as dark as thunder. Once inside Mickey's House, I went on a wild shopping spree, waltzing out with a mountain of large and small bags. My father reached instinctively for his wallet, but Gu Cui snatched the opportunity to pay first. A flash of smug triumph crossed his eyes as he reflexively reached out to take my hand. I immediately dumped every single bag from my father's arms straight into his. "Uncle Gu, would you be so kind as to carry these bags for my dad?"

Gu Cui's expression clouded over. "What did you just call me?" "Uncle Gu is already divorced from Mom, so I can't call you Dad anymore." I gripped my father's hand, speaking with crystal clarity. "Besides, if I kept calling you Dad, my real dad would be very sad." "Your mother and I..." Gu Cui frowned, but he trailed off and said no more.

After playing until we were exhausted, the group stopped at a KFC for lunch. At my insistent demand, my father bought me a strawberry sundae. I devoured it in just a few bites, and my father routinely reached over with a napkin to wipe my mouth, his movements entirely natural. Watching this, Gu Cui's face grew pitch dark. He tried to mimic my father by spearing a piece of salad and offering it to me. I turned my head away, flatly refusing. Fu Qiyan's voice cut through the air, cold and sharp. "Zhezhe is allergic to tomatoes. How long have you been pretending to be her father without even knowing something like that?" The pretty neighbor hurriedly stepped in, taking the plate of salad from him. "Oh, that was me. I ordered that dish." Gu Cui froze. He stared fixedly at the cherry tomatoes nestled in the salad, utterly speechless.

I joined the other children in the indoor playground. From afar, I spotted my father and Gu Cui deep in conversation, my father's expression turning profoundly melancholy. I zipped down the slide and ran back on my short legs as fast as they could carry me toward the two men. Fu Qiyan and Gu Cui crouched down simultaneously, both opening their arms to catch me. I executed a neat little pivot and threw myself straight into my father's embrace. Gu Cui's face darkened, his expression turning thoroughly wretched. "Dad, what was Uncle Gu just saying to you?" Fu Qiyan's eyes dimmed. He patted my head without a word. Gu Cui curled his lips into a smirk, casually running a finger over his cufflink. "Do you remember, Zhezhe? On your mother's birthday, she gave me a pair of cufflinks engraved with the image of swallows returning to their nest. Do you know what that means?" "Swallows returning to the nest—it symbolizes a family reunited, safe and whole." "That was Ning's only wish."

Ah, yes. That truly was her only wish. She was trying to tell Uncle Gu—she was leaving. She was going back to her own world, back to being Xu Diao.

I raised my head to look at my father. His eyes held an abyss of sorrow, a look so desolate it made my heart tighten in my chest. I leaned close to his ear and whispered, "Dad, don't be sad. Let me show you something." I rummaged through my small backpack, retrieved a tiny box, and handed it to him. "Dad, do you remember this? It's the gift you gave Mom."

Mom had a secret. Before she was brought back into the Xu family fold, she had a childhood sweetheart. Fu Qiyan had been a transfer student from the big city. Everything he wore and used was designer merchandise the locals had never even seen, and even his name sounded remarkably refined. His mother was equally unlike the women in that small town—gentle, composed, and aside from walking him to school, she rarely stepped outside. Gradually, the gossip mills began to churn. Fu Qiyan was rumored to be the illegitimate child of some wealthy tycoon from City Y, and his mother a shameless homewrecker who had been chased out to this impoverished rural backwater by the legitimate wife. Bit by bit, everyone at school began to distance themselves from Fu Qiyan. The townspeople, too, learned to shun and isolate his mother and son. It was around then that his mother's depression took a severe turn for the worse.

My mother—a transmigrated reader—had recognized him as the ultimate villain of the novel. While reading the book, the villain had been her absolute favorite character. He was the illegitimate child despised by all, who clawed his way up through sheer grit to the pinnacle of City Y, yet remained utterly steadfast in his devotion, forever remembering the little girl who had once offered him a scrap of warmth in his youth. The classic archetype of the "tragic, beautiful powerhouse."

One day, my mother found Fu Qiyan lying bruised and battered on the school rooftop, his face deathly pale, his eyes hollow. Even though she knew he was merely a fictional character and that everything was dictated by the plot... the despair etched across his face was far too real. Unable to help herself, she stepped forward and placed a bottle of water beside him. "I know... your mother isn't a homewrecker."

To be precise, Fu Qiyan's mother was the ultimate white moonlight whom the CEO protagonist had forced into a bitter romance. Childhood sweethearts, deeply in love since youth, who had naively conceived a child. The man had sworn up and down to marry her, only to turn around and marry a wealthy heiress of prominent lineage instead. His mother had been fiercely proud; she left behind a single sentence—"The child has been aborted"—and resolutely packed up to move far away. Years later, that man happened to catch wind of her whereabouts and threw caution to the wind to track her down. Only then did he discover—she had quietly raised this son all on her own.

And thus began a cascade of melodramatic tropes. The infatuated CEO could never let go of his first love, yet he lacked the power to defy his influential legal wife, ultimately being forced to drive both mother and son away. To summarize: the male lead and his mother were both victims of cruelty. They had clearly only wanted to live out their days in peace, yet due to the CEO's utter selfishness, they had been dragged into an inescapable vortex of power struggles.

That afternoon, the wind atop the rooftop blew with unusual ferocity. Fu Qiyan had stood up and walked away in icy silence. He hadn't believed my mother, assuming it was just another malicious prank orchestrated to mock him.

Mom recounted how she had subsequently persuaded her adoptive parents, leading them and their backyard chickens and ducks right to Fu Qiyan's doorstep, taking the initiative to clear up the rumors for the mother and son. Her adoptive parents were both schoolteachers who carried considerable weight in that small town. Once they spoke out, the townsfolk found it hard not to believe them. The kind-hearted locals, upon understanding the full story, felt a deep sense of injustice on behalf of the Fu family. Burdened with guilt for having gossiped behind their backs, the entire town voluntarily pitched in to look after the mother and son. At school, no one dared bully Fu Qiyan anymore; on the contrary, quite a few students actively approached him to apologize.

Another afternoon, Fu Qiyan had cornered my mother in a narrow alleyway, his gaze chillingly cold. "How do you know about my family?" True to his future villainous self—even at such a tender age, his aura was suffocatingly intense. Pinned firmly against the wall, my mother had stammered out a cover story: "I... I know someone who knows your mother, so I heard a bit about it."

Fu Qiyan's deep eyes had betrayed nothing of whether he believed her or not. Regardless, their relationship had gradually thawed from that day onward. They walked to school together, watched movies and listened to music, and sneaked off to internet cafes to play video games together. Fu Qiyan even tutored my mother in math—a subject she was hopelessly terrible at. He had been terribly strict back then, scolding her until she grabbed her head and fled in panic.

Time drifted by. His mother's depression steadily improved. My mother frequently dropped by their house to scavenge meals, endlessly cuddling a fat orange cat named Toast. Whenever she spoke of those days, her face would invariably soften with a warm, tender smile.

What my mother had never anticipated was—the villain would end up confessing his feelings to her. The young boy's face had burned red, radiating a heat far more potent than a thousand romantic declarations. His eyes were steadfast and brilliant, burning like an eternal star at the edge of the sky. Solemnly, he offered her a gift—a pair of small clay figurines he had sculpted with his own hands. They were undeniably clumsy and crude, but the sincerity behind them was unmistakable, capturing every intricate detail of the two of them.

To say she wasn't moved would be a lie. But she knew full well—the Xu family was coming to take her back. Bound by her role as a transmigrated player, failure to complete her mission would mean facing the terrifying consequence of being erased. And so, she had spoken the most cruel words imaginable, using the deepest wounds she could inflict to push him away.

She confessed that perhaps for the rest of her life, she would never forget the look on Fu Qiyan's face at that very moment. It was like a star that had once burned with dazzling brilliance, slowly, agonizingly, sputtering out.