Then she looked at the contact name.
The name was—Lu Mingxuan.
Lu Qingyan blinked once. Then twice. Her fingers hovered above the screen as a subtle frown curled between her brows.
Lu Mingxuan.
The name was like an old melody—vaguely familiar yet impossible to hum.
It itched at the back of her mind, like a memory just out of reach. And then it clicked.
Her eyes widened.
Oh.
Oh.
She remembered now.
Lu Mingxuan was one of the villain's in the webnovel 'A Thorn in the Crown', the very same novel she had binge-read like a lunatic exactly one week before she died.
She'd been a mess back then—skipping meals, clutching her phone like a lifeline, crying under the covers as she mourned the fictional tragedy of her favorite villain, Wang Jingyuan and her brother.
Wang Jingyuan, the boy who worked himself to the bone and still lost everything.
Wang Jingyuan, the fictional ache in her heart.
And now—Lu Mingxuan?
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
This brat. This noisy, obnoxious brat on the phone… was that Lu Mingxuan? The same Lu Mingxuan from A Thorn in the Crown?
The answer was slowly assembling in her brain like puzzle pieces snapping into place.
The name. The voice. The impatience. The arrogant tone that practically screamed, "I have a trust fund and no consequences." That was him.
Rich. Reckless. Rotten to the core.
Unlike Wang Jingyuan, who was born into a poor family and raised by a loving mother until her untimely death, Lu Mingxuan had all the money in the world—and none of the warmth.
His parents divorced when he was ten. His father, a stoic business magnate, won custody. His mother walked out with her designer heels and pride intact. Lu Mingxuan had been left with a nanny, a black card, and an empty mansion.
He was only a year older than Lu Qingyan.
Correction: the original Lu Qingyan. In the novel, she and Lu Mingxuan were siblings—technically. After the divorce, she went with their mother while Lu Mingxuan stayed behind with their father. Their visits grew infrequent. Her mother would take her to see him every month, but the boy never showed his face. Eventually, the trips stopped. The last time she saw him, she was nine years old.
Which meant… they hadn't seen each other in eight years.
And now she'd just hung up on him.
Oops.
Her thumb tapped rhythmically against the phone screen as she processed this chaotic information dump.
The air around her buzzed with heat and passing cars, but her mind was somewhere else entirely.
So let's get this straight—she died heroically saving a child, and then woke up in the body of Lu Qingyan, a high schooler in a novel she'd sobbed over a week ago.
"Fantastic," she muttered dryly. "I'm not even in a dog-blood romance. I'm in a tragedy with a villain as my brother."
And not just any villain—an infamous one.
Lu Mingxuan wasn't the main villain. That honor belonged to Wang Jingyuan, the male lead's rival. But Lu Mingxuan?
He was a beautiful disaster.
He was tall, wild, skipped class like it was a full-time job, and carried around a devil-may-care smirk that made teachers want to resign early. He had the kind of face that said "I'll ruin your life with a smile—and the bank account to back it up."
And yet…
Lu Qingyan couldn't help comparing him to Wang Jingyuan.
Wang Jingyuan, with his serious eyes and quiet persistence, who took on multiple jobs and studied late into the night, who cooked his brother's meals and read medical books so he could explain his condition gently to him.
Wang Jingyuan, who tried everything—only to lose it all.
Lu Mingxuan had money. Wang Jingyuan had heart.
And both of them had the same ending.
That was what made 'A Thorn in the Crown' so cruel. It didn't matter if you were rich or poor. The world chewed you up and spat you out just the same.
Her hands clenched around her phone.
Wang Jingyuan lost his brother just before the college entrance exam. He failed to reach his dream school. He broke. He spiraled. The world kicked him while he was down, and people started avoiding him like he carried misfortune.
He became a villain not because he wanted to, but because life offered him no other path.
And her?
Lu Qingyan let out a bitter laugh.
She had no right to pity him. She'd done the same thing—chased approval, got good grades, played the perfect daughter. All for her brother's pride. All so he could look at her and say, "You're doing well."
But then he died.
And everything she worked for crumbled like dust.
She closed her eyes, inhaled shakily, then exhaled through her nose.
"Nope," she said, straightening her spine like a soldier about to go to war. "Don't spiral. Not today."
First things first: confirm if this really is the world of 'A Thorn in the Crown'.
If so, she had a new goal.
Not survival. Not popularity. Not avoiding death flags.
No. If she was here, and if Wang Jingyuan was still alive somewhere in this timeline—
She was going to save him.
Even if she had to wrestle fate by the throat to do it.
And Lu Mingxuan?
She glanced at his name again on the screen and scoffed.
The brat could wait.