"Oh! You know who he is?"
"I'm named after him." Zhou Mingyu grumbled as he held his head in his hands. 'What crime did I commit in a past life to deserve such terrible luck? Of all the people she could've picked, why did she have to pick the useless sidekick?'
Useless was an understatement. In the novel, The Tales of Wu Junjie, Hua Mingyu was just a sidekick who was only there to provide comic relief and cause problems for the protagonist. What's worse is that unlike most sidekicks, this one couldn't even manage to stay alive to the end! Frankly, Hua Mingyu was so one dimensional that he would've been forgotten along with other countless useless characters if it wasn't for his dramatic death.
Because parts of the book were lost to time, the events leading to Hua Mingyu's death was a topic of debate in countless online chatrooms. Some people theorized that he tried to betray Wu Junjie by joining one of his enemies, some people even thought that Hua Mingyu was in love with Wu Junjie's true love and the novel's female lead, Liu Shu, and tried to force himself on her when she rejected him. Personally, Zhou Mingyu thought the last one was too out of character for such a silly person but other than that, he had as much of an idea of what happened as anyone else.
Whatever the reason, something happened during one of the gaps in the story that caused Wu Junjie to completely denounce Hua Mingyu. The silly sidekick disappeared from the story again before showing up again near the end right before the epic battle between Wu Junjiu and the main villain, a terrible heavenly demon that wanted to burn the human world to the ground and devour the souls left behind.
In the end, Wu Junjie won the battle and saved the human world but only because of a magical item that helped him to not only kill his enemy but allowed him to seal off this world completely from the demon and even spiritual world. This way no demon, spirit, or whatever in-between could enter the human world and cause havoc ever again. Without that magical item, Wu Junjie and even the world would have been doomed. Which made Hua Mingyu's death more dramatic and meaningful since he not only helped Wu Junjie retrieve the item in a desperate attempt to redeem himself, he also gave up his own life once they realized that the magical item needed a soul in order to activate.
As depressing as it sounds, Hua Mingyu finally managed to gain respect in not only the protagonist's eyes but also the audience. In the end, he died a noble death but that didn't mean Zhou Mingyu wanted to follow in his footsteps!
"What terrible luck I have." He muttered to himself as he trembled partly from fatigue and partly from fear he had for his future but for his life. Miss Star, who was completely unaware of what fate had in store for the body she picked, wondered why her human suddenly looked so depressed.
She quickly jumped up on her feet and loudly proclaimed, "Hey now, don't look so sad! I'm going to be by your side from now on so don't look so worried!" After seeing that her words had no effect, Miss Star wondered what she could say that would make her Mingyu feel better. She remembered how some humans looked happier after someone called them pretty so without thinking she blurted out, "Please don't be sad. You look too pretty for that!"
The absurdness of her words was what made Zhou Mingyu snap out of his depression. "Huh?" He stuttered as he blinked owlishly at her. He was called many things as a child: weird, antisocial, and even somber, but "pretty" or even cute was never one of them. A part of him grew curious about Hua Mingyu's appearance since unlike Wu Junjie or even Liu Sha there were no vivid descriptions of his looks, so a lot of readers had their own interpretations. Soon his curiosity became too much to bear and he walked towards the river's edge. As he leaned over the slow-moving water, he couldn't stop the gasp that escaped through his lips.
"Pretty" turned out to be an understatement!
His hair was no longer the dull black color that he had always known. Instead, it was a warm brown and tied into a high ponytail that tickled the nape of his neck with soft fluffy bangs that rested just above his eyes. His skin now had a healthy tan which was a far cry from the impossibly pale skin that Zhou Mingyu used to have. He even had freckles now for God's sake! All in all, the only feature that Zhou Mingyu had in common with this new body was their soft brown eyes. They even had the deep melancholy that Zhou Mingyu was never able to shake off, even as a child. Though such sharp and deeply sad eyes looked unnatural on such a young and carefree face. It was clear that even in a new body, Zhou Mingyu's constant sorrow still clung to him.
'How does this kid walk down the street and not get his cheeks pinched all the time?' Zhou Mingyu thought with a grim frown which looked like a childish pout on his new face. Looking down at such a cute face Zhou Mingyu concluded that he didn't and imagined the young boy being hounded by old ladies every day.
It was clear that Hua Mingyu would grow up to be an outstanding pretty boy which made Zhou Mingyu wonder why the author never bothered to mention the sidekick's good looks? Maybe the author didn't want the protagonist to have any kind of competition? Though it would explain why Hua Mingyu was constantly being kidnapped by random demons for no reason. In fact, the kidnappings became so commonplace that the author even turned it into a running joke between the characters!
As Zhou Mingyu pondered the author's intentions, a small group of boys emerged from the woods from the other side of the river. Most of them had bruises on their face and their once pristine clothes were dirty and covered in mud. The boys reached the river's edge and collapsed on the ground, all of them panting as if they all ran the race of their lives.
Zhou Mingyu quickly turned to Miss Star to tell her to hide since her strange appearance would definitely raise some questions that he didn't want to answer.
"Miss Star," He called out before finding only an empty space behind him. "H-huh?" 'I'm glad she thought ahead but where on earth did she go?'
While Zhou Mingyu was distracted, one of the boys spotted him and quickly jumped to his feet. The expression on his face was filled with such rage and disgust that it made the young boy look like he was suddenly possessed by a demon.
"You!" The young boy screamed out as he pointed an accusing finger at Zhou Mingyu. "You have some nerve being here!"
"…Huh?"