Chen Qian Qian let out a deep sigh as she finished reading the epilogue of the novel that she had been reading lately - The Sweet Love. It started well; university campus setting, a rich & handsome male lead who's a gentleman, a female lead who is fierce and intelligent, supportive parents, and no overly evil plots. The writing was good, and the flow of the story was good. But it was weird reading about all the other female characters of the story falling for the male lead while the other male characters fell for the female lead.
Almost every one of them! And neither of them had a happy ending. The only people truly happy by the end were the main characters. Qian Qian felt especially bad for the female lead's best friend who had been in love with her since they were kids. The circumstances made him turn into a villain who didn't even hesitate to murder a classmate. A girl who had the same name as her.
Chen Qian Qian.
The fictional character had what she didn't. A loving family and freedom to live her life the way she wanted. But she, the writer to be precise, destroyed it just for the sake of the "love" she had for the male lead. It all just felt so stupid and Qian Qian didn't like the fact that for the happy ending of the main characters, the happiness of every other character was ruined.
That's why Qian Qian was left with this complicated feeling of liking the novel but disliking it as well. It was very contradictory, and it was reflected in the review that she posted on the site.
Switching off her laptop, Qian Qian laid down on her bed, hugging a pillow close to her chest. She wished she could write a novel on her own. It just neither does she have the time for that nor did she dare to do so. The fear of what if her grandmother found out about it, of what the repercussions would be, always prevented her from doing what she wanted.
When she fell asleep, the last thought that Chen Qian Qian had on her mind was how her life would have been if her parents weren't dead and she had the freedom that the novel character had. How wonderful it would have been.
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Since she had started living with her grandmother, the rule of waking up at 6 in the morning had been drilled into her, and she had become so habitual that it felt like she had an internal clock that woke her up at precisely 6 A.M., no matter how late she had to go to sleep the last night. So even when it was Sunday too, Qian Qian woke up at 6.
At first, she didn't notice any change in her surroundings. She sat up on the bed and rubbed her palms together for a minute before placing her warm palms over her eyes. She then drank a glass full of water that was on the side table and then got out of bed. It was when she turned on the lights in her room that she noticed the changes.
The size of her room was the same, but the color of the walls and the furniture were different. The earlier white and grey walls were now painted in shades of peach, pink, teal, and white with gold accents. Her normal, necessary, and bland furniture was replaced by aesthetically pleasing pieces, along with the addition of a hanging chair and a full-body mirror.
The accent wall had a huge black and white portrait of hers that she had no idea when she got that clicked. Curtains were drawn close over the wall facing her bed which Qian Qian found was made entirely of glass which wasn't the case before. There were two doors on her right. The first one lead to her bathroom which again was different than her previous one. It followed the same color scheme as her bedroom but it had more white than any other color. And it even had a jacuzzi bathtub!
Chen Qian Qian moved over to the other door that led to her an extravagant walk-in closet that had a staircase leading down to another level of the closet. There were a variety of clothes and costumes on the first level, while jewelry, shoes, bags, and other accessories occupied the lower level. Most of them were pieces that Qian Qian knew she didn't own. On the lower level, there was another eye-catching portrait of hers next to another full-body mirror. It made her notice the dissimilarities between her and the girl in the picture.
The girl had longer hair than hers, a beauty mark on her right eyelid, and one on the left side of her lower lip. But other than that, they looked the same.
Qian Qian couldn't help but look at her reflection in the mirror and noticed that her mid-back length hair now went past the tailbone and she now had those two moles that she didn't have before. How could all this change in just one night?!
She rushed back upstairs to got look for her grandmother but in her haste, she collided with the door and fell on the floor. Rubbing her forehead she noticed that the door to her room which was on her left was now on her right. But what caught her eye was the photographs on the wall. There were photos of her with beautiful people that she didn't know, with a middle-aged couple who was smiling widely in every photo and had their arms around her in an embrace.
She felt dizzy and anxious because of all the changes. She started taking deep breaths and poured herself a glass of water to calm herself. But before she could take a sip, she was hit by an onslaught of memories. Familiar, but not hers.
She stumbled back on her bed, rubbing her temples to ease the pain that the sudden memories brought. Suddenly she was able to recognize who were all those people in the photos with her. The changes around her started to make sense.
"What the fuck?!"