Chapter 1: I Read the Last Chapter First

Xiao Fan's last act as a living person was finishing the novel that had been annoying her for six months.

She had started "The Radiant Heroine and Her Many Admirers" as a joke. She had kept reading out of spite. And in the final chapter, she had watched the villain — a secondary character named Xiao Chen, described only as cold, ruthless, and deserving of everything that happened to him — die alone in a prison cell, betrayed by every single person he had ever tried to protect.

It was, objectively, the worst ending she had ever read.

"He just needed one person," she said to no one in particular. "One person to actually talk to him—"

Then the truck hit her.

When she woke up, she was five years old. The room was unfamiliar. The clothes were wrong. And standing in the doorway, looking at her with large, uncertain eyes, was a boy who could not have been older than eight.

Even at eight, she could see it — the tension around his eyes, the careful stillness of someone who had learned very young that showing emotion was dangerous. The way he held himself like he was waiting to be told he had done something wrong.

She recognized him immediately.

"Xiao Chen," she said.

He startled. "How did you know my name?"

Xiao Fan stared at him. Then she looked at her own small hands. Then she looked back at him.

She was in the novel. She was the villain's little sister — a character so minor she had not even had a name in the original text.

"I'm your sister," she said.

He looked at her warily. "I know."

"I'm going to need you to trust me."

"I don't know you."

"I know. That's why I said I'm going to need it." She held out her hand. "But I'm going to fix this. I promise."

He stared at her hand for a long time. Then, slowly, like someone who had never been offered anything without a price, he took it.