Waking up felt like drowning in reverse.
Air rushed into his lungs, Light stabbed through eyelids that were clamp shut.
"Ghk—ha,"
Lin Chuan's eyes flew open, his breath cought in his throat causing him to cough loudly. He tried blinking wiping away the tears in his eyes.
The ceiling above him was not the library ceiling. It was white. Ornate. Trimmed with gold leaf that caught the morning light and threw it back in soft, expensive patterns. A chandelier hung in his peripheral vision, a real chandelier, crystal drops and all, the kind of thing that belonged in period dramas the billionaire penthouses.
He was in a massive bed, canopied and draped in silk, with pillows soft enough to swallow him whole. The sheets smelled like lavender a smell he'd always loved.
He tried to sit up but his hands were too weak to support him. There was a shift, a pull, a sense of difference that ran from his fingertips to his toes. He looked down at his hands and they were paler than he'd ever thought they would be, his nails were perfect and manicured a stack contrast to his which he had bitten to stay awake while studying.
Then suddenly, Memories crashed through him like a tidal wave, fragments, images, feelings that belonged to someone else, a locked bedroom door, a smiling face, a hand over his mouth, whispering: "They can't know about us. Not yet."
Gu Yunting.
The name made his chest hurt in a way that made him frown.
A novel apparently, of an Omega so obsessed with an Alpha that he forced a marriage, destroyed a true love and drove a woman to suicide.
The character's name: Ling Mu.
His name: Ling Mu.
Lin Chuan, no, not Lin Chuan, Ling Mu, he was Ling Mu now, gasped and doubled over, clutching his head as the memories and the novel and the terrified screaming of whoever had lived in this body before him all tangled together into a knot that threatened to pull him under, the feeling were so intense that for a sliver of a moment he considered ending it, but reason brought him back, he'd already died once.
After it all passed he camly accepted it he was the side character of a book he'd barely skimmed, months ago, when a classmate had left it on a library table and he'd flipped through it during a study break. An Omegaverse novel. Alpha, Beta, Omega dynamics. A "true love" story where the hero Alpha fought against an obsessive Omega's family pressure to be with the woman he really loved.
The Omega had died horribly. Tortured and imprisoned.
And now that Omega was him.
The screaming in his skull faded slowly, replaced by a hollow, echoing silence. The original Ling Mu, the one who'd lived here, who'd loved Gu Yunting, who'd been beaten and manipulated and used, was gone. He had comited sucide to force his grandfather to accept his marriage.
Lin Chuan, Ling Mu, get it right, you have to get it right,
He was in a wealthy home. The Ling family. Old money, powerful, influential in ways that Lin Chuan had only ever read about. He had a grandfather who ran the family empire, a father who was waiting to inherit it, and a mother who had died when he was young. He was an Omega, which in this world meant he was rare, valuable, and treated as property disguised as precious.
This is what he'd ever dreamed about. If he studies he can ask for tutors and exercise and eat without worrying about tomorrow.
Now one issue was their he was engaged, to Gu Yunting the novel's protagonist. He'd been pestering his grandfather and father for almost a year for the marriage to happen
The memories were clearer now. Gu Yunting's face, so handsome, so gentle in public. His voice, warm and concerned when others were watching. And then the door closing, he would be even sweeter, "I love you, I really do, but my parents don't want us to be together, you know how they feel about my grandfather's decisions ."
The original Ling Mu had believed him.
Had thought the secrecy was because of family pressure, because Gu Yunting's parents wouldn't accept an Omega choose by his grandfather because their relationship was stiff. Had given him money, access, influence, whatever he asked for, whatever might prove his love. Had finally, desperately, asked his family to use their power to force the marriage, thinking he was helping, thinking Gu Yunting would be grateful.
And Gu Yunting had played along.
Because Gu Yunting wanted the Ling family's money. Wanted their connections. Wanted to use them as a stepping stone while keeping his "true love" and enable him to control the Gu family and be above his siblings.
Wei Shiting.
The name surfaced with the taste of something bitter. The original Ling Mu's cousin. Beautiful, delicate, always kind to his face. But the memories carried, a flicker of unease, a sense of wrongness that the original had never been able to name. Wei Shiting, always present when Gu Yunting visited. Wei Shiting, always asking questions about the family. Wei Shiting, whose eyes went flat when she thought no one was looking.
Lin Chuan, Ling Mu, Ling Mu, Ling Mu, breathed slowly and forced himself to think.
He was in a novel and he was cannon fodder. He was about to force a marriage that would lead to his own torture and death, plus the suicide of Wei Shiting.
The engagement meeting was tonight.
His grandfather and father were planning to corner Gu Yunting and pressure him into agreement.
And in the novel, it worked. Gu Yunting "reluctantly" accepted, played the victim, and began his methodical destruction of the Ling family from the inside.
But Lin Chuan wasn't the original, he was not going to let his free meal ticket dissappear.
Lin Chuan had spent twenty, two years learning to read people, to see their weaknesses, to predict their moves. That is how he managed to not starve and also learn till university.
A soft knock at the door made him brought him out of his thoughts.
"Young Master?" A servant's voice, deferential. "Your grandfather requests your presence in the study. He says it's urgent."
Lin Chuan looked at himself in the mirror across the room it was his face, a cleaner, delicate version of it.
He smiled slightly, he liked this look, fragile and harmless.
"I'll be there shortly," he said.
His voice was soft. Perfect.
He swung his legs out of bed and stood he felt weak, he had sliced his wrists and his arms felt number.
He could not suddenly refuse an engagement he almost killed himself for the original Ling Mu didn't deserve what happened to him and no one's going to avenge him except line chuan.
He smoothed his borrowed clothes, composed his borrowed face into the expression of a nervous Omega, and walked out to meet his fate.