The air in the Golden Dragon Restaurant was a suffocating mix of cheap "Double Happiness" cigarette smoke and the heavy, cloying scent of overheated lard. It was 1995, a time when "status" in this small town was measured by how many tables of greasy food you could afford to layout for a banquet.
Li Hua stood at the center of the chaos, her breath coming in shallow hitches. She looked down at her hands puffy, red, and shaking. She was wearing a crimson cheongsam that felt more like a cage than a dress. The fabric, a cheap polyester silk, groaned at the seams. Every time she moved, she feared the threads would snap, exposing her to the fifty judgmental relatives watching her every move.
"Look at her," a sharp, melodic giggle pierced through the low hum of the crowd.
Li Hua looked up. Lin Meimei stood there, looking like a delicate willow branch in a pale yellow dress that cost more than Li Hua's father made in three months. Meimei's eyes were wide and seemingly innocent, but the curl of her lip was pure venom.
"Li Hua, I told you that red wasn't your color. You look like a burst zongzi," Meimei whispered, loud enough for the surrounding tables to hear.
The laughter erupted a wave of jagged, cruel sound.
1995... Li Hua's brain felt like it was being scraped by a rusted nail. I'm back. I'm really back.
In her previous life, this was the moment she had started crying. She had begged Gu Yan not to leave her. She had let them strip her of her dignity, her family's money, and eventually her life. She remembered the cold hospital bed, the smell of antiseptic, and the sound of Gu Yan and Meimei laughing outside her door as she took her last breath.
"Li Hua, are you even listening?"
Gu Yan stepped forward. He was wearing a stiff, grey suit that Li Hua had bought for him using her secret savings money she had earned by sewing late into the night until her eyes bled. He looked at her with such visceral disgust that it was as if he were looking at a pile of rotting garbage.
"The engagement is over," Gu Yan said, his voice cold and loud. "My mother says a woman of your... size... is a sign of a lazy household. We are a family of scholars and cadres. We can't have a daughter-in-law who looks like a breeding sow."
The humiliation was a physical weight, heavier than the 95kg she carried. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
[Ding! Soul synchronization at 100%.]
[90s Fat Girl Blessed System has been activated!]
[Status Check: Host is currently experiencing 'Extreme Social Humiliation'.]
[Mission: Reclaim your Dignity! Target: Gu Yan and Lin Meimei. Reward: -2kg Instant Body Fat, +5 Beauty, 10 Yuan Startup Capital.]
The mechanical voice in her head was like a bucket of ice water. Li Hua's trembling stopped. The tears that had been pricking her eyes dried instantly, replaced by a gaze so sharp it seemed to cut through the smoke in the room.
"A breeding sow?" Li Hua repeated. Her voice wasn't the high-pitched whine Gu Yan expected. It was low, steady, and dangerously calm.
She reached out and picked up a porcelain bowl of hongshao rou (braised pork) from the nearest table. The fat was glistening, the sauce dark and sticky.
"Li Hua, what are you doing? Put that down, you glutton!" Auntie Mei, her step-mother, hissed from the side, terrified of losing face.
Li Hua ignored her. She stepped toward Gu Yan. He tried to back away, but the crowd was too thick.
"You say I'm lazy, Gu Yan? Who stayed up until 3 AM for a month to sew the curtains for your new apartment? Who bought that suit you're wearing right now with money I saved from skipping breakfast for a year?"
"I... I never asked you to do that!" Gu Yan stammered, his face flushing red.
"You took it. You wore it. And now you're using it to stand next to my 'best friend' and call me a pig."
Li Hua didn't wait for his next lie. She tilted the bowl. The thick, soy-sauce-laden gravy poured slowly down the front of his grey suit, the oily meat sliding off his lapels like slugs.
The restaurant went silent. Even the kitchen staff stopped to watch through the serving hatch.
"Since you think I'm a pig, I figured I'd feed you like one," Li Hua said, her eyes boring into his. "But on second thought, even a pig knows loyalty. You're just a parasite."
"You...you bitch!" Lin Meimei screamed, lunging forward to grab Li Hua's hair.
Li Hua moved with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for a girl of her size. She caught Meimei's wrist in mid-air. The grip was like an iron shackle.
"And you," Li Hua leaned in, her voice a deadly whisper. "I know about the gold fountain pen you stole from my father's desk. I know about the 'study sessions' you had with Gu Yan in the back of the textile warehouse. If you don't want the whole town to know you're a thief and a mistress, you'll shut your mouth and stay five meters away from me at all times."
Meimei's face turned from red to a ghostly, sickly white. She began to tremble, her "White Lotus" act crumbling instantly.
Li Hua let go of her wrist with a look of pure disdain. She looked at the crowd the relatives who had whispered, the neighbors who had laughed.
"The engagement isn't 'off' because Gu Yan wants it," Li Hua announced, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "It's off because I refuse to marry a man who can't even afford his own clothes. Consider the soup a parting gift. Don't bother returning the suit—I don't want trash back in my house."
[Mission Complete! Rewards Issued!]
A sudden, violent heat surged through Li Hua's limbs. It was as if her blood had turned into boiling tea. She felt a tightening in her waist, a lightness in her knees. Her heavy, labored breathing suddenly became clear.
She didn't stay to watch the fallout. She turned and walked out of the Golden Dragon, her head held high, leaving behind the stunned silence of the 1990s elite.