It's Hard Being the Bad GuyChapter 1

Holding the acceptance letter in his hands, Wen Ai climbed five floors all at once, trying to find his classroom by looking at the floor plans hung on the wall. Just as he took a couple of steps forward, a strong sandalwood scent drifted out of nowhere. Smelling it made Wen Ai feel very comfortable. 

After taking several deep breaths, the faint voice of the System spoke in his mind, “It’s the air freshener’s scent from the restroom.” 2ISaf8

Wen Ai’s breath caught in his throat. He hurriedly expelled all the air from his lungs and speed-walked to a spot quite a distance away before inhaling once more.

He tried to reason with the System, “We should focus on doing the mission well. Stuff like pranks and what not, we don’t need it, ok?”

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System, “No, I want to.”

Wen Ai, “…” yKOeUM

This little System with ‘the princess attitude’ was there when Wen Ai had woken up. He had no memories, no idea of who he was, and had felt a little dazed by the boundless darkness around him. He had shuffled through the memories in his mind and found that aside from his name, he remembered nothing at all.

It was then that the System entered the scene. It didn’t expose its true personality in the beginning. Instead, it explained to Wen Ai with great patience that he had been selected to play the villain character, that it was his job to transmigrate into multiple worlds to complete his mission of abusing the male lead. Every mission would be scored out of one hundred and a score of 85 and above would be awarded a special prize. 

To get Wen Ai to agree to the terms and conditions, the System blew the award out of proportion. It said things like reaching for the stars and taking down the moon were child’s play compared to the extent of what Wen Ai could accomplish with the award, and that as long as he could imagine it, there was nothing that the System couldn’t provide.

So Wen Ai asked, “Can you give me back my memories?”

“You have amnesia?” The System paused for a moment and did a quick check-through of its internal code. “I don’t know how that happened either, but so long as you get those 85 points, recovering your memory will be a breeze.”

And then, just like that, Wen Ai became the System’s host.

This was his first world. The storyline had a modern background and followed the male lead, Xu Chang Zhou, a boy who grew up in a single-parent family. His biological father wasn’t a good dad to him, and as a result of his family background, Xu Chang Zhou’s personality had always been a little cold. During high school, there was a rich second generation that had a feud with the male lead. Out of fear of retaliation from the rich second generation, the other students stayed away from the male lead. Xu Chang Zhou was used to loneliness, so the ostracization from his classmates didn’t bother him much. But it was during this time that the female lead, who treated him equally and always smiled at him, began to catch his eye. Amidst the smoke and miasma shrouding his high school life, the female lead was like a breath of fresh air. The female lead had some goodwill towards the quiet boy, and the two of them became friends before developing a secret crush on each other. 

During senior year, Xu Chang Zhou’s father suddenly surfaced to bring him to the U.S., where his identity was changed into that of an heir to a mysterious family. Three years later, his name was well known throughout the underworld of the East Coast, and the female lead at this point had just won the opportunity to go to the States for an exchange. By some chance of fate, the two main characters met once again overseas. And the rest could be summed up quite neatly by two overused tropes: “The CEO’s darling: cold-hearted mafia boss won’t let me go” and “Dangerous love: my boyfriend belongs to the mafia”. LjNkxa

As for Wen Ai, his job was to play the rich second generation, the school bully that oppressed Xu Chang Zhou from the start of high school, Zhao Shu Yan. The Zhao family was a force to be reckoned with in the business world. No other family could rival them. The Zhao family was well known to have only one heir, their baby prince, who they doted on to no end. When Wen Ai had transmigrated into this world, he had kicked out his leg for a stretch and found that he had actually become a baby. At first, the System was trying to make stuff up, saying things like how this situation would make Wen Ai get into character better. Only later on did the System finally admit that it was because it wasn’t used to programming transmigrations, so it might have screwed up the time and location coordinates. 

When Wen Ai was little, the Zhao parents once asked him what he wanted. As sincerely and honestly as he could, he replied that he wanted to grow up faster. Way faster. And then his answer received a loving head pat from Father Zhao. 

On the brighter side, life as the Zhao family’s young master was very comfortable. Fifteen years passed in a breeze, and finally, the storyline began.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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There were a lot of people in the hallway. These were all new high school students, so their expressions showed varying degrees of hope and fear for the future. Several female students passed by Wen Ai, imbuing the air with a beautiful scent. It was the smell of several expensive perfumes, combined into one strong scent from the girls’ proximity. This school was an establishment specifically made for the rich, all the students here were quite well off. 

Wen Ai wasn’t used to smelling so much perfume at once. The strong scent made him sneeze twice in quick succession. The group of girls heard the sound and turned. Their gazes stopped for a moment on his face before their expressions melted into identical looks of motherly doting. As the System would say, if you kidnapped a samoyed pup and put it where Wen Ai was, then this scene would seem more normal. 

Wen Ai actually had no snarky retort to that statement. 

This face of his really had a way of attracting fondness and adoration. The delicate face shape, the soft and bouncy skin with a pair of watery eyes that glimmered like black gemstones. The corners of his eyes naturally drooped down a little, and the combined effect made him look a little naïve and oh-so-innocent. On the other hand, this type of adorable and well-behaved look didn’t fit with the evil bully character at all, and the lack of consistency made fitting the character to the face seem like an impossible task. fDULnQ

Wen Ai leaned against the handrails that ran along the hallway, switching up the way he was leaning now and then when the handrail pressed too hard on one spot for too long. The flip-flop motion made him look like a rice cake that was being cooked on both sides. After the rice cake had been thoroughly fried, the person that the rice cake was waiting for still hadn’t arrived yet. 

Wen Ai finally gave up and straightened his posture. “Why is the male lead still not here?”

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System, “He’s almost here. Do you still remember what I told you before? C’mon, recite it for me again.”

The words came easily to Wen Ai. “The expression has to be fierce, the movement has to be rough. Be outrageous, arrogant, and bossy. Be evil, go from 1 to 100 real quick.” d7AOBE

“Only remembering it is no use, you have to understand it, internalize it, and integrate—” The System suddenly paused. “The male lead is here.”

Wen Ai excitedly turned to look.

The lighting by the stairs was a little dim. The tall and lanky youth walked unhurriedly up  the stairway, the shadows pulling back from his body bit by bit, revealing his features to the light. 

His face had distinct and sharp features belonging to mixed-race ancestry. Beneath his prominent brows were a pair of deep-set eyes the color of molten amber. The expression in those eyes was cool and indifferent to the extreme, as if nothing in the world was capable of capturing interest from that impassive gaze.  KAOnN4

Wen Ai stared at the male lead’s aquiline nose, a little envious in his heart as he thought that mixed race really did have a genetic advantage. Look at that girl beside him, she can’t even shift her eyeballs to look away from his face. 

The System wanted to correct him— actually, your eyeballs have stayed on the male lead for quite a bit as well. Before the System could speak up, the monitoring lights flashed, and it immediately shouted, “He’s coming! Watch your expression!”

Wen Ai immediately snapped out of his stupor, shook his head from side to side and immediately changed his expression into one of insufferable arrogance, a look that conveyed “Don’t annoy this bad boy, or else I’ll kick you to the floor and beat you up”. This was an expression that he spent a long time perfecting in front of the mirror. 

Unfortunately, Xu Chang Zhou had already noticed Wen Ai long before the System had sounded the alarm. Those pure and innocent mannerisms resembling the bloom of a flower grown from the freshest mountain spring, none of it escaped the male lead’s watchful gaze. Even the stiff, evil expression was nothing but a delicate flower raising its leaves in a trembling display of fierceness. The display not only had no conviction, but instead had a strange and interesting appeal to it. aEPzKT

Xu Chang Zhou never looked directly in Wen Ai’s direction before he disappeared into the classroom. 

Wen Ai cleared his throat, patted his face, and gave himself a pep-talk before preparing to act out the beginning of the plot. 

The classroom was very spacious. All the seats were separate to avoid the discomfort of having to knock elbows with seating partners. Wen Ai stood in the doorway, scanning the classroom from where he stood, and spotted the male lead sitting beside the window. 

Jiang Cheng saw Wen Ai and immediately started slapping the seat in front of him, signaling for Wen Ai to come sit there. Wen Ai didn’t even spare him a glance. Instead, he focused his evil gaze on Xu Chang Zhou before walking haughtily past the podium to stand in front of the male lead.  pa6Y72

Wen Ai threw his backpack heavily onto the table in front of the male lead, rudely taking over the table. He opened his mouth and spoke as if the world was his, “This is my seat now. You, go away.”

Xu Chang Zhou raised his head and calmly looked at him. There wasn’t a single ripple of emotion behind those eyes of his. 

Wen Ai raised his chin, putting on the airs of a rich young master, and tossed the male lead’s pen to the floor. He put his two hands on either edge of the desk, propped himself up, and looked down his nose at the male lead. As if talking to an idiot, he slowly enunciated every word, “Go, away.”

Xu Chang Zhou still didn’t make a move. The deathly silent atmosphere made Wen Ai’s arrogant display seem a little awkward. qL1zEG

In his mind, Wen Ai scratched his head in confusion. Why are you just looking at me? Say something!

In the silence, any indication of smoke and fire that the scene had from before disappeared without a single trace. Wen Ai felt as if he had been given the cold shoulder, and waves of awkwardness almost made his act slip. Bullying people is so hard QAQ. The male lead isn’t even paying attention to me.

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It’s ok, it’s ok. The female lead is always here to save the day. 

Sun Meng, who was seated behind Xu Chang Zhou, really couldn’t stand to look at the scene any longer. She jumped to her feet. “He was here first, why does he have to give up his seat for you? If you wanted to sit beside the window, then you should’ve come earlier. What kind of nonsense is this, starting a fight over a seat? If there’s a problem, you can at least try to talk first, why do you have to put on airs and look down at people? You’re so arrogant and unreasonable, makes me wonder what kind of parent—“ KscM9Y

Xu Chang Zhou suddenly turned around and looked at her with a stony expression in his eyes. His stare made a chilling sensation creep up Sun Meng’s back, immediately putting a stop to her impassioned speech. 

She pressed a hand to her mouth and didn’t dare to say one more word, thinking to herself, Oh crap. In these turbulent years, being a good person was so hard. 

Unexpectedly, Xu Chang Zhou cleaned up his stuff and vacated the seat, offering it up to Wen Ai. Wen Ai looked at him in shock as he casually walked to the seat next to where he was sitting before, and sat down at his new desk. Wen Ai’s entire person felt wronged. 

It was supposed to go down like this: the male lead didn’t want to back off, the little bully got angry, and from there on developed a dislike towards the stubborn protagonist, to the point that he couldn’t even look at the male lead straight in the face without getting angry.  2zMqoA

But now the entire feud had been resolved before it even began. The female and male lead didn’t even get to sit in the same row. The plotline imploded right at the beginning, to the point where the entire script had just gone to rubbish. 

Wen Ai’s round eyes stared dolefully as Xu Chang Zhou took out his stationary and arranged them on his new desk, rooted to the spot. 

Wen Ai didn’t know how to cover up his gaze. Xu Chang Zhou felt someone looking at him and turned to see who it was. He was immediately met with Wen Ai’s dejected look. His hands stilled. 

  zPOKXG

……

It was the first lecture of the year. The math teacher babbled at the podium, spittle flying everywhere as he lectured them on studying. Wen Ai curled up in the sunlight shining through the window, crestfallen. 

His first try at following the plot and it already swerved off-rails and off the cliff. This feeling, it was like getting foot-wash water dumped on his head just moments after stepping outside.  TjXMlA

Wen Ai, “Hey Bucket, gimme some ideas. Didn’t you say that my mission score is related to your grade?”

The System had a rare moment of silence. Moments later, it replied to Wen Ai with a sticker. The simple picture showed a 囧 face, followed by a caption: 

What can I do? I’m also in despair.

  NsxFmH

T/N: System in Chinese is 系统 (Xi Tong) and bucket is 桶 (Tong). Wen Ai’s nickname for System is a pun. It’s also because System is about as useful as a bucket. Also guys, yes I’ve got like 2 advanced chapters on Patreon, but more importantly I’m doing this poll to decide on a project that I’ll be taking on. I have issues with making choices and decisions, so if any of you guys would like to help out that would be greatly apprediated. Happy Reading~!

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  lKhr9i

**this message includes a spoiler** Okay so idk what it insinuates but originally Jiang Cheng was referred to as 表哥 (older cousin) it sounded a bit weird so now Jiang Cheng is Wen Ai’s childhood friend. I believe that this was a fair and necessary decision to make.