Chapter 1: A Catastrophic Beginning

Prologue

“Tonight I don’t care about humanity, I only care about you.”

Chapter One Begins—

Spinning.

Leaping.

Opening his eyes, Eric Carter felt as if his soul had just gotten carsick, only to be immediately dragged onto a boat. The intense nausea and dizziness left his mind in a daze for quite a while.

After another ten seconds or so, Eric Carter finally regained clarity. The extra memories in his mind told him he had transmigrated to a parallel world—one with a history similar to his original world, but with a vastly different development in arts and culture.

“What was I doing before I transmigrated?” Eric Carter tried to recall.

He’d been staying up late at home, grinding through revisions for the planning department’s proposal. As someone who had started a small company from scratch, the days before going public were the busiest. He finished work at 3 a.m., took a sip of iced coffee, and then lost consciousness.

“Did I die from overwork?” Eric Carter muttered to himself. “Even as a boss, I died from overwork. I must have embarrassed all the capitalists. Did the heavens take pity on me and let me transmigrate? No, that can’t be right, I didn’t even pull all-nighters for that long… ugh—”

The nausea hit again, and Eric Carter couldn’t hold it back, vomiting all over the floor. It felt a lot like a hangover.

“My stomach feels awful.”

Passing through the dining room, Eric Carter rushed to the kitchen sink, gulped down two mouthfuls of tap water to rinse his mouth, then braced his left hand on the countertop while his right hand rubbed his stomach several times. The pain eased a bit. Dragging his legs, Eric Carter slumped into a dining chair and began sorting through the original body’s memories.

The countertop was made of black-gold cultured marble, the tiles icy cold. His left hand felt the chill, while his right hand, clutching his stomach, was warm. The contrast of hot and cold perfectly mirrored Eric Carter’s turbulent mood.

Elementary school, middle school, high school, university, signing up as a company trainee during high school—every experience played out in Eric Carter’s mind like a TV drama.

“The body I transmigrated into… is a top-tier idol?”

Eric Carter unlocked the original owner’s phone. The Weibo account—Eat a Big Orange

[Verified Singer, Representative Works: “My Dream,” “Beautiful and Brilliant”] (11.54 million followers_54 following_710 million likes/comments/shares)

Eat a Big Orange: [Good morning, world. Picture]

It was just an ordinary photo of the sunrise, average angle, average composition, average aesthetics—utterly mediocre. Yet this post had 180,000 comments. Eric Carter could feel the exaggeration of being a top star.

[Ahhh, groundhog scream, I miss you!]

[I’ll just call you hubby!]

[Babe’s photography skills are amazing, not much worse than a professional photographer.]

[Wuwuwu, wait for me at Huanghua Airport! I’ve already bought my ticket.]

[If an orange grows south of the Huai River, it becomes a king; north of the Huai, it becomes a zhi. The leaves may look alike, but they’ll always be together.]

[Why doesn’t Zhi-ge post selfies? I have a disease where I’ll die if I don’t see Zhi-ge.]

……

Before transmigrating, Eric Carter hated fandom culture, and despised crazy fans even more, thinking they were childish and immature. But if the crazy fans were his own—well, that would be great.

Just imagine, if there were a group of people who would support you unconditionally no matter what you did—who wouldn’t like that?

Eric Carter kept scrolling. If the original owner posted a selfie, the comments would shoot past 200,000, filled with “your skin is amazing,” “so handsome,” “hubby,” and even more exaggerated phrases like “I want to have your babies.”

In terms of professional ability, a new song would sell over five million digital copies in twenty-four hours; endorse a certain flavor of milk, and a massive wave of fans would rush to buy it online, selling out both the Chop-Hand website and the official Pinduoduo flagship store.

All these awe-inspiring feats happened two months ago. The latest comments now—

[Turned from fan to hater, kept as a sugar baby, secretly married, lol.]

[Even a scumbag like this can be a celebrity? The entertainment industry is way too forgiving. I don’t even think he qualifies as a person.]

[Kept by a sugar mommy, is playing with steel wool fun? (dog head)]

[Tsk tsk, playing with steel wool? What if it’s a male “auntie” taking the back door?]

[Zhi the scumbag used to be a decent person. Let’s spit on him before we leave, hetui]

……

In fandom lingo, this was called a “house collapse.” For a top star, a house collapse was no small matter—he’d trended on Weibo’s hot search 31 times from June to August.

Scandals of diva behavior, song plagiarism, being kept as a sugar baby, and marriage fraud broke out one after another. From the original owner’s memories, Eric Carter learned he’d been framed.

At a business banquet two months ago, the original owner and his agent attended together and took a “close” photo with a female sponsor.

The very next day, rumors of being kept as a sugar baby exploded. Weibo turned into tempura thrown into hot oil—instantly boiling over. Before the company could issue a statement, another scandal broke: a “girlfriend” claiming to have dated the original owner for five years came forward.

Over the following week, more and more scandals were thrown online, like lighting a fuse in a powder keg, triggering one explosion after another.

Amid the thunderous uproar, only the plagiarism and diva behavior were true. The former was because the company paid for songs in the industry without proper vetting.

The latter was the original owner losing himself after becoming famous overnight, indeed acting like a diva toward staff and in scheduling.

“When reporters spread rumors that you’re being kept by a rich woman, you’d better actually be kept,” Eric Carter muttered. “Then you could use her connections to smooth things over. But unfortunately…”