I live in a world where women hold all the power. I ended up in the body of a lowborn commoner—poor, ugly, and weak—who everyone expected to die. But I had a secret plan: protect and raise the "fake young master," the boy everyone else had abandoned.
He was born into a great family but was switched at birth with the real heir. When the truth came out at eighteen, his adoptive family drove him out to the worst slum of the city. There, with no skills or friends, he was beaten and left to die. I woke up in the body of the woman who had helped that happen.
Now I stare at the injured boy on my simple bed. His body is bruised, his clothes torn, and his eyes swollen from crying. Everyone says he's worthless. But I refuse to let him die.
To keep him alive, I must:
1. Find enough food.
As a destitute commoner, I have no money or status. I must hunt the strange beasts that roam the slum's edges. Their meat will feed us.
2. Give him a safe place to live.
The slum is full of thieves and worse. I will fight our way into the richer Inner District, where at least we can sleep without fear.
3. Keep his spirits up.
He will learn special powers. He will have a little pet for company. Someday he may even find someone to love him.
—
When I first met him, he was frozen with cold and fear. His fancy clothes kept out the sun but did nothing against winter's chill. He huddled on a broken stair, breathing on his hands to warm them.
A group of cruel women had tried to tear his clothes off, to humiliate him. He ran, shaking, until he found a scrap of hope: an address someone had once mentioned. It belonged to me—a poor outcast, but someone who had shown him kindness.
He climbed the broken steps to my shabby building, almost too cold to move. When he hesitated outside the door, I opened it. He looked at me, terrified and exhausted.
"Please," he whispered. "I have nowhere else to go."
I stepped aside. "Come in," I said.
That was the beginning of our journey together: two lost souls in a harsh world, determined to survive—and to change our fate.
Hazen lifted his heavy feet and slowly walked up the stairs. As he passed some rooms on the second floor, he could feel unfriendly eyes watching him from behind the doors. He shivered slightly and quickened his pace until he finally reached Room 222 at the end of the hallway.
He stood in front of the door, hesitating. It'll be fine, he told himself. She likes me. She'll treat me well and give me good food and a nice place to stay. He kept encouraging himself.
Even though Hazen had recently been betrayed and abandoned by his friends and family, he had been raised in a sheltered way for the past eighteen years. He didn't understand how dark people's hearts could be. So even after spending some time in the chaotic lower city, he still tried to think the best of others.
As he was giving himself a mental pep talk, he suddenly heard a door open nearby. He jumped in surprise and turned around to see a creepy woman peeking through a crack in her door, staring at him with a perverted look in her eyes. He instantly felt scared and quickly knocked on the door of Room 222. Knock knock knock.
After a while, the door opened...
---
It hurts... my head hurts so much... What's happening…? Quinn felt like her head was about to explode.
What was going on? Wasn't she dead? She clearly remembered using her powers to blow herself up and take the zombie king with her. Just thinking about it made the pain worse. Why does it hurt so much…? Do dead people even feel pain?
She drifted in and out of pain for days. During the moments when her head hurt less, Quinn figured out some things. Her soul seemed to be stuck to a woman—wherever that woman went, she followed.
The woman was fat and creepy, living in a dirty, messy room.
The walls were covered with photos of two boys. She often stared at the photo of a beautiful boy with disgusting, obsessed eyes, whispering "Young Master Xiyu" while pulling tissues from a box.
The other boy's photo had been slashed with a blade so many times that his face was almost unrecognizable. The hate in that room was clear.
Quinn was often in so much pain that she couldn't think straight, so even after all that time, this was all she'd managed to learn. She didn't even know the woman's name or where they were.
She also had no idea why her soul was attached to this woman, or when she'd be free. She could only suffer in silence, with no end in sight.
Then, one afternoon, there was a knock at the door.
The creepy woman, too busy using tissues, didn't hear it. But for some reason, even through the pain, Quinn did. It felt like the knock landed directly on her soul. She couldn't help but focus on the door.
After the first knock, there was silence. Then came a second, and a third...
Finally, the woman noticed the sound and opened the door.
Standing outside was a boy who looked stunningly beautiful. Small, delicate, shivering from the cold—yet there was a proud look on his face, like knocking on this door was a favor to the person inside.
Quinn only had time to see his face for a second before the pain returned and swallowed her whole.
Alright, Quinn thought to herself, she would need to find a mind healer to help sort out and treat her mental sea... But did such healers even exist in this era?
Yes, clearly, the technology in this era was far more advanced than in Quinn's own time. She didn't recall ever seeing high-tech wristbands or holographic projections back in her time — those were things she had noticed in the past few days while following that sneaky woman.
Still, thanks to the internal scan just now, Quinn now had a better understanding of this body.
It was fascinating. Every single muscle of the original host, even down to each individual cell, was filled with an enormous amount of energy. Simply put, the original host's entire body was like a container for power — she was a walking energy vessel.
Quinn found it a bit amusing. The original host was no ordinary person. Quinn had only ever seen crystal cores used to store energy, never a human body that could do the same.
This explained why the original host was so overweight. Too much energy, and with the container too small to hold it all, the only solution was to expand the container.
If she was right, the original host couldn't lose weight — in fact, with energy overload, any extra intake would just turn directly into fat. In simple terms, she would "get fat even from drinking water."
Unless the original host could learn to circulate energy through her body, drawing it out from her cells and using it.
But clearly, the original host didn't know how. Now that Quinn was here… she looked up at herself in the mirror, raised the corners of her lips, and silently said, "Then it belongs to me now."
After confirming her basic condition, Quinn thought for a moment. She needed to figure out the original host's identity, social connections, and the details of this era — that was the top priority.
And also… the person lying on the bed.
Thinking of that, Quinn sighed in her heart. She already understood what had happened last night. If possible, she would try to make it up to the young man.
Even though in the apocalypse she had been cold and ruthless, never sparing any unnecessary kindness, it didn't mean she had lost all sense of human decency. If she gave up even the most basic line between human and monster, then she'd be no different from the zombies.
But first, she had to figure out whether the boy was a threat or not. If he was… a cold light flashed in Quinn's eyes.
Quinn figured out what she needed to do next and walked back to the living room.
It was called a living room, but it was really just one small room. The whole place was tiny — only a ten-square-meter living room, a three-square-meter bathroom, and a kitchen so small only one person could stand inside.
There was a 1.2-meter-wide bed in the living room. The previous owner had a large body but still only bought such a small bed, showing just how poor he was. There was also a small wooden table in the room. The rest of the space was filled with trash and photos covering the walls.
The living room and bathroom were dirty everywhere. Some places were sticky with black slime, and no one could even tell what it was. It clearly showed how lazy, disgusting, and messy the person living here had been.
But Quinn didn't feel uncomfortable in this kind of environment. In the apocalypse, she had seen places even dirtier and messier. When she was completely exhausted, she had even slept in spots soaked with corpse fluids. Compared to that, this place was already quite "clean."
First, Quinn took down all the photos on the wall and threw them into the trash — they were an eyesore. Then she looked at the bed.
On the side of the bed near the wall, the blanket was bulging up. A bit of messy black hair was sticking out. Quinn walked over and lifted a corner of the blanket. As expected, it was the same boy who had appeared at the door yesterday.
The boy's body was covered in marks — slap prints on his face, bruises around his neck, and other painful-looking injuries on his chest. It was a disturbing sight. His brows were tightly furrowed, showing how much pain he was in. His eyes were swollen like walnuts, and the corners were still wet.