Chapter 2 This cannon fodder female supporting character, she doesn't want to be one! ...
When Gao Wen returned to the school gate, she went to the snack street.
She used to eat low-fat meals, but after getting sick, she lost interest in all food. This time, Gao Wen wanted to indulge herself, so she bought roasted meat rice and fried chicken cutlets, and to cleanse her palate, she also bought a box of fruit.
As Gao Wen walked downstairs to the dormitory building, the dormitory supervisor poked her head out of the window and greeted her warmly: "You're back?"
"Yes." Gao Wen smiled. "Have you eaten?"
She stays on campus every holiday, so she naturally has a lot of things to trouble the dormitory supervisor. When she has free time, she also often helps the supervisor watch the door, and they get along well.
"Not yet, Shishi will bring it to me in a bit," the dormitory supervisor replied.
Shishi is the dormitory supervisor's daughter, and Gao Wen tutored her.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Gao Wen returned to her dormitory.
It's her junior year break now, and all her roommates have gone home, but she's the only one staying on campus.
For the past three years, Gao Wen has stayed at school during every holiday because she had nowhere else to go.
In his senior year of high school, Gao's father passed away unexpectedly. Song Jie took the compensation money, sold the house, and disappeared. All these years, there has been no news of her.
From then on, Gao Wen, who had been pampered since childhood, had to support herself.
Gao Wen has a stunningly beautiful face, which brings her many advantages. She is very smart, and after her family's misfortune, she kept silent to avoid being schemed against or targeted.
Despite these adversities, Gao Wen not only took good care of herself but also gritted her teeth and stayed up late studying, ultimately gaining admission to University A. Even though her score was low and her chosen major didn't lead to good job prospects, it didn't matter. She believed that as long as she stepped into the hallowed halls of University A and came to the capital, countless opportunities would open up for her.
Gao Wen believes that she has never been one to succumb to fate, so even though in her "previous life" she suffered from severe depression and anxiety, and her body and mind were tormented, she never had any thoughts of suicide.
She wanted to live, even if it was just to eke out a living.
Gao Wen placed the food she bought on the table and went to the balcony to wash her face. She wasn't wearing makeup today, but she had applied sunscreen, which she wanted to remove immediately.
After washing her face, Gao Wen came back and sat down, opened the packaging bag, and the aroma of roasted meat rice wafted out.
Gao Wen was about to eat when her phone vibrated twice.
She reached out and took it.
Fang Han: [Have you arrived at school yet?]
Gao Wen put down her chopsticks and typed a reply with her slender fingers: 【Yeah, just bought food and got back to the dorm.】
Fang Han's input was displayed, but no message was sent yet.
Gao Wen got up late and in a hurry this morning. She hadn't eaten breakfast yet, but drank a bottle of milk. She was already hungry, so she continued to eat small bites of food.
Both the grilled meat rice and the chicken cutlet were greasy foods, but they smelled very good and tasted delicious. Gao Wen restrained herself and only ate a third of them. Even though she wasn't full, she put down her chopsticks. She did eat a few more pieces of fruit, though.
Fang Han's message arrived belatedly: "Don't worry too much about finding a job. It took me half a year to find one, and I sent out countless resumes. You've already done a great job. I'll keep an eye out for suitable positions for you; you still have a long way to go before graduation."
When Gao Wen saw his message, she couldn't help but smile.
She could almost imagine how many times he had carefully edited the message, and how meticulously he had put it.
Gao Wen quickly composed herself. She typed a message, then edited it down, finally sending only: 【Thank you, senior.】
These few words are just polite formalities.
When Fang Han saw Gao Wen's reply, he wanted to say something more, but he didn't know how to respond.
She didn't actually need to be so polite to him.
*
After finishing her barbecue rice, Gao Wen felt a little restless.
Strict management of her figure has been ingrained in her since childhood.
After struggling for a while, Gao Wen resigned herself to taking out a yoga mat from the corner of the dormitory, wiping it with a rag, changing into yoga clothes, moving a chair over, putting her laptop on it, and turning on the video.
Gao Wen sat on the yoga blocks, gently closed her eyes, and cleared her mind of distractions.
The campus was quiet during the holidays, and since it was midday, apart from the occasional birdsong outside the window, there was only soft music and gentle guidance: "Bend your body back, a little more, a little more, take a deep breath, and then exhale slowly—"
Gao Wen's breathing gradually became rapid, sweat trickled down her cheeks and chin, dripping onto the yoga mat, and her legs trembled uncontrollably.
She pursed her red lips tightly, her gaze fixed firmly on the gathering point ahead, her body unwavering.
Only when the last countdown came from the video did Gao Wen slowly and deliberately use her breathing to move her body, supporting herself with her hands on the ground, and return to the standard downward-facing dog pose.
The video has ended, but Gao Wen's training continues.
She increased the difficulty for herself and practiced for another twenty minutes, holding nothing back. Finally, she collapsed on the yoga mat, her hair and clothes soaked with sweat, her chest heaving.
Gao Wen's physical condition is naturally worse than it was two years ago, but it is much stronger than it was before she got sick.
Although she was physically tired, she felt very relaxed.
Gao Wen closed her eyes for a while, reviewing and analyzing her current physical condition in her mind.
Her initial motivation for learning yoga was to change her posture and become more elegant and graceful. To this end, she put in a lot of hard work. First, she worked part-time jobs to save enough money to enroll in private lessons, all to build a solid foundation, learn how to use force correctly, and ensure she wouldn't get injured.
Gao Wen has a tenacious spirit. She does everything to the best of her ability. Even though her money is only enough for a period of private lessons and she can only attend group classes later, she continues to observe and learn, reading many books on nutrition and rehabilitation.
For the past three years, she has gone to yoga studio every day without fail, rain or shine, and even obtained a yoga instructor certificate. In the following years, when she had the financial means, she even went abroad to study under a master.
Gao Wen still can't understand why she ended up in such a state.
However, there's no need to waste time and energy on things you can't figure out.
Gao Wen stood up, tidied up her yoga mat, and took her pajamas to the bathroom. After showering, she sat down, held her expensive skincare products, looked in the mirror, and carefully applied them to her face, going through a tedious process.
Gao Wen is always strict with herself, diligent in her studies, goes to bed early, takes care of her skin, and works out to lose weight—she does it all. Her roommates all say that they are not jealous or envious of her beauty and radiance at all.
Because Gao Wen is so self-disciplined, almost to the point of being a devil.
After finishing her skincare routine, Gao Wen got into bed, drew the curtains tightly shut, and then lay down to sleep.
She has a biological clock and takes a half-hour nap every day.
Gao Wen slept very restlessly that night.
Fine beads of sweat kept dripping from her forehead. She tried desperately to wake up, but it felt as if a thousand-pound stone was pressing down on her body, and she couldn't move.
In Gao Wen's mind, the scenes from her previous life played out like a movie, frame by frame, in a fast-forward.
It turns out that this world is a novel, and she is not the female protagonist, but a cannon fodder supporting character that readers despise.
She is vain, selfish, cold-hearted, ruthless, and unscrupulous. She is also pretentious, can't stand hardship, and is a perfect leech off her boyfriend, Fang Han. She wears designer clothes and bags, spends his money to go to high-end restaurants to broaden her horizons, and then abandons him without any mercy. She is an utterly wicked woman.
The book's description of Gao Wen is mainly concentrated in the first half. She constantly makes a fool of herself at the company, while having an ambiguous relationship with Fang Han and enjoying his care and attention. At the same time, she seduces the male protagonist Lin Heng, attempting to marry into a local family.
Because of Gao Wen's constant self-destructive behavior, the male and female protagonists' relationship can quickly heat up and they can get together smoothly. After that, she has to "retire successfully" and leave the stage with a ruined reputation. The author arranges for her to flee to another place in a sorry state and gives her a casual ending of severe depression and anxiety, where she can neither live nor die, living in pain to appease the readers' anger.
As Gao Wen watched the readers applaud her ending, cold sweat poured from her forehead, and she struggled more and more fiercely.
Gao Wen felt it was unfair, as if her existence was simply to follow the storyline in the book, doing things she couldn't even understand, to fulfill the so-called protagonist of the world.
Moreover, the book only describes the sweet moments between the male and female protagonists, without mentioning that before she left, she went to great lengths to calculate the value of the gifts Fang Han had given her and deposit the money into his bank account.
She certainly had her own ambitions and ulterior motives, and wanted to live a good life, but she never really wanted to leech off anyone.
The novel concludes with a simple sentence summarizing Gao Wen's fate: tormented by illness, she became emaciated and died tragically in her rented room, only to be discovered after she began to decompose.
"No!" Gao Wen clenched her fists tightly, opened her eyes with all her might, her gaze filled with resistance and resentment.
She would never accept this ending.
She wants to live, to live well!
*
The next day, at 5:30 a.m.
Gao Wen was woken up by the alarm clock. She went to bed early and didn't stay in bed. She got up and got out of bed.
The dormitory didn't get power until 7 a.m., and it was still dark outside. Gao Wen turned on her desk lamp and looked at the pitch-black outside, her heart racing involuntarily.
She's afraid of the dark.
After those years, living alone in a rented room for a long time, I became even more afraid of the dark and never turned off the lights when I slept.
At six o'clock in the morning, the sky was just beginning to lighten. The dormitory doors were not yet open, but the dormitory supervisor made an exception for Gao Wen. She opened the door, yawning, and said, "Hurry up and go to work."
"Thank you, Auntie."
"Go on, go on." The dormitory supervisor squinted, still half-asleep, and turned back.
Today is Monday, and Gao Wen is going to work.
While her other roommates were enjoying their holidays at home, she found an internship with a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan. It was a pretty good job since it was an internship and it was related to her major.
The company is far from the school, and with that little salary, it's impossible to take a taxi. You have to take the bus and then transfer to the subway, which takes an hour and a half each way. That's why Gao Wen is in a hurry to find a place to live.
She likes to be efficient and will give herself as much time as possible, even if it costs more money.
Because of the long commute, Gao Wen is exhausted every night when she gets back to her dormitory. She just needs to wash up and go to sleep, and then she wakes up in a rush in the morning. Her usual morning and evening yoga practice has been forced to stop, which is unacceptable to her.
Gao Wen arrived at the company at 8:30, but no one was there yet. She had gotten up early in a hurry and her dormitory was dark, so she didn't feel like putting on makeup before coming. She went to the bathroom to put on makeup first, and when she came out, the takeout she ordered had just arrived.
Gao Wen ate breakfast leisurely, while her colleagues were clocking in one by one.
The first thing to do at work on Monday is the routine morning meeting.
Gao Wen took her notebook and followed her colleague to the conference room.
As an intern, she naturally had to walk at the back and sit in a corner to minimize her presence.
During the meeting, Gao Wen's mind was not on the meeting.
After the meeting ended, everyone returned to their workstations, but Gao Wen got up again and went to the director's office.
Seeing this, everyone looked at each other in bewilderment and couldn't help but whisper among themselves: "What is she going to do with the director? Can't she see he's in a bad mood today? Is she trying to get herself into trouble?"
"Who knows?" another female employee joked with a smile, glancing at the male colleague next to her who was craning his neck. "Since you're so concerned, why don't you go and eavesdrop? Maybe you can play the hero and save the day."
“Go ahead, what’s the big deal?” the male colleague retorted. “She’s an intern, we should be more tolerant of her.”
"Oh, you're just attracted to her because she's pretty. Why don't you show more consideration for the other interns?" the female employee said sarcastically.
On her first day at the company, Gao Wen caused quite a stir in the office.
She was beautiful, with a fair and clear face, and a slender and delicate figure. Coupled with her young age and naivety, she had long been the object of these seasoned veterans' lustful gaze.
The female colleagues in the office were somewhat scrutinizing of Gao Wen. Many previous interns had either failed miserably or become arrogant due to their favor, but Gao Wen was different from the previous interns.
Gao Wen has a keen survival instinct. On her first day at work, she figured out that keeping her distance from male seniors and getting close to female seniors would save her a lot of trouble.
She made quick and clear-headed decisions that were in her best interest, effectively blocking what she saw as unwanted romantic advances.
At the same time, Gao Wen is seen by the company as hardworking, diligent, humble yet assertive, and with an excellent temper. Even the most demanding female seniors would feel embarrassed to openly target her.
However, some people made sarcastic remarks. A curly-haired female employee next to her interjected meaningfully, "The hero should be Deputy Director Lin. If you out-of-towners go, they won't even look at you."
"Gao Wen is so beautiful, she must be aiming to marry a local from the capital. Deputy Director Lin is so handsome and a high-ranking official, his family owns a courtyard house in the Second Ring Road, and he also graduated from A University. He's practically a perfect all-rounder."
"They have high standards."
She wasn't saying this without any evidence.
She knew that Gao Wen had secretly added Lin Heng's contact information.
Lin Heng, who had just returned from the doorway, overheard this. He paused, his brows furrowing slightly.
Gao Wen did send him a few messages privately, though they were about work, but they felt a bit deliberate. He'd seen too many people trying to get close to him.
The others felt somewhat uncomfortable upon hearing this, especially the few single male colleagues, who immediately fell silent.
A sudden silence fell over the surroundings, and a voice rang out from the director's office, clearly reaching everyone's ears: "You want to resign? Is there something you're unhappy about at work?"
The curly-haired female employee was stunned when she heard this. According to her plan, Gao Wen stayed at the company in order to get close to Lin Heng and try to seduce him to become a phoenix.
Gao Wen is actually going to resign?
The office was abuzz with discussion once again.
A short while later, Gao Wen came out and walked to her workstation with a normal expression.
Before she could even sit down, a female senior colleague with whom she had a fairly good relationship couldn't help but ask, "Are you going to resign? Why? Although the work is tough, our company is a great opportunity for you. Don't be impulsive."
Gao Wen smiled lightly and said, "Sister, I've realized I can't be passionate about this industry, so there's no need to waste my time. Before I graduate, I'm going to try other industries."
"The supervisor said that I need to hand over my work to you today and tomorrow. Thank you for your help."
For Gao Wen, this is a place where she is manipulated by the plot. Afterwards, she will frantically seduce the male lead Lin Heng in private, constantly courting disaster and becoming a stepping stone on the road to the relationship between the male and female leads.
She must cut off all of this at its source.
Gao Wen's firm resignation and optimistic attitude towards the future brought about a complete reversal of events, and the curly-haired female employee who used to make sarcastic remarks about Gao Wen in private fell silent.
Their ambitions lie elsewhere; it's all their fault for having filthy thoughts.
Even Lin Heng looked a little awkward after misunderstanding Gao Wen and quickly returned to his office.
Because Gao Wen was about to leave, everyone suddenly felt that she was a very nice person. She often helped them with chores, cleaned the house diligently, and brought them some delicious food from time to time. She was beautiful, kind-hearted, and spoke sweetly. She was simply the most popular intern.
An atmosphere of reluctance to see her leave actually filled the office.
Gao Wen, however, was very rational. She knew very well that the real leading lady with a halo would come to work here in a few months. At that time, everyone would fawn over the leading lady, and she would become a vicious cannon fodder to highlight the leading lady's kindness.
She didn't want to be this cannon fodder female supporting character!
During lunch break.
Gao Wen went to the tea room and made herself a cup of flower tea.
As she turned around, she saw Lin Heng at the door, which startled her.
"Am I that scary?" Lin Heng frowned.
A note from the author:
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Good morning everyone! I'll also be giving out 100 red envelopes in this chapter.
There will be an extra chapter at 6 PM.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
