Zhao Youyue felt incredible about herself right now. She was a transmigration heroine, after all. In this day and age, how could a transmigrated protagonist not start as a super beautiful girl?
The moment she realized she had entered a new body, everything felt settled, as if the outcome had already been decided. If she was not a top tier beauty, then what was the point of transmigrating at all?
It was like watching those stories where people talked about growth and struggle. They were only interesting when the starting point was already good enough to look at. If transmigration did not land you in the body of a stunning girl, then you might as well call it a bad roll and move on early.
Zhao Youyue did not think she possessed the kind of terrifying perseverance that the top student Wu Di had. After transmigrating into a chubby girl, Wu Di had relied on sheer willpower to slim down and rise into a goddess. Zhao Youyue knew herself well enough to admit that she could never pull that off. She preferred the easy route.
Taking one step straight to the finish line was obviously the best option. She absolutely hated those pointless plots where the protagonist deliberately started at the bottom just to crawl upward later. Why suffer first when you could begin at the peak?
With full confidence, she took a small, palm-sized mirror out of her bag and looked at her reflection. The glass was clear, catching the classroom light. This should count as a pretty girl, right?
Her features were well proportioned, and her skin was fairly fair and smooth, almost like porcelain. She had short hair that reached her ears, with bangs casually falling across her forehead. Her hair quality was quite good too, soft and glossy under her touch. Looking at herself like this, she couldn't help but think of Saekano's heroine, Katou Megumi.
She was basically a real world Katou Megumi. Sure enough, that classic setting of transmigration heroines always being beautiful wasn't a lie.
After that, she merged with the original body's memories and discovered that the girl's fifteen years of life had been painfully monotonous. Her personality had zero presence. Really, wasn't this exactly what a real world Katou Megumi would be like?
She also realized that she had never received a love letter. No one had ever confessed to her. Some classmates couldn't even remember that she existed, even when she was sitting right in front of them.
She had to admit that only now did Zhao Youyue start feeling that her earlier confidence about being a beautiful girl might have been an illusion. A truly super beautiful girl would never have such a weak presence. With just looks alone, you could conquer everything. Just look at the manga artist An Yi. She had baited and betrayed countless fans, yet all it took was casually posting a photo and acting cute to calm everyone down. Beauty was a weapon, but Zhao Youyue's weapon seemed to be made of transparent glass.
Objectively speaking, Zhao Youyue could only be considered a cute girl. Because her personality was far too ordinary, she lacked any real charm, which resulted in an extremely thin sense of presence.
When people looked back on their student days, they could always remember the top students with amazing grades, the school beauties and heartthrobs with outstanding looks, or even the troublemakers who didn't study and openly talked back to teachers. But would anyone remember that classmate who wasn't particularly good looking, whose grades were neither good nor bad, and whose personality was completely average?
Maybe only at a class reunion, when that person stated their name, would everyone suddenly realize that such a classmate had indeed existed. "Oh, right! I think I remember her now," they would say, before immediately returning to their louder friends.
Without a doubt, Zhao Youyue was exactly that kind of existence. She didn't even have any special talents. As a child, she had signed up for many interest classes and learned a bit of everything, yet mastered none of it. She simply lacked any strong drive to improve.
Thinking about this, she finally found something comforting. She should count as a rich girl, right? Just not the top tier kind. Nothing like the richest man's daughter. Her father was a private hospital's director, which was basically their family business, and her mother was a university professor. In short, even if she lived as a freeloader for the rest of her life, she would be fine. Sadly, things like private jets, luxury yachts, or top level villas were out of reach. Still, driving a million-level luxury car and living in a high end apartment were completely doable.
She didn't feel comforted for long before realizing that this setup had zero protagonist aura.
A protagonist should either be born at the very bottom and rise through sheer effort, pulling off a grassroots reversal, or be born into a top tier family, often as an illegitimate child or a useless playboy, before eventually taking control of that elite family.
Her family background left no room for a protagonist to perform at all. It was too stable, too comfortable, and too boring.
Sure enough, she wasn't the protagonist. She was just a background character.
No. She wasn't the original Zhao Youyue anymore. She had to change herself, increase her presence, and let the world know that she had once been here.
She decided to check her cheat first. At the very least, she should have photographic memory, right? Or a computer-like brain stuffed with classic works. Then she could happily become a copycat writer, let her copied works sell big in this parallel world, and gain countless fans. That would definitely make people remember her, right?
What left her in disbelief was that she couldn't reproduce any of those classic works at all. Take Jin Yong's novels, the must-copy material for any copycat. She knew The Return of the Condor Heroes. She remembered the general plot and the iconic characters. But if she tried to write it herself based on memory, she simply couldn't do it. She didn't have that level of writing skill. The words felt clumsy and hollow on the page. If she couldn't even copy a novel, then manga was even more impossible. After all, she had no talents whatsoever.
The copycat route was completely cut off.
"System, hurry up and come out. Without a system, I'm really going to become a cannon fodder extra in this world."
Zhao Youyue muttered in her heart, hoping to hear something like a chime, a binding notification, or the word "host." There was still no response. The silence in her mind was deafening.
In the end, she helplessly realized that she really didn't have any cheat. Even before transmigrating, she had been an untalented background character with a similar personality. How was she supposed to go from a nobody to a protagonist?
Did that mean she really had to study seriously and become a top student?
She opened the high school textbooks she had just received and glanced through them. The pages were filled with dense text and complex diagrams. Why was everything so complicated and difficult? Being a top student was way too hard.
Then she might as well go into adult films.
That would definitely give her a strong sense of presence. As a hospital director's daughter, that identity alone had some selling power, right?
Of course, there was no way she would actually do something like that. Competition in that industry was fierce too. In her previous life, there had been so many girls in Japan who went into adult films, but how many of them were truly remembered? Most were just ephemeral shadows.
Zhao Youyue had once really liked Katou Megumi from Saekano. But she didn't have Katou Megumi's saint-like mentality. She wouldn't willingly accept being a background character. In fact, under that male lead's guidance, Katou Megumi had grown more and more charming and present, fully deserving her status as a heroine.
Zhao Youyue decided to train herself. She would turn herself from a background character with no presence into a protagonist with presence. Right now, her mind was filled with two words: cause trouble.
"Classmate behind Wang Yang, it's your turn to introduce yourself," the homeroom teacher, Teacher Qiu, reminded.
Zhao Youyue stood up. Her chair made a dull scrape against the floor. What she wanted to say was something like, "I'm not interested in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens or time travelers among you..." Even if the joke was old, it would definitely grab attention.
What came out of her mouth instead was, "My name is Zhao Youyue. I'm very happy to become classmates with everyone."
Her tone was calm, her voice pleasant, very much like Katou Megumi. But the content of her self introduction was far too ordinary. Everyone only glanced at her casually before losing interest. The fleeting attention vanished before she even finished her sentence.
Zhao Youyue sat back down in frustration. She realized that she had a heart full of plans to cause trouble, yet couldn't put any of them into action. How could she possibly say something as embarrassingly chuunibyou as Haruhi Suzumiya's self-introduction in the real world? She really didn't want to boost her presence in that way.
At the end of the day, what right did a background character like her have to be a protagonist? If a novel actually used a character like her as the lead, it would be better to cut it off early. It would definitely flop.
And so, this book ends right here. Applause, applause.
However, Zhao Youyue finally found where she could cause trouble, and she also discovered her special ability.