I Became the Foil in a Period Novel

What is it like to be a poor student reborn as a top student?

Don't ask. Either I'm studying with a book balanced on my head and an awl stabbing my thigh, or I'm clutching my books and staying up all night, determined to outlast the dawn.

Gu Xuan never dreamed that after she, a poor student, stayed up all night studying to avoid failing her classes and died from exhaustion, she would end up in the body of a top student in a sweet, adored-by-everyone novel she'd read before.

The story takes place in the 1980s, during the period of reform and opening up.

The heroine is a poor student, but she's sunny and cheerful. She has a childhood friend who secretly loves her, a mischievous younger brother, open-minded parents, and, naturally, one, two, three, four, five men who love her but can't have her.

Gu Xuan, meanwhile, has become a gloomy top student at No. 1 High School. She has no parents and is raising a younger brother who will grow up to become an antisocial villain.

In the original story, after repeatedly framing the heroine, her admirers sent her overseas, and she never set foot on her homeland again before she died.

Gu Xuan didn't understand it, but she was deeply shocked.

At that moment, her not-yet-corrupted villainous little brother tugged at the hole in her clothes and pouted, saying he was hungry.

???

[Cover art courtesy of the artist Dou Le Ge Zhou]

Theme: Don't follow the crowd blindly