I Was Forced to Give the Tragic-Novel Male Lead a Happy Ending to Meet My KPI

[Focused on natural development, not just romance]

*

No protagonist aura, no golden finger. On an utterly ordinary day in her first year of high school, stuck at home taking online classes, Cui Wuruo got into a vicious argument with netizens in the Douyin comments and transmigrated.

She woke up in the body of Cui Ruo, the impoverished daughter of a disgraced official. According to her KPI, she could only return home after becoming the wife of a top-ranked scholar and then dying.

With nothing to her name, she chose to give up.

Since studying was the only thing she knew how to do, she was forced to live by the principle that relying on a man was better than relying on herself.

She got a job doing odd tasks for a Southern Opera troupe, rented a shop on the outskirts of town, and opened a makeshift classics tutoring school.

She charged no tuition, only requiring her students not to marry and to owe her a huge favor.

But the times were turbulent, and no one needed actresses to sing and dance gracefully to "□□ Flower" anymore. Famine and unrest also brought Jiangnan to the brink of cannibalism more than once.

After spending all her savings and teaching her students everything she knew, she watched them get barred from advancement by the revived Nine-Rank System.

*

"The wind has stopped, the fragrance of dust and flowers has faded. The sun sets, and I am too weary to comb my hair."

"Things remain, but people have changed; everything is over. Before I can speak, tears have already fallen."

Unable to find work that could support her, Cui Wuruo was willing to go to a temple and serve the noblewomen who had become nuns to flee the world under the previous dynasty.

Going there helped her see many things clearly.

"So... so it really is true: the world is fickle, and people are cruel. None of those words were lies." She, too, became as melancholy and sentimental as an ordinary woman of ancient times.

Some fates are simply what they are. Cui Wuruo stopped expecting anyone to save her from her sea of suffering.

But when the new dynasty was established, visitors and worshippers streamed through the temple, and she caught sight of one of her former students.

Hope stirred in her heart once more.

*

And so, at last...

"I shed my cassock and donned a red dress. Now I go to marry Zhang."

Wearing a bright red wedding dress, she drank the sweet wine Liu Niang of the opera troupe had given her long, long ago.

In her previous life, she had no parents to cherish her, no good teacher to care for her, and no friends to keep her company. She had found all of that in this life.

She had Liu Niang, who treated her wonderfully despite her sharp tongue and soft heart; Fentao, her devoted playmate; Qi Zhan, her patriotic student with a pure and loyal heart; and Wen Linmo, a gifted student who could compose brilliant lines on the spot...

They were all people of the utmost sincerity and goodness, yet they all died for nothing.

The sweet wine still tasted bitter in her throat.

She was going home, but what about them? They, along with countless others, would be buried in the earth, and no one would remember them ever again.

*

Zhang Lengqiu

"Drums and horns proclaim auspicious airs that chill the sky; wind and waves shake the earth as autumn settles over sea and mountain."

Top scholar in the imperial examinations, disciple of the chief minister, noble of a different surname, his name recorded in the history books...

At last, he had climbed to the position she had wanted most and given her everything she had asked for. But the little girl who used to crowd around him while he studied and sing a few tuneless lines of Kunqu opera would never return.

Was he wrong?

[Reader's Note]

There's not much to say, really. This isn't a book focused heavily on romance, but if you have to classify it, like the title, it's a happy ending.

Don't let the heavy blurb fool you. The heroine is a goofball, just like the author. [Wicked grin]

Theme: Things remain, but people have changed; everything is over. Before I can speak, tears have already fallen