It's So Hard to Pretend to Be the Aristocratic Academy's Beloved Heartthrob

As a scholarship student at Hines Academy for the Nobility, Xie Buyi was just like all the other poor residents of the lower district who believed that intelligence and hard work could change their fate. Every day, he was wantonly bullied by the children of the elite families at the top of the pyramid.

The more bitter, exhausting, and painful his life became, the more jealousy and resentment grew in Xie Buyi's heart.

He hated the privileged descendants of the powerful, who could enjoy lives of luxury and splendor just because they'd been lucky enough to be born into the right families.

He especially hated the academy's four most well-connected, haughty, and beautiful students, known on the forums as F1, F2, F3, and F4.

Of the four, the one he hated most was F4, who had once personally stripped off his clothes and humiliated him.

Xie Buyi knew F4 was a hypocritical piece of trash. But in the eyes of everyone else, unlike the violent and tyrannical F1, F2, and F3, the younger F4 was a graceful young man with a quiet radiance.

The teachers at the academy doted on him, his classmates admired him, and F1, F2, and F3 treated him like a little brother.

All the wonderful labels, like everyone's darling, the moonlight in someone's heart, and the adored favorite, were heaped on F4 alone.

Xie Buyi felt that fate was unfair.

Perhaps the heavens really could hear the resentful thoughts of an insignificant ant like him. When he and F4 both fell into the water one day, he became bound to an evil System capable of stealing other people's lives.

The System temporarily switched his identity with F4's. Now, in everyone's eyes, his face and body belonged to the illustrious F4. F4, unconscious after falling into the water, had become scholarship student Xie Buyi.

From then on, Xie Buyi experienced what it was like to have everyone revolve around him without his having to ask for anything or humble himself, as if the entire world existed to please him.

He became addicted. To live like this forever, he forced himself to become another person. He did everything he could to imitate F4's words, actions, expressions, and habits.

Even though he overworked his brain learning new skills every day until he couldn't sleep, and felt like he was walking a tightrope every second, terrified of saying the wrong thing or making a mistake that would tip the others off, he was still willing to do it.

But for some reason, although no one had truly seen through him, the people around him were acting stranger and stranger. Wherever he appeared on campus, the atmosphere had shifted from simple enthusiasm to an indescribable, restless intensity.

The sweet love letters that the real F4 would receive were replaced, when they were sent to him, by pages filled with words dripping with sick desires.

The admirers the real F4 would normally attract became, when it came to him, perverted men who endlessly searched trash cans for his discarded personal belongings; stalkers who secretly photographed and eavesdropped on him; and extreme fans who would crack someone's skull open just for saying something bad about him.

Even the posts about him on the campus forum began to grow feverish and dark:

[Has anyone noticed that F4's skin turns pink whenever he exercises? His long, slender neck tenses up, his Adam's apple keeps bobbing, and sweat makes his shirt almost transparent. Hngh, hngh!]

[He's so beautiful, with such a supple waist. He was born to be someone's wife.]

[F4's lips look so soft and red. I really want to bite them and mark him with my personal brand.]

[I don't consider myself gay, but if it's F4, I bet anyone would want to give it a try.]

Even F1, F2, and F3, who should have shared nothing but brotherly affection with him, began staring at him with twisted, possessive, shadowy gazes. They said to him, “If you weren't born into a family like that...”

Before they could finish, hatred and anger were already blazing inside Xie Buyi. He knew exactly what they meant.

Looking at the face in the mirror, a face that seemed to inspire an intense desire to destroy, the beautiful young man, beautiful as a dream, clenched his trembling hands. His expression was stubborn and resolute, unflinching in the face of what lay ahead.

He told himself that he would not be exposed. He would rather die than be exposed.

Then one day, the System told him that the real F4, who had been in a vegetative state after hitting his head in the fall, had awakened.

He was about to be exposed.

Blurb screenshot backed up on 2025-11-29

Theme: Stay positive and strive to succeed.