★ Fake step-siblings x death loop x school survival game
★ Dom-leaning, fiery-tempered little sister x nasty delinquent big brother
~
One day, Gui Yingbai begins to be tormented by nightmares, day after day.
Her dreams are of a classroom soaked in blood, an academy strewn with corpses, and the many grisly ways her brother, Gui Heyin, dies...
And a strange, ominous black goat that seems wrong in every way.
April 1, April Fool's Day.
The usually stern school administrators suddenly act completely out of character and announce a special event called the Black Goat Game in front of the entire student body. The first day's mission is to kill one third of all students?!
At first, nobody takes it seriously. They think it's just an April Fool's prank.
That is, until blood spreads across the campus, the demon's scythe comes swinging down, and the lambs awaiting slaughter are driven into a dead end.
Only then do the students of Qinchuan Elite Academy realize this is a death game where their lives are the stake.
When she was nine, Gui Yingbai was adopted by a kind couple.
She is obedient and well-behaved, and her adoptive parents adore her. The only exception is her nominal older brother, Gui Heyin, who has always been hostile toward her.
Almost everyone at Qinchuan Elite Academy knows them. The younger sister is sweet and well-behaved, excels in her studies, and is the academy's undisputed idol. Her older brother, on the other hand, has a long record of bad behavior. Getting into fights is routine for him, and he is a notorious delinquent.
Gui Yingbai thought the two of them would go on disliking each other forever.
Only when the brother she hated most, the arrogant one, stepped in front of her and died saving her did Gui Yingbai understand how important he was to her.
After Gui Heyin died, she too could not escape her fate. At the moment before she was killed, only one thought remained in Gui Yingbai's mind:
If only I had been a little more sensible, a little stronger. Then my brother wouldn't have died, right?
Gui Yingbai wakes in a cold sweat. April 1 is clearly circled in red on the calendar beside her bed.
She lets out a sigh of relief.
So it was only... a nightmare?
On the way to school, the annoying Gui Heyin is picking on her again. Gui Yingbai thinks she should shut her brother up with a kiss and leave him too flustered to say another nasty thing.
Someone as hopeless as Gui Heyin would never die to save a sister who isn't even related to him by blood, would he?
But why are the things he has been saying since a moment ago... the same things he said in the dream?
When the school administrators once again announce that the Black Goat Game is starting, when Gui Heyin's blood once again stains Gui Yingbai's field of vision red, only then does she realize she was wrong.
This cruel joke of fate is far from over. The only difference is that she has gained the ability to rewind to twelve hours before each death.
Gui Yingbai's life is turned upside down.
Qinchuan Elite Academy becomes a living hell of schemes and desperate struggles for survival. Her former classmates die one after another. Stranger still, some “presence” completely erases every trace that the dead ever existed, which means outsiders have no way to understand the terrible fate unfolding around them.
The Black Goat, always lurking in the shadows, issues new missions every few days. Anyone who fails a mission or breaks a rule is mercilessly erased. Terror and despair take root at the academy, and some students even volunteer to maintain the Black Goat Game to protect themselves, turning their blades on their own classmates.
Again and again, Gui Yingbai watches Gui Heyin die, then rewinds to twelve hours before the point of death.
But does rewinding... really come without a price?
Gui Yingbai still has that dream about the black goat. But after every rewind, the goat in her dream gets closer and closer, until one day it devours her completely.
She becomes the new Black Goat.
Her annoying brother, eyes red, demands to know why she has become so cold and heartless. Gui Yingbai, however, thinks he is being unreasonable.
She has clearly become sensible enough, strong enough to protect everyone, hasn't she?
Why is everyone afraid of her? Why are they even calling her a monster?
A desire suddenly surges up from the depths of her heart: to eat all of the “hateful humans.” Every last one.
But Gui Yingbai suppresses it.
Because her brother would be scared.
This time, she does not want to lose him again.
~
A few reading notes ↓^^
① During some periods, the heroine's Sanity drops to zero, leaving her irrational and without a sense of right and wrong.
② Step-siblings with no blood relation. The sister is sweet on the outside, dark on the inside; the brother is dark on the outside, sweet on the inside.
③ You can tell the author wants to imitate the atmosphere of Japanese school horror, but who knows how it will actually turn out, orz.
2025.7.30
Blurb revised for the second time on 2025.8.10
Theme: Hope is born from despair
