Playing the Vicious Supporting Female in a Horror World

#Playing the Villainous Female Lead in a Horror World#

#Collection of Short Stories#

1. [Boyfriend]

Xie Luyao had a boyfriend.

Or rather, a human ATM. She never worked, only squeezing an endless stream of money out of him.

He looked shrewd, but was actually easy to fool. Completely under her spell, he did her laundry, cooked for her, obeyed her every whim, and worked himself to the bone to satisfy her insatiable appetite for spending.

Then he died.

He was brutally murdered by a burglar in their living room. As he lay dying, he was still worried about what would happen to her. Xie Luyao had heard everything from the other side of the wall, but she cowered in the bedroom, pretending to be deaf and doing nothing.

From that day on, strange things began happening at home.

Even though nobody cleaned, the rooms always stayed spotless. The power went out whenever she stayed up gaming. Strange noises sometimes came from the kitchen, and prepared meals would mysteriously appear in the fridge.

Was his resentment still lingering?

To make him leave sooner, Xie Luyao got a new boyfriend. But after just a few days, her new boyfriend, whose appearance was completely different from his, began to look more and more like him. His personality grew gentle and domestic, and memories only he could have known began surfacing in his mind.

It was as if her new boyfriend had become him completely, inside and out, from his memories to his personality!

Terrified, Xie Luyao kept moving to escape [Boyfriend]. But she gradually realized that no matter where she went, whether she dated anyone or not, [Boyfriend] would always silently appear in her home, at her workplace, on her commute, and at the restaurants where she often ordered takeout...

They were growing in number, more and more, more and more...

2. [Encounter with a Snake]

While traveling in Yunnan, Xie Luyao met a strikingly beautiful man who pursued her relentlessly. She was half-reluctant, half-willing, and spent some time with him.

He loved her dearly, tender and devoted, clinging to her with touching affection. His body was always cold, though, and his habits were so bizarre and creepy that Xie Luyao found them hard to tolerate.

Even harder to accept was that the man seemed to want to marry her.

It was only supposed to be a brief fling, yet he kept talking about being together forever, never to part again. His obsessive, pathological behavior was downright unnerving.

Just then, a Taoist priest found Xie Luyao and told her the man was a yin creature. Half-convinced, Xie Luyao waited until he was asleep that night and secretly shone a bronze mirror at him. Sure enough, reflected in the mirror was a giant snake, silver-white from head to tail, its scales gleaming with a cold light!

Terrified out of her wits, Xie Luyao immediately followed the priest's instructions and put realgar powder in the man's water. Together, they killed the giant snake.

Then they divided up and ate it.

To suppress its soul, and to prolong their lives... Xie Luyao forced herself to swallow her lover's flesh. But when she returned home, still shaken, strange things began to happen.

Xie Luyao began having nightmares. A rotting giant serpent coiled tightly around her, its blood-red eyes weeping with sorrow. Her body grew cold, scales sprouted, and her pupils turned vertical...

She was becoming more and more like him.

And more and more like... a snake.

Some said they had been cursed by the dead yin creature and were doomed to die. The Taoist priest had met a gruesome end days ago. She was still alive, not because the snake had spared her.

The snake was assimilating her...

"Darling, did you enjoy eating my flesh? Have some more..."

Every night, the enormous snake's corpse curled around her affectionately. Its long, crimson tongue slipped through her ear canal to lick her insides, delighting in the changes to her body. "Almost there, almost there... Soon we'll be together again... Forever and ever, never to be apart..."

3. [Incoming Call]

Hoping for a promotion, Xie Luyao came up with a nasty scheme: seduce her rival, then pretend to propose marriage. That way, one of them would have to leave the company.

Of course, the one who left would never be her.

She put on a slightly troubled expression, and her rival immediately gave in. He was nothing like the sharp-tongued, arrogant man he had been before. Fidgeting awkwardly, he said he was willing to be her househusband.

Ha! As if!

Xie Luyao already had a boyfriend back home. How could she possibly marry him?

On the day she got her promotion, Xie Luyao dumped him without hesitation. No matter how far he set aside his pride to beg her, she wouldn't change her mind.

That night, she celebrated with her colleagues at the office. Her rival called her, but she didn't answer. Then he jumped from the roof of the company building.

From then on, Xie Luyao would receive strange calls around midnight.

A man would pant and moan on the other end, sometimes begging desperately, sometimes inviting her sweetly, sometimes weeping with grief.

"Yaoyao... Yaoyao..."

"It hurts so much... Why won't you answer my calls? Did I do something wrong?"

"You said you'd never leave me... You liar. I hate you so much..."

Unlike stories where a faithless lover eventually gets what they deserve, Xie Luyao's life went smoothly from then on, and her career kept getting better.

Her only regret was that her love life kept going wrong. Some of her boyfriends inexplicably accused her of cheating, while others suddenly disappeared. Those who vanished would always receive a familiar-looking call.

How strange, Xie Luyao thought. It was only a phone call that gave people cold, erotic dreams. Why would they disappear because of it?

Why?

Stranger still, the male voices on the calls were growing in number, and every one of them sounded unbearably familiar...

4. [Perfect]

Xie Luyao had a perfect lover.

Perfect meant flawless. In looks, character, and family background, he was someone Xie Luyao could never hope to measure up to. People often told her she had "struck it lucky" and wondered "why he would ever choose you." At first, Xie Luyao thought so too, but hearing it over and over eventually got on her nerves.

Perfect, huh? Have you ever seen how weird he is in private?

They had been married for five or six years, and Xie Luyao had never once seen her lover get wet. He was always rushing into the bathroom, up to God knew what, then emerging looking radiant.

He was also a masochist, secretly pricking himself with needles every day.

It was disgusting.

The more Xie Luyao looked at him, the more annoyed she became. She even grew jealous of him, then started to hate him.

When she could bear it no longer, Xie Luyao asked for a divorce. But her lover refused, constantly pleading with her to stay and asking her to give him another chance.

As they struggled, Xie Luyao lost her grip and pushed him off the balcony.

He bled profusely and stopped moving.

Terrified, Xie Luyao buried him in the garden and fled abroad. After a month passed without incident, she cautiously returned home. The moment she opened the door, she saw her lover waiting for her, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, like a twisted sandbag, in the posture of a corpse.

"Sorry, darling. The cotton soaked up the blood and got a little heavy. The rain washed me out." Her perfect lover looked at her gently and smiled. The rotting skin sagged away from his face, revealing the cloth and cotton inside. "Would you mind burying me again? This time, remember to dig deeper so nobody finds me."

"..."

"Oh... If burying me is too much trouble, you could try drowning me or burning me instead?"

He tilted his head, a chilling note of excitement creeping into his voice. "It's all right, darling. You can treat me even more cruelly. I'm a very sturdy doll, after all."

Only then did Xie Luyao remember the cloth doll she had loved as a child. He was always her husband whenever she played house. Later, when she moved, she lost him. After waiting so long for his owner to return, the doll had to come find her himself.

Just like when they were children, she would be the wife and he would be the husband.

They were the perfect family.

Reading Guide:

1. The male lead is always a virgin, but the female lead may not be. The men suffer, not the woman.

2. The blurb should make it clear that the heroine is a truly vile cannon-fodder character. Please don't read if you can't accept that.

3. The stories won't be written in order. I'll follow my inspiration, and may remove a setting if I can't come up with ideas for it.

Theme: Protect yourself