Work Text:
Shen Yuan had known that he was fated to die young.
It was a fact of life. The sky was blue, the grass was green, Proud Immortal Demon Way was a shitty excuse of fiction, and Shen Yuan was not going to live past 20.
Of course he had known. The constant visits to the hospital throughout his childhood, and the chronic pain that refused to leave his bones, and the pitiful looks that his parents and brothers would direct at him…it was all so telling.
But that didn’t mean Shen Yuan had to submit to this fate. He always did his best to give himself a normal life; he went to school (when he was still healthy enough to go to school), he played with his younger sister, he learned how to cook and clean—all for the sake of pretending he was a normal kid.
As he got older, it got harder to ignore the ache in his bones and the shortness of his breath. When the doctors hadn’t come up with a cure by the time he turned 16, his family started preparing for Shen Yuan to die within the next few years. They kept him in the house, didn’t leave him alone, and monitored every little movement he did.
Shen Yuan didn’t like this. He had gotten into a large fight with his parents, which spread to his older brothers as well.
Eventually, Shen Yuan exploded. He remembered screaming, “If I’m going to die, I want to die doing what I want rather than die stuck at home.”
His family had quickly agreed to his demands. After he graduated high school, he was moved to an apartment in downtown Shanghai - not too far from where his family lived, but it was better than nothing - and given a weekly allowance. He wasn’t capable enough to be moving around for more than a couple hours at a time, so that meant no job—but it was better than just being stuck at home.
Sure, he still had to go to his doctor appointments every month, which meant one of his family - usually his brothers - had to come pick him up, but it wasn’t all bad!
And then, Shen Yuan fell down the rabbit hole of Zhongdian Literature, and his life went downhill.
Not literally, of course.
Or, actually, maybe a little literally, since it did cause Shen Yuan to spiral. Not in any dangerous way, but it did cause him to lose his brain cells.
“It”, of course, being trashy webnovels.
Was his obsession with webnovels maybe a result of his bad experience with living life to the fullest because he physically couldn’t unless he had major barriers set up around him, forcing him to find solace in fiction? Possibly, but more importantly, it was because Shen Yuan liked reading.
He would spend hours at a time on Zhongdian Literature, clicking through many different webnovels and commenting on all of them. He bookmarked the ones that he liked that were still in progress and made sure to fairly criticize all of the ones he read.
(Some may disagree with that statement, but only the truly uneducated disagreed with Shen Yuan’s takes.)
And, of course, fate would guide him to Proud Immortal Demon Way.
Oh, Proud Immortal Demon Way. Where could Shen Yuan even start?
Trick question: he wouldn’t. If he were to rant about how much he hated Proud Immortal Demon Way, it would no doubt fill up a whole first chapter of a transmigration danmei.
Wait, what was the point of mentioning Proud Immortal Demon Way, again?
Right. Proud Immortal Demon Way made Shen Yuan so mad, he became the most chronically online he’d ever been in his life. He read the webnovel all day, and when he wasn’t reading it, he was thinking about it. Even in his sleep, he would wake up angry after dreaming about the damn novel.
That’s probably why, when he found he was getting to the last few chapters, he forgot about his own bodily functions. Specifically, the collection of pills that he was required to take every morning. He had woken up, remembered that he was only a few chapters away from finishing the damn novel, and immediately rolled off his bed and made his way to his computer. His yogurt from the night before was still on his desk, so he didn’t need to worry about breakfast!
As Shen Yuan lay dying on the floor, he thought about what could have caused this. Maybe he had finally succumbed to his weak body; maybe he ate something bad. Either way, the it was the result of either not taking his medicine or being too lazy to just throw the yogurt away and get something else for breakfast.
If I make it out of this, he thought to himself wryly, I’m not telling anyone it was because I forgot to take my medicine. Or that it was because of food poisoning. But he had to find something to blame it on…
His eyes landed on his computer, still open to the comment section of the last chapter of Proud Immortal Demon Way.
Dumbfuck author. Dumbfuck novel.