Kayla stared at the ceiling listlessly, completely ignoring the doctor as he tried to ask her questions in a soft voice. This was it. She was going to die horribly, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Kayla ran the events of the novel over in her head, but the later chapters had been so interesting that she’d forgotten almost completely about the early arcs.

It suddenly occurred to her that Xianchun had been 25 at the start of the story, and the Grand Duke’s grandson had been the same age. Kayla sat up immediately.

“Young lord! Please take it easy,” the doctor hurriedly said. Kayla whirled towards him.

“How old am I?” she asked.

“25, my lord,” the doctor said slowly, eyes moving over Kayla’s face with a worried look.

“Shit,” Kayla groaned, flopping back onto the bed. Not much wiggle room there.

“Young lord, are you in pain?” the doctor asked. Kayla didn’t respond. The doctor tried again.

“Sir, by any chance, are you experiencing any issues with your memory?”

Kayla turned her gaze onto him again. The doctor immediately balked, lowering his head in a bow.

“Please forgive me, my lord!”

Kayla sat up again. “Actually, yes. I am.”

The doctor relaxed slightly. “My lord, please forgive me for asking, but do you remember anything from last night?”

Kayla shook her head.

“Then, do you feel any pain or discomfort?”

Kayla had a headache from all the stress and anxiety, so she pointed to her head and nodded. The thought of suddenly having a man’s body was really stress-inducing. Just the notion of using the restroom made her heart twinge with discomfort. “My heart also feels weird,” she added.

The doctor’s expression was growing graver. “My lord, I’m afraid that you have been poisoned,” the doctor said.

Kayla glanced at him in shock. Just how bad was her luck?

“Please be at ease, my lord, it seems that there was only a minuscule amount of poison, and it was neutralized by the large amount of alcohol you consumed last night. However, you will still experience some side effects,” the doctor said. “I will prescribe some medicine for you, please be sure to drink all of it and get some rest.”

Kayla didn’t respond and sat in silence until the doctor left. A good number of serving girls, including the young woman from earlier, still remained. She ignored them for a while, but they didn’t leave.

“Okay, can you please leave?” Kayla asked. She glanced at them as they shifted nervously. “Can I get some privacy here?”

The young woman bowed. “Then we’ll leave you to rest, young lord,” she said, before gracefully leaving the room. The other serving girls followed suit, and Kayla watched as they left single file. She lay back down, trying to recall anything about the ill-fated Wenyuan beyond his gruesome death scene.

Wenyuan had joined politics through nepotism and became an official solely through his grandfather’s connections as well as his bloodline, as the sole son of the Grand Duke’s deceased son and the Emperor’s recently deceased sister. Wenyuan had acted as the main character’s political rival for a time, serving as his grandfather's puppet, until the main character took him out and started aiming for the Grand Duke. In other words, Wenyuan wasn’t even a proper rival, he was cannon fodder. And he’d gotten all the benefits of a luxurious life while Kayla was getting the shitty ending. How the fuck was any of this fair?

Kayla buried her face into the soft blankets and groaned, feeling too overwhelmed to even cry. The door opened and someone stepped through.

“Didn’t I ask you guys to give me some privacy here?” Kayla asked without removing her face from the fabric. It came out rather muffled. Steady footsteps approached her and someone pulled the blanket away with a firm grip.

“Hey!” Kayla turned to glare at the rude asshole and stopped. The person in front of her was a tall man with grey hair and broad shoulders. He was dressed in several layers of silk, with a purple outer robe embroidered with a four-claw dragon, and had a seriously impressive beard. Everything about him radiated an intimidating aura of power.

“Oh, um,” Kayla fumbled for words and moved to sit up. The man put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back to the bed.

“Stay there, Wenyuan,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”

Kayla didn’t have to remember the novel’s description of the Grand Duke to tell who was standing before her.

“Uh, I’m ok, I guess,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. The Grand Duke looked at her with a concerned expression, but his eyes seemed strangely aloof.

“I was worried,” the Grand Duke said. “Is it true that your memories were affected?”

“Yes,” Kayla replied quickly. The Grand Duke’s eyes narrowed.

“That won’t do, I can’t have the heir of this household go around like that. We’ll have to find the gaps and fill them before you return to the court, or I won’t be able to quash the rumors.”

“Sure,” Kayla said unsurely. He seems more concerned with his reputation than his grandson's condition.

“Don’t worry about the work on your hands. Just focus on recovery.”

“Thanks, grandpa,” Kayla said. She didn’t know what title to use with the Grand Duke, so she just guessed randomly. A look of displeasure flashed across his face.

“It seems your condition was worse than I thought. Once your health is better, we’ll have a lot to work on,” the Grand Duke said disapprovingly. Kayla swallowed nervously and nodded. It seems she’d guessed wrong.

“Get some rest,” the Grand Duke said. Kayla bowed her head and mumbled her thanks as the man swiftly left the room. She let out another deep sigh. It seemed this would be a lot harder than she’d thought.

//////////

After a truly uncomfortable experience of using the restroom in a stranger’s body, Kayla returned to alternating between despair and blind panic. What the hell did she even do now? She wasn’t smart enough to find a way out of this, especially given how many mind games the main character and pretty much every named character played at any given moment. After running over a few options, the only one that made sense was straight up backing out of the story.

Couldn’t she just leave the capital?

Wenyuan had been strictly controlled by the Grand Duke, but if she pretended to be chronically ill, the Grand Duke would probably let her leave. The story was set in Ancient China, after all, no matter what fantasy elements there were, people were still superstitious. If a young man in perfect health suddenly fell ill and no doctors could find the cause, people would think that supernatural forces were at play. Or at least, that was the impression Kayla had gotten from the period dramas focusing on the harems of various Emperors, where characters were routinely sent to live in remote temples when they were assumed to be cursed by spirits.

Kayla vaguely regretted watching the soapy harem dramas instead of shows that focused more on historical details that could probably help her out, but it was too late for that. In her defense, the harem dramas were much easier to find for free on pirating sites and consumed much less mental energy to understand. The few history classes on Ancient China she'd taken had also focused on covering large periods of time in rather broad strokes, with little information on how one went about getting out of politics without incurring too much suspicion.

From what Kayla could tell, the Grand Duke only used his grandson because Wenyuan’s bloodline was closer to the royal family than anyone short of the Imperial princes. If Wenyuan became useless, the Grand Duke probably would want him out of the way.

Kayla decided to play sick with everything she had. Her life literally depended on it.

How the hell do I pretend to be sick? Cough a lot? Kayla quickly crossed out that idea. Her fake coughs were way too obvious, and she also couldn't fake a fever. She briefly ran through her options for feigning illness as a perfectly healthy person, before deciding that the only viable options were to fake fatigue and lack of appetite, two of the most common symptoms in the period dramas she'd seen.

When the servants brought her meal, which was served on silver plates, Kayla determinedly only ate a quarter of it before turning away from her meal with a nauseated expression.

“Is the meal not to your liking, young lord?” the young woman who’d woken her up asked.

“I’m not very hungry,” Kayla replied.

“Are you not feeling well, my lord?”

“Yeah, I’m feeling pretty queasy,” Kayla said hoarsely. She waved her hand at the meal. “Sorry, but could you take this away?” The young woman looked at her in concern but bowed and complied. It was weird to have people bow to her, but Kayla shifted uncomfortably and refrained from saying anything. The servants quickly and silently took away the food, and the young woman bowed to Kayla.

“Then we’ll leave you to rest, young lord. Is there anything else?”

“What’s your name?” Kayla asked. The young woman looked up in surprise before lowering her head again.

“My name is Chujiao,” the young woman said. Kayla tilted her head.

“Which two characters?”

“Chu for the region of Chu, and Jiao for charming, my lord.”

Kayla nodded. Her mother was Chinese, but Kayla never learned the language. Strangely, not only could she now speak it fine, but she also recognized the characters Chujiao spoke of. Maybe it was some kind of transmigration amenity.

“Thanks, that’s all.”

Chujiao bowed. “Then I’ll take my leave now.”

Kayla stayed in bed for the rest of the day, and ate sparingly, ignoring Chujiao’s increasingly worried gaze. She lay awake for most of the night and was roused again by Chujiao in the morning. After complaining of a headache, Kayla was once again consigned for bed rest. Over the next two days, Kayla continued to eat as little as possible and turn away a meal randomly, hoping to be diagnosed as having something seriously wrong with her as quickly as possible.

She tried taking a bath but was shocked to find that the process consisted of a bunch of serving girls stripping her and tending to her in a large bathtub, pouring water and rose petals over her head, and making the discomfort of washing in a male body even worse than it already was. After that, Kayla resigned herself to washing quickly in the middle of the night to avoid having a bunch of servants rush in and start undressing her. She was still unused to her new body, but it took a backseat compared to the constant hunger she now faced as a result of her extreme dieting.

I could at least fill my stomach with cheap food back in my shitty apartment, but now I’m in a luxury suite but I have to go hungry, she thought darkly. Kayla tried not to cry as she pondered the situation. She didn’t know if it was working, or how much longer she had to go on for, or if she had even made the right choice to begin with. The situation still consumed her with panic everytime she tried to think too deeply about it, but that was starting to subside as Kayla slowly processed the drastic new changes.

The doctor had been in a few times but had left each time with a quizzical look on his face, and Kayla was starting to wonder if she should give up on this plan and try to think of another one. There was also a chance that she would die even if she managed to leave the capital. Lost in her thoughts, she barely noticed the Grand Duke entering until he was right in front of her.

“Get up,” the Grand Duke said. Kayla startled at the cold anger in his voice, hastily moving into a sitting position. The Grand Duke glared down at her.

“I said, get up.”

Kayla uncertainly made it to her feet, looking at the Grand Duke nervously.

“Good evening, grandfather,” she said, trying to keep her anxiety out of her voice.

“The doctor told me there’s nothing wrong with your body, the poison was neutralized a long time ago” the Grand Duke said, beginning to pace the room in a deliberate manner, hands clasped behind his back. Kayla followed him with her eyes cautiously.

“Really? I haven’t been feeling well,” she said shakily.

“He said you’re physically fine, that it was a mental condition.” The Grand Duke whirled around to glare at her.

“I…must’ve been shocked at the poisoning,” Kayla replied. This was not going in the direction she’d hoped for.

“Shocked? How can a grandson of the Zhao family be so weak?” the Grand Duke approached Kayla, towering over her with a fierce expression. “I did not raise you to show such shameful behavior, and I will not tolerate it.”

Kayla took in a deep breath. Oh boy. “I’m sorry-”

“That doctor has been silenced. I would not have our family humiliated on account of your weakness,” the Grand Duke snarled. Kayla froze, forgetting to breathe in. Paralyzing fear seeped into her bones as she stared at the Duke shakily. Silenced? Holy shit, he killed the doctor? Did I just get someone killed?

“Uh,” she made out, trembling from head to toe.

“Housekeeper Wang!” The Grand Duke barked towards the door. A middle-aged man hurried in with his head lowered and a whip in his hands. Kayla looked at it with mounting horror.

“Wenyuan, do you remember this whip?” the Grand Duke asked. Kayla haltingly shook her head.

“You will from now on,” the Grand Duke said coolly, turning the whip in his hands.

The housekeeper scurried out, closing the door behind him. Kayla dashed towards the door in a mad rush of fear. The Grand Duke’s hand grasped the back of her neck with crushing strength and flung her back into the room. Kayla crashed to the floor, her body instinctively curling up as the Grand Duke cracked the whip. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Tears streamed from her eyes as the blow landed, her back erupting in searing pain as the whip broke her skin. Kayla began to sob as the whipping continued. Maybe it was muscle memory or another transmigration amenity, but the body seemed to endure the pain better than Kayla would’ve, and prevented Kayla from crying out or screaming. Rather, she began instinctively counting to a hundred silently in a slow and steady fashion, in spite of the fear and pain screeching through her mind. The nightmare continued until she reached 74, but it felt like it’d been going on forever. Still sobbing silently, Kayla remained curled up on the floor as the Grand Duke stepped away from her.

Kayla didn’t move from her position on the ground as the Grand Duke’s breathing evened out. There was the sound of rustling silk as the Grand Duke adjusted his robes and tossed the whip to the floor.

“From now on, eat properly and behave,” he said. “Don’t ever act in such a shameful way again.”

Kayla remained on the floor as he left until the Housekeeper came in with a doctor in tow. It wasn’t the kindly man with sagging cheeks who’d come in multiple times before, but a younger man she’d never seen before. She flinched away from the doctor’s touch in fear and guilt, remaining stiff as she was helped onto the bed.

Not only was the plan a complete failure, she’d gotten someone killed. What the hell was she even supposed to do now?