I Am Not a Vicious Stepsister! - Chapter 2

Although she had mentioned that she might try to help Modesty Rodney, Ni Songan didn’t actually take any action.

This wasn’t just out of fear that she might introduce more variables to an already scrambled plot, but also because she needed to focus on her studies at Nanzhou University. The “Heilo” from the original book could carelessly abandon her education, but Ni Songan couldn’t bring herself to drop everything. She had no intention of relying on the Rodney family fortune for a life of leisure, she wanted to find her own way.

Nanzhou University might not be the top school in the region, but it provided a solid environment and excellent faculty. Heilo’s major was in traditional science and engineering, which overlapped significantly with what Ni Songan had studied before her transmigration. Since academic knowledge remained consistent across both worlds, Ni Songan was confident she could graduate smoothly and earn her degree.

If possible, she even hoped to use the Rodney family’s resources to pursue further studies. In her past life, she was an orphan raised in a foster home who suffered from poverty and had to find work as early as possible to survive.

In the original novel, Ni Tianjiao and Althea were only lacking in their emotional attention toward Modesty and Ni Songan, in all other aspects, they were incredibly generous. As long as the girls’ desires weren’t completely out of line, they got whatever they wanted.

If Heilo hadn’t chosen to give up on herself, her two mothers would likely have been more than happy to fund her education.

Thinking about this made Ni Songan feel a bit down. The missing Heilo, the sudden addition of mothers and family… it all bothered her. Everything around her didn’t belong to her. She felt like a thief who had taken someone else’s life without asking.

But what could she do right now? Scream that she wasn’t the original owner of this body? Claim she was a transmigrator?

If she did that, everyone would just think she was mentally ill.

She had no choice but to play dumb and pretend to be the original Heilo. When she was alone with Ni Tianjiao, her “mother” didn’t notice anything unusual, though Ni Songan herself was constantly on edge, terrified that she wouldn’t be similar enough to the original girl.

So far, no one had pointed out a change in personality. Perhaps, aside from their looks, the original Heilo’s mannerisms were naturally similar to Ni Songan’s.

Fortunately, the time for intense role-playing was coming to an end. Ni Tianjiao and Althea were going on a long trip, and Ni Songan was leaving Quxi Orange County for school.

Perhaps there, she would find a safe zone where she could finally breathe.

The sweltering summer was drawing to a close, gifting Nanzhou a bout of drizzling rain.

Ever since her midnight encounter with Modesty, Ni Songan hadn’t left her room for several days. When she finally emerged, she had already packed her bags, ready to head to Nanzhou University.

Rosaline, the housekeeper, followed behind her, pulling two suitcases.

Ni Songan held an umbrella for both herself and Rosaline, declining the help of other busy servants to see them out.

The driver was waiting at the front steps. Rosaline had contacted her yesterday to arrange the ride. The driver dutifully stepped forward to help load the luggage into the trunk.

Seeing them busy, Ni Songan opened the car door herself, handed the umbrella to Rosaline, and slid into the backseat.

As the car started, Ni Songan looked back at the luxurious mansion with an inexplicable feeling—

Like a dream, if she stayed away from this place, could she stay away from the plot and return to a normal life?

The thought was overturned within seconds.

Her gaze lingered for a moment on the third-floor balcony, but due to the misty rain and the dark tint of the car windows, she couldn’t see clearly who was standing there.

The rain grew finer and more dense, the sound of droplets hitting the glass gradually increasing.

The grand architecture slowly shrank in her vision, and the figure on the balcony vanished along with it.

“Why did she just leave like that? This is different from the plot you told me about. Is something wrong?” Modesty stood in the rain, reaching her hand out toward the horizon. She studied her hand, noting that her nails had grown long again.

Rainwater dripped from her eyelashes, soaking through her clothes.

She rubbed her fingertip against a nail, wondering if she should trim them before the piano teacher arrived. Otherwise, the teacher would surely think she wasn’t taking her practice seriously.

After Modesty’s question, the system existing in her mind remained silent.

“Hey, where did you go?” Modesty called out.

The system finally responded, sounding a bit flustered. “Sorry, I was just checking the data.”

“And? Did you find anything?”

“In theory, Heloise should have been seduced by the sudden shift from poverty to luxury. She should be hopelessly lost in a decadent lifestyle. As for academics, she shouldn’t care at all.”

The system spoke hesitantly, “Then she is supposed to bully the host, and we start the ‘Face-Slapping Plan,’ taking down the villains one by one.”

And then?

Modesty looked in the direction the car had driven off. The system seemed to be throwing a fit inside her head. “But! Why did this Heloise run off to school?! How are we supposed to implement the rest of our plan?”

“This doesn’t fit the setting at all!!!”

Modesty brushed the wet hair away from her cheek, her eyes narrowing slightly. “What’s the rush?”

“If she doesn’t come back, we can’t do our tasks!” The system was noisy; if it had a physical body, it would likely be pacing circles around her.

“It’s not like Heloise is never coming back,” Modesty said, tolerating its rudeness with a patient explanation.

The system paused. “I guess that’s true”

Seeing it calm down and willing to listen, Modesty continued with satisfaction, “I remember you said there are a total of how many plot points involving Heloise?”

“Five!” the system answered quickly. “As long as you complete the key plots, the host gets point rewards, and the mission can proceed smoothly.”

Modesty glanced toward her bedroom, rubbing her temples with feigned distress. “The first one, I believe, is when Heloise takes a fancy to her step-sister’s comfort plushie and forcibly snatches it away?”

“So the condition for completing the task is to have Heloise try to steal it, while I refuse to give it to her.”

The system thought for a moment. “That should be it.”

“In that case, let’s wait until she returns to Quxi Orange County to act. Whatever means it takes, as long as the goal is achieved.” Modesty announced her final decision to the system.

Nanzhou was a vast territory. The university Ni Songan was heading to was nearly a hundred kilometers away from Quxi Orange County. To her pre-transmigration self, this was the equivalent of going to school across state lines.

But it was fine. At least it gave her an excuse not to come home on weekends.

Unfortunately, that idea was ruthlessly crushed after only a few days of living alone—Ni Tianjiao and Althea had finished their honeymoon and notified Ni Songan to return for a Rodney family banquet.

She was studying in the library when she received the message, surrounded by the rustle of turning pages and the controlled clicking of keyboards.

Only after walking out of the library did Ni Songan let out a long sigh.

The faint glow of her phone screen reflected on her face, highlighting the complicated emotions in her eyes.

Regarding the original owner’s two mothers, Ni Songan’s instinct was to stay away. Heilo was the child of Ni Tianjiao and another woman, while Modesty was the daughter of Althea and her ex-wife. Due to various circumstances, neither had stayed with their former partners, instead choosing to part ways peacefully.

About six months after they met, Ni Tianjiao and Althea formed a new family with their respective children and fell into a passionate romance. Since their children weren’t exactly young, the two mothers felt there was no need to interfere too much in their teenage growth. As long as Heilo and Modesty didn’t speak up, they wouldn’t force themselves into the children’s lives.

This parenting style clearly didn’t work for Heilo or Modesty. Moreover, Ni Tianjiao and Althea were indeed more focused on their own feelings and loved themselves more, it was true that they didn’t care much for the children. In short, the neglected original Heilo and Modesty gradually grew apart. Later, the original Heilo even tried to cast Modesty aside to monopolize the Rodney family fortune.

Because of this, Ni Songan had complicated feelings about these two mothers. It wasn’t entirely resentment or condemnation, though there was a bit of that. Beyond that, her emotions were a mix of guilt and self-loathing.

She felt guilty for stealing their child’s identity, guilty for not daring to tell the truth, and she hated that she couldn’t harden her heart to cut ties with everything attached to this identity. She hated that she couldn’t be more selfish…

The indecisiveness she had shown since transmigrating left her in an awkward position.

She couldn’t bring herself to be close to her new family, yet she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the kinship entirely.

But this was all she could do. Fortunately, Ni Tianjiao was immersed in her new romance, and Althea and Modesty didn’t know the original Heilo very well. None of them noticed that the “Ni Songan” in front of them had already become a different person.

The only thing Ni Songan was unsure of was whether Ni Tianjiao would truly fail to recognize her own child when they stood face-to-face.

The novel A Guide to the Big Shot’s Entrepreneurship had very little description of Heilo. Most of it focused on how arrogant and domineering she was in the later stages from Modesty’s perspective, but it said nothing about how she behaved in front of her mothers early on.

Ni Songan decided to stick to her plan of acting as herself. After all, no one had noticed anything wrong before.

After her Friday classes ended, Ni Songan packed her bags for a two-day stay at Quxi Orange County and left the dormitory.

She called a taxi herself instead of following Ni Tianjiao’s instructions to have the family driver pick her up. After all, a round trip was nearly two hundred kilometers, it was too much trouble to make someone else do that.

On her phone’s navigation map, the taxi followed the designated route toward the familiar territory.

It was a rare sunny day, but Ni Songan couldn’t muster any spirit.

The reason was simple, just a moment ago, Ni Songan had received a text message from Modesty Rodney. The content was a request for Ni Songan to go with her to see their mothers as soon as she got home.

She had expected something like this, but when it actually happened, she couldn’t help but feel flustered.

Ni Songan stared out the car window. Countless flowering trees blurred into colorful streaks as they sped past, but her gaze wasn’t focused on them.

What did those two mothers want them for?

Ni Songan focused intently on this one question. The last time she was called to the study, it was about her new name. Because she disliked the name “Heloise,” she had wanted to protest, at least asking for a brand new, unused name.

But today? After going to school, Ni Songan finally had enough private space to record the plot points she remembered.

In Quxi Orange County, she had to worry about servants seeing her notes while cleaning her room, and other methods of writing were too cumbersome. At school, the environment was safe and private.

The original book didn’t mention this specific event, but Ni Songan wasn’t panicking. Ni Tianjiao and the others wouldn’t hurt her, it was likely just some important family news. She was mostly just curious.

However… Ni Songan remembered something that was supposed to happen around this time.

Her arrival had changed parts of the plot. Whether this would cause a butterfly effect remained to be seen, as Ni Songan could only guarantee that she wouldn’t actively provoke the female lead.

In the original text, shortly after Heilo moved into the Quxi Orange County mansion, she became obsessed with her step-sister, Modesty. The latter was excellent, well-behaved, and possessed a refined, beautiful appearance. In comparison, the former paled into insignificance, making people sigh with disappointment.

The first conflict between Modesty and Heilo wasn’t exactly huge, but it wasn’t small either.

Because at that time, Heilo’s mindset had begun to shift quietly, she started as a bystander, envying Modesty, but suddenly discovered that she could actually take things away from her.

So why not take more? That thought naturally took root in Heilo’s heart. She began to measure herself against Modesty in everything. Whatever Modesty had, Heilo had to have too…

Thinking of this, Ni Songan felt a bit of regret. At least at that point, Heilo hadn’t been completely consumed by greed. What she wanted back then was very simple.

In the beginning, it was just a small plushie.

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