Transmigrated as Jane’s Ghostly Godmother - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Playing Ghost and Causing a Scene at Gateshead—Listen to Me, You Are Not at Fault…

“BANG—”

A thunderous crash echoed as the glass window shattered. Countless shards exploded inward into the room.

Jane, who had rushed toward the door, was fortunate enough not to be hit.

John Reed, sitting in his chair, was not so lucky. Several sharp pieces of glass grazed his cheeks and the back of his hands, instantly drawing blood. The tyranny on his face froze, replaced by extreme terror and pain.

“Aaaaaah! Someone help! Mother!”

His already sickly face turned completely bloodless as he let out a piercing, unpleasant shriek. Lin Zhao instinctively covered her ears, watching as a crowd quickly gathered at the door.

Eliza Reed was the first to peek in. Terrified by the mess, she recoiled and started screaming for her mother. Servants swarmed in, dragging the wailing John out of the pile of glass and fumbling to tend to his wounds.

John wept bitterly, not forgetting to pin the blame on Jane: “It’s all that beggar’s fault! If she hadn’t stolen my book, I wouldn’t have been hurt! Aaaaah!”

This inversion of black and white was so “logical” to them that the maid, Abbot, didn’t even stop to think. She grabbed the dazed Jane and shoved her toward John.

“My goodness, look what you’ve done to the Master! Apologize at once!”

Jane looked soul-shaken, her face no better than John’s. She didn’t believe it was her fault, so she kept her mouth shut. But as her gaze shifted, she saw the “ghost” calmly step through the broken window frame over the glass shards into the room. Jane trembled violently and finally erupted in resistance, trying to break free from the hands holding her.

“Can’t you see? There’s someone there!”

Several people in the crowd followed her finger, but aside from the mess on the floor and the freezing wind howling through the hole, there was nothing else in the room.

The culprit, Lin Zhao, heard this. She leaned over to pick up her copy of Jane Eyre from the glass shards, dusting it off as if brushing away dirt, her expression unchanged.

At the moment she smashed the window, a thought had flashed through her mind: Will I be cut by the glass?

But the truth was, the shards seemed to pass through her as if she were a phantom. Forget pain—she didn’t even feel a sensation of touch. Lin Zhao was now completely at ease.

This really is a dream. In this dream designed to change Jane’s fate, Lin Zhao didn’t care about anyone’s opinion except Jane’s. In fact, the more they feared her, the better. She met their searching gazes calmly, matching the faces before her to the characters in the book.

Among those looking her way, Bessie was the first to look away. Having finished bandaging John, she moved to suppress Jane’s flailing arms, scolding her with disbelief: “Stop talking nonsense. Is this how you intend to frighten your young master?”

These words caused both Lin Zhao and Jane’s expressions to change.

Jane scanned the people in the room, and a massive sense of despair seized her. Regarding the uninvited guest in the room, it wasn’t just that John couldn’t see her—it was that only she could see her.

This realization made her fall silent instantly. She allowed the maids to hold her down in front of John without moving.

John, thinking she had finally submitted, stuck out his tongue maliciously: “You little pest! You should have—Aaaaah!!”

His words were cut short again by his own scream.

Lin Zhao had kicked a piece of glass toward John’s feet, interrupting his aggressive shouting. The slight surprise she felt was quickly overtaken by her impatience with him.

“If they can’t see me, my deterrent power is a bit weak,” she thought grumpily. She scanned the room and locked her eyes on the mirror near the dining table. Weighing the book in her hand, she threw it with all her might.

“CRASH—!”

The center of the mirror shattered into a spiderweb, and fragments tinkled onto the floor.

They couldn’t blame the wind for that. Lin Zhao rubbed her aching wrist, satisfied at the sudden silence of the crowd.

“What is going on here?” Mrs. Reed arrived late, unable to understand the cause of the chaos, her cold voice breaking the dead silence.

“Mother!!” John Reed acted as if he had found his savior, pushing through the crowd to huddle in his mother’s arms, tugging her sleeve and yelling, “There… there’s a ghost! It’s Jane’s fault, she summoned it with her wicked tongue!”

As soon as Mrs. Reed saw the injuries on her darling son’s face, she was overcome with distress. While stroking his head to comfort him, she cast a gaze as sharp as a knife toward Jane.

As the only witness who saw Lin Zhao and knew how the mirror broke, Jane was pale and did not react to Mrs. Reed’s cold stare. Mrs. Reed signaled to Bessie to explain the situation.

“Ma’am, the window seems to have been broken by the wind. But as for the mirror, I don’t know how it shattered…” Bessie didn’t dare tell the truth and gave a vague description.

“It was broken by the ghost,” Jane added in her mind.

But she didn’t dare say it aloud. After the “ghost” smashed the mirror, it had picked something up from the floor and was now standing silently beside her. If it discovered that only she could see it… the strength that broke the glass and mirror could easily crush her skull.

Jane felt a surge of nausea and couldn’t stop herself from shaking.

As for the culprit, Lin Zhao, she was completely oblivious to Jane’s reaction, listening with great interest to John’s “ghost theory.” Although she didn’t want Jane to misunderstand her as a ghost, she didn’t care about the others. Perhaps, taking advantage of this situation, causing a ghostly scene at Gateshead wouldn’t be a bad idea? They had all bullied Jane so much!

“Was the wind really that strong today?” Mrs. Reed asked suspiciously, looking at the window and then noticing the book lying on the floor. “Were only John and her here when it happened?”

“Yes, Mother, only them! I don’t know what Jane did, but John’s scream brought us all here!” Eliza rushed to say. Though she hadn’t seen what happened, she spoke with absolute certainty because she was the first to arrive.

“And! She was saying all sorts of frightening, ghostly things just now, and now she’s playing the mute!” Georgiana added, trying to act the favorite. Her beautiful face was full of a spite that did not match her age.

“Miss Eyre did seem to call out…” Bessie hesitated, trying to supplement the story, but her voice was small and quickly drowned out by Abbot.

“Yes! Just as Miss Georgiana said, Master John is so pitifully injured, yet Miss Eyre is still talking nonsense about hauntings!”

Mrs. Reed stared suspiciously at Jane, who merely stared numbly at the floor, unresponsive to the accusations. Jane was not surprised that everything was being blamed on her. But compared to her usual resentment, she was now consumed by a sense of powerlessness and fear. After all, with everyone saying these things, the ghost must have realized it was visible only to her and was likely about to kill her…

Being bullied by the living every day was hard enough—why wouldn’t the ghosts leave her alone too? The more she thought, the more desperate she became. Her nose stung, and her vision blurred.

Lin Zhao looked at these spoiled children. The malice described in the book had become real knives stabbing into the ten-year-old child before her. She felt a sharp pang in her heart.

She had caused this commotion to vent Jane’s frustrations; how could she ignore her tears? In that instant, all thoughts of playing ghost or staying detached vanished. She squatted down, moving carefully in front of Jane so their eyes were level.

“Jane, don’t be afraid. I am not a ghost.”

The strange voice reached Jane’s ears again, the tone still a bit awkward. Perhaps because her fear had reached its limit, she found a bit of numb courage. She slowly raised her tearful eyes to look at the source of the voice.

The face looking at her was unlike anyone she had ever seen. The expression was calm, and the black eyes even held a trace of pity.

“Don’t listen to them. This is not your fault.”

Jane’s pupils shrank slightly. She didn’t understand the meaning of these words for a moment and simply stared blankly. Lin Zhao saw the anger and fear from this farce layered over a deeper, long-standing loneliness. The passages from the book about Jane’s internal struggle came to life. Lin Zhao’s voice tightened as she spoke urgently:

“I know everything. John Reed is a total villain; Eliza is selfish and headstrong; Georgiana is spiteful and heartless; your aunt and the biased servants… not one of them is good to you. I know it all, Jane.”

“My appearance may be strange, but I am certainly not here to hurt you.”

After finishing her stumbling explanation, she felt a bit nervous, unsure if she had been understood. Jane didn’t blink; she stared wide-eyed, finally processing what the other was saying.

Is she comforting me? This is the first time, Jane thought. This was the first time someone had stood by her side—not out of pity or charity, but with an attitude of complete understanding, telling her “you are not wrong.”

The next second, her fear and trance-like state turned into a prickly sense of annoyance. She is the culprit, of course she would say that! Complex emotions piled up, lighting a fire in her heart—did a ghost have more shame than the living, knowing enough to feel guilty for the blame she took?

Jane remained silent, but the ignited anger was hot, and the sudden comfort was heavy. She could no longer control her tears; they fell in large drops from her eyes.

Seeing the tightly shut mouth and the tears breaking through the silence, Lin Zhao was reminded of Jane’s self-questioning moments in the book. Just as she was feeling distressed, Mrs. Reed’s cold, biting voice rang out again:

“What are you crying for? If you really knew shame, you would correct your obnoxious behavior!”

Mrs. Reed didn’t want to deal with talk of ghosts, but John kept pestering her for a punishment. And she could not tolerate Jane’s silent, weeping posture; it felt like a silent provocation. Her eyes shifted, and a cold determination surfaced.

“Take her to the Red Room. Lock her up.”

The Red Room!

Wait, wasn’t she supposed to be locked up as punishment for fighting with John? What was happening now?

A strong sense of unease rose in Lin Zhao’s heart. She stood up abruptly, trying to think of something to make Mrs. Reed change her mind, but it was too late.

The moment she heard “Red Room,” Jane’s body stiffened. Those tearful eyes that had just reflected Lin Zhao’s silhouette suddenly lost all their light. Amid the gasps of the crowd, the small body fell straight backward.