The Stand-In's Shining Future

A wealthy heiress from Belvoria’s elite circle asked me to be her dead boyfriend’s substitute.

My compensation included a 50,000-dollar base salary, plus 8,000 dollars per shared meal and 10,000 dollars per accompanying shopping trip.

My hypocritical older sister quickly stopped me from agreeing to this deal.

“We come from a respectable family. How can you sell your dignity for such little money?”

Yet she later became a rich man's mistress and successfully married into wealth.

Meanwhile, I struggled to balance work and studies to pay for my tuition. This hurt my academic performance. After graduation, I could only find a job with a monthly salary of 3,000 dollars.

I even developed a tumor from overworking. I eventually died in a cold and impersonal hospital, unable to afford treatment.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the young heiress asked me to be her dead boyfriend’s substitute.

This time, I agreed without hesitation. I was determined to take this role.

“I’ll give you 50,000 dollars a month to be my boyfriend’s substitute. Deal?” A familiar voice asked.

It was the young heiress from Belvoria’s elite circle, Bella White. She was standing in front of me with slightly reddened eyes, and I realized I had returned to the past.

I instinctively touched my head. My thick hair felt prickly against my hands. My head was not smooth and shaven for chemotherapy.

I felt no pain from a brain tumor, nor were there endless medications to take. It was as if the sufferings of my past life had all been a dream.

I trembled with excitement. How wonderful it was to have a healthy body!

At that moment, a voice laced with sarcasm and dripping with jealousy came from beside me.

“She’s just lucky she was born rich! She thinks her stinking money gives her the right to toy with people.”

My sister, Eliana Moore, pulled at me and whispered, “Don’t listen to Bella’s nonsense, Ethan. Rich folks like her get a kick from mocking people like us. Once they get bored, they’ll toss you aside and ruin you without a second thought!”

As I took in her hypocritical demeanor, anger and disgust welled up in me.

In the past, she also believed that Bella was merely amusing herself with the poor. She thought Bella was just a spoiled heiress who took pleasure in using money to humiliate those less fortunate than her.

She refused to believe Bella was genuinely that kind-hearted. She was convinced that spending so much money just to find a so-called substitute must involve some sinister scheme.

However, when Bella had hired another guy as a substitute, the guy simply accompanied her for food, drinks, and fun while earning hundreds of thousands a month.

Eliana was so jealous that she almost wished she could change her gender on the spot.

Yet, to hide her jealousy, she said to me, “Just wait and see. He’ll end up being played with and discarded miserably!

“Ethan, we may be poor, but we have dignity. We can’t just become playthings for these rich girls over a bit of cash!

“As long as we study hard, we’ll earn the life we want with our own two hands.”

Consequently, I spent all four years of university scrambling to cover tuition and living costs. I failed so many courses that I could not graduate and ended up in a job that earned me only 3,000 dollars a month.

Meanwhile, Eliana secretly got involved with a rich guy. She became the substitute for his childhood sweetheart, who had gone abroad to study. For this alone, she received three apartments that were transferred under her name.

To please him, she took out a loan of several hundred thousand dollars using my ID to fund her plastic surgery. Eventually, she succeeded in marrying into wealth.

I, however, worked myself into a brain tumor under the crushing debt. When I went to her to borrow money, she coldly responded, “A brain tumor is terminal anyway. Treatment would be pointless. You might as well spend your last days eating well and enjoying yourself.”

In the end, she dismissed me with just 5,000 dollars.

Without money for treatment, I soon died. After my death, Eliana came to collect my body with a look of disgust. Unwilling to even buy a burial plot, she poured my ashes straight into a roadside sewer.

Remembering Eliana’s selfish and hypocritical face from the past, I wished I could kill her right then and there!