Wish thought that if she ever got a second chance at life, she would at least wake up in a better story.

A spoiled princess.
A doomed villainess on the path to redemption.
A heroine adored by powerful husbands.

Anything would have been fine. That's how stories were supposed to work.
Instead, fate—and whatever twisted cosmic editor writes destinies—casts her in the one role she should never have been reborn into: the fat, ugly, unwanted maiden chosen for sacrifice.

She awakens in a body mocked by her tribe, pitied by her parents, and avoided by every man. In a world where beast forms define worth, hers is a joke—a puff-fluff fox, a useless cotton cloud that couldn't frighten a butterfly.

Worse still, she is the doomed extra whose sole purpose was to die during the Mating Moon Ritual—her death the trigger that allowed the real female lead, a beautiful, weak princess, to earn the devotion of the four almighty beast deities.

The Wind Deity—hot-headed, wild, and dangerously unpredictable.
The Solar Deity—arrogant, playful, and impossibly radiant.
The Sky Deity—silent, calm, and shrouded in mystery.
The Night Deity—cold, calculating, and merciless.

Except Wish doesn't die.

And her survival breaks everything.
The plot stutters. Events twist. Characters act wrong. The world itself seems to notice her refusal to disappear—and begins trying to correct the mistake.

Now hunted by fate and trapped in a society where beauty is worshipped, mating marks define destiny, and the weak are meant to be sacrificed, Wish is given one impossible condition for survival:

She must derail the story completely.

The only way to do that is to draw the attention of the four beings the world revolves around—creatures meant to be untouchable, distant, and divine. 
One is bound to her by a ritual that should have killed her. 
One meets her with hostility instead of fate. One sees her existence as a threat that must be erased. 
One should be incapable of feeling anything at all.

They were never meant to notice her.

The story was never meant to let her live.
So how is she supposed to survive a world that measures worth by beauty and power, when she is fat, unwanted, powerless—and armed with nothing but a useless fluffy fox?

Can she break the story that wants her dead?
Or will she die exactly as the plot demands?

Another notification dinged in her provided villa pocket vision crystal.


Challenge Announcement: The Bikini Mad Race


Report to the Beach Arena in two hours. Directions are provided below. Wear provided swimwear. Your companion has been notified.


The Beach Arena turned out to be a massive stretch of artificial shoreline at the villa's edge, complete with white sand, crystalline water, and an obstacle course that looked like it had been designed by someone with a sadistic streak.


All twenty couples were gathered, the women now wearing bikinis in various styles—some modest, some barely there. Wish's was black, simple, and covered more than most, but she still felt exposed. Vulnerable.


Dain appeared beside her, now in swim trunks that sat low on his hips. He was built—lean muscle, defined abs, that bronze skin on full display.


He caught her looking and grinned. "Like what you see?"


Chapter 84 - SECONDARY MISSION: THE BIKINI MAD RACE