Vanguard

A counter-intelligence officer dies in the cold and opens his eyes inside the harem novel he'd been reading for nine years — wearing the body of its most pathetic character, the rich boy who throws away a fortune and a life on a woman who never looks at him. He's read the ending. He knows the devotion is a slow suicide, and that three women die in its wake. He also knows none of it is his. The body, the debts, the people who flinch when he's kind because the original never was — all inherited. So the question was never how to win. It's what a borrowed life owes the people it was going to ruin. Across the city, an orphaned student crammed into a rented four-square-meter room is told by a glowing screen that the world owes him everything, and that women are the interest he's earned. Author's Note: Relaunched on Royal Road on June 1, 2026, with simultaneous releases on ScribbleHub and WebNovel. AI assists with editing and research, while all story direction, characters, and final edits are by the author.