My name was Yuan Junyao, a name my grandmother gave me, meaning “beautiful jade”, although I was not beautiful at all. Actually I was ugly.
I was told that I grew tumours on my face since I wasn’t even 3 months old. My parents had me examined in hospital and the doctor said it was a fibroma and it was benign. It couldn’t kill me but I couldn’t get rid of it because if I did, it may develop to fatal.
My father started to beat my mother since then for he blamed her for having a sick child who got disease from her bad gene.
In less than two years, after my father got promoted at work, he divorced my mother and never came back to see me again.
My mother started to see a man soon after. That man didn’t like the way I looked and worried my tumours were contagious, so he forced my mother to send me away to my grandmother who lived in a village. Over these years, I had only seen my mother for a couple of times.
When I was in the third year of junior high school, my stepfather killed somebody in a fight and might end up in prison for his entire life. My mother passed away for working too much. I wasn’t too sad for her death because she was basically a stranger to me.
Very soon a boy three years younger than me got send to us. His name was Shen Anyi, a son of my stepfather and his ex-wife. No one in my stepfather’s family wanted to take him in. So the police turned to us.
Grandma was a softhearted woman, said he was only a poor boy, so she let him stay.
Since then, I had a brother.
My little brother was raised by my mother, so he had a character similar to my mother's. He was intimidated by me the first time he saw me though, he got used to it and called me sister later and stayed very close to me.
Because of my tumours, I had to wear a hat and mask when I went out. My classmates bullied me a lot. Teachers hated me. They never stood up for me. Day by day, I learned to keep everything inside.
One day a boy in my class pulled my mask off and grabbed my hair in front of the class, and laughed, “Look at her! She is hideous. If I were this ugly, I would kill myself.”
The whole class stared at me, pointing fingers at me. I had never felt so humiliated but I had no guts to fight back. All I did was to stay silent with my head down.
Right at that moment, Shen Anyi stormed in and punched that boy like crazy. That boy was tall and strong. My brother got beaten back and his face looked like a piece of shit but he squeezed a smile at me, “Sister, I will protect you.”
From that day on, I treated him like my blood.
Grandma passed away when I was in senior grade 3, which meant we had no income. I got admitted by Jinling University, but I quitted because of its tuition fees. I left everything grandma left us to my brother to go to university.
He was so smart and got enrolled by the best high school in Shancheng. We moved to the city. I couldn’t find a decent job because I was too ugly and had no good education. I could only do waitressing or package delivering.
I had three jobs at the same time and package delivering earned me the most money. I delivered day and night, even when no one wanted to do.
On that day, it was dark night. My boss gave me a parcel and rushed me to deliver, saying that it was very urgent. I had to ride my scooter.
It was a remote villa that took me a while to find. They seemed to be having a party in the house because it was really loud.
I knocked on the door and gave the parcel to him, and said, “Please sign here.”
He was a good-looking young man. He looked drunk and scanned my body with eyes, “Take off your mask.”
I didn’t want to but he rushed up and pulled off my mask, surprised, “You are fucking ugly. Everybody, look! Look at this ugly thing. ”
I covered my face, turned and ran but got caught by those young men. I struggled but got covered in the mouth and nose by a wet handkerchief.
Before I passed out, I heard them laughing, “We finally found the hideous woman ever. Let’s see how the cool, emotionless Yin Shengyao would feel about after he found himself sleeping with such an ugly woman.”
When I woke up, I was lying on a big bed next to a very good-looking man. We were both naked.
The man woke up too. He looked at himself, then at me with a look of utter disgust, then got angry.
He kicked me so hard right on my chest. I got kicked out of the bed and my ribs were broken. It was too painful to stand on my feet.
I would never forget the way he looked at me. It was like he was looking at the dirtiest thing in the world.
Those young men who put me down walked in, laughing and holding a DV to film us.
The beautiful man thought of something and roared, “Kang Junnan, how dare you give me knockout drops?”
They started to fight. And I managed to get out of the house although I was in great pain.
I couldn’t call the police. I know I was ugly. I didn’t want to be laughed at or pointed fingers.
I had to return to the dirty, messy community in the city. Where we lived was an old, shabby but affordable flat.
When I was lying on bed in great pains, my brother came home and got shocked. I didn’t tell him the truth but only said I felt down from my scooter when I was delivering parcels.
He dragged me to go to hospital. I didn’t want to because I couldn’t afford it.
He insisted. What happened next was out of control. On our way to the hospital, a red Porsche ran towards us at top speed and my brother shouted, “Look out!” He shoved me away and the car hit him.
The car made a turn and ran away after it hit my brother. I scooped my brother up in my arms right away and rushed to the hospital.
For 15 hours in the operation room, Anyi survived but became a vegetable. I had to spend a lot of money to sustain his life.
I called the police. Because I didn’t see the plate clearly and there was no camera there, they couldn’t track down the car owner.
But I knew that car because it was parked at the backyard when I ran out of the villa.
It was Yin Shenyao! He hated me! He was trying to kill me!
I hated it! I hated being useless and ugly! I hated that I couldn’t avenge my brother.
But the biggest problem I had right now was to pay for my brother’s medical bills.
The delivery company and my other jobs all called to fire me, and asked me if I had messed with the wrong people.
It was Yin Shengyao again!
He was rich and powerful. How could I fight against him?
I went back to our flat. There was a computer on the desk, which I got from the second-hand market as a present for my brother.
Now he couldn’t use it anymore.
I turned on the computer to look for a job. I posed my resume online and got response a few minutes later. He asked me if I was a man or woman. If I were a woman, I could do live stream which could be very profitable.
I clicked Heiyan TV, the biggest video stream platform, and found that those camgirls were either sweet-looking or sexy-looking who could both sing and dance. No matter they were good or not, the audience kept sending them virtual gifts. Some popular camgirls could make tens of thousands for just one video streaming.
I sighed helplessly. With this look, how could I be a camgirl? A freak show?
When I was about to close the website, I saw someone was live streaming ghosts.
I clicked on it and a man was live streaming in an old ghost-haunted house. The ambience was terrifying.
I followed him online and he didn’t see a real ghost even by the end of the stream. But the ambience was too real to spook the audience. He had many audiences who sent him lots of gifts while they watched. I was a little inspired by the idea.
Nobody wanted to see the host’s face of a ghost live streaming, which suited me very well.
Without hesitating, I took out all the money I had and bought a homemade mobile phone with a high-definition camera and a strong battery life. Then I asked one of my former colleagues to help me with the access to an unlimited monthly data package.
Everything was ready. I set off when the night fell.
I chose an abandoned clinic in the village, not far from where I lived.
When I arrived at the clinic, I logged in the Heiyan TV with my new phone and opened a live stream room, which was named as “Live Show of Evil Ghosts, Journey to a Haunted Clinic”.