Lucien transmigrates into a billionaire CEO novel. As who?

The fake young master. The disposable pawn. The guy the author throws away by chapter three.

Honestly, he’s prepared for this.

He’s read enough transmigration novels to know how it goes: either you wake up early enough to sabotage the real heir before the plot even starts, or you arrive during the climax and go down in spectacular, messy fashion.

Lucien opens his eyes.

He’s on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic.

The story is already over.

He’s been exposed, disowned, and shipped overseas to quietly disappear.

…Great. Fantastic.

It gets worse.

His English is atrocious. Not technically — academically, he’s fine. But the second he has to speak out loud, his brain short-circuits into French or Chinese. He can’t even ask for extra napkins without sounding like a malfunctioning GPS.

Then there’s Leon Bolton.

Leon Bolton, WK's star fighter, three-time intercollegiate heavyweight champion. Campus legend says he could knock out a charging bull with one punch.

Lucien hears all this in the dining hall while eating fries and goes,

“So basically… North American martial arts master.”

That same night, Leon has him pinned against a floor-to-ceiling window — all two meters of muscle wrapped around Lucien like he’s some rare, fragile thing built to break pretty.

Lucien is red-faced, furious, half crying while kicking at Leon’s jaw.

“Get off me! Go use that farm-boy strength on somebody else!”

Leon catches his ankle easily.

Then lowers his mouth to the arch of Lucien’s feet and kisses it slow.

Unhurried.

Like he has nowhere else to be.

A laugh rumbles low in his chest.

“Baby,” Leon murmurs, lazy and devastating. “Be good.”

Notes:

Heavily inspired by transmigration tropes, except the original plot barely matters after chapter two. This is really just a college campus romance about two idiots falling catastrophically in love despite a disastrous language barrier.

Lucien eventually passes his English exam. Mostly because Leon refuses to stop talking filthy in his ear, and survival instincts kicked in.

The fights are hot.

The yearning is mutual.

And according to Lucien, the crying during sex is “not my fault, okay? He’s just built unfairly.”

---

The pizza boxes started collapsing somewhere between the second floor and the third.

Lucien Renault-Lin felt the cardboard bend against his palms and immediately tightened his grip like that alone could prevent disaster.

"Don't do this to me," he whispered in French.

The boxes ignored him.

So had life lately.

By the time he reached the third-floor hallway of Building Five, sweat clung to the base of his spine beneath the oversized Super Pizza T-shirt hanging off his frame. The shirt was aggressively ugly — bright white with a cartoon pizza slice giving a thumbs-up across the chest.

Everyone at the shop hated the uniform.

Lucien owned six.

One for hot weather.Two layered together when the nights got cold enough to creep through the cracked dorm window in his building.

Poverty destroyed embarrassment surprisingly fast.

He shifted the stack higher against his chest and squinted at the receipt taped to the top box.

McKen.

Simple.

Probably.

His spoken English got worse whenever he was tired. Or nervous. Or hungry. Or perceived by another human being.

Unfortunately, his current life involved all four constantly.

Lucien adjusted the delivery bag digging into his shoulder and knocked on the apartment door with his elbow.

The door swung open almost immediately.

Lucien looked up.

Then farther up.

Then, with growing alarm, even farther.

The guy standing there looked less like a graduate student and more like somebody bred specifically for combat sports.

Buzzcut. Thick neck. Massive shoulders stretching the sleeves of a gray WK athletics shirt.

Lucien suddenly became very aware of how small his wrists were.

"You McKen?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah."

The man's voice rumbled low in his chest.

Lucien lifted the pizzas toward him. "Delivery."

McKen grabbed the entire stack with one hand.

One hand.

Lucien stared before he could stop himself.

Americans were insane.

There was simply no other explanation.

"Cool," McKen said. "Thanks, man."

He started closing the door.

Lucien panicked.

"Wait—"

McKen paused.

Lucien's brain instantly emptied itself.

Review.

The word was review.

He knew this.

Five-star review. Positive review. Good review.

The problem was that every English word he had ever learned suddenly scattered like frightened pigeons.

"Please give us a…" he started weakly.

Nothing.

His throat tightened.

"Merde," he muttered under his breath.

A second voice drifted from deeper inside the apartment.

Low.

Rough.

The kind of voice that sounded dangerous even through a wall.

"McKen."

Lucien froze.

"What the fuck is taking so long?"

Something shifted inside the apartment.

A shadow crossed the hallway floor first.

Then footsteps.

Heavy.

Unhurried.

Lucien's instincts reacted before his thoughts did.

He turned and left immediately.

Not elegantly.

Not calmly.

Just gone.

His sneakers squeaked against polished flooring as he disappeared toward the stairwell, the oversized shirt fluttering around his thighs in the draft coming through the open windows.

Sunlight spilled across pale skin almost too light beneath the heat of late summer. Dark hair fell into his eyes when he glanced back once, revealing hazel-gray irises that flashed gold in the light before vanishing around the corner.

Leon Bolton stepped into the doorway just in time to catch the last glimpse of him disappearing downstairs.

For a moment, he said nothing.

The hallway smelled faintly like pizza crust and expensive detergent.

McKen cleared his throat. "Food's here."

Leon's eyes stayed on the stairwell.

Slim waist.

Nervous posture.

Pretty.

McKen watched Leon's expression carefully.

Then, because self-preservation had never been his strongest skill, he said:

"Cute little thing, right?"

Leon finally looked at him.

McKen immediately regretted speaking.

Leon Bolton didn't raise his voice often. Didn't need to.

At six-foot-five, broad-shouldered and cold-eyed, he carried the kind of presence that made people move out of his way automatically.

Three-time intercollegiate boxing champion.

Bolton heir.

WK's favorite campus myth.

People called him The King when he wasn't around.

People lowered their voices when he was.

"You trying to get kicked out of WK?" Leon asked mildly.

McKen lifted both hands. "Relax. I'm just saying."

Leon looked away first.

Which somehow felt more threatening.

Inside the apartment, laptops and notebooks covered the dining table. Half the graduate cohort looked ready to kill each other over their group presentation.

Leon walked past all of it without interest.

McKen followed behind him carrying the pizzas.

"You should've seen him better," he kept talking anyway, because apparently survival instincts were optional now. "Tiny waist. Accent. Definitely foreign. Pretty enough to ruin somebody's life."

Leon sat down slowly.

Across the room, someone started arguing about data models.

Leon ignored them.

For reasons he didn't examine too closely, he could still picture the delivery boy's eyes.

Hazel-gray.

Soft-looking.

The kind of eyes prey animals had right before bolting.

—

By the time Lucien finished his shift, his legs felt hollow.

He stumbled back into Super Pizza and collapsed into the plastic chair beside the register with the quiet despair of a nineteenth-century orphan.

The tiny white shop dog waddled over and flopped beside his shoes.

Lucien stared down at it.

The dog stared back.

Two exhausted creatures trapped in capitalism.

"Lucien!"

Jamie appeared from the kitchen carrying a soda and looking suspiciously glittery for a Wednesday afternoon.

"You took the Building Five order earlier, right?"

Lucien cracked one eye open. "Why?"

"Did you see him?"

"Who?"

Jamie stared at him.

Lucien stared back.

"The King?"

Lucien blinked slowly.

"…Should I know what that means?"