Drama

Five years ago, I left Qi Tan in a fit of pique.

Later, after he won the Best Actor award, he stood at the Hundred Stars Awards Ceremony holding my photograph, pleading for help to find me. “My lover has been missing for a month,” he said. “Please, help me find her.”

But the news of my gruesome death had already broken countless times back in 2018. Qi Tan, however, had suffered a trauma-induced bout of amnesia, forgetting everything that happened after I died.

On the day his manager announced that Qi Tan was retiring from the industry indefinitely, the news of his suicide exploded across the headlines.

I was married to Chi Ni for three years.

It wasn’t until after his death that I discovered his morbid, obsessive longing for me through his diary.

“I’m so jealous of the Young Lady’s dog. I want her to put a collar on me, too.”

“I dreamed of the Young Lady. When I woke up… I was wet again. I am a sinner.”

Clutching that diary, I was reborn into a time ten years in the past.

These were Chi Ni’s most wretched, downtrodden days.

He looked at me with a cold, detached gaze, like a wild dog that couldn’t be tamed.

I curled my finger at him with a beaming smile. “Smile for me, or I’ll kiss you until your lips are raw.”

The cold indifference he had fought so hard to maintain instantly crumbled.

I am the most ferocious, terrifying entity in the horror movie world.

I had finally saved up enough points to visit the daughter I once had.

But when I found her, she had already been adopted into a wealthy family.

Bullet comments drifted across the air:

“Just a few of them, and the female lead takes them all with a smile.”

“What have they turned her into? She went from fighting for her life to crying and begging for it.”

“To be fair, she’s pretty unlucky. She ended up crossing these rich brats who aren’t afraid of anything.”

I looked at my daughter, clutching her backpack and trembling slightly, and the group of boys surrounding her.

They aren’t afraid of anything? I wonder if that includes ghosts.

My five-year unrequited love has come to an end.

It ended because Shen Chen’s “white moonlight,” Su Yue, has returned.

Half a month ago, on the first day of autumn, I made some stewed pear soup to bring to Shen Chen.

Shen Chen smokes constantly and never listens when I tell him to stop, so I’ve made it a habit to prepare stewed pears with fritillary bulbs for him whenever the seasons change.

When I arrived, Shen Chen opened the door shirtless.

As the door swung wide, the air in the room smelled thick and suggestive. The scent of body wash clinging to him was the very one we had bought together.

I looked down and immediately spotted a pair of round-toed, mid-heel shoes. They were cute, yet they felt like an eyesore.

“Who is it?” a sweet, cloying female voice called out from the bedroom.

Shen Chen took the pear soup from my hands. His eyes were filled with guilt, but he prioritized his options in an instant.

“It’s just delivery.”

Everyone says my Little Aunt climbed her way to the top using her body.

They claim she used the excuse of caring for me to sneak into my husband’s room every night.

People curse her for being shameless, accusing her of defiling even her own niece’s husband.

But she simply handed me a piece of candy and said, “Yingying, in this life, we will survive together.”

During our sophomore year of high school, the underprivileged student my childhood friend had been sponsoring transferred to our school.

She was plain, rustic, and awkward, yet her eyes carefully concealed a crush on Xiao Yunzhou.

Everyone at school mocked her for her wishful thinking, and they warned me with heavy hearts:

“Huaishan, you’d better be careful. Having Wei Xiaoyun stick to Xiao Yunzhou is like getting a piece of gum caught in your hair-you’ll never get rid of her.”

“Having someone like that hovering around your childhood friend every day is honestly disgusting.”

“Exactly, Huaishan. It’s not the thief you should fear, but the one who’s always watching. Sooner or later, you’re going to suffer at Wei Xiaoyun’s hands.”

By the time the Female Lead appeared, I was already pregnant with Zhou Shiyu’s child.

I failed to fight against fate. He once risked everything to break off his engagement with her for my sake, but eventually, he grew to hate me to his very core. Even a single glance at me filled him with nothing but disgust.

Finally, I grew tired of it all. I let go of our tangled emotions and even gave up on the child.

It wasn’t until an evening six years later.

A young child knocked on my door.

With a stern, stoic expression that mimicked an adult, he said, “My dad doesn’t want me anymore. Can I stay with you?”

On the day I confessed to my crush, I suddenly discovered that I was just cannon fodder in a novel.

A sudden System notification informed me that the man standing before me was the Male Lead.

The plot was about to kick off, and the Female Lead would soon be making her grand entrance.

It was destiny; I was fated to be nothing more than a background character.

Suddenly, my rebellious streak flared up.

Before anyone could react, I leaned in and planted a loud kiss right on the Male Lead’s cheek.

Both the System and the Male Lead were frozen in shock.

My boyfriend insisted on a Platonic relationship, believing that carnal desire was a sin.

Just for trying to kiss him, he sent me away for “spiritual purification.”

The purification worked.

I no longer felt any desire for him.

However, my desire for other men doubled.

Later, as he stared at the hickey on my collarbone, he started acting like a lunatic in public again.

“Must you insist on falling into the abyss of sin?!”

His friend pulled me onto his lap, kissing my hand with a smirk. “I’ve committed a crime. Why don’t you call the police and have me arrested?”

I am the most indolent concubine in the Imperial Harem.

The Emperor is currently reading my Annual Slacker Report.

“This year, your name tag was flipped nineteen times. Of those, you were intercepted thirteen times. You actually served in the bedchamber six times, during three of which the Emperor couldn’t perform.”

“This year, you knelt over a thousand times. You called the Noble Consort a ‘bitch’ over ten thousand times, but the number of times you actually said it to her face was zero.”

“Do you remember the Mid-Autumn Banquet?”

“The talent you performed was balancing a pot of wine on your upturned backside, which resulted in half a month’s stipend being docked.”

“This year, your rank and salary have seen no change from last year. In fact, this situation has persisted for three years now.”

“Your keyword for this year is ‘Trash.’ Please keep it up next year.”

Oh no. Am I about to be slacked all the way into the Cold Palace?