Psychological

After an argument with Zhou Mingyu, I jumped from the thirtieth floor with my five-month-old daughter in my arms.

When I opened my eyes again, time had actually returned to yesterday.

On this day, because the baby wouldn’t stop crying, Zhou Mingyu snapped at me for the first time: “Chen Ran, you don’t have a mother yourself, so it’s no wonder you don’t even know how to take care of a child!”

Our relationship had always been good, so I thought he hadn’t meant it; I blamed it on my own volatile temper and for taking things too hard.

But time continued to flow backward, and I discovered that this wasn’t the first time Zhou Mingyu had said such things: During my postpartum recovery month, he joked, “If your mother were still alive, my mother wouldn’t be so exhausted.”

On the day I was hospitalized to give birth, in response to the nurse’s questions, he said with a smile, “Her mother passed away, so who else could be her caregiver but me?”

At our wedding, he held my hand and vowed, “Chen Ran, I will definitely take good care of you in your mother’s stead!”

… It turned out he had always cared about the fact that I didn’t have a mother.

But the strange thing was, why didn’t I have any memory of my mother at all?

Had she ever truly existed?

If time continued to flow backward, would I eventually see her?

We had been together for three years, yet my girlfriend still couldn’t forget her first love.

There was a locked room in her house-a promise she had kept for him.

As long as he returned, there would always be a place for him in her home.

For his sake, she abandoned me time and time again.

The final time, I left nothing but a single breakup text and vanished without a trace.

Yet, she acted as if she had gone mad, searching the entire world for me.

Eventually, in a cemetery, she finally discovered the truth behind everything.

With bloodshot eyes, she pointed at the person in the black-and-white photograph-someone who bore an eighty percent resemblance to her-and interrogated me.

“Shen Yu, tell me-” “Every time you looked at me, who exactly were you thinking of?”

I was never smart, but the neighbor’s son was a once-in-a-century genius.

I spent day after day hunched over my desk doing practice problems before I finally got into a Project 985 university. He skipped class and dated the prettiest girl in school, yet the top universities fought over him.

I practically lived in the library, studying from morning to night, only to miss out on a guaranteed graduate school spot by one rank. He flipped through his books right before the exam and easily took first place in the entire department.

Whenever my parents scolded me, they would twist my ear and say, “Look at Little Lin! You’re both human, so how are you so much stupider than him?”

…

I spent the first half of my life living in his shadow. The moment I graduated, I couldn’t wait to leave home and run away from it all.

For three whole years, no matter how hysterical my parents got over the phone, I never went back.

On New Year’s Eve of the fourth year, I was carrying shopping bags back to my rented apartment when I saw him at the door.

His thin frame leaned against the wall, and he asked softly,

“Why won’t you go home?”

I didn’t answer.

The light in his eyes dimmed. Then he said, “Come back. Your parents miss you so much… and so do I.”

0

My sister is dead. She committed suicide for a man.

When I was sorting through her belongings, I found a pair of handcuffs and some photographs.

In the photos, she was completely naked, her body covered in bruises.

A rush of blood surged through me, my whole body turned cold, and I was instantly overwhelmed by an indescribable terror and confusion.

But I didn’t know yet that the person who started all this had no intention of stopping.

And I was his next target.

My best friend and I ended up inside the same novel.

She was the scheming second male lead’s hopeless admirer.

I was the obsessive villain’s substitute lover.

In public, we pined for men who didn’t love us.

In private, we spent their money like there was no tomorrow.

After three years of living it up, the heroine—the woman they supposedly truly loved—came back.

Once we learned that both men would lose their minds over her, my best friend packed a little bag and knocked on my door late at night.

“I’ve saved enough.

Have you?”

“Not quite,” I said.

“But I can spend yours.”

So we faked our deaths and ran away together.

Three years later, she had the misfortune to run into her ex-husband.

“I’ll cover for you!”

I told her.

“Run!”

Then I turned around and walked straight into a solid chest.

The obsessive villain calmly undid his tie and bound my hands.

“Try getting away yourself first.”

In high school, the boy seated behind me had a crush on me, so he put glue in my hair, punctured my bicycle tires, and threw away my homework.

He would even snap my bra strap while I was concentrating in class.

Snap-the sound rang out with humiliating clarity through the classroom.

I spun around, red with shame and fury, and he grinned at me. “New style today, huh?”

His friend immediately joined in. “Xia Xin! He only does it because he likes you!”

“You two are going to get married someday anyway, so who cares if your future husband touches you? Hahaha!”

The tips of Zhou Qi’s ears were bright red, but the sight only made my stomach turn.

Later, in the cafeteria, I dumped a tray of food over his head and smiled into his furious face. “I like you!”

His friend leaped up to defend him. “How is dumping food on his head supposed to mean you like him?”

See? They knew exactly what they were doing.

So I yanked down his pants with one hand and said flatly, “There-now I like you.”

While I was offering prayers to Buddha on the mountain, a young gentleman suddenly intruded upon my solitude.

He apologized, his face flushing a deep crimson.

Yet, I heard his inner thoughts: [I have heard the Princess is kind and benevolent; I wonder if she will blame me.]

[I only ended up in the wrong place because I was trying to escape my eldest brother’s schemes.]

[How should I apologize to make the Princess happy?]

He did not know that I had experienced a dream.

In that dream, I followed the guidance of his inner voice to investigate his claims, only to walk step by step toward a dead end.

In the end, my Imperial Father grew to loathe me, my eldest brother was deposed, and I was drowned in a pond.

Only after my death did I learn that this young gentleman could choose who heard his heart’s voice.

It was by relying on this trick alone that he rose from being an Outer Chamber Son to the legitimate second son of a Marquis’s manor.

Now. I looked at the fair-skinned, red-lipped young gentleman before me, who appeared shy and timid.

I gave him a gentle smile. “Someone, come. For trespassing in the Forbidden Courtyard, give him thirty strokes of the cane.”

The world says that Cheng Xiu, the Director of the Eastern Depot, is sinister, cruel, treacherous, and ruthless.

The world is right.

I have always been competitive to a fault. When my elder sister from the legal wife fainted, I shoved the Regent Prince aside and carried her back to her chambers myself.

When my elder sister from a concubine fell into the water, I outstripped the Young Marquis to rescue her and bring her to shore.

When the Second Prince was about to win at pitch-pot, I fired two arrows simultaneously into the ears of the pot, snatching first place for myself.

At a palace banquet, Zhao Wangjian-who grew up with me-bet that I wouldn’t dare kick the Neighboring Country Prince in the backside. I laughed; there was nothing in this world I didn’t dare to do. I followed the prince into a small grove, but when I woke up, I was lying beneath Cheng Xiu.

He asked if I wanted to marry him.

Who would have thought? It turns out there actually is something in this world I don’t dare to do.

After we made love that night, I drifted off to sleep.

My husband, who never liked saying sweet words, suddenly said: “Honey, I love you.”

I opened my eyes.

That tone was all too familiar.

It was exactly the tone he used when he’d done something guilty.

The tattoo on the back of Wei Yan’s neck was the initials of his ex-girlfriend’s name.

The only reason he had spared me a second glance in that vast sea of people was because my eyes and brows bore a striking resemblance to hers.