Romance

At the class reunion, my ex-boyfriend held his fiancée close as he announced their wedding date.

I snapped a photo and prepared to send it to his mother with the caption: “They look like a perfect match. Congratulations on finally getting what you wanted.”

Just as I was about to hit send, someone grabbed my wrist in a crushing grip.

“Oh? Still in touch with my mother?” He stared down at me, his expression dark and predatory. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you squeeze enough money out of her the first time?”

The surrounding room fell deathly silent. My face turned pale as I looked up.

I hadn’t even noticed when the music had stopped.

I had become the center of attention.

I had been married to the heir of the Jiang Group for two years, and during that entire time, he had treated me with nothing but cold indifference.

Then, in the middle of the night, I got out of bed to use the bathroom when he suddenly grabbed my hand.

I turned around to find the man before me with the corners of his eyes flushed a faint red, his voice trembling.

“Shen Tingwan, are you trying to leave me behind again?”

When I was a child, I fought with wild dogs for food. On the verge of starvation, someone shared half a steamed bun with me.

To repay his kindness, I disguised myself as a boy and stayed by his side as a servant.

This man was once the most noble Crown Prince of the dynasty.

One day, he fell from grace, reduced to ruin, and was humiliated and trampled by his lifelong enemy.

Later, he became the mad emperor whom everyone feared.

Yet on a snowy night, he took his own life, and before his death, pleaded desperately:

“Yunling, don’t look at me… I’m so filthy.”

When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound twenty years.

The Imperial Tutor harbored the ambitions of a Wolf, the general eyed the throne like a tiger, and the imperial brother plotted in secret.

Only the Little Highness remained innocent and pure, completely unaware.

In this life, I have come only to protect him.

On the day of the grand wedding, every guest in the hall witnessed Ah Ying take a sword strike intended for Gu Yanzhi.

No one knew that the blades, arrows, and poisons she had endured for him throughout her life were already enough to have killed her many times over.

All she had ever waited for was to die in his arms and hear him call her name just once.

Li Xiuyi was my fiancé.

Yet, at his own birthday banquet, he announced that he was marrying another woman.

Everyone turned to look at me, their eyes filled with uncertainty.

Amidst the awkward atmosphere, I was the first to start clapping.

I even presented a ring as a blessing.

“I wish you a long and happy marriage, and may you be blessed with a child soon.”

Young General Yan was having a spat with the girl who held his heart.

During the night banquet, he had hidden a stem of Evening Magnolia.

He declared that whoever found that flower would become the General’s Wife.

The noble ladies all turned their heads, scanning the room to see where the Evening Magnolia had landed. I remained silent.

I simply used my foot to quietly kick away the flower lying behind my seat.

A moment later, Yan Ci’s nonchalant voice rang out. “I wonder which lady has picked up my flower?”

My cousin’s parents passed away, so my Imperial Mother brought her into the palace to live with us.

From then on, she enjoyed the favor of my parents, the protection of my elder brother, and the devotion of my younger brother.

Even my fiancé praised her for being exceptionally gifted and refined.

There was only one exception. His heart and eyes were filled only with me, never swayed by any outsider.

I married beneath my station to become his wife, and for a time, we lived a life of joy and freedom.

But later, he died-stabbed countless times before being hurled off a cliff.

Song Qi drew a dare: check his phone.

Of everyone in his contacts, who had he told “I love you” the most?

The class beauty: three times.

Me: 972 times.

The jeering around us died at once.

The class beauty burst into tears.

In front of everyone, Song Qi deleted my contact information, then smiled as he coaxed her.

“That’s worth crying over?”

“You know I only dated her for three months to keep up an act.”

“Nothing I said to her was real.”

Those nine hundred-odd declarations had all come from one drunken night.

Song Qi had crouched by the roadside, impossible for anyone to pull away, his head bowed as he sent me the same three words over and over.

“Once I send you ‘I love you’ 999 times, the bet is off.”

“Then we’ll be together for real, okay?”

It was the fourth year of my relationship with Tong Yuen.

The harshest words I had ever heard came from his mother.

“Two men together-how are you supposed to get married and have children?”

“Don’t ruin him.”

“He was perfectly normal before he met you.”

“Mr. Fu, you’re not a child anymore. Have some sense.”

Finally, enduring the pain, I broke up with him.

But Tong Yuen spent the entire night huddled outside my door.

He tried to force the Little White Dog he had sewn together, stitch by stitch, into my hands.

When I rejected him again, he finally broke down in tears.

“Gege, you don’t want the Little White Dog… and you don’t want me anymore either?”

I found a chat log on Sheng Jing’s phone.

He had sent his female assistant a video of me helping Jiu Jiu with her homework and losing my temper.

“This is why I’d rather work overtime at the office than come home.”

The young assistant replied with a “poor you, sending hugs” sticker. “Manager Sheng, you have it so hard.

Work is exhausting enough, and then you have to deal with all that when you get home.”