Short Story

I had been with my boyfriend for three years.

During that time, I discovered that his handle on every social media platform was July.

I assumed he simply had a deep-seated love for the romantic month of July, so I never pried into it.

It wasn’t until our wedding day, when his ex-girlfriend sent a gift, that I saw the name signed on the box-

Qi Yue.

In that moment, I finally understood. It wasn’t the month of July he cherished; it was Qi Yue.

My heart sank into an abyss…

I was in the middle of feeding the pigs in my village when I suddenly saw a Danmaku.

[Is this bystander the villain’s younger sister?]

[She still thinks she’s an orphan. She has no idea that the villainous Chancellor is actually the brother she got separated from back then.]

[It’s a pity the villain lost to the male lead. He’s about to hang himself.]

[The villain only became an official to find his sister in the first place. If they could just meet once, maybe he wouldn’t have to die.]

What?!

I immediately sold my pigs to scrape together some travel money and rushed to the Capital overnight.

I knocked on the gates of the Prime Minister’s Mansion.

A pale man draped in a heavy cloak stood at the entrance, his gaze deep and haunting.

I lunged forward and threw my arms around his legs, wailing, “Brother! Wang Ergou from the village is trying to force me to marry him!”

I fell into a world of Strange Tales, but I thought I was playing a romance otome game.

At the stroke of midnight, the cobweb-covered landline rang. A raspy, eerie voice drifted through the receiver.

“You watched that videotape, didn’t you? In seven days… I will come for you…”

Me:

“Why seven days? Are you just not going to contact me at all during that time? Is this the silent treatment?

“And you’re only messaging me at midnight? Ah, I get it. You probably just finished spending time with someone else, and now your conscience is pricking you, so you’ve come to check on me.

“What’s the point of just calling? If you actually cared about me, you’d be by my side constantly. I absolutely hate long-distance relationships!”

Strange Tale: “Uh… I’ll come sooner, then.”

The other participants struggling to survive: “? No, wait, man! He said he’d take our lives in seven days-why the hell is he starting his shift early?”

After my husband cheated on me, I jumped. I threw myself off the twenty-eighth floor.

The wind howled past my ears as I closed my eyes. I had already done the math. Each floor in our complex was three meters high, making the twenty-eighth floor eighty-one meters up. From the moment I leaped until I hit the ground, I would have roughly four seconds.

Minutes earlier, my final conversation with Bai Yan had ended in disaster. I had screamed and ranted hysterically; I had begged and pleaded like a dog wagging its tail for scraps; I had even cursed him with the most vicious words and venomous language in existence. By the final moment, both of us were utterly drained. I sat on the edge of the balcony with my eyes rimmed red and my legs dangling in the air, asking him weakly, “Are you really set on this divorce?”

He looked at me calmly. The first time I had threatened suicide, he had been frantic with panic, but now his face held nothing but exhaustion. He asked me, “Are you quite finished making a scene?”

I said quietly, “If you leave today, I’m jumping.”

He gave me one long, deep look before turning to walk away. The door slammed shut with a deafening bang, and then I heard the sound of him waiting for the elevator.

I accompanied His Highness through three thousand miles of exile, yet after he reclaimed his throne, he found me lowly and loathsome.

Later, when the time came to reward merit in the Golden Luan Hall, I asked only one thing of him.

His Highness assumed I would ask for a title or a place by his side.

Instead, I prostrated myself deeply and spoke softly yet firmly: “I ask that Your Highness grant your subject’s daughter a marriage to General Shen.”

His Highness’s eyes nearly split with rage as he finally understood-

Throughout those three thousand miles of exile, from beginning to end, it was never him that I loved.

I am the sole Earth Master successor. While leading a group of elderly wealthy businessmen to Xiangxi to treat their corpse poison, we were kidnapped and dragged deep into the mountains.

The villagers forced us to work the fields, but they had no idea that after the sun went down, the things that came for us weren’t human at all.

The moment our daughter was born, my husband immediately named her Xingyue.

He looked at me gently and said, “From now on, you and Xingyue are my most precious treasures in this world.”

I was so touched-until one day, I discovered something.

His ex-girlfriend’s name was also Xingyue.

My virginity was sold by my family to a seventy-year-old tycoon for the steep price of one million yuan.

The price was fair, all things considered. After all, I wasn’t just selling my virtue; I was selling my life.

On our wedding night, the old man squeezed my throat and asked, “Do you have any final wishes?”

To stay alive, I told him three stories.

And then, I made a prophecy.

“You will die within my third story.”

The Emperor’s beloved Noble Consort, his one true love, was dead.

His one true love?

It was almost laughable.

And yet, the rumor had spread throughout all of Dayan.

By day, my straight roommate and I are sworn enemies.

By night, I secretly write slash fanfiction about the two of us.

[He slowly closed his eyes, his soft lips pressing against mine…]

That very night, in my dreams, we reenacted the exact scene from my story.

Later, I discovered that whatever I wrote, I would dream about that night.

I became addicted to it, losing myself in the fantasies until there was no turning back.

Still, I always made sure to maintain a sense of propriety, never daring to go too far or truly offend him.

Until one day, I finally plucked up the courage to reach out and touch my roommate in the dream.

The next morning, the look in his eyes when he turned to me was dark and unreadable.

“What’s the point of just dreaming?” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward him.

It turned out that I wasn’t the only one; he had been having those dreams too.