Slice of Life

I was the heroine of a sweet-wife story: delicate, soft, and made to be swept off my feet.

All I had to do was behave and let one man after another dote on me.

My stepbrother was walking toward me with a glass of milk when a system appeared.

It told me that, according to the plot, I was supposed to develop a sex addiction that very day. From then on, the slightest contact with a man would leave me unbearably aroused, and it would only get worse.

That sounded pretty good to me.

I drained the milk in one gulp.

My stepbrother smiled.

I smiled too.

The system gave an even more wicked little chuckle.

“Except I just changed it into an addiction to studying.”

I was my birth parents’ third child.

While my birth mother was pregnant with me, the village fortune-teller swore I would be a boy.

They could hardly wait.

They hid from place to place throughout the pregnancy and finally brought me into the world in the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month—

a girl.

In my second year at the army brothel, I became pregnant.

Every soldier who had ever entered my tent fought to claim the child as his own.

Chen Shitou had come to me only once, yet he dropped to his knees and begged, “Miss Yang, I’m about to go into battle with the vanguard. My parents have no child but me. I need to leave them something to remember me by.”

Later, I went to his hometown and met two of the kindest parents in the world.

[Experienced Heroine, Virgin Hero | Marriage Before Love]

A gentle noblewoman fallen on hard times vs. a cold, aloof, and powerful court official

Ji Hanyi’s family fell into ruin when she was fourteen. At sixteen, she arrived at the prestigious Xie Family with a marriage contract and married into their household.

Throughout their three years of marriage, she fulfilled every duty expected of a wife despite her husband’s cold indifference, determined to be a good and virtuous spouse.

Her husband was as elegant as a jade tree, an honorable gentleman with limitless prospects.

Everyone told her she ought to be satisfied. Her family no longer had anyone to rely on, so being able to marry into the Xie Family was an incredible stroke of fortune.

Yet on a snowy night, when her husband abandoned her once again for the woman in his heart, Ji Hanyi suddenly saw the truth: her husband had never loved her.

And so, at nineteen, she stubbornly took the Divorce Agreement and walked away alone, even as her husband mocked her and declared that she would regret it.

After the divorce, Ji Hanyi had planned to take her mother to Jiangnan, where she would run a shop and live a quiet, peaceful life. But then the most noble — and most aloof — scion among all the aristocratic families in the capital suddenly said he wanted to marry her.

Shen Si was like the high-hanging moon on a cold winter night, forever beyond reach. Noble by birth and immense in power, he was also notorious for his icy ruthlessness and unapproachable demeanor. Yet he told her, “You may take two days to decide whether you are willing to marry me.”

In his heart, however, he had already prepared what he would say next:

If you are unwilling, then I will keep waiting for you.

Ji Hanyi had no idea that Shen Si, that eternal block of ice, had fallen for her back when he first discovered love as a young man. Every trace of distance and aloofness he showed her was born of restraint and deep devotion. He had even hidden his possessiveness toward her perfectly.

The day Grandpa’s legs were crushed, I knelt on the ground, kowtowing as I heard the thoughts of the people around me.

[The heroine is so pitiful. Shouldn’t we help her?]

[No! If we help her, how is Song Hansheng supposed to make his entrance? He’s my favorite male lead in a redemption romance!]

[Shen Song is the heroine’s true love!]

[Nonsense! The heroine is the wife I picked for my darling Jiang Yanbei!]

Later, those male leads really did enter my life, one after another.

They loved me, saved me, fought over me, and tried to force me into their arms…

But I hated this world, and I had no need to be saved.

My goal was to kill the male leads.

In my senior year of high school, my parents cut off every cent of my living expenses and tried to force me to drop out.

With nowhere else to turn, I enrolled at an elite school packed with rich heirs.

My grades were good enough to earn a full tuition waiver, but tuition was not going to keep me fed.

After going hungry for half a month, I finally worked up the courage to face the classmates who never studied and ask, “Does anyone need their homework done? It’s only five yuan per assignment.”

The young masters and heiresses, who had been busy showing off their wealth, fell silent and stared at me in shock.

Then the room erupted.

“Five yuan? Who do you think you’re insulting? Five hundred—I’m first!”

“Five thousand! Put me at the front!”

“Fifty thousand—and I mean dollars!”

“I’ll top every bid! Let’s see who dares fight me for first place today!”

In the fifth year since he took me for himself, the powerful young heir finally grew tired of me.

He handed me a bank card with a lazy smile. “Your childhood sweetheart isn’t actually dead.”

“Go find him.”

I stared at the address in my hand for a long time—so long that he lost patience, hauled me out of bed, and drawled, “I’ll give you a ride. Move your things out after today.”

He had just pulled on his coat and started looking for his car keys when his phone rang.

On the other end, his childhood friend was sobbing anxiously. “If you break up with her, what’s going to happen to Xu Xinghe and me?”

Meng Fanyu carried himself with effortless distinction.

I thought that even if we eventually broke up, having him as my first love would leave me with no regrets.

So I pursued him with everything I had.

Eventually, I won him over, and he laid down three rules: we would date, never marry, and break up when we graduated.

For three years, we loved each other with abandon.

On graduation day, I was the one who ended it, but he went back on our agreement.

Our conversation fell apart, and Meng Fanyu lowered his proud head with a bitter laugh.

He told me I had better pray we never met again.

From then on, I did everything I could to avoid him.

But with the slightest turn of fate, the world can become very small, and two people who once belonged to each other are bound to meet again.

A diary chronicling the last two months of my life…

Maybe I was simply born unworthy of love. Why else would everyone who loved me leave?

Discovering my husband’s affair was a trivial matter.

At a dinner with friends, he, who had always been aloof, suddenly took the initiative to serve food to everyone at the table.

Later.

I heard him softly reciting a line from Roman Holiday in the study.

“In order to shake your hand, I shook hands with everyone.”

Ha!