Slice of Life

In the third year of my relationship with Tan Zongmin, I caught him meeting the woman his family had arranged for him to marry.

The moment he saw me, he froze.

Noticing his distraction, she followed his gaze and asked curiously, “What are you looking at?”

Tan Zongmin looked away and replied flatly, “Nothing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and played along with our unspoken understanding, pretending not to know him.

That morning, I’d received an email confirming that my resignation had been approved.

I’d been wondering how to break up with Tan Zongmin gracefully.

After rescuing my young nephew from the water, I went to the east wing to change my clothes.

But my brother-in-law, Zhao Hong, chose that exact moment to shove the door open and barge in, forcing me into a marriage with him as his second wife.

On the night before the wedding, my legitimate mother personally brought me a bowl of Sterilization Decoction.

I pushed the bowl away and looked up at her. “If you dare force me to drink it, the first thing I’ll do is make sure the Zhao Family has no descendants. Do you believe me?”

My legitimate mother flew into a rage and immediately went to complain to Zhao Hong.

Zhao Hong sneered. “Scheming women like her aren’t fit to bear my children.”

My eight-year-old nephew shouted too,

“Bad woman! You’re not fit to be my mother!”

I looked at Zhao Hong. “Since I’m not fit to bear your children, then don’t come to my bed.”

“From now on, the child’s food, clothing, lodging, schooling, future prospects, and dignity in front of the nobles… none of it has anything to do with me.”

“If my lord thinks I’m so scheming, perhaps he should raise the child himself.”

Before I transmigrated here, I worked in HR at a major tech company.

Aside from competence, the job also required knowing how to spot workplace PUA when you saw it.

Ever since I was little, I’ve loved putting on airs.

Every day, I posted online about my life as a Young Miss.

Then one day, a video I posted of my mansion blew up-and attracted a whole crowd of real heiresses.

They dug up the truth: my card was expired, the house was a stolen photo, and the car was rented.

One real heiress posted a screenshot of her WeChat balance and commented, “Want me to transfer you some?”

I immediately slid into her DMs.

“Really, sis?”

“I never imagined you’d be not only rich and beautiful, but kindhearted too.”

My older brother was eighteen when he was married off as a live-in son-in-law to my sister-in-law.

My sister-in-law said that if he gave her a child, she’d reward him by letting him continue his studies.

Later, the day my brother passed the imperial exam, Father still refused to give up and asked,

“Son, now can my grandson change his surname back to mine?”

Twenty years ago, my dad got drunk and let it slip to someone that he had made two hundred thousand yuan in a year raising chickens. Before long, every chicken on his farm had been poisoned to death.

Later, my dad bought an eighty-million-yuan apartment in Beijing outright, and he didn’t tell a single person back home. Even my grandparents had no idea.

Now my dad has long since become the CEO of a corporation worth several hundred million. Every time we go home for New Year’s or the holidays, he makes my mom and me help him pretend we’re poor.

At the New Year’s Eve dinner, I sat there bundled in a thick cotton coat and cotton slippers, both hands shoved into my pockets.

And so began my proud inheritance of my father’s fine tradition: talking absolute nonsense.

Who would’ve thought I’d overdo the act and run into someone I knew?

Me: “President Gu?”

Him: “President Shen?”

Then we both clapped a hand over each other’s mouths.

I married a pig butcher in my young mistress’s place. On our wedding night, I said, “From now on, you slaughter the pigs and I’ll sell the meat. As husband and wife, we’ll work together and make a good life for ourselves. When we have children, we’ll send them to school and do our best to free them from the fate of becoming butchers.”

Then my rather handsome husband pressed a hand to his forehead and laughed.

I was born only five minutes before my little sister.

Yet she was prettier than me, fairer than me, smarter than me.

The only thing I had ever beaten her at was being healthy.

I could roll around in the mud throwing a tantrum and still not get sick.

My sister, though, was allergic to pollen in spring, mosquito bites in summer, and cold air in autumn and winter.

When I was nine, all I did was pet a stray cat.

My sister said she felt so awful she could not breathe.

That day, Mom beat me half to death.

With red-rimmed eyes, she asked me, “Were you trying to kill your sister?”

“If she dies, you’ll be the only child in this family!”

So later, Mom sent me to live in a nursing home.

She said it very seriously: “This way, your sister will be the only child in the family.”

I was the eldest daughter of the family-the one no one favored.

From childhood, I was taught to be composed and proper, to serve as an example for my younger siblings.

And yet my fiancé was stolen away by my seemingly innocent and adorable legitimate younger sister.

My younger brothers remembered none of the good I had done for them. They only resented me for disciplining them too strictly. Even my parents saw me as nothing more than a tool to polish the family name, wholeheartedly taking my legitimate younger sister’s side.

Faced with all this, I spread my hands and gave up. From then on, I refused to involve myself in anything happening in the manor.

I let them flounder through one petty mess after another, gradually falling apart until none of the old warmth remained. Even that innocent and adorable legitimate younger sister, once she lost my support, was no longer the treasure of their hearts.

My buddy’s older sister was an aloof, goddess-level doctor, and every time I saw her, my heart started pounding.

Then one day, while I was eating skewers at a barbecue stand, I passed out from blood loss and got rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.

After she performed hemorrhoid surgery on me, I finally found out she’d been secretly in love with me for ten whole years!

Chapter 0

“Jiejie, I’m bored of this.” Qi Sen rolled over and got up from the sofa, chin raised as he spoke to me with an arrogant attitude.

I froze, instinctively covering the buttons of my shirt. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“It’s too late now, a taxi is too expensive,” I said, reaching for the bag tossed by the table and pulling out my phone to check the time. “You can leave tomorrow morning.”