Abusive Characters

On the day my stepsister was murdered.

I told my dad and the police that I had gone to school to do homework, that I hadn’t been home, and that I really didn’t know what had happened.

But the truth was, I lied.

On the night of my wedding, the Queen ordered her guards to pin me down and force those Glass Slippers back onto my bleeding feet. She said that if the shoes were not sated by my blood before the thirteenth bell toll of midnight, she would carve out my heart to feed the mirror. The entire hall waited for me to become a Princess Consort, but only the groom, Su Zhichuan, leaned in and whispered into my ear, his voice trembling and hoarse. He said, “Don’t believe in fairy tales. Kill me before dawn, or you’ll be the one who dies.”

Four years ago, a young girl vanished under mysterious circumstances after school.

At the time, I had just lost my job and was running a snack stall outside the kindergarten gates. Word was that her parents had been waiting right outside the whole time, yet they never saw her come out.

In the aftermath, the family’s grief-stricken protests and a massive compensation settlement forced the kindergarten to shut down.

Four years later, I’ve changed careers and come across the case files from that day.

Certain things I experienced while running that stall have started to crystallize in my mind. And those details are enough to completely overturn the entire case.