Cohabitation

On my wedding day, a certain "ex-boyfriend" sent me a message.

"Do you know what you did wrong?

"If you do, we can get back together."

I stared blankly at my phone, then at the contact name on the chat: "8/12-Six-Pack, Great Dresser, Terrible Drinker."

I sank into thought.

"?"

When I did not reply for a long time, he sent another question mark.

"I'm getting married today."

After some thought, I decided it was best to be direct.

"How far along are you?" he replied at once.

"I've already changed into my reception dress," I answered honestly.

"It's time to go make the rounds and toast the guests."

A deep, mellow male voice sounded beside my ear.

With it came his scent-a cool, distant trace of bamboo mingled with the sea.

It was Lu Yuzhi, the man I had married.

"Okay."

I gave him a stiff smile and locked my phone the instant I heard his voice.

What I did not know was when he had come up behind me-or how much he had seen.

Lu Yuzhi and I were joined by a business marriage, not love.

Even so, no one would be happy to see their new spouse talking to someone of the opposite sex saved as "8/12-Six-Pack, Great Dresser, Terrible Drinker" on their wedding day.

My online boyfriend had an insanely attractive voice.

Every night, I hid under my covers and talked to him on the phone.

He indulged my every request, and his voice was so seductive it could practically get me pregnant on the spot.

Afraid my male roommate might overhear, I asked my online boyfriend to lower his voice.

That was when a comment feed suddenly appeared before my eyes.

[How can the supporting female character be this oblivious? She has no idea her online boyfriend is the obsessive male lead she lives with.]

[She really went and provoked him. She’ll have plenty of reasons to cry later.]

[She’s only chatting with him as a stand-in for the heroine, though. She’d better run before he finds out who she is, or it’ll be too late and he’ll…]

Terrified, I ended the call.

I stepped out of my room, intending to splash some water on my face and calm down.

Then, from the bathroom, I faintly heard a man’s voice trembling with restraint. “Baby, why did you hang up all of a sudden?”

A new neighbor moved in next door-a man who radiated a wild, untamed energy from head to toe.

He always came home late at night.

On the rare occasions I ran into him in the elevator, he was quiet and withdrawn, looking nothing like a decent guy.

Until one night, without the slightest warning, the water in my apartment cut off.

Halfway through my shower, I stood there in silence for a long moment before wrapping myself in a bathrobe and knocking on my neighbor’s door.

“Bro, can I borrow your bathroom?”

It was the fourth year of my marriage to my rival Alpha.

He had been in a car accident and lost his memory, with his recollections stopping right before our wedding.

When he saw my wedding ring, his voice was laced with ridicule.

“Who was unlucky enough to marry you?”

I was scammed by a real estate agent into moving into a Columbarium. To my surprise, the place was already occupied by a handsome, young, and tsundere ghost. When I took a closer look, I was even more shocked-it turned out we were old acquaintances.

On the very first day I hung up my sign offering a “Protection Charm for a Happy Marriage,” the handsome guy from next door came to make a wish: he wanted to be a normal person.

That night, he collapsed beneath the Torii of my home, drenched in blood that shimmered like liquid gold.

My small shrine, which hadn’t seen a single offering in three months, had suddenly picked up a deity on the verge of being reclaimed by the heavens.

My husband is wonderful to me.

He is incredibly considerate and gentle in bed, too.

After several failed attempts to actually make him angry, I finally resorted to posting a plea for help online: [How can I get my husband to be a bit more aggressive?]

[Sweet talk is all well and good, but I really want to try dirty talk.]

[Angry sex? Never tried that either.]

There were plenty of helpful netizens, but unfortunately, their suggestions were underwhelming.

That was until the day I came home drunk after a class reunion.

The living room was shrouded in darkness.

In the fragmented Moonlight, my husband did something rare-he called me by my full name. “Lin Sui, come here and kneel.”

When I was sixteen, the Zhou Family bought me to be a breeder for their lame son, Zhou Yuqing, to bear him children.

Though the agreement was for me to arrive in June, I reported to the Zhou Family in March.

I did this for two reasons: first, to save my own family some grain, and second, to leave a good impression on my future master.

But Zhou Yuqing despised me for being a country bumpkin and called me stupid.

He said I wasn’t nearly as delicate or pretty as Miss Su next door.

Even as he shared my bed, he looked down on me for being dirty.

“You must bathe four times with green jasmine and white champaca, then comb your hair with osmanthus oil. Miss Su uses osmanthus oil-have you got that through your head? ”

“If you serve me well next time, this young master might just grant you a formal title.”

I nodded, scrubbing myself with a loofah until I nearly rubbed my skin raw.

Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me, dripping wet, out of the tub.

It was Madam Liu, the broker who had sold me. She was in a frantic rush as she dragged my naked, fragrant body toward the door.

“Good heavens! It’s all wrong, all wrong! It wasn’t the Zhou Family who bought you-it was the Zou Family!”

I had been nursing a secret crush on Zhuang Jinyu for five years.

My home was filled with life-sized dolls made in his likeness.

While on a business trip, Zhuang Jinyu was caught in a mudslide and ended up comatose in the hospital.

I was wailing his name, sobbing uncontrollably after seeing the news, when a voice drifted down from above me.

It was a lazy, haughty voice, delivered with a biting tone I knew all too well.

“What are you screaming for? Trying to wake the dead?”

My crying jagged to a halt. I spun around in terror. The tall, exquisitely crafted doll standing behind me had actually come to life.

The man who had been sleeping in a separate room from me for the past six months was standing there with a pillow in his arms when I blocked him at the top of the stairs.

“The two of us together aren’t even fifty yet. We’re at the age when we should be all over each other. Is sleeping in separate rooms normal?”

He frowned at me, staring so hard that cold sweat prickled down my spine.

At last, he nodded. “Mm. It isn’t very normal.” Emboldened, I snatched the pillow out of his arms and grumbled, “You never used to be like this.”

“What did I use to be like?”

“You used to hold me every night when we slept, and before bed you’d call me your little baby.”

“…Did I?”

“You did!”

Look at me. Do these look like the eyes of a liar?