Complex Family Relationships

My five-year unrequited love has come to an end.

It ended because Shen Chen’s “white moonlight,” Su Yue, has returned.

Half a month ago, on the first day of autumn, I made some stewed pear soup to bring to Shen Chen.

Shen Chen smokes constantly and never listens when I tell him to stop, so I’ve made it a habit to prepare stewed pears with fritillary bulbs for him whenever the seasons change.

When I arrived, Shen Chen opened the door shirtless.

As the door swung wide, the air in the room smelled thick and suggestive. The scent of body wash clinging to him was the very one we had bought together.

I looked down and immediately spotted a pair of round-toed, mid-heel shoes. They were cute, yet they felt like an eyesore.

“Who is it?” a sweet, cloying female voice called out from the bedroom.

Shen Chen took the pear soup from my hands. His eyes were filled with guilt, but he prioritized his options in an instant.

“It’s just delivery.”

I died of a sudden asthma attack while being bullied.

My family sent my bruised and battered body straight to the incinerator; no one went to my school to demand justice for me.

Later, my brother started dating the girl who bullied me.

He turned her into the blade he would use to avenge me.

Everyone says Qi Zheng loves me.

When we were young, girls came and went around him, but as long as I turned around, he was always there behind me.

Later, he reformed for me and kept himself chaste for me. The once unruly and rebellious playboy began to learn how to cook and take care of the household.

On my twenty-sixth birthday, he knelt on one knee before me and produced that ring symbolizing true love.

After a long silence, I said only one thing-

“Qi Zheng, Wen Yi is dead.”

Qi Zheng’s face went pale in an instant. I looked at him calmly. He said, “I never thought you’d still remember her.”

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.

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.

The man I was to marry was a young general who had lost the use of his legs.

Rumor had it that he suffered from an unspeakable ailment and didn’t have long to live.

Later, behind the bed curtains, I discovered just how vigorous he truly was. Face burning, I shouted, “Stop bullying me!”

The man laughed hoarsely and caught my hand. “Then how about Qingqing bullies me this time?”

The Emperor brought a beauty back from Jiangnan and declared his intention to make her his Empress.

I adamantly refused.

“Empress Dowager, why? She and I share such a striking resemblance; it’s a sign we’re meant to be!”

You have the nerve to say that? You’ve gone and dug up the illegitimate daughter I hid so far away!

I finally plucked up the courage to drug my brother.

Unexpectedly, I wasn’t very tired that night, but I ended up falling into a deep sleep myself and didn’t wake up until dawn the next day.

The second time.

I mustered my courage and tried to drug him again.

Once more, I slept like a log until morning.

When I woke up, my brother was in the kitchen cooking.

The bright morning sun shone on him, making his hair appear almost pale gold.

Hearing me move, he turned around and flashed me a smile.

He looked like an angel descending from heaven.

“Zhiyu.”

“I made your favorite pumpkin pancakes.”

Clutching my aching conscience, I drugged him for the third time that night.

And once again, I enjoyed the sleep of a baby.

-I finally began to suspect my brother.

My husband and I have been sleeping in separate rooms for two years now. We’ve grown distant, with no passion left between us.

But last night, after he’d been drinking, he climbed into my bed and went absolutely wild…

I said, “Honey, you were nothing like yourself last night!”

Later, I saw a message from an unknown number on his phone:

“You slept with my wife, so I’m going to sleep with your wife. Only then are we even!”

My husband’s latest reply was:

“Now we’re square, right!”

I married a man three years my senior, and everyone said he was head over heels for me.

But not long after our wedding, he cheated.

He smoked, he drank, he got into fights, and he even kissed other women right in front of my face.

He did everything I hated most.

Duan Yi took a drag from his cigarette, looking down at me through hooded eyes. “What? Regretting it now?” Clutching the divorce papers in my hand, I took the glowing, red-hot cherry of his cigarette and ground it hard into his palm.

“Duan Yi, you ruined me. You should have died back when you loved me most.”

Duan Yi acted as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “That actually hurts.”