Complex Family Relationships

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!

The day I found out I had cancer.

He Wei frowned and said coldly to me, “Do you think anyone would be sad if you died? No one would feel bad about it.”

I said, “Whatever.”

Then I sincerely wished him, “I hope you’ll do as you say.”

After all, the year my brother died saving me, everyone looked at me and said:

“Why wasn’t it you who died?”

Later, I stood on the rooftop of the abandoned building where my brother passed away and jumped off.

But He Wei, why were you crying?

During my years dominating Gangcheng, I’ve kept quite a few men on the side.

They all knew the rules of Miss Qi.

I only have one husband, and no matter how much they acted out, they were never to cause trouble in front of my legal spouse, Gu Yi’an.

But one of them just had to have a death wish.

He tracked down my home and staged a confrontation with Gu Yi’an, demanding he step down.

“You’re already past your prime. Why are you still clinging to this position?”

“She told me herself-the one she loves most is me.”

I broke things off immediately: “You crossed the line.”

The young man, looking like a wounded puppy, felt his eyes well up with tears.

“I didn’t do anything wrong! Love means a desire for exclusivity. Those other guys could tolerate this because none of them loved you enough!”

I gazed at his heartbroken yet stubborn eyes, my mind drifting for a moment.

…He was so similar.

Out of everyone, he was the one who resembled my brother the most.

Six years after our divorce, I ran into my ex-husband on a street corner while holding my three-year-old daughter.

He stared blankly at the girl in my arms for a long time before knitting his brows. “She’s almost six years old,” he said, his voice laced with accusation. “Why does she look so thin and small?”

Ha!

He actually thought the child I was holding was his.

I suppose he believed I loved him so deeply that even after he cheated and divorced me, I would have gone off and raised his child all on my own.

When Nie Feng and I were about to file for divorce, he was in a car accident and lost his memory.

His memory was stuck eight years in the past.

Eight years ago, he loved me the most.

On the third day after being diagnosed with Stomach Cancer, I chose a grave for myself.

They say the feng shui is especially good.

It’s supposed to bless me so that in my next life, I won’t be the real daughter everyone despises.

No one will steal my parents, my brother, or everything else from me.

No longer… unloved.

I burned my photos and clothes, erased every trace of my existence.

Then I slit my wrists, lay down in the bathtub, and waited peacefully for death.

But then the Cemetery Center suddenly called me:

“Miss Lu, we’re terribly sorry.”

“Two Agents accidentally sold the same plot.”

“This grave was also sold to another gentleman.”

“Would you… mind moving your grave?”

I picked up my boyfriend’s phone by mistake, only to see a message his ex had just sent: “I forgot to take the morning-after pill that night.”

Those few short words left me chilled to the bone.

The night before last, I had a sudden bout of acute gastroenteritis. He was supposedly working overtime at the office, and I called him over a dozen times, but I couldn’t get through.

Enduring the piercing pain, I eventually took a taxi to the hospital alone at three in the morning.

As it turns out, the reason his phone was off and he never came home that night was that he was with his ex-girlfriend.

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.”

The day Fu Chengbi broke up with me, I got into a car accident.

I didn’t die.

The one who died was the personality inside me that loved him.