Chapter 12

Chapter 12

I had already bribed the doctor; he would provide Gu Jingshen with a seamless report of a miscarriage.

I lay on the hospital bed, staring blankly at the pale green ceiling. Only my bruised forehead and my leg bone still throbbed with a dull ache.

From the other side of the wall, the faint sound of an argument drifted in.

I pulled out the IV needle from my left hand, climbed out of bed, and limped out of the room.

Those voices belonged to Gu Jingshen and Jiang Wan. They were talking in the empty patient room next door.

“Why did you treat her like that? I don’t love her at all,” Gu Jingshen’s voice was thick with suppressed anger.

I leaned against the cold wall. Hearing Gu Jingshen state the truth didn’t even cause a ripple in my heart.

Jiang Wan gave a soft laugh. “Do you have even a shred of trust in me?”

The room fell silent for a moment before the door suddenly swung open. Unsurprisingly, it was Jiang Wan, clutching her bag.

She gave me a deep, lingering look.

I stared right back.

Now, the urge to retch surged in my throat again.

Love means nothing to you. But Jiang Wan, without him, I’ll die. I really will die!

Everything I’ve done has just been to stay alive.

I am so disgusting.

A nurse pushing a medicine cart walked toward us. Jiang Wan brushed past her, her figure disappearing at the end of the corridor.

I thought I would never see her again for the rest of my life.

But then came a flurry of hurried footsteps from behind me. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who realized this.

Gu Jingshen chased after her, his coat tail whipping up a gust of wind. He shoved the medicine cart out of his way, sending bottles and jars clattering and clanging, earning him a sharp scolding from the nurse.

He didn’t see me, but I saw him clearly.

His face wore an expression I had never seen before-blank with desperation, a frantic desire to reclaim something lost.

I opened my eyes and touched my neck.

It was perfectly intact.

This System, fate, or whatever it was, had a vivid imagination when it came to methods of death; so far, none had repeated.

Yet the track the little ball rolled down remained unchanged, plunging toward a predestined end.

I had been invited to play this Pinball Machine that could never be won.

Even if I were the completely innocent “victim” in the script, Gu Jingshen would break through the shackles of morality to run toward his true love.

If I ended my own life before the divorce, would I find eternal peace?

I began to seriously consider the question.

On social media, a kind-looking woman said, “A child is the crystallization of love and the bond of a family. Once there is a child, a man will eventually return to your side. That is the power of life.”

My phone lay beside me, playing this thirty-second video on a loop. The glow illuminated the pitch-black ceiling like a scene from a horror movie.

Gu Jingshen was a fortress I could not breach. Pregnancy, miscarriage, even suicide-they were all useless to him. This so-called “power of life” would only work if it were Jiang Wan-

Wait.

Only if it were Jiang Wan.