Chapter 3
On the day of our wedding, Duan Yingze entered the dressing room while I was having my makeup done. He watched me in silence for a long time. Only when the emcee said, “The groom needs to take his place,” did he take my hand and press a light kiss to it, his eyes brimming with affection.
“Weiwei, I’ll be waiting for you.”
I lowered my eyes to him and smiled.
The moment he turned away, every trace of that smile vanished.
The woman in the mirror looked numb and hollow.
It was as if I had finally received the present I wanted most, only to open the box and discover it had been switched.
No matter how alike the two looked, they were not the same.
My chest felt so stifled that I made an excuse about going to the restroom. At the far end of the corridor, I caught sight of a figure.
So painfully familiar.
He looked exactly like the man who appeared in my dreams.
Lifting my skirts, I raced after him with no thought for anything else. I collided with person after person, but no one could stop me from giving chase.
I followed him all the way to a storage room at the end of the hall.
The door stood ajar.
As though one push would reveal the man I had longed for day and night.
My hand trembling, I stepped forward. Before I could touch the door, however, someone pulled it open from inside.
It was a maintenance worker.
A face I did not recognize.
My violently pounding heart plunged. Still unwilling to give up, I asked, “Who—who came in here just now?”
The man shook his head.
“No one, Miss Song. Perhaps your eyes were playing tricks on you.”
Had I imagined it?
The people searching for me caught up a moment later. Even as they led me away, I kept looking toward the end of the corridor.
But the familiar figure was gone.
Perhaps I simply missed him too much.
Perhaps I really was seeing things.
Friends and relatives filled the wedding hall.
The emcee smiled. “Mr. Duan Yingze, do you take Song Shiwei to be your wife, to remain with her through sickness and health, until death parts you?”
Duan Yingze held my hand and smiled.
“I—”
Before he could finish, someone burst into the hall.
“Duan Yingze!”
It was He Meng.
Wearing a white bridal gown, she walked slowly in from the entrance, her eyes fixed on Duan Yingze with single-minded devotion.
“Yingze, you’re the one I’ve always loved. I didn’t understand my own heart back then. I married someone else and hurt you. I regret it so much. I shouldn’t have married another man just to spite you. I was wrong!
“You are the only man I’ve ever loved, and I know you love me too. Don’t you? I put on the wedding gown you once had made for me because I wanted to ask you one more time: are you willing to marry me now?”
The last words came out almost as a scream.
They carried the resolve of someone staking everything on one final throw.
The guests stared in disbelief.
Duan Yingze regarded He Meng without expression, as if entirely unmoved.
But the truth was in the crushing force of his hand around mine. It hurt.
He was struggling.
I said nothing.
He Meng waited. Slowly, her expression darkened. She laughed bitterly. “I understand. Then I wish you happiness…”
The next second, Duan Yingze raised his head and gave me a complicated look. Then he released my hand.
“I am willing to marry you.”
The room erupted.
He Meng stepped forward, smiling radiantly, and held out her hand to him. “Then take my hand and run away with me.”
“All right.”
Duan Yingze took her hand and left without looking back.
Not even once.
From far away, I could still hear He Meng and Duan Yingze laughing joyfully.
As though they had escaped from a cage.
The banquet hall exploded into chaos. Voices crowded around me from every direction—mockery, scorn, pity.
“Weiwei, don’t be angry. I’ll have someone drag Duan Yingze back right now!”
“We told you from the start that he only loved He Meng. We told you to stop clinging to him, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look—he’s run away with her.”
“Those two are disgusting. They had to stage an elopement to prove theirs is true love and leave you to clean up the mess.”
“Weiwei, please don’t be sad.”
Sad?
I frowned and thought about it carefully.
Then I realized I did not feel the slightest sadness.
Instead, I felt light.
As though a problem that had tormented me for years had finally been solved.
In that instant, I knew with absolute certainty:
Even if He Meng had never appeared,
I would not have married Duan Yingze.
Then I felt a gaze so intense it was impossible to ignore.
I looked toward it and, in a shadowed corner of the hall, saw that familiar figure again.
He wore a dark suit. His face was strikingly handsome, and stubble darkened his jaw, lending him the seasoned appeal of a mature man.
A tiny mole rested beneath one eye like a fallen tear.
As if it held a thousand words he could not say.
He smiled at me. His thin lips parted, and I heard the voice I had missed for so long.
He said,
“Weiwei, I’m back.”