Chapter 1
The day I discovered I was the heroine of an angst novel, I was in the hospital having the bandages removed from my eyes.
The moment they came off, an avalanche of information crashed into my mind.
I saw my future. I was destined to become a walking blood bank and organ reserve for his untouchable first love, the designated scapegoat for his childhood sweetheart, and the woman he would torment in body and soul until my entire family was dead. In the end, I would kill myself. Only then would he finally understand his feelings, clutch my ashes, and spend the rest of his life drowning in regret.
I stood frozen, unable to recover for a long time.
There was something I simply could not understand.
If I was already dead, why did it never occur to him to apologize with his own life?
The young caregiver mistook my silence for disappointment that Qin Si had not come.
She cautiously tried to make excuses for him.
“Mr. Qin should be here soon. He said he’d come today, and he always keeps his word.”
I looked at her young, fresh face.
Her concern was so genuine.
I smiled. “All right. I’ll wait.”
But before long, a message from Lin Xueqin appeared on my phone.
“You may have saved him, but don’t try to hold it over his head. He doesn’t have time to pick you up, so make your own way home.”
Lin Xueqin was Qin Si’s childhood sweetheart.
In the novel, she deserved half the credit for every cruel thing Qin Si did to me.
She considered herself no match for his untouchable first love and had graciously withdrawn from the contest. But when someone as unremarkable as me picked up the prize she had abandoned and became Qin Si’s girlfriend, she began tormenting me in hopes that I would remove myself from the game.
She certainly knew how to pick on the easiest target.
After waiting for what felt like forever, I called Qin Si. Unsurprisingly, he rejected the call.
The caregiver looked at me with pity while struggling to hide it.
What a difficult job I had given her.
The truth was, everyone could see that Qin Si treated me badly.
I had saved his life.
He sent me to the best hospital and hired the best caregiver.
The one thing he refused to do was visit me.
That was no way to treat the person who had saved him.
I left the hospital on my own, the caregiver hovering protectively as if I were made of porcelain.
I took a cab back to Qin Si’s villa, packed a few things, left, and rented an apartment as quickly as I could.
I needed time to work out why a perfectly sane young woman like me had ever allowed someone to torture her body and soul—and eventually harvest her kidney.
When I thought about it, the answer was simple: the sunk cost had become too high.
I had invested too much of myself in Qin Si, lowering my boundaries for him one step at a time. That was why turning around and walking away had felt so hard.
At first, I had been unable to accept that Qin Si had an untouchable first love. I had made scenes and fought with him over her. Yet whenever I did, some crisis would soon befall me, and Qin Si would just happen to help. Gratitude forced me to compromise.
His childhood sweetheart had not started provoking me yesterday, either. He always dismissed it as mere willfulness. If I wanted to stay beside him, he said, I naturally had to learn to indulge her little moods.
Looking back, I realized that we were all the same age, yet I alone had somehow been stripped of the right to be willful.
His double standards had always been there. I had simply refused to see them.
That would never happen again.
First, I sent Qin Si a message: “We’re done.”
A few short words, carrying the weight of three years of love.
Then I messaged Lin Xueqin.
“Once there was a fox who couldn’t reach the grapes, so it declared they must be sour. Later, someone else ate those grapes. The fox grew jealous and chased her like a mad dog, biting and refusing to let go. Well, I’m here to tell you that the grapes really are sour. I’ve thrown them on the ground. If you want them, go pick them up.”
Three days later, Qin Si found me.
Standing outside my door, he said coldly, “Open up. I know you’re in there.”
He truly was all-powerful. It had taken him no time at all to track me down.
I opened the door.
He stood outside; I stood within.
Our eyes met, and neither of us spoke.
Qin Si had been blessed with a handsome face and eyes that always seemed full of feeling. When he stood in the dim hallway with his brow faintly furrowed, even the air took on the timeless beauty of an old painting.
Some people were born carrying a thousand stories. The smallest gesture from them could become a work of art.
He cast me a sidelong glance, walked in without invitation, and seated himself on the sofa.
“Why did you send that message to Ah Xue?” he demanded. “Go apologize to her.”
I left the door wide open and leaned against its frame, mildly surprised.
The moment Qin Si spoke, I saw a wave of malice surge toward me. Before it could touch me, it rebounded and struck him instead. The towering violet aura of fortune around him scattered in every direction.
Could tormenting me actually damage his fortune?
I remained silent for too long, and Qin Si lost his patience.
His face hardened, suppressed fury simmering in his eyes.
“Zhao Mange, are you even listening to me?”
I came back to myself. “What year is it?”
He stared for a moment, then gave a scornful laugh.
“What game are you playing now?”
That single word—now—cut me deeply.
How little did he trust me? How certain was he that I could never leave, to speak to me with such casual cruelty?
Suddenly, I could not be bothered to explain anything more.
“It is 2023,” I said calmly. “The Qing dynasty ended one hundred and eleven years ago. We have broken up. You and I have nothing to do with each other. She doesn’t deserve an apology from me. Now get out.”
His certainty froze on his face. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“Are you angry because I didn’t pick you up from the hospital?”
I pointed at the open door without saying a word.
Qin Si cared too much about his dignity to linger. His face turned icy as he swept past me.
“You have one hour to apologize to Ah Xue. This is your last chance.”
The harsher his words became, the faster his fortune drained away.
I slammed the door in his face.
I had believed that seeing my future so clearly would spare me the pain.
I was wrong.
Every word he spoke still pierced my heart.
An hour later, my phone rang.
Qin Si.
I switched it off and slept as if the world had ended.
When I turned it on the next morning, countless messages flooded in. The most important was from Human Resources.
“Ms. Zhao, your illness has held up a great deal of work. The company has found someone else to take over your position. Please come in and complete your resignation when you have time.”
I worked at Qin Si’s company.
I had saved his life, and the miser could not even bring himself to fire me properly.
I replied, “Is the company terminating me?”
“You are not suited to this position. The company hopes you will resign voluntarily.”
“The designs I completed before my hospitalization just won the company a major award. If the company intends to terminate me, please send me a formal notice. Otherwise, I will return to work as usual. If the company is trying to avoid paying lawful compensation, I will file for labor arbitration.”
A long string of ellipses appeared, followed by another message.
“You offended someone. Giving me a hard time won’t help you. You’re close to Mr. Qin—why don’t you ask him?”
I stared at that line for a long time.
Perhaps that was Qin Si’s plan: force me to submit and go begging to him.
But anything obtained through a personal favor had to be repaid with another favor. The law, on the other hand, gave me the right to stand tall.
If domineering CEOs were all legally illiterate, I would give this one a lesson.
I went to work as usual.
The receptionist gaped when she saw me and hurriedly picked up the phone to report my arrival.
My desk had already been buried beneath a heap of junk. It had clearly been dragged over in a hurry and tossed down at random. Around the corner, someone was hiding and panting for breath. The instant our eyes met, they lowered their head in panic.
They had gone to such trouble to come up with this childish way of dealing with me.
I photographed the desk, then pushed every piece of junk onto the floor.
Just as I turned on my computer, someone stopped me.
“Zhao Mange, you’re no longer an employee of my brother’s company. You can’t just touch company property.”
The voice was soft and smiling, yet perfectly designed to provoke anger.
I looked up and saw Lin Xueqin.
Qin Si stood beside her, aloof and indifferent, as if none of this had anything to do with him.
A description of him from the novel suddenly came back to me: Amid the countless splendors of the mortal world, he walked alone, untouched by dust, for nothing in this world was worthy of entering his heart.
Once, I had found those words beautiful. They made him seem fragile, lonely, and deserving of tenderness.
Living through it myself, I understood the truth. Qin Si was selfish to the bone, and he had never been worth risking my life to save.
I ignored Lin Xueqin and looked directly at him.
“Mr. Qin, are you terminating me?”
Before Qin Si could answer, Lin Xueqin snapped, “You’ve been fired. Can’t you understand human speech?”
“Ms. Lin, this company belongs to the Qin family. Come back and give orders after you become Mrs. Qin. Until then, it isn’t your place.”
Lin Xueqin went pale and looked to Qin Si for help.
He stared at me as though he were graciously offering me one last opportunity.
I knew he was waiting for me to yield and apologize to Lin Xueqin.
I simply refused to speak.
At last, Qin Si’s patience ran out.
“Resign,” he said, crisp and cold.
Resign.
Not be terminated.
So this had been his idea after all.
Why had I expected him to act like a human being?
I drew a deep breath.
“I think this is an excellent company. I have no intention of resigning.”
Lin Xueqin exploded.
“Have you no shame, Zhao Mange? You’ve been fired!”
“Dismissal for cause is an administrative penalty imposed by a company on an employee. If I violated company policy, please notify me in writing and specify the exact rule I broke.”
“You haven’t come to work in days. Isn’t that enough?”
“I was injured saving the company president. If that counts as a workplace injury, Mr. Qin owes me proper compensation. If it does not, then he ought to be thanking his lifesaver with a ceremonial banner instead of trying to destroy her reputation by claiming she skipped work.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
They knew Qin Si and I were close, but they did not know I had been hospitalized because I saved him.
In the past, I would never have spoken of it. My parents had taught me to live modestly and never expect repayment for kindness.
Now I understood that such generosity should be reserved for decent people.
The wicked never thought of repaying kindness. They treated every sacrifice as their due. With people like that, you had to rip away the human skin they wore and let the world see the monster beneath it.
Lin Xueqin’s face turned white.
She opened her mouth again, but Qin Si cut her off.
“Zhao Mange, the company is formally terminating your employment. Go complete the paperwork with HR.”
He turned and strode away, back straight, every step sharp with authority.
Lin Xueqin hurried after him.
“Wait for me!”
I looked away and forced down the last trace of pain in my heart.
I had once loved the fierce, commanding energy in his stride. Now, as I watched his fortune pour away, I suddenly found it easy to let go.
He had always known what he was doing.
He knew this would hurt me. He simply wanted to watch me react, watch me surrender piece by piece and lose myself. Only then could he feel that I belonged entirely within his grasp.
The novel said Qin Si had endured a difficult childhood. When he returned to the Qin family, he gained money, prestige, and power, but his early suffering left him consumed by insecurity. Only what he could hold firmly in his palm—what satisfied his need to win—felt truly his.
That was why tormenting the heroine and watching her retreat gave him such satisfaction.
When she finally died, his inner defenses collapsed. He spent the rest of his life regretting her death while secretly basking in the knowledge that someone had once loved him completely and selflessly.
Perhaps heroines in angst novels were all born with the urge to erase themselves for someone else’s happiness.
I was not.
I was certain that when the bandages came off my eyes, they had taken my lovesick brain with them.