Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Song Cheng stared fixedly at my tattoo. “No need to check further,” he said. “It’s her.”

He appeared so composed, though his face was deathly pale. I heard the police officer tell him, “The killer has an antisocial personality disorder. He was stabbing people indiscriminately at the mall. Your girlfriend was trying to pull a pregnant woman to safety when she tripped and fell. It was an act of bravery.”

That wasn’t how it happened. I had kindly tried to pull that pregnant woman along so we could escape together, but when the killer was about to catch up, she shoved me back and ran away herself.

I was stabbed over twenty times by that antisocial killer and died from excessive blood loss.

Talk about bad luck.

I stood in front of Song Cheng and cried. *It hurts so much, Song Cheng.*

*It really hurts.*

But it was a good thing he didn’t let the police pull back the white sheet; my body must have been a gruesome sight.

Song Cheng stumbled slightly as he walked out of the morgue.

Then, he leaned silently against the wall outside.

After a long time, he called my parents, presumably to notify them of my death.

But the call didn’t go through.

This wasn’t surprising. My parents divorced when I was very young and had no affection for me. Likely fearing I would ask them for money, they had cut off all contact years ago.

However, the police were quite efficient. An older officer patted Song Cheng on the shoulder and handed him a business card. “This is the contact info for the funeral home. Have them come pick her up as soon as possible.”

“The weather is so hot. She’ll start to decompose in a couple of days. You can’t just leave her here.”

From the moment I was murdered to the moment I became a handful of ash in Song Cheng’s palm, not even twelve hours had passed.

Song Cheng handled my remains and the funeral arrangements with cold efficiency, signing papers and following procedures at the police station with methodical precision.

I widened my eyes, searching his handsome, pale face for even the slightest trace of sorrow.

Just a little bit. Couldn’t he shed even a single tear for me?

Even if you’d raised a dog for this many years, you’d show some sign of grief, wouldn’t you?

But unfortunately, I found nothing.

I followed Song Cheng as he drifted back home. He sat on the sofa in a daze, looking as if he were stunned by the sudden turn of events.

Not just him-even I felt like this was all a dream.

One moment I was perfectly fine, arguing with him over his ex-girlfriend, and the next, I was murdered, becoming a wandering soul lingering in the human world.

I can never go back.

I’m dead. I was stabbed over twenty times, and every minute before my death was agonizing. My body has been reduced to a handful of ash, and now only a wandering soul remains, greedily and desperately trying to find some shred of evidence from my boyfriend that he actually liked me.

What a pathetic, pitiful life.

Maybe I’ll vanish before the sun rises tomorrow. I suddenly felt a twinge of fear.

Song Cheng stared at the ceiling with wide eyes, his thoughts unknown. I gently drifted over and rested my head on his shoulder.

I was trying to draw some warmth from him.

When the sun came up the next day, I surprisingly hadn’t vanished. I turned to look for Song Cheng.

He was on the phone with Qin Xingyun. They were going on a business trip together to City B to handle a client’s case.

Oh, right. Both he and Qin Xingyun are lawyers.

Last year, Qin Xingyun jumped ship to join the Red Circle Law Firm where he worked, and Song Cheng is a partner at that firm.

After that, we began to have frequent, explosive arguments.

I remember one time when I was so furious I lost my filter. “Song Cheng, do you want to break up and rekindle things with your ex? If you want to break up, just say so.”

He stood in the living room with the light behind him, his handsome face expressionless. He just looked at me coldly without saying a word.

Later, after the fight, I regretted it. I was the one who built the bridge to reconcile. In the kitchen, I wiped away my tears and asked, “Song Cheng, do you want pork and cabbage dumplings for dinner, or shrimp and egg?”

He said pork and cabbage.

And so we made up, both of us pretending the argument had never happened.

Song Cheng began packing his luggage after hanging up. I thought that after my death, he would at least be despondent for a short while, but it was clear.

My death caused no emotional ripple in him at all.

It didn’t even delay his business trip schedule.

I never imagined he would be like this after I died-going to work and coming home with such regularity, sleeping late and waking early.

His days followed a set routine. Aside from frequently staring into space for long periods, he acted as if I had never existed in his life.

I was like a bubble that had vanished from his world, leaving not a single trace behind.

How heartless.

Maybe on this business trip, fighting side-by-side with Qin Xingyun and staying in the same hotel, the old flame might even reignite between the two of them. Who knows?

Anyway, I’m already dead.

Yes, I’m dead.

I suddenly felt a sense of weariness and a coldness in my heart.

It’s strange that one still has a heart after death. This pain branched out from my heart, creeping along veins where blood no longer flowed, leaving me in unbearable agony.

I felt as if my entire body was hollow, floating weightlessly in mid-air.

I heard the sound of the door closing. I had originally intended to follow Song Cheng.

But then I thought, even if I went, what would it matter?

Even if they kissed right in front of me, there was nothing I could do. I stared at the ceiling with open eyes and, in the deathly silence of the house, began to reminisce about every little moment between Song Cheng and me.

I had always known he didn’t love me.

But I never expected that even after being by his side for all these years, he truly didn’t have even the slightest bit of affection for me.