Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I found out my husband, Ji Huaike, had lied to me three months ago.

The lung cancer he had finally managed to get under control suddenly spread.

That night, he coughed until dawn, bringing up so much blood. He only barely fell asleep when the sky was beginning to lighten.

With swollen red eyes and disheveled hair, I sat beside the bed on the verge of a breakdown, staring at him as my fingers traced his handsome features little by little.

I fought desperately to hold back my sobs, terrified I might wake him.

At the hospital, the examination revealed multiple metastatic tumors in his brain. The doctor said the surgery would be extremely difficult.

I didn’t dare imagine how I was supposed to go on living after my husband left this world.

Ji Huaike and I had met and fallen in love in college. From then until now, we had spent a full fourteen years together.

Six years dating. Eight years married.

In the thirty-some years of my life, he had occupied fourteen of them.

Ji Huaike was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer three years ago.

I accompanied him to every major hospital we could find, both in China and abroad, and in the end, we were fortunate enough to get an appointment with a renowned elderly traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Jing City.

A single prescription from that old doctor managed to hold back Ji Huaike’s life just as it was about to enter its final countdown.

After two doses of the medicine, Ji Huaike’s difficulty breathing eased considerably.

But the preparation process for the herbal medicine was complicated.

Some ingredients had to be soaked in advance, some boiled first, some added later, and several precious medicinal herbs had to be decocted separately three or four times. Even the temperature of the medicinal broth and the exact time it was taken came with requirements.

I was afraid no one else would do it properly, so I handled everything myself.

Every day, I made him all kinds of nutritious meals in different ways to maintain his strength and immunity.

I handed off the company’s affairs and spent the past three years at home taking care of him with all my heart. My only wish was for him to stay by my side a few more years.

Under my care, his health gradually recovered. He could even keep a normal daily routine like any healthy person.

Just three months earlier, at his follow-up appointment, the doctor had clearly said everything was well controlled. Yet in the span of a few short months, we still received his death sentence.

When the doctor said his cancer cells had spread throughout his body and that a large number of metastatic tumors had appeared in his brain, I went completely blank. My legs gave out, and I collapsed to the floor.

Ji Huaike, on the other hand, was very calm. Or maybe he was only pretending to be.

He helped me up from the floor and pulled me into his arms.

Suppressing his own emotions, he said, “Ah Ran, this day was always going to come. I’ve already lived three years longer than the doctors estimated back then. Now the knife hanging over my head has finally fallen. My only regret is that I can’t grow old with you. Leaving you to walk the rest of this life alone… I’m sorry.”

At that moment, I even wanted to die with him.

Looking back on how I felt then, saying it was like ten thousand arrows piercing my heart wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

I’ve gone a little off topic.

Let’s get back to how I discovered that Ji Huaike had lied to me.