Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I was a bit of a mess. Even after sitting down at my desk, I still couldn’t figure out how I’d managed to escape his grasp.

A colleague saw me and rolled her chair over.

“Weren’t you supposed to go get your marriage certificate this afternoon? Am I seeing things, or do you love work that much?”

I rubbed my temples and gave her a shrug, lacking the energy to explain.

Another email was sitting in my inbox.

It was from the same sender as those chat logs.

The content was simple-what looked like a candid photo of a woman in a white dress pulling a suitcase through an airport.

It came with a message:

“Do you know who she is? Her name is Bai Kexin, Su Yuan’s first love.”

“Su Yuan treats Bai Kexin differently than any other woman. She’s back…”

“Now, do you still think you can keep him?”

…

I felt like this kind of elementary-school-level provocation shouldn’t be enough to make an adult like me waste a single second of my time.

I closed the window and refocused on my reports. I stared at the butterfly clip on the folder, but I couldn’t concentrate for the life of me.

Bai Kexin…

I knew her.

Or rather, anyone who knew Su Yuan back then knew her.

Even though they had broken up a long time ago, Su Yuan’s ex, Bai Kexin, still lived on in people’s idle gossip.

She was also my nightmare back then.

Everyone around us used to bet on how long it would take for Su Yuan to dump me, wondering if a man as incredibly proud as Su Yuan would go crawling back once Bai Kexin returned.

But Su Yuan and I had stayed together until now, and Bai Kexin had never come back.

Now, that strange balance had been shattered.

…

I frowned. It was lunchtime. Usually, I would have asked Su Yuan what he was having for lunch.

It was our habit-sharing the little details of our day. My best friend always teased us, asking why we were still acting like we were in the honeymoon phase when we were about to get married.

But after seeing those chat logs, I didn’t want to send him so much as a single punctuation mark.

I didn’t know what Su Yuan took me for. A fool who was easy to deceive and easy to coax?

While he was playing me like a fiddle, I had actually gone on loving him this much, for this long.

Just thinking about it sent a dull ache through my heart, as if someone were grinding against it.

My phone vibrated. Su Yuan had sent me a photo.

Three dishes and a soup.

He asked me if I’d eaten yet.

I stared at the picture for two seconds, then I deleted him from WeChat.