Chapter 1

In my previous life, when the bloody truth was finally laid bare, I lost my mind.

I was the last to know.

Mom urged me to preserve everyone’s happiness so we could all live together in harmony.

I insisted on divorcing Yu Jinnian. There was no room for compromise.

That day, he was with my sister, Fu Zhien, playing with their daughter, Youtian. His phone lit up with the divorce agreement I had sent him. At that instant, something seemed to strike him—he remembered it was my birthday, and that for an entire year he had forgotten to give me so much as a present.

A vast, belated panic seized him. He shoved away Zhien, who had been leaning against him, and even ignored Youtian’s outstretched hands as she haltingly called, “Da… Daddy.” One thought burned through him: he had to come home at once and celebrate my birthday.

Otherwise, he did not dare imagine what would follow.

He drove at breakneck speed while leaving me message after message.

He knew that I had discovered his betrayal and understood the choice I had made. But his mind refused to work. He simply kept talking at me. “Zhiya, please don’t leave me. Don’t give up on me.”

“After all this, I finally understand that you’re the one I love. I love you most. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. I don’t know how I could have made such a mistake for more than a year…”

“I’m coming back to you. I’ll stay with you and the children, and we’ll live out the rest of our lives together.”

“Zhiya… Zhiya… My heart hurts so much it’s splitting apart. I never knew that betraying you would hurt me most of all.”

“Zhiya, you must be waiting for me. How could you truly want a divorce? You only wanted to force me to face reality and choose. I choose you—only you! You won’t blame me, will you? I had my reasons.”

“No, Zhiya. I was wrong. How can I ask you to forgive me? How can I have the nerve?”

“…”

A relationship belongs to two people, but the moment one of them lets go completely, it is over for good.

Yu Jinnian did not understand that. Wrapped up in his own feelings, he raced down the road, urgently forgave himself on my behalf, and then pronounced his own death sentence.

The word divorce swam endlessly before his eyes.

His vision blurred. The wheel slipped from his control, and the car smashed through the guardrail and plunged nose-first into the moat.

Before the icy water swallowed him, he used the last of his strength to message Zhien. “Zhien, I’m leaving. Take good care of Youtian.”

“Zhien, I wish I had never met you.”

“No. If I hadn’t met you, how could I have been with Zhiya? To love Zhiya, I had to know you. But why did you have to exist?”

“Zhiya was supposed to be an only child. How could she have a sister like you? Why were you ever born?”

Yu Jinnian died bewildered by the question of why Fu Zhien had been born.

The moment Zhien received his messages, she went mad.

When I said I went mad, I meant that I had been overcome by extreme emotion. It was an exaggeration.

She truly lost her mind.

She muttered to herself, “That’s right. Sis has an only-child certificate. So why does she have a sister like me?”

“I love Yu Jinnian so much, but he asked why I was born?”

“I could only love him if I was born.”

“Doesn’t he want my love? No, I have to ask him! He loves me. I know he does!”

She called him over and over in a frenzy.

She had to ask why he had said those things.

No one answered.

No one ever would.

Two hours later, the police called her to identify his body.

Without a word, she walked slowly to the thirteenth-floor window and jumped. The apartment had been Yu Jinnian’s gift to her.

Beneath the home where they had loved each other, her body shattered on the ground.

Mom had just coaxed an exhausted Youtian to sleep when she heard the dull impact. She leaned out the window and looked down. Her beloved younger daughter was now a mangled pool of flesh and blood.

That single glance robbed her of speech.

For three whole days, she sat before that window like a clay statue, staring blankly.

After I had handled every detail of Yu Jinnian’s and Fu Zhien’s funerals, I went to say goodbye to her. All I found was Youtian, barely alive and nearly starved to death.

My pent-up fury finally erupted, and I demanded an answer from Mom.

My voice jolted her awake. She mumbled one slurred sentence: “You have to raise Youtian.”

I flung the bankbook Yu Jinnian had left behind in front of her, turned, and walked away. I wanted no further entanglement with her.

Had Mom not tacitly permitted—even encouraged—what happened, how would Zhien ever have dared climb into Yu Jinnian’s bed? His diary recorded everything with painful clarity.

Mom’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

I thought we would never see each other again.

Six months later, she appeared at my door with a scrawny Youtian in her arms.

“She is Zhien and Jinnian’s flesh and blood. You’re her own aunt. You can’t abandon her!” Her eyes were hollow, but her voice was shrill. “If you’re cruel enough to leave your mother and this child to die, we’ll smash our heads open right in front of you! You owe me. You owe Zhien!”

That same day, Mom stared at me and finally voiced the resentment that had festered for half her life. “Do you know why I always loved Zhien more? Why I’ve always believed you owed this family?”

“Before your high school entrance exam, someone introduced me to a divorced man with a child. He liked me, but he said—” Her voice scraped like a rusted blade. “‘Your eldest daughter is about to start university, the most expensive time of her life. I won’t pay to raise someone else’s nearly grown child. A girl that age can never become mine.’”

“I thought about it for three days and three nights, then turned him down.” Her smile looked worse than tears. “I gritted my teeth and sent you to university all by myself. From that day onward, I remembered every bit of hardship. You must remember what you owe me. You must spend your whole life repaying it.”

I stood frozen, cold to the bone. So that was it.

All those years I had desperately tried to give them a good life, and to Mom, it had been nothing but penance.

I did not want to accept it. Yet when I thought again, I realized that, however unintentionally, I really had stood in the way of her happiness.

So I let her and Youtian stay.

I hid none of it from Jingran and Jingxin, my eight-year-old twins.

They were so young, yet they were forced to understand the most absurd family bond imaginable: their father and their aunt had secretly had a daughter, and their grandmother did not blame the aunt at all. Instead, she forced their mother to raise the child.

Their mother had no choice, because in their grandmother’s eyes, it was a debt she owed.

My children watched as I supported Mom until her death with an almost numb detachment. On her deathbed, she clutched my hand and said, “You’re the reason I’ve cried so many tears in this life… Don’t imagine you’re the one who suffered. Zhien and I were the true victims.”

“When I die, leave your entire inheritance to Youtian. That is what you owe her.”

I slowly pulled my hand free.

Then I watched her die amid desperate screams.

After Mom died, Youtian accused me of treating Grandma without love or gratitude.

She punched and kicked me, pouring out years of grief and anger. She hated me for never caring about her, for giving her nothing but money. Grandma had raised her. Grandma was her only family.

She wanted to see me consumed by guilt, regret, and agony.

Jingran yanked her away, while Jingxin threw a stack of documents at her. “Read these before you start raving like a mad dog again.”

With trembling hands, Youtian leafed through the papers and learned the whole truth. “You aren’t my mother? You’re my aunt? My mom stole your husband, but Grandma forced you to raise me? I thought Grandma and I were the victims, but you were the victim all along, and Grandma and I were the villains. Hahaha… I’m one of the villains…”

Youtian disappeared.

I did not look for her. My children never mentioned her again, nor did they ever mention their father.

No—that was not quite true. They spoke of him once.

I had been hospitalized from exhaustion, and they thought I was asleep.

They huddled together and whispered what was in their hearts.

Jingran said that if there was another life, he would rather never be born than be Yu Jinnian’s son—because that would mean I had met Yu Jinnian again, and he did not want me to suffer the same pain.

Jingxin said that if there was another life, she would push Grandma from the top of a building with her own hands, so Grandma could shatter alongside Youtian and Fu Zhien.

Their words left me struggling for breath.