I’d been married for three years, and my husband remembered every single one of my periods, knew all my dislikes and preferences by heart. Until his childhood sweetheart, Aria Smith, brought me chestnuts from her hometown. Morning sickness hit me hard, and I spat out the chestnut in my mouth. But Aria broke down crying and ran to complain to my husband. “Bella ate the offering I prepared for the mountain god! What am I going to do? The mountain god will punish me!” My husband, Tristan Hall, eyes red with anger, confronted me in disbelief. “Do you know the mountain god’s wrath could kill Aria? When did you become so vicious?” I was too shocked to speak. Before I could tell him I was pregnant, he locked me in the basement cold storage. “You’ll stay in there and reflect on what you’ve done. Come out when you’ve learned your lesson.” After he left, Aria smiled sweetly as she turned on the refrigeration. “Bella, Tristan belongs to me and me alone!” I couldn’t push the door open. The temperature kept dropping. All that awaited me was endless cold.
Icy air rushed at me from all directions, piercing into my bones. I endured the cramping pain in my abdomen, crawled up from the floor, and pounded on the cold storage door with all my strength. “It’s so cold! Tristan, let me out!” “I know I was wrong! Let me out!” My lower abdomen began cramping again. But no matter how hard I screamed for help with every ounce of strength I had, it remained quiet outside. “Honey… I’m so cold…” I felt a tearing pain in my lower abdomen. A warm flow slowly ran down my thighs. My hands were covered in blood, my voice panicked and trembling. “Honey! Tristan! Please save our baby!” “Please!!!” He never heard my cries. Or he didn’t want to hear them. The temperature around me kept dropping. My mind grew foggy. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. I shivered from the cold, curling up in the corner. Soon, a layer of frost formed on my eyelashes. I exhaled cold breath, my teeth chattering. But no matter how much I called for help, no one responded. The air in the cold storage was thin. A suffocating feeling engulfed me like a tide. I wanted to breathe. But it was too cold. Too cold to have any strength. My vision began to blur, my ears buzzing. In the endless cold and despair, my consciousness gradually faded. My body curled in the corner. After exhaling my last warm breath, I wasn’t cold anymore. My whole body felt burning hot. My brain couldn’t think. Unconsciously, I stripped off all my clothes. Scenes of Tristan proposing to me flashed through my mind. He knelt on one knee, the tenderness in his eyes nearly drowning me. “Bella, I, Tristan, swear to you that I will protect you for life.” “Liar.” After uttering those last words, I finally closed my heavy eyelids. When I opened my eyes again, my soul was floating above. Looking down, I saw my body curled in the corner of the cold storage. Like an ice sculpture. I was dead? Dead at the hands of the man I loved most in this life. After coming home from work, Tristan felt uneasy. “Bella!” He called out several times, but no one answered. “Why is there no sound?” He frowned and walked toward the cold storage. Aria suddenly ran over, her voice clingy and aggrieved. “Tristan, you’re back! I’m starving!” Tristan was carrying my favorite chestnuts. His eyes swept around the room, his steps pausing as he asked in confusion: “I brought her favorite candied chestnuts. By the way, did you see her this afternoon?”
Aria stammered, unable to speak. “Tristan, are you looking for Bella?” “She packed her things… and then left…” “Right! She said not to tell you, to make you angry!” A flash of inexplicable loss crossed Tristan’s eyes. He casually tossed the newly bought chestnuts to Aria. “Since she doesn’t want them, the chestnuts are yours.” The next morning when he left, he felt vaguely uneasy. But he still smiled at our wedding photo on the wall. “Darling, I’m heading out!” My soul followed him as he went to the courthouse. The Tristan in court was completely different from the one at home with me. He was sharp-tongued with clear logic. He left the opposing lawyer speechless. He won a commercial smuggling case worth a billion dollars. No one would imagine that this righteous attorney was the murderer of his own wife! After work, a colleague joked: “Attorney Hall wins the case and won’t even celebrate with us?” “Want to rush home to your wife and kids?” Tristan laughed softly, his earlobes turning red. “Not yet! Although I love kids, I respect Bella’s wishes.” “After all, having children isn’t just my decision. Bella would have to sacrifice more.” I held my breath. If I hadn’t experienced all this firsthand, I might have fallen into the death trap woven from his tenderness and sweetness. His tenderness was all fake pretense. A friend’s voice carried a trace of doubt. “It’s already ten-thirty. How come I haven’t heard your Bella call looking for you?” I held my breath. But Tristan just glanced at his phone casually. “Oh! You mean that!” Tristan spread his hands, laughing helplessly. “She must have blocked me again. Looks like I’m sleeping on the couch tonight!” I did used to block him after arguments. But I never thought he wouldn’t even make a single call to me. I held back my tears. So this was what it felt like when love and hate intertwined—pain piercing to the bone. When he got home, Tristan carefully prepared a candlelit dinner. He arranged my favorite roses. This was his unique way of apologizing. “Bella, come out and eat!” But he called again and again. Still no one answered. I floated beside him, listening to him sigh. “Bella, if you’re angry at me, you can say it directly. There’s no need to deliberately eat the chestnuts and take it out on an innocent person.” “If something happens to Aria, neither you nor I can bear that responsibility.” Aria also said with red eyes, adding fuel to the fire: “Tristan, Bella didn’t do it on purpose.” “But I peeled those chestnuts one by one for the mountain god. My nails are all split…” “Watching her waste them like that, it hurts my heart.” As she spoke, she threw herself into Tristan’s arms, squeezing out two tears. Tristan looked down, his eyes instantly reddening with heartache at her aggrieved appearance. “Aria, don’t cry. She’s probably just throwing a tantrum again. Maybe she went to her parents’ house.” I trembled with rage. But I could no longer grab his collar and demand answers. He clearly said I was his lifelong love. Why didn’t he believe me? Why did he believe whatever Aria said? Aria sat across from him, her face full of smugness. Accompanying him to enjoy this romantic candlelit dinner. As if Aria were more like his wife, more like the mistress of this house than I was. And I was just an unwanted outsider. But late at night at midnight, looking at our wedding photo on the wall, Tristan tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He finally called my mom. “Mom, um… did Bella come home?”
“She had a fight with me and ran away from home. I’m worried about how to coax her back.” My parents laughed and teased on the other end: “That’s what you get for spoiling her. How could she really be angry at you?” “What couple doesn’t fight at the head of the bed and make up at the foot? Just coax her a bit more.” “Bella has been sensible since childhood. Five days from now is her birthday—we’ll come over and talk to her.” My heart skipped a beat. Would they discover my body? Aria was eavesdropping at the door, slowly curling her lips into a smile. Suddenly the circuit breaker went ‘snap.’ “Mom, Dad, I think the power just went out here. Let me check. I’ll talk to you later.” After hanging up, he turned off his phone. The ‘humble and gentle’ mask on his face instantly disappeared. Replaced by cold indifference. Too bad no one knew that the wife he described as throwing tantrums was already dead in that cold storage. Her body had already started to rot and stink. “Bella, did you trip the breaker?” But he couldn’t hear my response. Only deadly silence. A faint stench drifted out from the basement. Tristan wrinkled his nose, his face full of disgust. He held a flashlight and knocked on the cold storage door. “Bella? Bella Dream?” “Are you in there?” The breaker had tripped, the cold storage was no longer refrigerating. A swarm of rats smelled the stench and rushed in through the ventilation ducts. They frantically pounced on me in the corner. But he couldn’t see any of it. Tristan knocked twice, then waited a few seconds outside the door. A rat suddenly scurried past his feet. Aria ran out from the bedroom sleepily. “Bella is deliberately hiding from you!” “She’s hiding in some corner watching, watching you worry and panic over her.” “When she stops being angry, she’ll definitely come find you.” Tristan nodded, seeming to believe I was deliberately avoiding him. The fifth day after my death. The iron door of the cold storage could no longer contain the stench. Tristan, who was taking a shower in the bathroom, smelled it and couldn’t help but frown. He inadvertently glanced at the pregnancy test in the trash can. Two lines. Tristan’s furrowed brow gradually relaxed. Joy flickered in his eyes. “Pregnant!” “Really! Running around while pregnant! So irresponsible!” Just as he was getting happy, Aria suddenly rushed in. She snatched the pregnancy test from his hand, deliberately pouting. “Tristan, that’s mine.” “Don’t worry, I’ll go to the hospital to get rid of this baby and won’t tell Bella…” Tristan tiredly stroked her head. “I’m sorry, Aria! I was drunk that night and mistook you for Bella… that’s why I felt so guilty toward you. That’s why I treated her that way…” The two snuggled together. The tender scene of mutual affection deeply pierced me. But floating in mid-air, I still saw the triumphant smile at the corner of Aria’s mouth. After he coaxed Aria to sleep, he pulled out my designer perfume. “It stinks!” He irritably raised the perfume and sprayed it everywhere. Trying to cover up the stench. “Which corner has a dead rat?” But he was too lazy to go look in the basement again. And I died in the basement cold storage, one body, two lives.
On my birthday, my parents came to visit. As soon as my mom walked in, she praised the wedding photo on the wall. “Look how beautiful this is, what a perfect match!” Tristan looked at me in the wedding photo, touched his nose, and smiled sweetly. “Bella didn’t mind that I was dirt poor back then!” I floated above their heads. Remembering how I willingly endured hardship with him, I now found it utterly ironic. Mom suddenly furrowed her brow and wandered through the rooms. “What’s this smell… so foul!” She muttered to herself, coming to the basement door. “It’s coming from down there…” Tristan covered his nose. There really was a smell of dead rats that even perfume couldn’t cover. “Looks like Bella is still angry at me and wants to prank me.” “It’s fine, I’ll go clean the basement later.” Watching him lie and slander me without even blinking, I was so angry my chest heaved up and down. Mom’s expression changed as she nodded. “It’s our fault for spoiling Bella.” “Tristan is successful in his career, has a good temper, and dotes on Bella. He’s a rare good man.” “With Bella married to him, I can rest easy.” Tristan’s image as the good son-in-law was flawless. Even my parents were completely fooled. Dad shook his head angrily. “This child… always causing trouble.” “Tristan is so busy with work, yet he has to indulge her tantrums.” “No way! Call her over here. I need to give her a piece of my mind!” Aria seized the opportunity to come out and comfort them. They chatted happily in the living room. As if Aria were the mistress of this house. No one noticed me. She squeezed in, affectionately holding my mom’s hand. “Mr.Dream, Mrs.Dream, I’ll help you talk to Bella.” “Mrs.Dream, can I chat with you? You remind me of my mom!” “Would you accept me as your goddaughter?” My mom readily agreed, then suddenly frowned. “I have no problem with it, but we need to ask Bella’s opinion.” “Bella is pregnant. We promise not to disturb her rest!” “Right! We haven’t seen our precious daughter in so long!” The warmth on Tristan’s face instantly faded. He frowned and asked again: “Mom, who did you say is pregnant?” Mom smiled and repeated. “Bella, didn’t she tell you?” Tristan suddenly remembered something, his face turning pale. The faint stench grew stronger and stronger. Irritation flashed in his eyes. “Why is it… so foul?” Aria immediately waved her hands, blocking their way. “It’s nothing, just meat that rotted in the cold storage…” Tristan nodded too. “Rats are running wild in the basement. Better not go down there yet.” But Mom’s eyes were determined. “What’s to be afraid of! A few little rats won’t eat anyone!” “That stubborn girl Bella must be hiding down there. She doesn’t even mind the stench!” She even went around him, heading straight for the basement. Tristan tried to stop her. “Mom, don’t go down there. The rats will bite!” “Come back up! If something happens to you, Bella will definitely blame me!” Aria’s face turned deathly pale as she timidly grabbed my mom’s hand. But Mom sensed something was wrong and shook off her hand. With a serious expression, she opened the cold storage door. Instantly, a nauseating stench burst out.
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