I rescued three wolf pups from the streets, and they all grew up to be shifters. They clung to me every single day, practically dragging me into bed. Once, when I was completely exhausted and limp, I overheard them talking: “Tsk, with her weak body and stamina, she actually dares to keep three of us?” “It’s fine. Once she can’t take it anymore, she’ll just give us to her younger sister.” “She can’t even get out of bed right now. Give it a few more days, and she’ll give up on keeping us entirely.” My vision went black. I immediately grabbed my phone and called my sister: “Aren’t you always complaining about being frustrated? I’ll give you all three of my wolves. Give me that platonic snake shifter of yours!” 1 The conversation in the living room continued. They thought I was asleep. I lowered my eyes, looking at the faint glow of the bedside lamp illuminating the various red marks on my wrists and legs—all undeniable evidence of our intimacy. “She wouldn’t actually give us all to her sister, would she?” “Yeah, which means she’ll probably keep one of us.” “Tsk, Vivian is so wooden and boring. You guys can stay if you want, but I’m not doing it.” “…I don’t want to, either.” “Whatever, we’ll leave it to fate. Is she awake yet?” “Definitely not. She cried so hard she almost passed out earlier. How could she wake up so easily?” “She’s so weak.” “Let’s wake her up later and go at it for a few more days straight. She’ll probably give up on keeping us then.” My vision went completely dark. Pale-faced, I grabbed my phone and dialed my sister, Sabrina. She answered quickly. “What’s up, sis?” My voice was pure desperation: “Didn’t you say you were incredibly frustrated lately? I’ll give you all three of mine. Give me that platonic snake shifter of yours.” She paused, not rejecting the idea, but testing the waters. “Can we do that? Are they willing?” I went silent for a moment. “They like you.” She understood immediately. It was the truth. Everyone always liked her more. Sabrina thought about it. “I guess that works. Your place is too small anyway; it wasn’t a good environment for them. But… that snake of mine? He’s completely freezing and detached.” I said, “Is he platonic? If he is, then I want him. I didn’t plan on doing that with him anyway. I’m so drained lately, I just need him to do chores around the house. I’m just terrified he’ll be like these three wolves…” She laughed. “You’re overthinking it. Even I haven’t been able to tame him. There is zero chance he’ll be interested in you.” Before I could say anything else, she finalized the deal: “I’ll come pick them up this afternoon.” The second the call disconnected, my bedroom door was pushed open. “You’re awake?” A lazy voice drifted in, and I met a pair of sharp, mocking eyes. He walked over and reached to pull back my blanket. My voice was hoarse: “…Wait!” He narrowed his eyes, leaning in close. “What’s wrong, Master?” “I’m too exhausted. I need to rest,” I said softly. “You can’t do that,” he said casually. “Master, since you decided to keep us, you have to be responsible. We aren’t even full yet. If you rest, what are we supposed to do?” With that, he grabbed my chin. Just as his lips were about to touch mine, I shoved him away with all my strength. “Sabrina is coming to pick you all up this afternoon!” The man in front of me froze. Even the two leaning against the doorframe paused. “We…” Chase tilted his head. “Which two of us?” They assumed I was splitting them up and giving two to Sabrina. I shook my head. “All of you.” 2 When I found the three wolf pups, it was a damp, rainy day. They were collapsed on the concrete, their fur matted with blood, looking absolutely pathetic. I originally wanted to just walk away. But one of them weakly wagged its tail twice, then slowly wrapped it around my ankle. Feeling a pang of pity, I took them home. Under my care, they recovered beautifully. After a while, they hit their growth spurt— And all of them transformed into beastmen. I should have sent them away, but the shifter rescue shelter told me they were incredibly attached to me and already viewed me as their master. If I abandoned them abruptly, it would cause them immense psychological trauma. Looking at those three pairs of beautiful eyes, my sympathy got the better of me, and I kept them. They said they didn’t have names, so I named them myself: Hunter, Chase, and Ryder. Young, hot-blooded wolf shifters had an insane amount of energy. Even in human form, they couldn’t control the twitching of their ears and tails, constantly clinging to me with sticky affection. Until one day, when Sabrina called me. “Sister, are you still refusing to come home for the arranged marriage?” I pushed Ryder, who was burying his face in my chest, away. “That man has had three wives die under mysterious circumstances, and he’s ugly.” She paused, then whispered, “But his family is rich…” I lowered my eyes. Because of this exact reason, after I fiercely fought against the marriage, my family completely cut off my finances. But they didn’t want to sacrifice Sabrina to that man either, so they could only subtly and aggressively pressure me. Sensing my low mood, Chase, who was always good at reading the room, narrowed his beautiful eyes, wrapped his arms affectionately around me, and comforted me. “If you’re uncomfortable, just hang up.” “What’s that noise?” Sabrina asked. I used the opportunity to change the subject, complaining, “I found three injured wolf pups a while ago. They recently shifted into human form and they are way too clingy. I honestly can’t handle it.” The other end of the line was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m so jealous. That snake shifter at my house won’t even let me touch him.” I froze for a second, then comforted her, “He’ll fall for you eventually.” Sabrina didn’t argue, just let out a light hum. After that phone call ended… The next day, Sabrina showed up at my apartment carrying bags of expensive gifts. Wearing a gorgeous, delicate white sundress, she smiled brightly. “Sister, surprise!” I instinctively turned around. The gazes of all three wolf shifters were entirely glued to her. I quietly turned back. Honestly, I was used to it. Everyone always preferred Sabrina. She was radiant and charming, effortlessly drawing everyone’s attention. Compared to her, I was just wooden and ordinary. Sabrina looked around. “Sister, your place is nowhere near as big as the mansion. Is there even enough room for them to move around?” I paused. “It’s fine, I guess.” Then, I watched Hunter, who had always been aloof and careless, fix his gaze entirely on Sabrina. Chase was still wearing his breathtakingly seductive smile, but that smile was now directed solely at her. Even Ryder, who usually had a terrible temper, propped his head on his hand and stared at her, his wolf ears twitching rapidly. And Sabrina acted as if she didn’t notice a thing, innocently sipping her water. At that very moment, I knew. My things were going to dutifully march over to Sabrina’s side. Again. After that day. The gentle, affectionate intimacy vanished. They became more vicious each time, acting as if they wanted me to die in that bed. Until I heard their conversation with my own ears. I hadn’t guessed wrong. They really had fallen for Sabrina, even after just one meeting. 3 Afternoon came quickly. There was a knock on the door; Sabrina had arrived. The apartment, which had been dead silent all afternoon, felt even more suffocating. “I mean,” Hunter leaned against the wall, sizing me up with intense aggression, seemingly in disbelief. “You’re really going to give all three of us to her?” I gave a simple “Mm.” Chase smiled and asked, “Not even keeping one for yourself?” I countered, “Do any of you want to stay and keep me company?” The atmosphere froze again. No one answered. Finally, it was Ryder who stood up to open the door. The young man rolled his eyes dismissively, a sneer playing on his lips. “Stop acting like the good guy.” When the door opened, Sabrina’s bright, cheerful smile greeted us. “Hi guys! My sister already told you, right? You all belong to me now.” Ryder laughed recklessly, leaning in close. “Hello there, my new master.” Sabrina looked him over with satisfaction, then scanned Chase and Hunter. “You guys are gorgeous,” she praised genuinely. “Are your bags packed?” Sabrina asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Never mind, you don’t need to pack. I’m sure my sister couldn’t afford to buy you anything good anyway. When we get to the mansion, I’ll buy you entirely new wardrobes.” Hunter gave a lazy hum of agreement. Chase looked at Sabrina, then glanced back at me. I showed no emotion. For a moment, all eyes fell on me. Noticing this, Sabrina walked up to me. “Don’t worry, sis. I’ll definitely take better care of them than you did. Once you’re done playing around, just go home and accept the marriage alliance. Stop making Mom and Dad worry.” “Marriage alliance? What marriage?” Chase asked thoughtfully. Sabrina didn’t elaborate. Seeing that I still had no reaction, she offered with a show of fake kindness, “How about you guys leave one person behind to keep my sister company? She looks pretty sad.” Ryder stood next to her, refusing to move. Hunter leaned lazily against the wall, and Chase just wore a callous smirk. No one volunteered. Sabrina wasn’t surprised. She shot me a comforting smile. Between her and me, I was never the one chosen. We were both used to that. “Where is he?” I asked. As the words fell, Sabrina subtly froze, then called out the door, “Come in.” The sound of heavy footsteps approached. A man walked in slowly. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his posture rigid and cold. The next second, I locked eyes with a pair of dark, brooding pupils. I pursed my lips and greeted him, “Hello.” His gaze looked down at me from above, carrying a slippery, dark scrutiny unique to serpents. I broke out in goosebumps. He didn’t acknowledge me. Sabrina glanced at him. “He just has this kind of temper. Sister, if you really can’t handle him, just tell me and I’ll take him back.” “Who is this?” Ryder asked suddenly. Sabrina clearly didn’t want to explain, and I didn’t know how to start either. She smiled and changed the subject. “The driver is waiting downstairs. Shall we go?” They fell silent for a moment, didn’t ask any more questions, and followed Sabrina out with their long strides. The snake shifter stood frozen in place. He stayed behind. Just as I was about to close the front door. Chase looked back at me, his emotions unreadable. Meanwhile, the dark pupils of the man standing beside me suddenly contracted, transforming into cold, golden vertical slits. A smooth snake tail instantly wrapped around my waist. A bizarre, intoxicating scent exploded, filling the room in an instant. I pushed against him in panic, but it was useless. “You… you’re in heat…!” I was pressed hard against the door with a heavy thud. But thanks to his snake tail acting as a cushion, it didn’t hurt. I felt his breath brush against my neck, sending shivers across my skin. The next second, there was an urgent knock on the heavy front door. Chase’s voice came from outside. “Vivian? Are you okay?” As the words fell, my fingers twitched. The pale golden vertical slits of the man I was making eye contact with seemed to grow even darker, and his grip on my waist tightened. I didn’t choose to open the door. Instead, I struggled to reach up, touched his ice-cold cheek, and forced the words out: “Is it… really uncomfortable? I’ll get you a suppressant, okay?” The heavy, oppressive aura around us paused. Even the potent scent of his heat stopped intensifying. A few more knocks on the door. It was giving me a headache. Sabrina asked hesitantly, “Sister, is everything okay in there?” Thinking I had managed to soothe him, I let out a sigh of relief. Just as I was about to speak… A sudden chill on my neck. He bit me. It wasn’t gentle; it felt like a predator locking onto its prey, yet it carried a strange, lingering intimacy. I let out a muffled groan. My voice sounded a bit detached: “Nothing’s wrong… you guys can go.” “Are you sure?” Hunter asked lazily. I replied, “Mhm…” “She said she’s fine,” Ryder’s impatient voice rang out. He paused, then asked, “Vivian, that snake didn’t hit you, did he?” “No…” I bit my lower lip. After my neck was bitten, it was being licked by an ice-cold tongue. Thank god the door was closed in time, so the scent didn’t leak out. The sound of footsteps gradually faded away. I shoved the snake shifter away, not daring to look at his tail, and scrambled to find the suppressants. This was what I used to inject Hunter and the others with when they went into heat—before things escalated. I still had plenty left over. I threw the suppressant to him, then frantically went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. 4 When I returned to the living room. His snake tail was gone. The man was leaning against the sofa, his long legs crossed, his expression back to its cold, gloomy state. He lifted his eyelids and glanced at me. I was a bit confused. “Are you… platonic?” His voice was hoarse. “This is a normal physiological reaction. It’s been too long since my last suppressant.” “Oh, okay.” Honestly, given Sabrina’s personality, if she really wanted to sleep with him, she absolutely wouldn’t have given him suppressants. Seeing how he acted just now, it didn’t seem like he could hold it in either, so how had he been coping all this time? But since he didn’t want to explain, I wasn’t going to press the issue. I poured a glass of warm water and handed it to him. “You should just rest today. You can help me with chores tomorrow. If you haven’t fully recovered, you can rest a few more days, that’s fine too…” He interrupted me. “Were you like this with them too?” I froze. Them? Did he mean Hunter and the others? I stayed quiet for a moment, then nodded. Even though society pushed for equality between humans and shifters, because of the shifters’ natural instinct to imprint on a master, humans were encouraged to be more accommodating toward them. A long silence followed. “My name is Silas.” The deep, calm voice finally broke the quiet. I snapped back to reality and gave him a bright smile. “Hi there, I’m Vivian.” He stood up and walked toward the balcony without showing any emotion. My pupils shrank. “Your bedroom is over there. Wait, are you trying to jump off the balcony? If you really hate it here, I can have Sabrina come pick you up…” I hurriedly followed him. Only to see him bend over, open the washing machine, and pull out the freshly washed clothes, piece by piece. He was hanging my laundry. Chase had put my clothes in the washer this morning. But he left without taking them out. Watching Silas’s long, elegant fingers holding my clothes, I scratched my cheek. “Once I buy a dryer in a few days, you won’t have to hang them anymore.” Silas didn’t say a word. 5 Unfortunately, before I could buy a dryer, an unexpected guest arrived the very next day. The butler from the Caldwell estate stood respectfully at my door. “Miss, the Master says since you’ve had your fun, it’s time to come home and accept the marriage alliance.” His tone left no room for negotiation. I refused. “No.” The butler smiled. “Miss, this is the will of both the Master and the Madam.” With that, several bodyguards appeared behind him. I scoffed coldly. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll take a knife to the groom on the wedding day and then kill myself?” The butler’s face stiffened. He recovered quickly. “The Master said that if you are willing to marry, you will receive five percent of the Caldwell Group shares.” My hand, which had been ready to slam the door, paused. The butler seemed to expect my reaction. “The car is already waiting downstairs. By the way, the Second Miss said you should bring Mr. Silas with you as well.” I looked back at Silas and met his gaze. His dark eyes were still completely devoid of emotion. But for some reason, a chill ran down my spine. 6 Back at the Caldwell estate. The massive first floor was empty except for Hunter, Chase, and Ryder. The atmosphere was incredibly awkward. Ryder put down his game controller, raised his eyes, and scanned me and Silas standing behind me. Hunter drawled lazily, “Why are you here?” “It’s my own house. Can’t I come back?” After I snapped back at him, Hunter’s expression didn’t change; in fact, the smirk on his lips seemed to deepen. Me: “…?” Chase put down the fruit platter he was arranging and walked slowly toward me. He affectionately lifted my chin: “Sabrina said you absolutely refused to come home. Now you suddenly change your mind. Did you miss us?” I took a step back, just about to speak. But Ryder cut me off with a cold snort. “Do you even have to ask? She can’t last a single day without us.” From behind me, Silas spoke, his voice completely devoid of warmth. “She doesn’t look heartbroken to me.” Hunter suddenly glared up. “What the hell are you?” I immediately felt a surge of vicious energy. I quickly did what I had done the day before, pressing my hand over Silas’s ice-cold fingers, trying to soothe him. Wolves and snakes are both highly aggressive apex predators. If they actually started fighting, the consequences would be disastrous. Chase’s voice dragged out, carrying a hint of mockery: “Are you trying to use him to make us jealous?” “Snakes are cold-blooded animals. And Sabrina said this particular snake is extreme; he has absolutely no emotions,” Ryder sneered. “You don’t actually think you can thaw him out, do you?” Suddenly. Chase gripped my chin, his fingers digging in hard. He stared dead at my neck—specifically, the spot where Silas had bitten me yesterday. His voice dropped like a stone: “What is this? A hickey?” That single sentence sent ripples through the room. Ryder leaned forward on his elbows, smirking as he walked over. “Hah? What the hell is that?” The next second, I was yanked behind an ice-cold back. Silas flashed a remarkably cold smile and spat out a single, freezing word: “Get lost.” Chase’s face darkened instantly. “What did you say?” The tension was ready to explode. Right at that moment, Sabrina walked down from the second floor, smiling sweetly. “I heard your voices all the way upstairs. What are you guys talking about?” I knew exactly how she operated, so I spoke calmly. “They think this mark on my neck is a hickey. They don’t seem very happy about it and wanted to inspect it.” Sure enough, the smile on Sabrina’s face faltered. Her gaze locked onto my neck. “…So, is it?” Her eyes darted rapidly between me and Silas. “What do you think?” I didn’t answer; I just threw the question back at her. Sabrina didn’t reply. The air in the room solidified. Hunter took a long stride forward, his hands in his pockets, sweeping a careless gaze over me. “You always hated showing off marks like that. Why the sudden change of heart today?” …Probably because I didn’t actually consider it a hickey. His comment seemed to awaken the others. Ryder realized it too. “Yeah, exactly. You used to cover up completely.” Chase’s sharp eyes narrowed. Sabrina pursed her lips and turned to me. “Sister, Father is calling for you in his study.” Then she pointed a finger at Silas. “He doesn’t need to follow you upstairs.” I gently pulled my hand from Silas’s grip and paused. I looked back. “Don’t bully him.” “We? Bully him?” Ryder enunciated every word, laughing in disbelief. “Vivian, in your eyes…” Before he could finish, I turned and walked away. Leaving dead silence behind me. 7 “You’ll get the marriage license first, then we’ll hold the wedding,” my father said, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip of tea. “Once everything is set in stone, I will transfer the five percent of shares to you.” I didn’t hesitate, speaking calmly. “The moment I sign the marriage certificate, I want those shares.” He slammed his teacup down heavily. The wrinkles around his eyes crinkled in anger. “You have that little trust in your own family?” I sighed, speaking with total sincerity. “I’m just terrified that Sabrina will bat her eyelashes and whine, and suddenly my things will be gone again.” My words hit a sore spot. His expression remained stormy for a moment, but he finally relented: “When the time comes, bring your marriage certificate and your husband to see me.” This proved exactly how much value my arranged marriage would bring them. And— Saying he was giving the shares to me was actually a way of showing loyalty to my soon-to-be, unseen fiancé. Because assets gifted after a marriage are legally considered joint property, meaning the spouse has a claim to half. I didn’t argue. I just gave a “Mm,” and stood up to leave. “You will stay at this house for the time being. No running around. And you need to cut ties completely with those shifters before the wedding!” His authoritative voice echoed behind me. 8 When I returned to the first floor, the atmosphere was still incredibly tense. I ignored them and walked straight to Silas. “I’ll show you around my room.” I also had something I needed to tell him. Ryder looked over suspiciously. “Haven’t you been gone from this house for ages? What’s there to show off in your room?” I smiled. “Why, do you want a tour too?” “Who said I wanted a tour?” Ryder snapped back instantly, then scoffed and turned his head away. Sabrina was eating from a fruit platter. She cast a subtle glance at Silas. “Father is home. It’s not very appropriate.” I looked confused. “You have three shifters around you, and I’m just taking one back to my room. Why is that inappropriate?” Sabrina’s expression tightened. Hunter frowned slightly. “We never…” Sabrina put the fruit platter down with a sharp clink. “Sister, you make a good point. But it also depends on whether Silas is willing.” For a moment, all eyes turned to the man whose face showed absolutely no emotion. Silas slightly parted his thin lips. “Let’s go.” I nodded, signaling him to follow me. As for the reactions of the people behind me, I couldn’t care less. … My room was decorated in a minimalist white. There was no dust; it was clearly cleaned regularly. I cleared my throat, just about to speak. The air in the room suddenly shifted. Before I could even react, something wrapped around my waist again… A snake tail. “Your scent… it’s so strong in here.” His voice was incredibly raspy. I was in shock. “I haven’t lived here in forever! Is it really that strong?!” His sharp teeth scraped lightly against my collarbone. A dangerous aura spread through the room. I was genuinely terrified he was going to eat me alive. I took a deep breath. “You just took a suppressant yesterday, right?” This didn’t feel right. The snake tail constricted, locking me tightly against his chest. I struggled to speak. “…I brought you upstairs to tell you that I really am getting married.” But Silas didn’t let me go like I expected. Instead, his tail lifted me up and tossed me onto the bed. He loomed over me, his narrow eyes radiating a dark, eerie intensity. Then, his tail slipped under the hem of my shirt. I instinctively grabbed it, quickly looking away. He narrowed his eyes darkly. “Do you hate me?” “Huh? Not really…” “Aren’t you my master?” he leaned down slightly, his voice so soft it was unnerving, mixed with a cruel confusion. “Or… are you afraid?” Shadows enveloped me. …I was definitely a little terrified. First off, it’s widely known that snakes are naturally lustful, and snake shifters are even worse. If Sabrina wasn’t lying and he really was platonic, I definitely shouldn’t provoke him. Secondly… In certain aspects, it was just too extreme. I sighed. “But I really do have to get married… So I might have to give you back to Sabrina. She won’t be getting married anytime soon.” Silas finally reacted. Just as a flash of ruthlessness crossed his eyes, I asked softly: “Do you want to? To go back to Sabrina?” Silas looked down, meeting my gaze. A slow smile spread across his face: “Does being by your side cause you pain?” I paused. “No, you actually have a pretty good sense of doing household chores.” Wait. Why did the topic jump back to this? The next second. He leaned down, his shadow completely covering me: “Then don’t ever think about getting rid of me.” I stayed silent for a moment, then gently stroked his tail. Finally. He spoke in a ghostly tone: “Don’t worry.” Don’t worry? What was I supposed to not worry about? I shook my head internally. I already had a plan. 9 A few days later, in a private room at a cafe. I calmly took a sip of my coffee. I looked at the man sitting across from me and got straight to the point: “I know you like Sabrina.” The man looked at me in surprise and put his phone away. “I also know you’ve been proposing to my family just to get Sabrina to marry you. Unfortunately, they used the ‘older sister must marry first’ tradition as an excuse to brush you off.” The man smiled nonchalantly. “Anyone would prefer your sister over you, wouldn’t they?” He paused, then let out a cold laugh. “Your sister isn’t entirely uninterested in me. But she said because you like me so much, she didn’t want to fight you for me.” I smiled slightly. “Is that so? I have a way to get you exactly what you want.” The man looked stunned. “What way?” “We get a fake marriage certificate, and then you come home with me. Since you said my sister likes you, if she sees us together, she’ll definitely be jealous, right?” I laid out my plan smoothly. He hesitated. “What?” “People only know how to cherish something once they’ve lost it. When the time comes, be a little affectionate with me. If she sees it with her own eyes, it’ll definitely break her heart.” I continued, “Then, at our grand wedding, I will completely disappear. With the bride missing, my sister won’t be able to bear seeing you humiliated. She will inevitably step up and take my place. “Then you tell her that she’s the one you’ve always deeply loved. Have a special diamond ring ready just for her. She’ll be incredibly moved.” The man’s eyes shifted, the tension in his face slowly relaxing. He murmured, “…You know, that makes a lot of sense.” I pulled out a tissue and dabbed at imaginary tears in the corners of my eyes. “Honestly, I know that even if I marry you, I wouldn’t be happy. You like Sabrina so much, and she likes you. I’d rather see you two find happiness.” After a long while, the man stood up, reached out his hand, and spoke with newfound respect: “Miss Caldwell, I never expected you to be so generous and kind-hearted. I completely misunderstood you before.” I shook his hand. “As long as you two are happy.” 10 The day I brought the fake marriage certificate and my fake husband home. Everyone in the Caldwell family sat at the dining table, their expressions varied. By now, the news of the marriage alliance had completely spread. I cast a reassuring glance at Silas; he was expressionless. But I could already feel his uncontainable, violent aura and dark energy. It didn’t matter. Once the dust settled, I would integrate him into the next phase of my plan. I gave Silas a comforting smile from across the room. He glanced at me, then looked away, his emotions unreadable. When I went to the kitchen to help bring out the food, Chase was leisurely washing his hands nearby. He said, “You don’t like him.” “Who?” “Your husband.” Chase smiled brightly. “Vivian, beg me, and I’ll help you run away from the wedding.” I shot him a glance. He clarified, “Don’t worry, they agree too.” “They” meant Hunter and Ryder. No wonder their faces looked so terrible today. Chase’s voice was seductive, yet carried a sense of superiority: “You don’t want to spend the rest of your life with a man you don’t even like, do you?” I turned to leave. “None of your business.” “You’ll regret this, Vivian.” The voice behind me turned freezing cold. Regret? Would I regret it? I chuckled inwardly. After dinner, Sabrina was happily chatting with my fake husband, radiating charm. I went alone to the study and signed the equity transfer agreement. Next week was the highly anticipated, grand wedding. And the real show was just beginning— 11 Over the next few days, I relaxed and went about my pre-wedding preparations, picking out jewelry. A heavy cloud of low pressure hung over the Caldwell estate. Even Sabrina, who usually maintained a facade of harmony with me, came over to mock me. “I didn’t think five percent of the shares would make you surrender so easily.” I showed no reaction. She seemed even angrier, letting out a cold laugh. “Do you know how many shares I’ll get in the future? When Father dies, it will all be mine.” Me: …? I turned my head and gave her a long look. She looked satisfied. “Jealous?” What an incredibly filial daughter, I thought to myself. Ryder remained deadpan. “Self-destructive.” Chase nodded in agreement. Hunter lazily scrolled on his phone, noncommittal. Self-destructive? Are they talking about me? But I didn’t care about their reactions. I focused entirely on Silas’s response. He didn’t look as gloomy as I imagined. He simply lifted his eyelids, his eyes as dark and deep as a bottomless pool meeting mine. It was only then that I realized with a start—when those eyes weren’t filled with darkness and malice, they were actually stunningly beautiful. Thin, slightly upturned at the corners, carrying a hint of careless laziness.

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I was a complete try-hard, but my entire brand was “effortless perfection.” Ever since I was little, I was absolutely determined to take the number one spot in everything. Watching the awe and admiration in other people’s eyes as they looked at me like a genius gave me a thrill so intense it made my scalp tingle. That was, until high school, when I became the perpetual second place. Later, the guy in first place and the girl in third place started dating. When the results for another mock exam came out, I heard someone in the hallway laughing: “Why is Riley always stuck between those two lovebirds like a giant third wheel? Hahaha…” Walking past an empty classroom, I heard the valedictorian tutoring his girlfriend: “Baby, if you score a few more points next time, our names can be right next to each other on the honor roll.” “…” I completely snapped. You want your names next to each other, right? Fine. I’ll take first place and grant your wish! 1 I’ve been fiercely competitive since I was a kid. From the moment I became the fastest in my kindergarten class to master basic arithmetic, earning praise from the teachers and envy from my classmates, my life’s trajectory was set. My vanity swelled as I grew older. Before high school, I practically monopolized the number one spot in my grade. Basking in the reverent gazes of my peers, I felt an intoxicating rush. The joy of a perfectionist pretending to be effortless is just that superficial. For high school, I tested into the elite St. Jude’s Academy with the highest score in the city. But of all places, this was where I met Tristan Hayes. For the entirety of freshman and sophomore year, I never beat him. Not even once! I, someone who lived and breathed to show off, was firmly nailed to the humiliating post of “perpetual second place.” The teachers would always console me: “Riley, you’re already outstanding. You just lack a tiny bit of luck. Just be more careful next time.” But I’d hear them discussing in the faculty lounge: “Tristan’s brain just works on another level. His logic is so mature. I heard he used to do college-level math competitions…” Even when classmates came to ask me questions, they always had to throw in a “high-EQ” backhanded compliment that pierced my heart: “Riley, being able to hold down second place is insane! You’re the only person in our grade who can even compete with Tristan.” Tristan. I maintained my polite, breezy smile: “What can I say? I’m just not as skilled.” Inside, I was screaming and dying of rage. As soon as the classmate left, my desk-mate, Chloe, leaned in mysteriously. “Riley, I’ve got some gossip.” “Hmm?” My eyes stayed on my textbook, but my ears perked up. “Tristan is dating.” What does that have to do with me? “Guess who he’s dating?” I finally shifted my gaze from the worksheet to look at her. “Who?” “Serena Blake,” Chloe whispered. “Who?” Chloe: “…” She rolled her eyes at me. “My dear Queen Riley, if someone scores lower than you, do they just not exist in your eyes?” “Her class rank is right behind you and Tristan.” Thanks to Chloe, I got a crash course on this academic romance. Tristan and Serena were in the class next door. Serena used to rank in the top twenty, but this semester, her grades skyrocketed. “I heard they stay after school every day to do practice tests together. The valedictorian is personally tutoring her. No wonder she improved so fast. He’s a gold-medal tutor,” Chloe sighed. I finally remembered who Serena was. Actually, after every exam, I always checked the names of the people ranked right behind me. Serena had long, dark hair, big round eyes, and curled eyelashes. She was very cute. “You don’t have any thoughts on this?” Chloe poked me, whispering. “The teachers definitely know, but since it’s Tristan, they just turn a blind eye.” “No, why would I care?” I smiled. Date, date, date away! I hope you both get distracted and drop to the bottom of the class! I thought viciously. Right before the end of our sophomore year, the final honor roll was posted. I stood near the back of the crowd, but the rankings were crystal clear. Second place again. I was so mad I planned to go home and eat two massive bowls of rice to vent my frustration. But before I could even finish being angry, I heard someone in front of me joking: “Why is Riley always stuck between those two lovebirds like a giant third wheel? Hahaha…” “Our graduating class really hit the jackpot with these two freaks. The first and second place have never changed hands. But I bet Serena has a chance to overtake Riley next time. She was only six points behind her this round.” “…” That wasn’t all. After school, I realized I forgot my house keys and went back to grab them. Passing the classroom next door, I happened to see Tristan tutoring Serena. They were the only two left in the room. They were sitting by the window. Tristan’s voice drifted out: “Baby, if you score a few more points next time, our names can be right next to each other on the honor roll.” “…” Being the eternal runner-up was miserable enough. But instead of people hoping I’d pull Tristan off his throne, there were actually people hoping someone else would pull me off mine? I let out a dark chuckle. I was fully in my villain era now. You two want your names next to each other, right? Fine. I’ll take first place and grant your wish! 2 At dinner, my parents, accustomed to my second-place finishes, praised me as usual: “Second place is amazing! Your mom and I never scored this high when we were in school. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself.” How could I not? I absolutely had to get first place. But at my level, hiring those expensive, gold-star private tutors wouldn’t do much good. Suddenly, a car pulled into the driveway next door. My mom mentioned casually, “Ethan is back for the summer. Do you want me to go over and ask him for his old study materials?” Ethan Sterling. He was two years older than me. During his senior year, he swept the state academic decathlons and secured early admission to an Ivy League university. When he got in, let alone our school, even our neighborhood threw a block party. For a while, he was the absolute star of the town. Before I could speak, my dad said, “Ethan is a competition genius. His materials probably aren’t suitable for our girl’s standard curriculum, right?” The moment my dad said that, a lightbulb went off in my head. I jumped up from my chair. “Why are you acting so frantic?” My mom was startled. I sat back down, shoveled the rest of my food into my mouth at lightning speed, put down my fork, and announced, “I’m going to ask Ethan for his study materials.” The gate to the Sterlings’ yard was open. I walked right in, greeted Mr. and Mrs. Sterling on the first floor, and sprinted straight to the second floor. Ethan, wearing a white tee and baggy jeans, was slouching on the upstairs sofa playing a game on his phone. The lights were dim, and the glow of the screen illuminated his flawlessly sculpted profile. Honestly, I didn’t like Ethan. From the first time I met him when I was ten, listening to our parents exchange parenting tips, I knew immediately—this guy was also a massive “try-hard.” And try-hards never like people who are better at faking it than they are. Sure enough, all these years had only proven my initial impression right. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me. “Well, if it isn’t little Riley…” Before he could finish his sentence, I dropped straight to my knees in front of him. Before I could even speak, Ethan, who had been lounging on the sofa, jumped up in shock. “Riley, why the hell are you kneeling?” I looked at him, absolutely serious. “Ethan, I heard you’re home for the summer. I want to hire you as my tutor.” Ethan came over to pull me up. “If you want to hire a tutor, just ask. Why are you kneeling? You’re going to curse me, and if my mom sees this, she’ll beat me to death.” “It means I’m begging you,” I blinked. “Kneeling on one knee is weird, so kneeling on both shows more sincerity.” “…” “Ethan, can I book you for two months at market rate?” “…Don’t word it like you’re hiring an escort.” “Oh.” Ethan pulled me up and looked me up and down for a good moment. “I remember your grades being pretty solid. Why do you need me to tutor you?” I hesitated for a second, debating, but decided to be honest. “So you’re telling me, since entering high school, you’ve been stuck in second place for two straight years?” Ethan looked at me in amazement, then gave me a genuine thumbs-up. “Honestly, impressive.” “…” Was he mocking me? From what I knew, even though Ethan focused on advanced competitions, whenever he took the standard school exams, no one could ever pry him out of the number one spot. He had no weak subjects. “So you’re here to learn the secret to getting first place?” My ears burned, but I nodded honestly. As expected, a fellow try-hard understands best. Ethan suddenly let out a laugh. “If you’re willing to drop to your knees and beg me, it seems you really want that number one spot.” People like us hate begging others. But Ethan didn’t need the money. If I didn’t beg, why would he agree to tutor me? And compared to the humiliation of begging, staying the perpetual runner-up would actually kill me. “So, will you teach me?” I looked at him eagerly. Ethan had a lazy smile on his face. It was the exact same effortless, carefree smile he wore during his senior year when he secured his Ivy League acceptance. Faking it without breaking a sweat. I was so incredibly jealous. 3 “Bring me your most recent exams tomorrow. I’ll take a look,” Ethan said. “I can’t guarantee I’ll take the job.” That meant he would take the job. Try-hards always leave themselves a little wiggle room when they speak. The next day, I brought him my exams. Not just the recent mock exams, but the ones from the two previous grading periods as well. He flipped through all my incorrect answers. His first comment was: “Nice handwriting.” “…” Of course it was. Since I was a kid, I knew how crucial good handwriting was. I used to fill baskets with calligraphy practice books, all just so that when people praised my beautiful handwriting, I could casually reply: “It’s alright, I guess.” It felt amazing. “You don’t lose many points on careless mistakes. You’re meticulous. For the standard curriculum material, you’re getting almost perfect scores. Your biggest problem is the bonus and advanced questions. It’s normal that you struggle with the ones that go beyond the syllabus.” Ethan paused. He didn’t say the second half of that sentence, but I understood. I couldn’t do them, but Tristan could. That was where he had the edge. “Also, don’t just focus on the STEM subjects. You need to pull your English and History scores up by 5 to 8 points. Maximize your points across the board.” I glared at him resentfully. Did he think I didn’t know that? Bringing English up by 5 to 8 points meant getting a near-perfect score. He said it like it was nothing. Ethan stared at my tense face and laughed. “Why are you looking at me like that? Didn’t you hire me to boost your score? Doubting my abilities?” He was so full of himself. When would I be able to fake it as effortlessly as him? Ethan’s parents were thrilled to hear I’d hired him as a tutor. Their reasoning? It would cut down on the time he spent addicted to video games. ? Addicted to video games, yet easily dominating as the academic god? I was so jealous I could cry. High school summer break began. I didn’t have summer classes yet, so I practically moved in next door. During the weekdays, I would take pictures of my incorrect answers, send them to Ethan, and he would explain them all to me on the weekends. Actually, before I even sent him most of the questions, I had already spent hours figuring out the logic myself. On the weekend, Ethan asked, “Do you know how to do them now?” I nodded. “Yes.” Ethan pulled out a piece of scratch paper with several handwritten problems on it. “Try these.” His handwriting was elegant and sharp, perfectly balanced. I remembered a story: the calligraphy class my mom enrolled me in was actually recommended by Ethan’s parents. I had never seen the problems on the scratch paper before, but they followed the same core logic as the advanced questions I had gotten wrong. Using what I’d learned, I solved the first two. I got stuck on the third one for a while, scribbling all over the paper, but eventually stumbled my way to the answer. For the last one, I burned through two whole pages of scratch paper. None of the approaches I tried worked. I finally put my pen down and looked at Ethan. “I don’t know how to do this one.” The guy next to me smirked. “It’s fine. That’s a college-level competition problem. It’s normal that you don’t know it.” “…” What a blatant attempt to provoke me. 4 I stared at the problem for a long time, as if sheer willpower could reveal the answer. Ethan chuckled beside me. “Alright, going to let your personal tutor show his worth?” His long, elegant fingers gripped the pen and circled two key variables in the equation. He leaned in close as he explained, his voice falling right next to my ear as he turned slightly to look at me. The chaotic mess of my thought process instantly cleared up under his precise guidance. “You probably won’t see this exact type of question on your exams, but consider it mental weightlifting.” He then flipped back to the previous question I had solved. “My answer was right.” I didn’t understand why Ethan wanted to waste time on a question I had already conquered. Ethan smiled like a fox. “If you and everyone else can solve the same advanced question, how do you prove you’re better than them?” I thought for a moment. “By having cleaner, more elegant steps?” “What else?” I drew a blank. “Riley, think about it. For a tough problem, what if others only know one method, but you know two, or even more?” Under my solution, Ethan wrote: [Method 2]. ? I had an epiphany. My eyes lit up as I looked at him. This was brilliant! So pretentious! I loved it! Immediately, Ethan showed me five other ways to solve that exact problem. Two of them required college-level calculus. But the way he explained it, I actually understood. “…” I was so jealous. By July, my summer break was officially in full swing. When the final semester grades were released, I was at Ethan’s house doing practice tests. I checked my rank. Still second. Ethan glanced over. “Scores are out?” I gave a weak “Mhm.” “Not bad. You’re only 5 points behind first place. That’s an improvement.” The main reason nobody in school thought I could beat Tristan was that his total score was historically always a solid dozen points higher than mine. I acted completely unfazed at school, but in reality, I was grinding my teeth into dust. Ethan’s words did not comfort me. Until he handed me a folder. “Here’s your preliminary study plan. Grind through this summer, and we’ll talk about competing next semester.” “Who’s competing?” Ethan nodded patronizingly. “Right, right, you’re not competing. A soldier who doesn’t want to be a general is a bad soldier, and a student who doesn’t want first place is a bad student.” “…” When you fail to achieve something for a long time, it becomes an obsession. That summer, I practically lived at Ethan’s house, studying until my brain was fried. But Ethan treated his tutoring gig like a real job with actual PTO. Whenever he took a day off, I stayed home and did practice tests. Occasionally, classmates would ask me to hang out, and I would actually go. When the topic of prep classes came up, I would smile faintly. “I didn’t sign up for any prep classes. I’ve just been binge-watching shows and playing video games lately.” The binge-watching was true—I watched movie recaps on 3x speed. The video games were also true—Ethan insisted on “work-life balance” and dragged me into playing a few matches with him. My classmates’ reactions were exactly what I expected: “Riley, why would you even need tutoring? You should just pack your bags for the Ivy Leagues already!” “It’s so unfair how easy school is for smart people. My mom hired a top-tier private tutor for me, and I barely have the energy to breathe, let alone watch TV…” “What games do you play, Riley?” I told them the name of the game, and they looked thrilled. “No way, what a coincidence! We should squad up sometime.” “Sure,” I agreed with a bright smile. Crap. Now I had to find time to actually practice the game. 5 Ethan’s tutoring style was very different from any tutor I’d had before. He was blunt: “Solidifying the basics is important, but the basics alone won’t get you to the top. The problem types I’m showing you might never appear in your senior year, but they’ll completely rewire your critical thinking skills.” He didn’t just tutor me in STEM; he took over my English and Humanities too. I studied in the second-floor living room of Ethan’s house, using his personal desk that he had dragged out of his study for me. During the day, his parents were at work. It was usually just the two of us, plus the housekeeper who came by to cook. But Ethan would constantly tempt me, asking seductively, “Riley, do you want some junk food?” I seriously suspect that a significant portion of the tutoring money my mom paid him ended up in both of our stomachs via Uber Eats. While I solved problems, Ethan would sit behind me on the sofa, playing on his phone. When I finished, I’d turn around for him to grade them. I turned around once and found him fast asleep on the sofa. I crouched next to him, admiring his flawless skin, his sharp nose, and his thick eyelashes up close. “…” Jealousy came as naturally as breathing to me. After waiting ten minutes, seeing no sign of him waking up, I poked his arm. Ethan woke up, looking at me groggily. It took him a few seconds to process. “Finished?” He sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I was playing games until 4 AM last night. I’m a bit tired.” Then he walked over to the desk, picked up my scratch paper, glanced at it, and immediately identified the mistake. I stared at him resentfully. He gamed until 4 AM, then woke up early the next day to earn money as a tutor? And he still had this much energy? Jealous. I spent my entire summer following Ethan’s grueling routine. Driven by the desire for that number one spot, I forgot to eat and sleep. I went through every single past exam paper from the last few years. As long as it wasn’t a purely subjective essay question, I secured every possible point. Before I knew it, the new school year started. I went back to school earlier than Ethan. He handed me a brand new study plan. “Your teachers have to accommodate the pace of the whole class. This plan is tailored specifically for you. Also, these are a few workbooks I picked out for you from the bookstore. Text me if you have any questions.” I had to admit, Ethan was an incredibly dedicated tutor. He charged by the hour, but he constantly went into overtime and flatly refused whenever my mom tried to offer him a bonus. Senior year didn’t shuffle the class rosters, so I was surrounded by familiar faces, but the atmosphere was noticeably more intense. The teachers constantly fed us motivational quotes like, “The game isn’t over yet; any of you could be the dark horse.” I had heard it all a million times. Until the first mock exam of senior year. I was laser-focused during every single subject. After finishing, I meticulously checked my work. Hiring Ethan as my tutor had definitely paid off. I could feel my problem-solving logic was infinitely sharper than before. On the day the rankings were posted, I suppressed the burning anxiety in my chest and casually strolled past the Honor Roll board. My eyes slowly drifted to the name in the number one spot. Riley Evans. First place! My very first number one rank in high school! The corners of my mouth crept up. I looked down at the second-place name. ? It wasn’t Tristan? I scanned all the way down to tenth place. Tristan’s name wasn’t there. Something was wrong. 6 At that moment, I heard people talking in front of the board: “What happened this time? Riley is actually first. Where’s Tristan?” “Tristan had a terrible fever on the day of the exam. He was absent.” “No wonder. Otherwise, how could Riley ever get first?” “…” My rising smile froze completely. Before the rankings came out, I had imagined many scenarios. The worst one was remaining in second place. I never imagined that Tristan would be absent. Which meant, to everyone else, this first-place finish was basically handed to me by default. I was furious. Back in the classroom, friends congratulated me on getting first place. I acted humble on the surface, thanking them, but the second I got home, I turned into a miserable, brooding mushroom. Before bed, Ethan unexpectedly video-called me. I hesitated for a second but answered. The background was his college dorm. Ethan was sitting at his desk, wearing a headset. “What do you want?” I muttered darkly. The guy on the screen smiled at me. “Your mom said you got first place but you’ve been looking depressed all evening. She dispatched me to cheer you up. Why aren’t you happy about getting first, Ms. Evans?” I pressed my lips together, refusing to speak. But Ethan was incredibly patient, and eventually, I spilled the whole story. Ethan was silent for a few seconds after listening, then said sympathetically, “No wonder your eyes are red from crying.” “Who’s crying?!” I glared at him. Ethan laughed again. “Riley, I asked around. You’re nearly 20 points ahead of the second-place student. That proves you’ve made huge progress.” “People are saying I won by default,” I said, still feeling low. Although I was a try-hard who loved to show off, I had always backed it up with genuine, hard-earned ability. “Even if he hadn’t been absent this time, you still would have gotten first place, and people still would have said it was a fluke.” Ethan offered advice from the perspective of someone who had been there. “He missed one exam. He won’t miss the second or the third. Your goal isn’t just to get first place once. Over time, those doubting voices will disappear.” Ethan’s words calmed me down a bit. I knew the logic, but I had been obsessing over this ranking for two years and had dug myself into a mental hole. “Figured it out? If you have, go to sleep peacefully. You’re too young to carry so much mental baggage.” The call ended. I took a deep breath, lay down on my bed, and tried to sleep. Ten minutes later, I crawled out of bed and finished half a practice test at my desk before I could finally sleep peacefully. When I went back to school the next day, I maintained my persona as the effortless, aloof academic god. My homeroom teacher even called me into the office for a pep talk: “Riley, your state of mind this semester is excellent, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you run into any difficulties in your studies or your personal life, you can always talk to me.” I knew the teachers also felt my first-place finish wasn’t entirely legitimate, but just as Ethan said, we had a long road ahead. Time would prove everything. The next major exam after the mock was the city-wide standardized test. Tristan, in the class next door, had long since returned to school. As the exam approached, I accidentally overheard the boys in his class talking as they walked together: “Tristan, make sure you take back your rightful number one spot this time!” 7 A city-wide standardized test naturally included students from other high schools, allowing for a much broader comparison. The questions this time were brutally difficult, especially in Math and Physics. Even the English section included a lot of obscure, college-level vocabulary. Almost everyone walked out of the exam rooms sighing in despair. I, of course, realized the difficulty of the exam. And the results proved that my decision to hire Ethan as my tutor over the summer was entirely correct. After the exams were over, the teachers began reviewing the papers. Because of the difficulty, one class period simply wasn’t enough time. When the math teacher finally got to the last question, half the grading results had already been released. “It’s completely normal that most of you couldn’t solve this problem. Getting the first sub-question right is already a great achievement. From what I know, the teachers grading this question had a very easy time. So far, there are fewer than five students in the entire city who solved it perfectly. Do we have anyone in our class who did?” In the dead silence, I slowly raised my hand. The math teacher nodded in satisfaction. “It looks like in the two classes I teach, only Riley and Tristan from the class next door managed to solve it. “Riley, come up to the board and walk us through your thought process.” Under the watchful eyes of everyone, I walked to the podium and clearly laid out and explained the solution steps. When I finished calculating the final result on the chalkboard, I paused and looked at the math teacher. “Teacher, actually, I have another method that is much more elegant.” The math teacher looked slightly surprised. “Go ahead.” So, I began explaining the second method. This time, more students in the class showed expressions of sudden realization. The math teacher’s gaze upon me was filled with even more admiration. I couldn’t care less if people secretly called me a try-hard. When people think I’m pretending to be a genius, it means my performance was a success. It felt so good! Even before the official scores for all subjects were released, I had already estimated my score based on the answer keys. My ranking would depend on how everyone else performed. On the day the rankings were posted, I didn’t rush to look at them immediately. Being too eager would ruin my aloof, unbothered persona. During passing period, while everyone else ran to check the brand-new Honor Roll board, I sat calmly at my desk, working on the practice book Ethan had given me. My desk-mate jogged back into the room, looking at me excitedly. “Riley, you’re number one! Number one in the whole city!” She wasn’t the only one. Other classmates came over to congratulate me. “As expected of our Queen Riley! You’re insane! You beat Tristan by 2 points!” “With questions that difficult, scoring a 1580—are you trying to ascend to heaven?” “This is so satisfying! When you got first on the last mock exam, the class next door said you only won because Tristan was absent and got lucky. Let’s see what they have to say now!” “…” I had a pretty good reputation in class. Firstly, because of my grades, and secondly, because of my willingness to help classmates with their questions. I was even the Class Representative for Academics. Now, facing my classmates who were genuinely happy for me, I maintained my persona and smiled faintly. “I guess I just had pretty good luck this time.” That day after school, I walked past the Honor Roll board. Seeing the names of the little couple from the class next door nestled together right beneath my first-place spot, a mysterious smile graced my face. I had finally granted the little couple’s wish. Going home, I hid under my thin blanket and rolled around on my bed in excitement. It felt so good! Getting first place is the best feeling in the world! 8 When I went back to school, I was still the hardworking, humble, and unbothered top student. Since we were in adjacent classes, I occasionally bumped into Tristan in the hallway. We obviously knew who each other were, but we weren’t close—barely even acquaintances. For the past two years, he probably hadn’t even considered me a blip on his radar, considering I had always been stuck beneath him in the academic rankings. Now, when we crossed paths, I occasionally caught him looking at me. It was the kind of appraising look reserved for a genuine rival. Satisfying. I naturally told Ethan about getting first place. After offering a few polite compliments, he asked for my exam papers and then asked, “How are you doing on those practice books I gave you before?” “I’ve finished most of them,” I replied. “I bought a new set of exams. I’ll bring them back for you this weekend,” Ethan said. I was a bit taken aback. “Didn’t the tutoring end a long time ago…” Giving me practice books right as the tutoring ended made sense, but what was the point of bringing me more exams now? Ethan chuckled. “Isn’t this my first time being a tutor? I need to let you experience what premium after-sales service feels like.” “…” I really need to learn how to act as effortlessly cool as him in the future. In a semester, there are only a few major exams with grade-wide rankings. After the city-wide standardized test, there was another mock exam. I didn’t get first place that time. I missed it by exactly 1 point. My mindset was better than before, but I still went home and sulked for the entire night. Compared to Tristan’s crushing dominance in the past, the current situation was much brighter for me. The nickname “Perpetual Runner-Up” was slowly detaching itself from me. When finals approached, I dialed my focus up to twelve. I double-checked almost every single question. Especially for the advanced questions, I only felt relieved when I used two different methods and arrived at the exact same answer. After that came winter break. Time passed much faster than I imagined. Just a few days into the break, it was my 18th birthday. My parents went all out decorating the house, ordered a custom cake, and prepared gifts. That day, the final rankings were released. First place, beating the second place by a full 5 points. My heart was soaring with joy. After asking for my opinion, my parents invited Ethan’s family over for dinner. At the dinner table, the adults engaged in their usual round of mutual bragging about their kids. I was used to it. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Ethan seriously focusing on his food. Good, he didn’t let my dad’s cooking go to waste. After eating the birthday cake, Ethan said he was taking me to his roof to set off fireworks. “You call these sparklers ‘fireworks’?” I asked, delivering a soul-piercing question. “Why is a young kid like you looking down on sparklers?” Ethan smiled brightly. “Aren’t they pretty?” “…” They were pretty, sure. But standing on a roof in the freezing winter wind at night made us look like complete idiots. Ethan lit a sparkler and placed it in my hand. “Make another wish. The day isn’t over yet. Wish for whatever teenage dreams you have.” The bright sparks danced in my hand. I reverently closed my eyes and solemnly made my 18th birthday wish. Click. A flash of white light went off. I opened my eyes to see Ethan pointing a camera at me, having just taken a picture. I had no idea where he pulled it from. “What did you wish for?” he asked. The sparkler in my hand hadn’t burned out yet. I met his gaze, unaware of how bright my eyes looked in the glow of the sparks. “I want to be the State Valedictorian.” That was my teenage dream. An incredibly ambitious dream. The sparkler fizzled out, but Ethan smiled, his eyes shining brightly too. “Alright, keep coming over during winter break. I’ll keep tutoring you.” I looked up in surprise. Before I could speak, he added, “Free of charge.” After hesitating for a moment, I asked, “If you have free time, shouldn’t you be looking for an internship?” Ethan looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Did I not tell you? I’m in a combined Master’s-PhD program. It’s going to be a long time before I graduate.” “…” So pretentious. I was dying of envy. As I was about to head downstairs, Ethan took the camera off his neck and, without any warning, hung it around mine. The weight of it made me freeze. “This is your birthday present. I hope you’ll be a happy adult.”

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In the spring of 2016, my little sister went missing during a school field trip, falling into an abandoned mine shaft. It took three days to find her. But here was the bizarre part: The canteen she carried was completely full of water, yet her autopsy report stated she died of severe dehydration. She had literally died of thirst. Because of her tragic and gruesome death, my parents couldn’t handle the blow. One died; the other went insane. A once-happy family was utterly destroyed. Ten years later, I became a PhD candidate in Criminal Psychology. When I returned to that abandoned mine shaft and repeatedly replayed the events of that day… I uncovered a blood-curdling truth that completely shattered everything I thought I knew. 1 April 12, 2016. A Saturday. It was my sister’s twelfth birthday. In our hometown, a child’s twelfth birthday is a major milestone. It means the child has firmly planted their feet in the world and officially entered their teenage years. But my sister met her end on the exact day she was supposed to become a teenager. I was attending college in the city back then, and I specifically took the bus home to celebrate her birthday. Coincidentally, my sister, who was in the sixth grade, had a school-organized spring field trip to Blackwood Mountain that very day. My mom initially didn’t want her to go, but my sister had been looking forward to visiting Blackwood Mountain for ages. So, the birthday dinner was pushed back to the evening. My mom prepared a windbreaker, a sun hat, a canteen of water, and some snacks for her, reminding her to come home early that afternoon. “You guys aren’t allowed to secretly eat the birthday cake! Wait for me to come back before you put the candles in!” My sister playfully ordered my mom and me, still worried we’d start without her. “Hey, Chloe, I heard there’s a really beautiful type of Ghost Orchid on Blackwood Mountain. How about I bring a few branches back to make bookmarks for you?” She sneaked a cautious glance at me, trying to butter me up. The night before, while playing a computer game, she had accidentally deleted the Organic Chemistry term paper I had worked so hard to write. Organic Chemistry was my absolute most hated and headache-inducing subject. I was currently forcing myself to rewrite the paper from scratch, so I angrily snapped back, “You said it yourself! If you don’t pick them for me, don’t even bother coming back home to see me!” In reality, I didn’t actually care about those Ghost Orchid bookmarks. I was just angry at the time and wanted to give her a hard time. Back then, none of us knew that while the Ghost Orchids of Blackwood Mountain were famously beautiful… They could only be admired from afar. 2 “She fell off the cliff because she was trying to pick those Ghost Orchids for me. I didn’t know until she died that those flowers only bloom on the steepest, most treacherous cliffs.” “For many years after that, I always wondered… if I hadn’t said that awful line, ‘If you don’t pick them, don’t come back,’ would my sister still be alive?” Ten years later, I sat across from my PhD advisor, Professor Arthur Vance, and recounted the story. Even after all these years, I still broke down in tears. “When did they find your sister?” Professor Vance pulled out a tissue and handed it to me. “Three days later.” “I remember it so clearly. It was an early morning, and the sun was shining on her shriveled, sunken face. It felt so warm.” “My mother passed out on the spot. My father had a massive heart attack.” “I was the only one left to sit there and keep her company.” The coffee maker off to the side bubbled quietly, the sound exceptionally loud in the dead silence of the office. “Honestly, finding a body after someone goes missing in the mountains is rare. It was a tragic stroke of luck that you even found her,” Professor Vance said as he stood up, poured a cup of coffee, and gently pushed the warm bone-china mug toward me. “Hundreds of people searched the mountain back then. The police, my parents, friends, relatives, my father’s former students—graduated and current—and even a lot of local volunteers rushed over to help.” “The police used her last known location as a radius. They checked surveillance cameras, canvassed the area, and interviewed every rural neighborhood within a ten-mile radius.” The moment they found the body, my mother lunged at me, tearing at my clothes, screaming in absolute despair: “You knew it was her birthday, and you still cursed her! How could you be so vicious?!” My father, who had been a high school teacher for half his life, was overcome with grief and rage. He rushed over and slapped me across the face three times, pointing a trembling finger at me while cursing: “I’ve spent my life educating people, how did I raise such a cold-blooded, selfish animal?! Why wasn’t it you who died?!” He announced right then and there that he no longer had a daughter. Facing the disgusted and judgmental stares of everyone around me, I didn’t hide, and I didn’t defend myself. I numbly endured all the beating and spitting. Because even I felt that I was the one who forced my own sister to her death. I deserved it. I deserved to die. I tried hard to swallow the burning lump in my throat and continued: “At first, everyone thought my sister’s death was an accident, until the autopsy report came out.” “Her cause of death was utterly baffling. She didn’t die of hypothermia. She wasn’t killed by wild animals or snakebites. And she definitely didn’t die from the fall.” Professor Vance, who was stirring his coffee, stopped. “Then how did she die?” “She died of thirst.” “Dying of dehydration after going missing in the wilderness is pretty common, isn’t it?” Professor Vance tapped his mug. “But… what if her canteen was completely full of water?” I stared at him, asking word by word. “Is it possible someone took her water before the accident, and then, afraid of being held responsible, quietly put it back after she died?” Professor Vance asked, looking at me. I shook my head. “The search party that found my sister’s body consisted of exactly three people: my father, one of his former students, and a search-and-rescue volunteer. Moreover, the crime scene investigators confirmed there were only three sets of footprints around her. There was no fourth person.” “What about her classmates? Teachers? How were her interpersonal relationships at school?” I tried hard to recall the situation back then. “My sister had excellent grades, a very easygoing personality, and the police interviews found no evidence of grudges, bullying, or being bullied.” “So it goes without saying there was nothing wrong with the water in the canteen, right?” I nodded. Professor Vance’s expression darkened. 3 “Did they do a full autopsy?” “Yes. I was a college sophomore at the time and had already taken a forensic anatomy course. I requested to observe the entire autopsy process. Her body exhibited classic pathological signs of fatal dehydration.” Professor Vance patted my shoulder. “That must have been incredibly hard on you.” No one knows what it feels like to watch your own flesh and blood being dissected right in front of you. Every cut felt like it was slicing into my own skin. The extreme agony numbs you to the point where you can’t even shed a single tear. “So… that’s why you switched from a forensics major to clinical medicine…” Professor Vance flipped through my resume, looking at me with deep sympathy. “Yes. I developed a severe psychological block. I could never dissect a corpse again.” “Later on, I went into clinical medicine. I researched all of the human body’s stress responses and dehydration mechanisms. Ultimately, I crossed disciplines and applied for your PhD program.” “So, you applied for my Criminal Psychology PhD program just to have me help you reconstruct this decade-old cold case?” Professor Vance looked at me, a bit incredulous. There’s a running joke in academic circles: Getting into Dr. Vance’s PhD program is harder than scaling Mount Everest. Perhaps this was the first time he had ever heard such a motive for pursuing a doctorate. “Yes. Becoming your student was so I could meet you, but more importantly, so I would earn the right to speak with you on an equal footing.” “You are a renowned criminal investigator and a leading authority in criminal psychology in this country. You’ve solved countless cold cases.” “I’m begging you to guide me in uncovering the truth. I need to know if my sister’s death was an accident or murder.” “I need to know why, when she had water, she died of thirst!” “If her death was purely a tragic accident, then I’ll let her rest in peace. But if she was murdered, I will exhaust my entire life seeking justice for her!” Even though I tried my hardest to control myself, I practically screamed those last few sentences. After my sister died, my mother fell into a deep depression and eventually passed away. My father went insane and was institutionalized. A once-happy family was ruined. In every dream I had over the past ten years, I desperately wanted to hug my sister. I wanted to ask her: Why didn’t you drink the water? I wanted to tell her that her big sister didn’t blame her for losing the Organic Chemistry paper. And that I didn’t want the Ghost Orchid bookmark at all. I just wanted her to come home safely. If she came back, this family would come back. But that was forever impossible. 4 Professor Vance stayed silent for a moment before saying, “Tell me the specific autopsy results.” “The body was highly desiccated. The skin was dry, wrinkled, and had a leathery appearance. Her eyes were slightly open, and the eyeballs were sunken due to fluid loss. Because the blood was highly concentrated, livor mortis was unusually dark and abnormally distributed. The blood inside her heart and major vessels was dark red and highly viscous. Body cavity fluids were significantly reduced.” After countless sleepless nights of research and review, my sister’s autopsy report was permanently etched into my mind. Even the visual memory of the autopsy itself flashed before my eyes again. Professor Vance stopped stirring his coffee. “In April, the nighttime temperature at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft on Blackwood Mountain usually drops to around 50 degrees. A twelve-year-old child trapped there for three full days would generally die of hypothermia.” I took a deep breath and said, “That is the most bizarre and anomalous part of the autopsy.” “When a person experiences severe hypothermia, the gastrointestinal mucosa undergoes a stress response, producing massive dark brown hemorrhagic spots. In forensics, we call these ‘Vishnevsky spots’. But my sister’s autopsy report showed her gastric mucosa was perfectly intact. There were absolutely no signs of cold exposure.” Professor Vance’s eyes instantly sharpened. “No hypothermia… but instead, she exhibited characteristics of hyperthermia?” I nodded, my voice trembling uncontrollably. “Yes. The medical examiner’s final conclusion was that her direct cause of death was multiple organ failure induced by extreme dehydration—in other words, dying of thirst.” “What’s even more horrifying is that her organs showed pathological signs of extreme ‘dehydration fever’.” “When a person is severely dehydrated, their body can’t produce a single drop of sweat. The cooling system completely shuts down. It was as if she was locked inside an invisible oven. She was literally ‘dry-roasted’ to death by her own core body temperature!” “As for why she didn’t freeze to death, I went to the scene and spent a night there years ago. I found out that the bottom of that pit wasn’t cold at all.” I unzipped my backpack and spread a yellowed geological survey map on the desk. “I looked up the geological data for Blackwood Mountain. Even though the mine shaft is only a couple hundred feet deep, its bottom connects to an active geothermal fault line.” “That geothermal fault keeps the bottom of the pit at a constant temperature of around 77 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. With no wind, it’s essentially a natural incubator.” Professor Vance’s gaze hardened. He stared at his black coffee, tapping his knuckles lightly on the desk, deep in thought. The office was so quiet that only the ticking of the clock could be heard. After a long while, he asked another question: “What were the results of the toxicology and exclusionary diagnostics?” “Blood and vitreous humor tests showed extreme elevations in blood sodium and blood oxygen. She must have gone completely blind at least a day before she died.” “There were no signs of food or mineral poisoning. Her body only had minor abrasions, ruling out blunt force trauma or assault.” I rattled off the facts in one breath. “Any signs of sexual assault?” I shook my head. “None. But… there is one thing that has always baffled me.” Professor Vance gestured for me to continue. “The autopsy and crime scene evidence indicated that my sister likely took her last breath sometime between the afternoon and night of the third day she was missing. The body was discovered exactly on the morning of the fourth day. It’s too coincidental. It feels like… like…” “Like someone had been standing by, watching her coldly the entire time, intentionally waiting until she was completely dead before letting you guys find her?” Professor Vance stared at me without blinking. “Yes, it was found entirely too ‘conveniently’.” I nodded slowly. “During those three days, she endured the ultimate agony of dehydration fever. For a healthy adult, the absolute limit of survival without water is three days. Let alone a twelve-year-old child. The killer timed it perfectly to ensure she was dead.” “How was this case classified back then?” “Because my sister’s cause of death couldn’t be logically explained, it was still classified as an accidental death. But Detective Miller, the lead investigator, disagreed. He said there were too many suspicious elements, and calling it an ‘accident’ was incredibly irresponsible. Later on, someone even suggested my sister committed suicide by intentionally refusing to eat or drink. But she clearly had food in her mouth…” “Are you saying when she was found, she had food in her mouth?” Professor Vance interrupted me, unable to hold back. “Yes.” I nodded, my eyes burning with unshed tears. “Her mouth was completely stuffed. It was the snacks my mom had packed for her the morning she disappeared.” Professor Vance’s expression grew even more solemn. “What about her stomach?” I shook my head. “Nothing. It was empty.” The hand Professor Vance was using to hold his coffee mug suddenly tightened. “Were there signs of climbing or scrambling in the pit? Was there dirt on her clothes and shoes?” “Yes. All ten of her fingers were scraped raw. The nails on her left middle finger and right index finger were completely torn off…” My eyes burned as I fought down the dull ache in my chest. “…She was still clutching a few dried Ghost Orchids in her hand… the ones meant for me…” Professor Vance stared at me and said, word by word: “No hypothermia. Anomalous dehydration fever. A container full of water, and a mouth stuffed full of food she couldn’t swallow. Chloe, I can confirm with absolute certainty that your sister’s death was a homicide.” 5 My heart violently contracted, and the coffee mug in my hand nearly slipped. “Wh… why?” Even though I expected the result, my voice still trembled uncontrollably. Who would do this to a child who had just turned twelve? What kind of deep-seated hatred would drive someone to torture a little girl so sadistically? “There was dirt under her fingernails. There were signs of scrambling. Her nails were torn off. This proves she exhausted every ounce of her strength trying to survive.” “And a person fighting that hard to survive does not commit suicide.” “Have you ever considered that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to drink the water, but that she couldn’t drink it?” My scalp went numb. “What do you mean?” My first instinct was that this was absurd. What could possibly threaten a desperate child so much that she would leave a full cup of water untouched and literally allow herself to die of thirst? “There was some external force that made her too terrified to drink, or completely unable to drink.” Professor Vance’s eyes blazed. “If that’s the case, then this external force understood your sister incredibly well.” “Therefore, it must be someone she knew. Perhaps someone she was very familiar with.” My mind went completely blank, as if I had been struck by lightning. My entire body froze. For ten years, I had visited that abandoned mine shaft countless times, obsessively turning over every blade of grass and bush at the crime scene. Time and time again, I sat at the bottom of the pit, trying to reconstruct the events of that day. Hoping to find even the slightest clue. But in the end, I found nothing. I had considered countless possibilities. Did the fall give her brain damage? Did she feel like her family didn’t love her enough, so she stubbornly refused to drink out of spite? … But I had never, ever considered that she couldn’t drink the water. 6 Right at that moment, my phone rang. It was Mrs. Higgins, a volunteer from the neighborhood stray cat rescue. She told me that the stray cat I had been rescuing had something terrible happen to it. “Chloe, honey, your cat is dead. I’m so sorry. She was so wild, she ran off outside for two days. When she came back, I poured her a bowl completely full of cat food.” “I don’t know what happened to her, it’s like she caught some weird disease. She stuffed a mouthful of kibble into her mouth, but she just wouldn’t swallow it. She’d spit it out, put it back in, and literally forced herself to starve to death…” I started rescuing stray cats three years after my sister died. I named this particular orange cat “Lily,” using my sister’s name. My head buzzed loudly, and I almost dropped my phone. “A mouth full of food, unable to swallow, guarding a bowl of food while starving to death…” How terrifyingly similar was this to my sister guarding her water bottle, dying of thirst with unswallowed snacks in her mouth?! Professor Vance noticed my pale face. “What happened?” I took a deep breath and repeated what Mrs. Higgins told me. “It looks like that person has been around this whole time.” Professor Vance’s gaze darkened. He grabbed his car keys from the desk. “Let’s go. We need to examine that cat’s body.” Half an hour later, we were standing on a balcony looking at the cat’s corpse. The orange cat’s body was already completely stiff, its mouth half-open. Sure enough, its oral cavity was stuffed with soggy, viscous cat kibble. Its chin was covered in dried saliva. Its cloudy eyes stared into the void, full of helplessness and unwillingness. What kind of torture did it endure before it died? That extreme desire for food, only to face the agonizing inability to swallow it at the very last second—it instantly pulled me back to that mine shaft from ten years ago. Mrs. Higgins nervously rubbed her hands together, repeatedly explaining how bizarrely the cat had died. “This kind of death is really rare, you know? I haven’t seen it in at least ten years. Back then, there were a few cats and dogs that died looking almost exactly like how Lily looks right now…” Hearing Mrs. Higgins say this, a violent shiver ran through my body. Ten years ago? That was exactly when my sister’s accident happened. I violently grabbed Mrs. Higgins’s wrist, my voice trembling as I demanded: “Mrs. Higgins, what did you just say? Ten years ago? Where did you find those dead stray cats and dogs ten years ago?!” “Who usually went to feed them? Did you see any suspicious people around? Please, think carefully, this is incredibly important to me!” Mrs. Higgins was startled, then shook her head blankly. “It’s been ten years, honey. How could I possibly remember clearly? And nobody really paid much attention to the stray animals out there anyway.” “Chloe.” Professor Vance pulled me back from the brink of a breakdown. “Don’t rush this. Let’s dissect the cat’s body and confirm things first. You can’t just look at the surface.” I nodded. 7 We brought Lily’s body back to the anatomy lab. The bright fluorescent lights flickered on, casting a harsh, pale glare on the emaciated orange cat. “Remember, everything that is done leaves a trace. The more the perpetrator does, the more flaws they expose,” Professor Vance said. I put on my sterile scrubs and pulled on rubber gloves. Ten years. The moment I held a scalpel again, my hands still trembled uncontrollably. But there were some things I had to face. I had to forge armor out of my courage. Only then could I go onto the battlefield and fight. Chloe, you can do this. Believe in yourself. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried with all my might to steady my nerves. The scalpel started at the cat’s oral cavity, making a precise, incremental incision. I carefully separated the muscle tissue, exposing the esophagus and trachea. Professor Vance stood to the side, his brows tightly furrowed. I cut down the throat straight to the stomach. In that instant, my pupils contracted sharply, and my breathing stopped. “What is it?” Professor Vance keenly noticed my reaction. “The entire esophagus…” My hand holding the scalpel froze in mid-air. My trembling gaze swept over every inch of the exposed tissue, and the hair on my arms stood on end. “There is no mechanical obstruction. No signs of toxic corrosion. No pathology in the smooth muscle.” “It is exactly the same as my sister.” “Ten years ago, the killer practiced on stray cats and dogs. Only after perfecting their method did they move on to killing a human.” Professor Vance’s eyes were dark. “Chloe, you are a PhD student in criminal psychology. Show me your professional discipline. Step back and look at this as an objective observer.” “Go back and take a hard look at the people around you. Don’t let a single one slip by.” “If you only focus your eyes on your sister’s death, you’ll miss too much. Investigate your mother’s suicide and your father’s insanity as well.” “Professor Vance, do you mean… all of this was man-made?” I gripped the edge of the dissection table so hard my knuckles turned white, breaking out in full-body goosebumps. For ten years, I believed it was my one angry sentence that destroyed my entire family. But now, an icy chill, like a venomous snake silently locking onto its prey, crawled frantically up my spine. “If my guess is right, that person has been by your side this entire time.” Professor Vance’s expression was exceptionally grave. “I need you to contact the detective who worked your case immediately and check two things.” “First, your family’s social network. Relatives, friends, neighbors, even your parents’ colleagues. Make a list.” “Second, find out who was near your sister’s class on the day of the incident, or anyone who frequently interacted with her class. You will find something.” Professor Vance paused, then added, “If you identify a suspect, do not alert them. Come to me. Remember that.” Perhaps fearing I wouldn’t take it seriously enough, he added one final instruction before leaving the room: “You’ve waited ten years. Don’t rush it now.” 8 March 5, 2026. I found Detective Miller, the officer who oversaw my sister’s case back then, and relayed Professor Vance’s deductions to him. He slammed his hand on his thigh. “Back then, we focused our investigation entirely on a twenty-mile radius around the crime scene. The one thing we never considered was an acquaintance.” “If we follow the two threads Professor Vance suggested, they form a net. Whoever gets caught in that net is our suspect.” “Don’t worry, Chloe. I will drag this person out of the shadows for you!” Feeling like a breakthrough was imminent, Detective Miller instantly looked ten years younger, walking with a renewed spring in his step. On March 6, my sister’s case was officially reclassified as a criminal homicide investigation. Professor Vance joined the task force as a consulting criminal investigator. That same day, I asked Detective Miller to pull the neighborhood surveillance footage from the past week. I fed photos of the stray cat, Lily, into an AI program to trace its movement patterns. I used the fastest method to identify anyone it interacted with over the last few days. But there was nothing unusual. It wasn’t until the fourth day that an old security camera near a local bodega captured a blurry but familiar figure. On that day, I had visited the abandoned mine shaft on Blackwood Mountain and re-examined the decade-old crime scene. When I looked at those remaining, heavily blurred footprints at the scene, a specific possibility suddenly struck me. An icy chill shot up from the soles of my feet, traveled up my calves, and pierced straight into my skull, making my scalp tingle. What if one of the three people who initially found my sister’s body was the killer? Then, after arriving at the scene, their earlier footprints would simply blend in. Or they could have been “accidentally” blurred out by them. Professor Vance had hypothesized that the killer was someone familiar to my sister. But just how familiar? I had to go confirm it myself. Before I went, I met with Professor Vance again. After listening to my deduction regarding the footprints at the scene and the discovery in the surveillance footage, he only said one thing: “Chloe, remember, you are a criminal psychology scholar. You cannot stare into the abyss for too long. When the abyss stares back at you, do not let it consume you.” 9 March 11, 7:25 AM. On the way to the State Psychiatric Facility to see my father. I received a call from Detective Miller. The background check on the people related to Blackwood Mountain on the day of the incident was complete. “Chloe, because this case is highly sensitive, and for your personal safety, my superiors and Professor Vance agreed to keep you updated on the investigation so you aren’t caught off guard and give the killer an opening. The investigation results and the suspect’s files have been sent to your email…” After reading the files in my inbox, I laughed. I laughed until my lungs burned. Combining the surveillance screening from the past few days, yesterday’s re-examination of the crime scene, and all the little details of my family’s life over the years… I touched a horrifying truth that completely flipped everything I thought I knew upside down. 10 At exactly 8:00 AM, I walked into the facility I had visited countless times over the past five years. After my mother passed away, my father’s mental state slowly deteriorated. Every time he saw me, he would lunge forward, looking like he wanted to strangle me. I thought he resented me, hated me, and refused to see me. So I had to hire people to take care of him. Later on, as he became increasingly incoherent, I had no choice but to admit him to the psychiatric facility. But every time he saw me, his emotional state would become wildly erratic. To avoid triggering him, for the last five years, I would only visit once every two months, just to look at him from a distance. That was it. This was also the first time since he got “sick” that I went in to deeply and carefully understand his medical condition. No one knows that my father, a high school teacher, always wanted to be a psychiatrist. Because of this, he didn’t just spend years studying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); he practically self-taught himself clinical psychiatry, neurobiology, and behavioral psychology. Now that he was a long-term resident at a psychiatric hospital, I guess you could say he achieved his dream. His attending physician, Dr. Caleb Shaw, was the only one of my father’s former students who went into clinical psychiatry and psychology. Before my sister’s accident, the two of them were like mentor and friend, and he was a frequent guest at our house. He was also the only person who didn’t blame me after my sister’s accident, and the only one who comforted me.

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After my confession to my childhood friend failed, I started an online romance. Every day, I flirted with my online boyfriend by sending faceless body pictures and calling him “hubby.” One night, I was flirting with him again. My online boyfriend replied instantly: [I can’t take it anymore. I want to f–k you right now.] The next second, there was a frantic knocking at my door. As soon as I opened it, my childhood friend stood there. He pinned me against the wall and kissed me. 1 It was 3:00 AM, and I couldn’t sleep… Time to flirt with my online boyfriend. I got out of bed, took off my pajamas, and put on the new belly chain I just bought. In the mirror, my waist curved inward, forming a captivating silhouette. The silver chain hung low on my hips, its metallic gleam dancing against my pale skin. I took a picture in the mirror, cropped out my face, and sent it to my online boyfriend. [Hubby~ Look at this pretty thing I got.] He replied almost instantly. [Trying to seduce me in the middle of the night again?] I licked my lips and typed back with a wicked smile. [I’ll help you touch it] He immediately started a video call. Camera off. I kept my camera off my face too, pointing the lens directly at my waist. … An hour later, the call ended. I lay in bed, savoring the moment. It all started after high school graduation, when I confessed to my childhood best friend, Ethan Hayes. He rejected me, saying he was straight and only saw me as a friend. I was heartbroken, so I downloaded a multiplayer game to distract myself. But my skills were terrible, and my teammates constantly yelled at me over the mic. I wasn’t about to take it, so I yelled right back, conveniently venting all the frustration I had from Ethan’s rejection. After I finished screaming at them, the quiet carry on our team, username “G”, sent me a private message: “I’ll carry you.” After playing together for a while, I slowly became interested in him. Every day in the game, I’d constantly praise him: “Wow, you’re amazing!” Eventually, I started pestering him for his Instagram or Snapchat. After he rejected me for the fourth time, I stopped bothering him and started finding other guys to carry me in games. That made him panic, and he finally gave me his snap. But he must have given me a brand-new alt account, because there was absolutely nothing on it. At first, G was incredibly cold to me. If I didn’t text him, he would never initiate a conversation. And whenever we did talk, it was always me asking a question and him giving a one-word answer. I was about ready to give up on him. Until one night, I was wide awake and bored. A wicked idea flashed through my mind. Out of nowhere, I sent him a faceless picture of my body. He replied almost instantly, sending three question marks. The corners of my mouth curled up. [Do you like it?] The screen showed “Typing…” for a long time. But after waiting forever, he still hadn’t replied. I raised an eyebrow. [If you don’t answer, that means you don’t like it.] [Whatever. Since you don’t like it, I’ll just send it to someone else.] He panicked. [I like it.] [Don’t you dare send it to anyone else.] I felt like I had finally figured out how to handle him. I gave a smug little head bob. 2 Under my guidance, G started initiating conversations with me every single day. He called me “baby” constantly and learned how to talk dirty. Every now and then, he’d send me gym selfies. Even though he didn’t show his face, my intuition told me he was definitely handsome. Not only that, but he was incredibly generous. He frequently sent me money or bought me in-game gifts. Even though my family was well-off, my parents believed kids shouldn’t be spoiled with cash, so they didn’t give me any allowance and made me earn my own money. G was simply the perfect online boyfriend! Then, today happened. The chef was busy in the kitchen. Seeing him prepare a massive feast, I quickly asked my mom: “Are we having guests?” My mom, cracking sunflower seeds, replied casually: “Your dad brought home a box of fresh crabs yesterday, so I invited Ethan and his mom over for dinner.” I froze slightly. Even though Ethan’s house was literally right next door to ours, I had been avoiding him ever since he rejected my confession. Even when mutual friends invited us both out, if Ethan was going, I wouldn’t go. I hadn’t seen Ethan in a whole month. Just then, the doorbell rang. I went to open it. The moment the door opened, Ethan’s handsome, refined face appeared right in front of me. I instinctively took a step back, putting distance between us. Mrs. Hayes looked at me for a moment, then at Ethan. “What is going on with you two?” “Weren’t you guys super close before?” Neither of us said a word. At the dinner table. Ethan sat next to me, but I deliberately scooted over, putting as much space between us as possible. It felt like there was an entire galaxy separating us. Ethan frowned at me, but I chose to ignore him. During the meal, Ethan put a piece of ribs on my plate. Growing up together, he was used to taking care of me. It was exactly because of things like this that I mistakenly thought he liked me. Turns out, I was just delusional. Right in front of him, I picked up the rib and fed it to our dog, Buster. He froze, a flash of anger appearing in his dark eyes. 3 After dinner, I sat on the living room sofa, pulled out my phone, and started texting G. [Just finished dinner, but I’m still so hungry.] G replied instantly. [What else do you want to eat? I’ll order delivery for you.] I smirked and typed back. [I want to eat you.] Beside me, Ethan suddenly spat out the water he had just taken a sip of. I looked at him in confusion. He hurriedly grabbed a napkin to wipe his mouth, shooting me a very strange look. Me: “?” Psycho. What did I even do to him? I ignored him and went back to chatting with G. [Honestly, I kind of want an orange right now.] [But I hate peeling oranges. It gets my hands sticky and it’s so annoying.] In the past, Ethan was always the one who peeled them for me. I brought up meeting in person again. [When are we finally going to meet in person?] [I really want to see you so badly.] [If we meet, will you peel oranges for me?] The chat screen showed “Typing…” again. But he took forever to reply. Just as I expected. Every time I brought up meeting, G would hesitate. I waited a bit longer. He sent me a transfer for $500 first. Then he replied. [Baby, let’s talk about this later, okay?] I didn’t push it. I figured I might be rushing things. After all, we had only known each other for less than a month. Take it slow. Ethan put his phone down, reached out, and grabbed an orange, starting to peel it. His fingers were pale and slender. He looked good even just peeling an orange. I was mesmerized for a second. It wasn’t until he handed the peeled orange to me that I snapped out of it. But I didn’t take it. I rejected it coldly. “I don’t eat oranges peeled by you.” An emotion I couldn’t decipher flashed through Ethan’s eyes. “I already peeled it for you. Just eat it.” My temper flared instantly. Who gave him the right to order me around? I angrily swatted his hand away. The orange fell to the floor. 4 The atmosphere between us dropped to freezing point. I got up and went straight to my room. In my room, I vented to G. [My childhood friend is so annoying.] [He’s a clueless, boundary-less jerk.] [He rejected my confession, but now he’s acting all fake and trying to be nice to me.] After sending that, I got worried G might get jealous, so I added: [Me liking him is totally in the past. I don’t like him at all anymore.] [Since I met you, you’re the only one in my heart.] [Love you~] G didn’t reply. Suddenly, Ethan pushed my door open and walked in. His face was dark: “Chloe, can you please stop acting like this?” Acting like what? Rejecting the orange he peeled? I looked up at him and said seriously, “Ethan, you need to stop acting like this!” “I have a boyfriend now. Please keep your distance from me.” “Otherwise, my boyfriend will get jealous.” Ethan let out a bitter laugh. But he seemed to think of something, swallowed whatever he was about to say, turned around, and left. I locked my door, lay on my bed, and checked to see if G had replied. After a long time, G finally answered. [Mhm.] Just “Mhm”? He’s brushing me off with one word? I frowned and typed back angrily. [Your tone is so cold. Do you not want to talk to me?] [Fine, I’ll go find someone else to talk to.] He immediately panicked. [No.] [Baby, don’t be mad.] [It’s my fault, okay?] He sent me five consecutive $100 transfers. [Are you still mad, baby?] I pouted. [Don’t you think my childhood friend has a screw loose?] [I hate him so much.] He was silent for a moment. [Yeah, he has a screw loose. Don’t be mad at him, baby.] I was satisfied and went back to oversharing with G. [I just laid all my cards on the table with my friend. I told him I have a boyfriend and told him to stay away from me…] 5 It was the weekend. Our friend Matt invited me to a karaoke place to hang out. Since he was a mutual friend of both me and Ethan, I asked: “Is Ethan going? If he’s going, I’m not.” Only after Matt assured me Ethan wasn’t coming did I agree to go. But when I got to the karaoke room, Ethan was sitting right there on the sofa. I glared at Matt. He definitely set this up! Matt played dumb and dragged me inside. If I insisted on leaving now, it would just make me look petty. Having no other choice, I sat as far away from Ethan as possible, pulled out my phone, and started chatting with G. [I miss you. Send me some abs pics, I want to see.] Ethan, who was sitting far away, glanced down at his phone, then looked up and stared at me meaningfully. I felt so confused. What are you looking at?! But I didn’t want to engage with him, so I went back to harassing G. [Are you there?] [Why aren’t you replying?] [Do you not love me anymore?] [Reply to me now.] G replied. [Baby, I’m out at a party with friends right now.] [I’ll take some for you when I get home.] I refused. [No, I want to see them right now.] [You can just go to the bathroom and take a pic!] [Hurry up, I wanna see.] [Hubby~ please.] I pulled out my ultimate weapon. [If you don’t take one for me, I’ll go find someone else to take one for me.] Sure enough, G replied instantly. [Don’t you dare!] [I’m going to take one for you right now.] I smiled in satisfaction. Ethan suddenly stood up. He walked past me and headed toward the bathroom. Not long after, a fresh picture of some very nice abs came through. Sharply defined abs—you could tell he worked out constantly. I admired them for a while, then started teasing him. [I want to touch your abs.] [I want to lick your abs.] [I want to…] Just then, a friend sitting nearby suddenly spoke up. “Hey Ethan, who are you texting?” “You’re blushing so hard.” “Is it a girlfriend?” I looked up and realized Ethan had returned at some point. He frantically locked his phone screen and immediately denied it: “Just a normal friend.” But his bright red earlobes completely exposed him. I had never seen Ethan look like this before. Did he actually get a girlfriend? Not my business anyway. I lowered my head and went back to teasing G. 6 At the karaoke place, someone suggested playing a game. Truth or Dare. My luck was terrible; I kept losing. But I always chose Truth. Eventually, everyone thought Truth was too boring. They demanded I had to choose Dare. When I lost yet again from rolling the dice, I drew a Dare card. My luck was absolute trash. The card said I had to hug someone for thirty seconds. Everyone unanimously assumed I would choose Ethan, since we were the closest. They started cheering and hyping up me and Ethan. Ethan sat in his seat, his face expressionless, watching me quietly while spinning his phone in his right hand. But my eyes swept past Ethan and landed on Matt, who was sitting next to him. “Matt, I choose you.” Ethan stopped spinning his phone. His face visibly darkened. Matt didn’t dare move. I called his name again. “Hurry up!” Matt looked at me, then looked at Ethan. Finally, he chugged an entire beer himself. “I’ll take the penalty drink for Chloe. Skip, skip!” Ethan glanced at me, stood up, and left. I felt like the vibe was dead anyway, so I left early too. When I got home, I continued chatting with G. [I’m home.] [Is your party over yet?] [Do you want to play a game together tonight?] G replied. [Can we play tomorrow?] I sensed that G was in a bad mood and asked, [What’s wrong?] [Who made you mad?] G was silent for a moment. [I’m fine.] 7 On my birthday, G was the very first person to wish me a happy birthday. In the past, that person was always Ethan. Thinking about that made my chest feel a little tight, but the feeling passed quickly. I invited a lot of friends, but I specifically didn’t invite Ethan. Halfway through my birthday party, I took out my phone to message G. [I really wish you could be here for my birthday party.] [The cake you ordered for me is so delicious.] [But I don’t dare eat too much, I’m afraid of gaining weight.] G replied instantly. [Baby, you’re not fat. Eat as much as you want.] The doorbell rang. I happily went to open the door, only to see Ethan standing there. My smile vanished instantly. “I didn’t invite you.” Ethan completely ignored what I said and handed me a gift. “Your birthday present.” I didn’t take it. Ethan didn’t care; he just walked right in holding the gift. By the time I walked over to him, he was already sitting on the sofa, looking up at me. “Did you forget to invite me?” “Don’t be so careless next time.” Me: “?” I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. I turned and walked away. Finding a quiet corner, I started texting G again. [My childhood friend just showed up.] [He’s so annoying. Just seeing him ruined my mood.] G replied. [Baby, why do you hate him so much?] [He just wanted to come celebrate your birthday.] I replied immediately. [But I don’t want to see him.] Ethan’s back looked lonely. He was shrouded in shadow, looking incredibly depressed. After the party ended and all my friends had left, Ethan was still there. He sat on the sofa, his eyes following me as I moved around. I looked at him. “Are you still not leaving?” He looked at me. “You used to love the gifts I gave you. Aren’t you even going to open it?” I said impatiently, “When are you leaving?” “Chloe, I…” He hesitated, looking at me with such a lonely expression. I frowned. “If you’re not going to leave, fine. I don’t care. I’m going upstairs to chat with my boyfriend.” Staring at my back as I walked upstairs, Ethan couldn’t look away for a long time. It wasn’t until I completely disappeared from his sight that a wave of deep regret washed over him. 8 Mrs. Hayes invited my family to vacation at their beach house. My mom asked if I wanted to go. Even though I really wanted to go, I didn’t want to see Ethan. I lied and said I had other plans and declined. Hearing my refusal, Mrs. Hayes said regretfully, “Our Ethan can’t make it this year either because he has things to do. I really miss the times our families used to spend summer vacations together. With neither of you kids coming, it won’t be lively at all.” When I heard Ethan wasn’t going, I quickly said, “Mrs. Hayes, I’ll go!” Sun, sand, and the ocean—here I come! Before leaving, I sent G a message. [Hehe, I’m going to the beach.] [The new swimsuit I bought is super cute~] [I’ll take pictures for you later.] At the beach. I changed into my swimsuit and lay on a beach chair, trying to apply sunscreen to myself. But it’s impossible to reach your own back. While I was struggling to apply it, a hand took the sunscreen from me and started rubbing it on my back. I turned around in surprise and saw it was Ethan. I was shocked: “Why are you here?” “Didn’t you say you had things to do?” Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Someone was constantly tempting me to come. So I pushed my other plans.” I wasn’t listening to him. Because my attention was drawn to something else. Ethan was applying the sunscreen very meticulously. Every time his hand glided over my skin, a tingling sensation swept through my entire body. When his hand reached my waist, I distinctly felt him apply more pressure. That strange sensation made my mind wander. I snapped back to reality, immediately pushed Ethan away, and snatched the sunscreen back. “I don’t need your help!” He looked at me, a very faint smile playing on his lips. That afternoon, I lay on my beach chair, and Ethan lay on the chair right next to mine. Since this was technically his family’s property, I couldn’t exactly kick him out. But I didn’t talk to him. I just kept my head down, chatting with G. First, I sent G a few pictures of the beach. [It’s pretty here, right?] G replied instantly. [Pretty.] The corners of my mouth curled up. [Wait for me.] I glanced back at Ethan. He was also looking down at his phone. Seeing me look at him, he looked up and smiled. I rolled my eyes, quietly walked further away, took out my phone, and started taking selfies. I originally wanted to include my face, but to keep a little mystery for the day we finally met in person, I only took pictures of my lips. I gently bit my full, rosy lower lip. After sending the photo to G, I asked him: [Is the ocean prettier, or am I prettier?] [You.] I walked back to my beach chair, satisfied. I was a little thirsty, so I grabbed a bottle of water next to me and tilted my head back, drinking it in big gulps. I didn’t notice Ethan next to me. His gaze moved down, lingering on my lips, and he swallowed hard. 9 I fell asleep on the beach chair. I’ve always been a deep sleeper. I slept all the way until the sun went down. When I woke up, my lips felt a little swollen and sore. I reached up and touched them. They felt a bit swollen. Just then, Ethan stood up. “Let’s go. Time to go back and eat.” I didn’t think much of it and got up to head back to the villa. When we walked into the living room, Mrs. Hayes came over. “Chloe, why are your lips swollen?” As Mrs. Hayes spoke, she narrowed her eyes and glanced at Ethan standing behind me. Ethan: “I’m going upstairs to change.” I touched my lips again and said, “I might just be having an allergic reaction. I had spicy hotpot last night.” After dinner, Mrs. Hayes pulled me aside to chat for a bit. Then I went upstairs to rest. My room was right next to Ethan’s. In my room, I lay on the bed for a while, then went to the bathroom to take a shower. I suddenly remembered I still hadn’t sent G a picture of me in my swimsuit. I pulled a swimsuit out of my suitcase. It was one I’d never actually wear outside; I bought it specifically to show G. In the bathroom, after I took the picture in the mirror, I sent it straight to G. But before G could reply, there was a sudden knock on my door. I panicked, quickly took off the swimsuit, threw on some pajamas, and went to open the door. When I opened it, Ethan was standing there. He seemed to be in a hurry. “The bathroom in my room is broken. I need to use yours.” I stepped aside to let him in. He went straight to the bathroom. I sat on the bed and waited. He was in there for half an hour. I grew impatient and yelled toward the bathroom, “Did you fall into the toilet?!” Ethan’s voice was hoarse, and it sounded like he was desperately trying to suppress something. “I need to wait a little longer.” Another half hour passed. It suddenly hit me—my swimsuit was still hanging in the bathroom! If he saw it… My face instantly turned bright red. I knocked on the door. “Ethan! Are you done yet?!” Ethan opened the door. His cheeks were a little flushed. He gave me a look and quickly walked away. I rushed inside. The swimsuit I had hung up was gone! I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. A thought crossed my mind. I knocked on Ethan’s door. Afraid Mrs. Hayes or my mom would hear, I lowered my voice. “Ethan! Did you steal my swimsuit?!”

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After sleeping in separate rooms from my boyfriend, Ethan, for half a year, my period started getting highly irregular. I went to the hospital, and an older, holistic doctor told me I had a severe hormonal imbalance, suggesting I needed to be more “intimate” with my boyfriend. That night, wearing lace lingerie, I knocked on Ethan’s bedroom door. He was on the phone with a female colleague and didn’t even look at me: “I’m busy. Another day.” I looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” 1 After coming home from the doctor’s office, I dug out a set of lace lingerie that had been buried at the bottom of my drawer and spent ages posing in front of the mirror. At 28, I didn’t look vastly different from when I was 25. But there was a visible exhaustion beneath my eyes, and my skin felt a bit dry. Even though I technically had a boyfriend, my face somehow carried the aura of a lonely, single woman. No wonder the doctor said my hormones were out of whack. After all, Ethan and I had started sleeping in separate rooms last year. He said he was too busy, had too many surgeries, and complained that I was a restless sleeper who always hugged him and ruined his rest. Even when I promised to change, he still moved into the guest room. Ethan had always been somewhat repressed and was never particularly enthusiastic about that aspect of our relationship. Since we started sleeping in separate rooms, our already sparse intimate life hit rock bottom. From once a week, to once a month. And now? The last time we were intimate was probably two or three months ago. I took a deep breath. Knocking on his door felt incredibly ironic. This was my own house. This was my own boyfriend. Yet, initiating intimacy with him made me feel a humiliating mix of shame and anxiety. Inside the room, Ethan was on the phone with someone. His voice was cool and indifferent, as usual. But this was his reading time—a time even I wasn’t allowed to interrupt. The fact that he had the patience to stay on the phone at all was unusual. “It might be a hemangioma. I’ll take a look at it tomorrow—” The voice behind the door stopped abruptly. The sheer fabric did little to cover my body. I tugged at it nervously and called out softly toward the door: “Ethan, are you asleep?” After a moment, the door finally opened. Ethan was wearing gray loungewear, holding his phone as he stepped out. When he saw me, he froze, instinctively frowned, and covered the phone’s receiver with his hand. “Why are you dressed like that?” It was already awkward enough, but his question made my face burn. I forced myself to speak: “We haven’t slept in the same bed for a long time.” I bit my lip. “Do you want to sleep together tonight? I promise I won’t hug you and ruin your sleep.” “Not tonight. I have things to do.” He rejected me without a second of hesitation. “Another day.” “Wait—” I reached out to grab the door handle. He loosened his grip on the phone, and a young woman’s voice drifted out from the speaker: “Dr. Davis?” Her voice was beautiful—clear, bright, and unmistakably belonging to a very pretty, young girl. And it sounded very familiar. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was Maya, the new surgical intern in Ethan’s department. I had met her once when I visited him at work. She was still a med student, with striking, radiant features, carrying herself with effortless confidence. I heard she was Ethan’s junior from med school, an overachiever who had won countless awards. She was excellent. Just as excellent as Ethan. I gathered my courage. For a split second, I wanted to say so many things. I wanted to ask why they were on the phone so late at night. I wanted to ask if he could just talk to her tomorrow. I wanted to say that I didn’t actually even want to sleep with him, I just hadn’t held him in so long. I missed him. But looking at the growing impatience in Ethan’s eyes, all my words condensed into a single sentence. “Okay. Have a good night.” He swept a glance over my lingerie and shut the door. From start to finish, he didn’t express a single thought about what I was wearing. I honestly would have preferred if he told me I looked terrible in it. It would have been better than this complete, utter dismissal. It felt like a humiliation. I stood blankly in front of the closed door, listening to his low voice from inside: “It’s nothing. Just a minor interruption. Keep going.” 2 Probably due to my hormonal imbalance, I developed insomnia, tossing and turning in sheer frustration. Eventually, I got up, grabbed a few cans of cold beer from the fridge, chugged them down, and finally drifted into a hazy sleep. In my twisted, chaotic dreams, I was back in college, dreaming of Ethan. I had been at the beach with friends, nearly drowned, and was pulled out of the water not breathing. It was Ethan, just passing by, who gave me CPR and literally dragged me back from the brink of death. I still remember coughing up water, opening my eyes, and blurting out my first blurry vision: a breathtakingly handsome face that seemed utterly incapable of showing emotion. He looked like an angel sent from above, bathed in a halo of light. His face showed no reaction, as if he had just done the most mundane thing in the world. Seeing the ambulance arrive, he simply turned and walked away. After that, I searched for him for a long time, but I never found him. Until I was 23, when our paths crossed again. My heart pounded violently in my chest as I cautiously approached him. “Hi.” Ethan looked up at me, his expression indifferent. “Hello.” He didn’t remember me at all. … After that, I started chasing Ethan. Delivering umbrellas in the rain, bringing him dinner when he worked overtime, dropping off medicine when he was sick. I visited so frequently that everyone in his department knew me. The nurses went from glaring at me with hostility to looking at me with a mix of pity and admiration: “Chloe, you’ve got a heart of steel to chase a guy this cold for so long. Respect.” Ethan never gave me an opening. He rejected me time and time again. I had heard the phrase “I don’t like you” so many times my ears were growing calluses. I wanted to give up, but what could I do? I liked him too much. After stubbornly chasing him for a full year, Ethan suddenly sent me a text. “Come see me now, and we can be together.” My heart practically leaped out of my throat. I grabbed an Uber and rushed to his hospital. But when I pushed open his office door, I saw a gorgeous woman with voluminous waves sitting there. Ethan grabbed my hand and said to her, “I told you, I already have a girlfriend. Stop harassing me.” Later, I found out Ethan was just sick of the endless women throwing themselves at him. He chose me to be his shield because I caused the least amount of drama. But that didn’t matter. I liked him, and that was enough. I figured that if we stayed together long enough, even a heart of ice would eventually melt. But I never expected… Ethan’s heart wasn’t made of ice. It was made of solid iron. On our third anniversary, he still hadn’t fallen in love with me. We had no shared hobbies, no common topics of conversation. He left early and came home late, and during the rare moments we were together, he was always busy. And now? We didn’t even sleep in the same bed anymore. Under the same roof for three years, I felt further away from him than ever. At 3 AM, I opened my eyes, feeling the dampness on my pillow. I was getting tired. 3 On the exact day of our three-year anniversary, I sent Ethan a text. “We need to talk.” I couldn’t stand this arrangement anymore—two people together in name, but living entirely separate lives. I wanted to ask him what exactly he was thinking. After a long time, Ethan replied: “Okay. I get off shift at 7.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I prepared a table full of food and poured some wine, wanting to have a serious talk about my feelings. But 7 PM came and went, and he wasn’t home. It wasn’t until late into the night that there was a knock on the front door. I went to open it. Maya, wearing a chic beige trench coat, was supporting a drunk Ethan. She smiled at me: “Oh? You are…?” I paused for a second. “I’m Ethan’s girlfriend, Chloe. You’re Maya, right? I’ve heard Ethan mention you.” “Oh, I didn’t realize Dr. Davis had a girlfriend.” She smiled. “He hasn’t mentioned you to me at all.” She looked me up and down, her tone ambiguous. “I never would have guessed Dr. Davis liked this type.” I was at home, wearing a fluffy, oversized cartoon bear pajama set, barefoot. I had seen these matching couple pajamas online and loved them, so I bought a set. Ethan never wore his, not even once. Maya, on the other hand, wore a sophisticated black turtleneck, tailored white trousers, and a pair of designer heels. I didn’t know the brands, but she radiated a highly intellectual, expensive aura. I suddenly felt like she and Ethan were a much better match than Ethan and I. Her comment was incredibly rude. I was just about to frown when she practically dumped Ethan onto the sofa. “Anyway, Dr. Davis and I have a surgery tomorrow. Please take good care of him.” “What surgery?” I asked instinctively. “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you,” Maya waved her hand dismissively. “Just ask him later, he knows.” She left quickly. After she left, Ethan sobered up slightly. He had surgery the next day, so he usually never allowed himself to drink. But his alcohol tolerance was terrible; two sips were enough to make him miserable. He frowned slightly, looking at the congealed fat on the cold dishes on the table, as if just remembering why I was sitting there. He explained: “Maya is scrubbing in tomorrow. There were some clinical procedures she wanted me to review with her—and it turned into a department dinner. I forgot to tell you.” I paused. “Can we talk now? I’ll go heat up the food.” Ethan stood up and headed for the bathroom: “Not tonight. It’s too late, and I have surgery tomorrow. Next time.” In the dead silence of the night, I stared at his back and said softly: “Ethan, do you think I’m just going to love you forever?” “This is important,” he said coldly. “I’ll come home early tomorrow.” “Is everything an ‘important’ matter as long as it doesn’t involve me?” I finally asked. He stopped walking, turning back with a slight frown. “Stop throwing a tantrum.” Then he walked into his room and shut the door. I knew he probably didn’t have anything romantic going on with Maya. Ethan despised cheating. If he truly liked Maya, he would have broken up with me immediately to be with her. He just didn’t love me, so out of habit, he placed everything and everyone else ahead of me. The TV was playing softly in the background. It was a scene from a classic romance movie. The female lead asked the old man next to her what the song meant. The old man said, “It means—you’ve fallen for a girl, what do you do? Oh man, you’ve fallen for her, you love her so much, you love her so much you can’t stand it, what do you do?” The female lead asked, “What do you do?” I was wondering the same thing: What do I do? I just loved him so much. But this love had been dragged out by years of waiting and exhaustion, and I felt like I couldn’t hold on anymore. Ethan went to sleep quickly. I sat in the living room for a while, stood up, dumped all the food into the trash, and finished the wine by myself. Alcohol is a wonderful thing. It makes you forget your troubles. But why was my vision getting blurrier and blurrier? I reached up and felt a hot, wet mess all over my face. While I was crying silently, the doorbell suddenly rang. I stumbled to open it, but when I saw the person outside, I froze. My first reaction was a slight fear. The guy at the door was huge, a full head taller than me, about the same height as Ethan. Wearing a black hoodie and jeans, he looked like he could knock me out with one punch. I sobered up instantly. Just as I was about to slam the door, I saw his face and my hand paused. It was a very young boy, probably not even twenty. And most importantly, he had an incredibly handsome face. He looked a bit like Ethan. Except he didn’t have Ethan’s cold, mature demeanor. Instead, he radiated a bright, youthful, puppy-dog energy. “Who are you…?” I asked blankly. The boy flashed me a brilliant smile showing all his teeth, acting like we’d known each other forever as he grabbed my hand. “Hi, sister-in-law! I’m Caleb!” I was completely bewildered. My alcohol-addled brain struggled to remember who this was. The next second, when it clicked, my brain felt like it exploded! “Y-Y-You—” I pointed at him, stuttering in shock: “You’re Caleb?!” 4 Thinking back, the only reason I ever found Ethan again was thanks to the kid standing in front of me. When I was 23, I was bored and found an online “boyfriend” in a video game. We got along great. He was amazing at the game and carried me up the ranks every day. Besides gaming, we had a lot in common and would chat endlessly when we weren’t playing. Having been single my entire life, I fell completely in love with his attentive care. We “online dated” for six solid months. We were so obsessed with each other we practically spent 24 hours a day on voice calls, even falling asleep on the phone together. The only suspicious thing was that he seemed incredibly busy and could only talk to me at night. But he told me he was a doctor with a grueling schedule, so I accepted it. Six months in, I couldn’t take it anymore. I secretly bought a plane ticket to his city and demanded we meet in person. He hesitated for a long time before finally agreeing to come out. We arranged to meet at a coffee shop. Trembling with excitement, I pushed open the doors. The next second, I froze in place. The first person I saw was Ethan—the man who had saved my life years ago, the one I had searched for endlessly but never found. Blood rushed to my head. My ears rang. My online boyfriend… was actually him?! He was a doctor. It all made perfect sense. Then I noticed he was standing next to a kid wearing a middle-school backpack. “I’m sorry,” Ethan said, his voice slightly different from our calls, a bit deeper. “My younger cousin just got out of school, and no one was home to pick him up. Do you mind if he tags along?” I looked at the kid next to him. The boy had a face as flawless as a porcelain doll. His red lips were pressed tightly together as he stared at me unblinkingly. I didn’t care about any of that. I frantically waved my hands. “It’s fine, it’s totally fine. I don’t mind at all.” A massive wave of happiness drowned me. I thought it was fate. But this “Ethan” was different from the one I had imagined. He was much colder, completely different from the passionate guy I talked to online. It was like he was a different person. I thought he was just disappointed in me, which made me feel incredibly insecure. But I still loved him, so I chased him for two full years before we finally got together. When Ethan and I went on dates, his little cousin Caleb was often tagging along. Caleb actually really liked me. He was always clinging to me, calling me “Chloe this” and “Chloe that.” If Ethan was walking ahead of us, Caleb would hold my hand to cross the street and buy me ice cream. For birthdays and holidays, he would use his own allowance to buy me gifts. Once, he bought me a ridiculously expensive Cartier bracelet. At first, I thought it was a fake, but when I saw the receipt, I broke into a cold sweat and immediately returned it to him. He looked so disappointed and heartbroken. But later, I found out the truth. The person I was online dating for six months wasn’t Ethan. It was his cousin, Caleb. Caleb had been too terrified to meet me in person, afraid I’d call him a liar and cut contact, so he begged his older cousin, Ethan, to go in his place. When I found out, I was devastated and struggled to accept it. But by that time, I was already officially dating Ethan. Plus, as Caleb grew older, I naturally distanced myself from him, and we eventually lost touch. Caleb tried to find me a few times, looking absolutely devastated. I never expected him to grow up this fast. I snapped out of my daze and stepped aside. “Why are you here so late? Is everything okay? Come inside.” Caleb didn’t step in. He just took a half-step back, revealing a massive suitcase behind him. “Chloe, I was getting bullied in my dorm and I don’t have anywhere to go. Ethan told me I could crash here for a few days.” He gave me a pitiful, puppy-dog look. “Is that okay?” 5 After Caleb moved in, Ethan and I couldn’t really fight with an outsider in the house, so we just let things slide. It was obvious Ethan had a good relationship with his cousin. At dinner, Ethan even made a rare joke: “You used to cry when you were little, swearing you were going to marry her. Do you remember that?” Caleb looked shy. “That was when I was a kid. I was clueless. Please don’t hold it against me, Chloe.” I waved it off. “It’s all just fate.” He smiled, glanced at me, and didn’t say anything else. … That night, while scrolling through TikTok, I stumbled upon a viral question: “If your partner woke you up at 2 AM and said they wanted to go to the beach to watch the sunrise, what would you do?” The comments were varied, but most said: “I’d call them a psycho, and then I’d get out of bed and go watch the sunrise with them.” My heart suddenly itched, even though I knew asking Ethan to do something like this was absolutely impossible. His schedule was too rigid; he’d never do anything that spontaneous. But I just had to try. I knocked on his door and asked tentatively: “Ethan, I want to go to the beach to watch the sunrise. Can you come with me?” Ethan’s reaction was exactly as I expected. He frowned, his eyes glued to his phone, not even turning his head to look at me. “Stop messing around. I have surgery tomorrow.” Just as I predicted. I closed the door and leaned against the hallway wall, not feeling too disappointed. Probably because I already knew exactly what the outcome would be. Caleb, who had just finished showering, walked by. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and was drying his hair with another. The young man’s muscles were full and defined—not the kind built from rigid, scheduled gym sessions like Ethan’s, but naturally carved from playing basketball on the courts. Seeing me, he looked a little embarrassed. He used the towel to cover his chest and made small talk: “Chloe, am I interrupting you and Ethan? I see there’s another bedroom over there, maybe I should sleep in that one.” “It’s fine,” I paused. “That’s my bedroom.” “Your bedroom?” He looked at me like he couldn’t process the information. “You and Ethan don’t sleep in the same room?” Explaining this would be too awkward, so I just gave a vague “Mm.” “Oh,” he nodded. “Couples should really sleep together, it’s better for the relationship. But my cousin is a total neat-freak, so I guess it makes sense.” He pulled the towel down, revealing his firm chest and a sharp collarbone still glistening with water droplets, smiling brightly. “Well, I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Chloe.” 6 When Ethan told me his mom wanted me to come over for dinner, I thought I had heard him wrong. We had been together for so long, but he had never mentioned taking the next step. He seemed completely disinterested in marriage or starting a family. He rarely talked about his background either. All I knew was that he came from a single-parent household and was raised by his mother, who was a university professor. I thought he was finally acknowledging our age and getting ready for marriage, so I spent weeks carefully picking out gifts. When we arrived at his mom’s house, I enthusiastically handed over the gifts and greeted her: “Hello, Mrs. Davis. I’m Chloe.” His mother was exactly as I had pictured—dressed like a sophisticated, intellectual socialite in a white silk dress, looking very youthful and elegant. But for some reason, I felt her facial features, or maybe just her expression, seemed a bit mean. Sure enough, she just glanced at me, didn’t take the gifts, and said flatly: “Come in.” My heart sank. I instinctively looked at Ethan. Ethan’s expression was indifferent, acting as if none of this had anything to do with him. I felt something was very wrong. Ethan had been acting weird ever since he decided to bring me here. He was expressionless, but I could clearly tell he was in a terrible mood. The dining table was empty, save for a few pieces of fruit on the coffee table. I sat awkwardly on the sofa while his mom went straight into another room without saying a word to me. I was completely confused. Just as I was about to ask Ethan what was going on, the doorbell rang. Ethan opened the door, and outside stood someone I never expected to see. Maya. She was wearing a cream-colored cashmere coat, carrying a few beautifully wrapped gifts, and walked in naturally, as if she owned the place. When she saw me, a perfectly calculated flash of surprise crossed her eyes: “Oh? You’re here too.” She smiled brightly and turned to Ethan’s mother, who had just walked out of the bedroom. “Mrs. Davis, you said you wanted me to try your soup today, so I stopped by a bakery and brought those pastries you love.” The ice on Ethan’s mother’s face melted instantly. She enthusiastically took the boxes, even patting Maya’s hand: “You sweet girl. You coming over is enough, you don’t need to be so formal. Come in, it’s cold outside.” She pulled Maya over to sit right in the center of the sofa, carelessly shoving my gifts—which were packaged far less impressively than Maya’s—off to the side. That subtle movement felt like a slap to my face. Even Ethan hadn’t expected this. He frowned: “Mom, what are you doing?” His mother replied naturally: “When I visited your hospital a while back and you weren’t there, Maya took care of me. Why didn’t you tell me you had such an outstanding junior colleague?” “I invited her today. You two went to the same med school and work together now; it’s a rare connection.” She quickly brought out the food from the kitchen. “You must be hungry. I made slow-roasted chicken soup. You mentioned you loved it last time, right?” Maya leaned in and smiled. “You’re so good to me, Mrs. Davis.” They sat close together, acting as intimate as a mother and daughter. Soon, dinner was served. At the long rectangular table, Ethan’s mother naturally took the head seat, with Ethan sitting on her right. Maya smoothly took the seat right next to him. I paused my steps. Ethan’s mother acted as if she had just noticed me, casually pointing to the seat furthest from the head of the table: “Chloe, you sit over there.” That seat was the furthest away, with only a plate of cold appetizers in front of it. I sat down in silence. The fine bone china in front of me gleamed coldly under the lights. “Maya, try the soup. I simmered it for four hours. You doctors work so hard, you need to nourish your bodies.” Ethan’s mother personally served Maya a bowl, her smile full of maternal affection. “Thank you, Mrs. Davis. Your cooking is amazing. I’ve been craving this.” “If you like it, come over more often. Treat this place like your own home.” Ethan’s mother finally glanced at me, her tone significantly colder. “Chloe, you have some soup too. Serve yourself.” I didn’t move. Halfway through the meal, Ethan’s mother casually brought up work. “Maya, how is that joint research project going? I heard your Chief praising you the other day, saying you learn fast and are very meticulous. A real rising star.” Maya smiled gracefully. “Dr. Davis is an excellent mentor.” “Ethan is flawless when it comes to work and academics.” Ethan’s mother looked proudly at her son, then steered the conversation back. “You young people should learn from each other and grow together. Especially since you’re in the same field and speak the same language. Whether in your careers or your personal lives, you can understand and support each other.” She heavily emphasized the words “personal lives.” I suddenly felt the urge to laugh. No wonder. Things had reached this point. If I still didn’t understand what Ethan’s mother was trying to do, I’d be an absolute idiot. A perfectly timed blush spread across Maya’s cheeks, and she didn’t say a word. Ethan’s mother’s smile deepened, but her focus abruptly shifted to me. “What kind of work does Chloe do again?” I said calmly, “Mrs. Davis, I’m a marketing director at an event planning firm.” “Oh, marketing.” She nodded. “That’s nice. But it probably doesn’t have much overlap with Ethan’s field. When you guys chat and he talks about patient cases or medical journals… can you even understand him?” The air in the room instantly solidified. Ethan frowned slightly. “Mom.” I thought I would love everything associated with him. But in that moment, I realized I absolutely loathed Ethan’s mother. These so-called “intellectual elites” are experts at packaging their disdain with cold indifference, acting as if they are culturally superior. But honestly? I had never eaten a single grain of rice paid for by her family. What right did she have to dictate my life? I finally looked up and met Ethan’s eyes. From the moment we walked through the door until now, he hadn’t spoken a single word to me, nor had he defended me to his mother once. I suddenly found the whole situation hilarious. I spoke up: “Mrs. Davis, I’m sure Ethan doesn’t understand the first thing about marketing either. I’m dating Ethan, not applying for a medical residency. Why do I need to understand his journals or his patient cases?” Ethan’s mother clearly didn’t expect me to fire back so directly. She was stunned for a moment. I set down my chopsticks. The ceramic clinked against the table, making a sharp, distinct sound. “As for what I like about him… in the past, I liked his kindness, his bravery, and his manners.” “But looking at him now… I guess he’s nothing special.” “What did you say?!” Ethan’s mother looked appalled. “Mrs. Davis,” my voice was surprisingly calm. “I thought you invited me here to welcome me. If this kind of thing happens again, I’d appreciate a heads-up. I’m a very busy person too.” “Oh, right,” I smiled. “There won’t be a next time.” I stood up, not looking at anyone else, walked straight to the entryway, and grabbed my purse and coat. Behind me, I could hear Ethan’s mother fuming: “I am furious! Ethan, what kind of woman did you find? She has absolutely no manners…” I didn’t stop walking.

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During my most reckless year, I secretly had a baby behind Ethan Reed’s back. At the time, his startup had crashed and burned, leaving him buried under a mountain of debt. I was terrified we’d both starve if I stayed, so without a word, I packed my bags and ran while I was still pregnant. I didn’t hear a word about him for five years. Now, he is the ruthless CEO of the Reed Conglomerate, the most powerful man in the city. But the tabloids say a car accident left him unable to ever have children of his own. I looked at my son, who was fighting a life-threatening illness, and finally made my choice. “Come on, Leo. Mommy’s taking you to see your dad.” 1 In the hospital bed, little Leo rolled his eyes at me the moment he heard those words. “Mom, are you finally losing it? You told me my dad died a long time ago.” I let out a nervous laugh. “Well, he was really sick, and I thought he wasn’t going to make it. Who knew he’d get a miracle cure?” Leo’s eyes suddenly sparked with hope. “Does that mean I can get a miracle cure too? Can I go home like Dad did?” I nodded firmly. “Absolutely!” Kids are so easy to convince. A few soft words and he was all in. Leaving the ward, I pulled up the news on my phone again. It was a headline from The Wall Street Journal: Tech Titan Ethan Reed Rendered Infertile Following Near-Fatal Crash. At first, I thought it was just someone with the same name. But then I clicked on the article. The man in the photo wasn’t just another Ethan Reed; he had the exact same sharp jawline and piercing eyes as the man I had abandoned. Coincidences like that don’t exist in the real world. There was only one explanation: Ethan had been lying to me back then, too. He was never just some broke kid with a dream. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. But for Leo, this was a lifeline. I booked a flight to New York for the next morning. When my mom brought dinner over later that evening, I was already packing. “Are you going on another business trip? Are you really dumping the boy on me again?” she grumbled. “What did I tell you? I told you not to have that kid, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you spend your days working and your nights dumping him on me. I’m supposed to be enjoying my retirement, not playing full-time nanny.” I looked at Leo, who had just woken up, and whispered, “Mom, can you please not say that in front of him? He might be small, but he understands more than you think.” “Oh, so you can do it, but I can’t talk about it?” “Mom, if you’ve got a second, just go give Leo a hug. I’m taking him to New York tomorrow.” My mother froze. She pulled me into the hallway. “Did you find the money for the surgery? Where did you get that kind of cash, Chloe? You’ve been struggling just to keep the lights on these past few years. Where would you get thousands of dollars?” I kept my head down, not ready to tell her the truth. “Don’t worry about it. Just know that once we leave, I don’t know when we’ll be back. You go ahead and enjoy your ‘peace and quiet.’ Leo and I won’t be a burden anymore.” My mom’s face fell instantly. “You brat. You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You know I’m all talk. I love that kid more than life itself.” She sighed, wiping a stray tear. “Fine. Forget I said anything. Let me go see my grandbaby.” 2 Early the next morning, my mom was a sobbing mess as she held Leo. “My sweet boy, Grandma’s going to miss you so much. Once you’re all better, you come straight back to me, okay?” See? That’s how people are. The moment you’re actually leaving, they realize they can’t stand to see you go. Before we checked in at the airport, she pressed a debit card into my hand. “I scraped some savings together. It’s not a fortune, but it should help with the initial bills. You know the PIN. Take care of my boy.” I waved goodbye, my heart aching. If she knew I was handing Leo over to Ethan Reed, she’d probably kill me herself. On the flight, I started coaching Leo. “Listen, when we meet these people, you have to call me ‘Auntie Chloe’ if there are strangers around. Got it?” “Why?” Leo tilted his head, his little face full of confusion. I patiently explained, “Remember I told you your dad was sick? Well, when he was struggling, I didn’t stay to help him. He probably hates me now. If he knows I’m back, he might try to get even with me.” Leo blinked, trying to process the grown-up drama. “Mom, aren’t you going to stay with me at Dad’s house?” I felt a surge of guilt and couldn’t look him in the eye. “Once you’re all better, Mommy will come and take you home.” “Promise?” “Promise.” “Pinky swear?” “Yeah, baby. Pinky swear.” 3 I didn’t go to Ethan directly. Instead, I pulled every string I had to track down Ethan’s mother, Mrs. Reed—a woman who radiated old-money elegance even in a simple silk scarf. She sat in a quiet, upscale bistro, looking entirely out of place in our part of town, her designer sunglasses hiding her expression. “You claim you have a child? A son belonging to my Ethan?” she started, her gaze slowly shifting from me to Leo. The next second, her breath hitched. “Oh my god… he’s a miniature Ethan.” She reached out, her hands trembling as she pulled Leo closer to inspect him. “This… this is unbelievable. He looks exactly like Ethan did at that age.” She wasn’t exaggerating. Even though Ethan hadn’t been there for a single second of the pregnancy or birth, Leo was his carbon copy. I handed over Leo’s medical files and his birth certificate. “Leo was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect a year ago. He needs a very expensive, very risky surgery. If you have any doubts, I’m more than willing to do a DNA test.” Mrs. Reed’s expression turned somber. “And you are…?” “I’m just the messenger. I have no intention of staying. If the Reeds are willing to take him in and save his life, I’ll disappear immediately.” Mrs. Reed stepped away to make a phone call. An hour later, she led us to the top-tier private hospital in the city. A nurse arrived with a sample of Ethan’s DNA—a strand of hair. The moment the results came back, Mrs. Reed’s eyes lit up with a predatory kind of joy. While the doctors took Leo for an initial evaluation, she pulled a thick envelope of cash from her purse and pushed it toward me. “Thank you. The Reed family will ensure the boy is well taken care of.” I declined the money. I had intended to raise this child on my own. It was just that our luck had run out. As I turned to leave, Leo broke away from the nurses and ran toward me. “Auntie, you aren’t going to lie to me, right?” His eyes were red, and he was clutching his chest. He still remembered our pinky swear. I knelt down and cupped his face. Over the past year, the illness had made him look much smaller and frailer than other five-year-olds. I wasn’t a good mother. I had failed him. I choked back my tears. “Remember what we said? Pinky swear.” 4 I didn’t leave the hospital until I saw the Reeds settle Leo into a private VIP suite. Back at my motel, my heart felt like a hollow shell. It felt like I had just cut out the most important part of myself and left it on that hospital bed. I lay there for hours, staring at the peeling wallpaper. Suddenly, my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I hesitated, then picked up. “Where are you?” A deep, gravelly voice vibrated through the speaker. “Who is this?” I asked instinctively. But even as the words left my mouth, my body recognized that voice. On so many breathless nights, he had whispered into my ear, telling me he loved me. “You know exactly who this is. Send me your location. Now.” The tone was absolute. I gripped the phone, my knuckles white. “I think you have the wrong number.” I hung up immediately, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Five years later, why was Ethan Reed calling me? How did he even get my number? Before I came here, I’d done my research. Ethan wasn’t married, but he had been with the same high-society socialite for years. If the news about his infertility was true, Leo was his only heir. That was the only reason I was willing to give him up. Life with Ethan Reed was a golden ticket compared to the life I could offer. But I was different. I was the gold-digging ex-girlfriend who had dumped him when he was at his lowest. I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. The next morning, I went back to the hospital for one last look at Leo before heading to the airport. As I approached the suite, I saw Ethan. He was in a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, sitting by the bed, focused entirely on peeling an apple. He hadn’t changed much, but he carried an aura of power and sophistication that he never had back in our cramped studio apartment. Leo was clearly hungry; he didn’t wait for Ethan to finish and leaned forward to take a bite out of the half-peeled apple. They both shared a small, genuine smile. My eyes stung. Maybe this really was the happy ending Leo deserved. I turned away, wiping my face. Suddenly, inside the room, Ethan snapped his head toward the door, looking exactly where I was standing. My heart nearly stopped. I ducked behind the wall, my breath hitching. He didn’t see me. A moment later, I heard Leo’s giggling through the door. 5 It was clear Ethan loved the boy. That was all I needed to know. I pulled up my phone to book an Uber to the airport. I needed to keep moving, or I’d lose my nerve. But I wasn’t paying attention and walked straight into someone. “Oh! I’m so sorry, are you okay?” the person asked. I looked up and froze. I was looking at a very familiar face from the tabloids—Madison Vance, Ethan’s long-term girlfriend. I stammered, “I’m fine, sorry about that.” I tried to push past her, but Madison grabbed my arm. “Wait, you just came from that direction. Is that the pediatric wing?” I blinked. She was going to the pediatric wing? To see Leo? I looked at her more closely. Madison was stunning—soft, elegant, and perfectly put together. She didn’t look like the “evil stepmother” type. She was carrying a fruit basket in one hand and a massive LEGO set in the other. Because of the gifts, she hadn’t been able to dodge me when I walked into her. I was about to answer when a voice boomed from behind me. “Madison.” My spine turned to ice. Madison smiled and walked past me toward Ethan. “This hospital is a maze. I almost got lost.” Ethan gave a distracted nod, but his eyes were fixed on me. “Who were you talking to?” I could feel his gaze burning through my back. “Oh, just someone passing by. We bumped into each other,” Madison said casually. I let out a breath, desperate to run. But Ethan spoke again. “You. Turn around.” It wasn’t a request. Madison seemed to sense the tension and tried to intervene. “Ethan, what are you doing? She’s just a stranger. I’m fine, really. Let’s just go see the boy.” Ethan didn’t move. He thought I had hurt his girlfriend. The irony was almost funny. Five years, and nothing had changed. I was still the one in the wrong. I slowly turned around and looked Madison in the eye. “I’m very sorry for bumping into you, Ms. Vance.” The entire time I spoke, Ethan’s eyes never left my face. He didn’t say a single word. 6 After leaving the hospital, I drove straight to the bus station. The whole way there, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Ethan had looked at me. I remembered five years ago. His startup had just tanked, and the debt collectors were literally banging on our door. I had offered him my last ten thousand dollars—all my savings—to help him out. He had looked at me with that same intense gaze and pulled me into his arms. “Baby, I can’t take your money. Trust me, I’m going to make it. And when I do, I’m going to give you the wedding of your dreams.” Back then, I didn’t think he was lying. When we first met, we both had less than a thousand dollars to our names. We shared a one-bedroom apartment. I slept in the bedroom, paying five hundred a month. He slept on the couch for three hundred. We split the utilities. Neither of us thought we’d end up falling in love. Ethan had a drive like I’d never seen. He worked until 3 AM every night. One night, I came home from a girl’s night and saw him still hunched over his laptop. “I brought some leftover pizza. You want some?” I asked. He practically leaped off his chair. “Starving!” We talked all night. That was when he told me he had walked away from his wealthy family, swearing he wouldn’t go back until he was a success on his own terms. I encouraged him. I told him he had the talent to make it if he just found the right niche. Ethan looked at me like I was his entire world. Because I was there for him when things were dark, he asked me to be his girlfriend the moment his business started to show a spark of life. We stayed in that same apartment. But instead of the couch and the bed, we both shared the bedroom. He took over the full rent. Life was finally looking up. But then, reality hit us. Hard. The debts from his first failure caught up to him, and he was drowning. He was home less and less. And that was when I found out I was pregnant. At first, I was too scared to tell him. I just wanted to help him get through the crisis. But then, I accidentally overheard him on a phone call. “Look, Chloe and I… it’s not what you think. Stop interfering, okay? Relax. Dating is one thing, but marriage? I’ll pick someone appropriate when the time comes.” I was Chloe. I was furious. I felt like a fool. Here I was, ready to sacrifice everything for him, and he was already planning my replacement. I decided right then that I wasn’t going to be the girl who starved while waiting for a man who didn’t even see a future with her. I left. To get even, I left a note on the kitchen table. I don’t see a future with you anymore. I’m moving on to someone who actually has a chance at success. I’m sure you understand—everyone has the right to chase a better life. I blocked his number and deleted my socials. It wasn’t until I was on the bus back to my hometown that I realized I was still carrying his child. 7 I thought about going back to confront him, to tell him about the baby. But every time I thought about that phone call, I realized it would just be another humiliation. He never planned on a future with me. As for the baby… well, he was already here. I’d just let nature take its course. Later, I heard snippets of news. His company had been revived. He’d cleared his debts and was expanding. I blocked the person who told me. I didn’t want to hear about his success. When Leo was born, my mom complained, of course. But the moment Leo flashed his first toothless grin at her, she turned into a puddle. Since my dad passed away, Leo had become her reason for living. She watched him while I worked. Life was simple, but it was enough. Until Leo got sick. Sometimes I wonder if I’m being punished for something I did in a past life. Every time I think things are finally going right, the universe finds a way to knock me down. … I snapped back to reality and realized I was crying in the middle of the bus terminal. Great. I still had to figure out what to tell my mom. My bus wasn’t for another hour. Just as I was settling into a plastic chair, my phone buzzed with a FaceTime request. It was my mom. I didn’t want to answer, but she was persistent. I finally swiped to accept. “Where’s my boy?” she demanded the second the video connected. I rubbed my nose. “He’s… he’s right here next to me.” “Let me see him.” I tilted the camera slightly. “He’s sleeping, Mom. He doesn’t want to be disturbed.” My mom wasn’t born yesterday. “Chloe, are you at a station? You said you were getting the surgery done. Why are you at a station? Put the camera on Leo. I want to say hi.” I stared at her, unable to move. “Chloe, what are you doing? Are you ignoring me now?” I barely heard her. My heart had stopped because, on the screen behind me, I saw Ethan Reed’s face. He was standing right behind me. My mom was still lecturing me. “If anything happens to that boy, I’m never forgiving you!” “Mom, I have to go.” I cut the call, my hands shaking. I turned around slowly, trying to look composed. “Can I help you?” I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know him anymore, especially since my kid was in his hospital. Ethan stared at me, his jaw tight. “You’re still as heartless as ever, Chloe. You dumped me five years ago, and now you’re dumping our son too?” I stood up, my temper flaring. “Watch your mouth. I didn’t dump you. You’re the one who told your family I wasn’t ‘appropriate’ for marriage!” Ethan frowned, looking confused. I pushed past that. “If you actually care about Leo, will you let me take him back once he’s healthy?” “In your dreams.” I knew it. Now that the Reeds had an heir, they’d never let him go. “Fine. Take good care of him. I won’t show my face again.” After all, Ethan had a girlfriend to marry. Leo was going to have a stepmother. My presence would only make things awkward. 8 The intercom announced that my bus was boarding. I grabbed my suitcase and looked at Ethan. “Thanks for coming to see me off. Tell Leo that as long as he keeps fighting, there’s hope.” Suddenly, a hand clamped around my wrist. Ethan dragged me toward the exit of the station. “What are you doing? Let me go!” I struggled, trying to pry his fingers off. “Ethan, let go! My bus is leaving! I’m going to miss my trip!” “Then stay.” He stopped and looked me dead in the eye. “Stay?” And then what? I didn’t dare ask. I wasn’t interested in being the “other woman.” If I were Madison Vance, I’d be losing my mind right now. Ethan didn’t let go. If anything, he stepped closer. “What are you so afraid of? You said you were going to chase a better life, yet you secretly had my son and raised him in a dump. You owe me an explanation, Chloe.” Before I could respond, he swept me off my feet and threw me over his shoulder. “Wait!! Ethan! Put me down! I’m calling the cops!” “Go ahead. The police don’t get involved in domestic disputes.” !!! He carried me out of the terminal and tossed me into the back of a waiting SUV. The driver looked terrified. “Sir, should I drive?” “Drive!” Ethan raised the privacy partition, trapping me in the corner of the seat. “You got pregnant and didn’t tell me. You had the baby and didn’t tell me. He got sick, and you still wouldn’t tell me. You went to my mother instead of me. Am I really that unreliable to you, Chloe?” “Aren’t you?” I snapped back without thinking. “Ha.” Ethan let out a dry, humorless laugh. “So that’s what I am to you.” I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. “It doesn’t matter now. We have nothing left to say to each other.” Ethan looked up. “Nothing left to say? Fine. Then let’s just do it.” I stared at him, sure I had misheard. Until he grabbed the back of my head. His face grew larger and larger in my vision. At the last second, I twisted my head, and his kiss landed on my cheek. I swung my hand and slapped him across the face. “Have you lost your mind?!” Ethan touched his stinging cheek and started laughing. “I lost my mind the second I found out we had a son.” 9 Ethan took me back to his estate. He tossed a set of silk pajamas at me. “Take a shower.” I’m an adult. I knew exactly what a shower in the middle of the day implied. I threw them back at him. “I’m not showering. And I’m definitely not wearing another woman’s clothes.” Ethan’s face darkened. “They’re brand new.” “I don’t care.” Ethan stepped closer, his voice dropping an octave. “Fine. If you won’t shower yourself, I’m happy to do it for you.” I had already felt how strong he was. I knew I wouldn’t win a physical fight. I cursed him under my breath and took the pajamas into the bathroom. Thirty minutes later, I walked out. Ethan was already lying in the massive bed. It was obvious he had showered too. I knew what was coming next, and my heart felt like it was being shredded. “Ethan, what do you think I am?” Tears started streaming down my face. “I have nothing left. Are you really going to take the last bit of dignity I have?” Ethan sat up and reached for a tissue to wipe my face. “Don’t cry. I just want you to sleep. Your dark circles are so bad not even makeup can hide them.” I froze. I hadn’t slept a full night since Leo got sick. I worked double shifts and spent the rest of my time at the hospital. For the first few months, I had lost fifteen pounds. Even my mom was worried, making me soup every day. But it was the path I had chosen. I brushed his hand away. “I don’t need your pity.” Ethan gritted his teeth, his jaw working. “You’re still the same, Chloe. It kills you to ever back down.” “So, can I go now?” Ethan sighed, seemingly defeated. “Fine. But only after you take a nap with me.” Seeing the look I gave him, he added, “Just sleeping. I won’t touch you.” “Why?” “Because I haven’t slept in three days either.” I lay down on the edge of the bed, as far from him as possible. Ethan rolled onto his side to face me. “Come closer.” “Don’t push your luck.” “Six months ago, someone tried to take me out. I was in a massive car crash. I almost died. The rumors about me being infertile? They’re true. The crash did permanent damage. So even if you sleep right next to me, I can’t do anything.” I gripped the duvet, my heart skipping a beat. “What about your girlfriend? She’s still with you, isn’t she? Aren’t you worried about betraying her?” “Girlfriend? Who told you I have a girlfriend?” Ethan propped himself up on one elbow. “You mean Madison Vance?” Suddenly, Ethan started laughing. A deep, genuine laugh. “Never mind,” he said after a moment. “Just sleep.” He ignored my protests and pulled me into his arms. At first, I couldn’t relax. But listening to his steady, rhythmic heartbeat, my eyes started to feel heavy.

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My boyfriend was undercover in a Central American cartel for three years. He finally came back safe and sound. On the night of our wedding, while we were being intimate, he suddenly asked: “Tell me, what kind of rabbit walks on three legs?” My heart stopped. This riddle was a secret code Liam and I had established between us. A rabbit represented danger, and the number following it indicated the threat level. A three-legged rabbit meant a Code Red emergency! 1 My brain exploded like a bomb had just gone off. The next second, I suppressed the horror rising in my chest and began to pant softly. “Are you seriously trying to play brain teasers right now?” Liam lifted his head from my neck and gave me a light bite. “I heard someone ask it during the toast earlier, and no one could guess it. I figured my smart wife would know the answer instantly.” Yes, I knew the answer. This riddle had no answer. Three years ago, Liam was deployed undercover to infiltrate a cartel in Central America. His survival was completely uncertain. The night before he left, I said, “Let’s come up with a secret code that only the two of us know.” “A three-legged rabbit means danger, because rabbits have the fastest reaction time to a threat.” “And the reason we use the number three is because of the saying ‘a smart rabbit has three burrows.’ A three-legged rabbit represents a Code Red crisis.” “Liam, this way, if you’re ever in danger, I’ll know.” He didn’t laugh at my childish idea. Instead, he seriously linked his pinky finger with mine. “Alright. Then I’ll be waiting for my wife to come rescue me.” Yet, the Liam in front of me was completely oblivious to the meaning of this question. It had only been three years. Could he really have forgotten? His mannerisms, his tone, even his habits and sequence during intimacy were exactly the same as before. Trying to push away the lingering doubt, I stopped his roaming hands. I looked embarrassed. “Hold on, Liam… I think my period just started…” “Already?” A flash of suspicion crossed his eyes. “When we calculated the wedding date, didn’t we specifically avoid your cycle?” I feigned guilt and explained, “Work has been crazy lately. To get time off for the wedding, I pulled all-nighters for a week straight. My hormones are probably just out of whack.” He cupped my face with concern. “Work isn’t as important as your health, you silly girl. I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you from now on.” Seeing the pure, genuine concern in his eyes, I secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I was just being paranoid. Three years as an undercover operative must have been terrifying, walking the line between life and death every single day. It would be normal to forget a silly joke. Soon, Liam brought me a hot water bottle and thoughtfully brewed me a cup of ginger tea. “Drink some of this to warm up.” I accepted it with a sweet smile, but the moment I took my first sip, my heart plummeted to rock bottom. There was brown sugar in it. I am severely allergic to brown sugar. In college, I once accidentally drank boba tea with brown-sugar-flavored pearls and broke out in full-body hives. Liam had to rush me to the ER in the middle of the night. There was absolutely no way he wouldn’t know. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. This man… he wasn’t Liam. 2 I stared at the pitch-black ceiling, my heart racing. Our wedding was held at Liam’s family’s old farmhouse in his rural hometown. Liam’s parents passed away when he was young, and he was practically raised by the neighborhood. During the toasts, he accurately recognized every single relative and neighbor, even remembering that his Uncle Joe had injured his leg working in the fields and couldn’t eat ginger. How could there be two identical people in the world? Fear pumped back into every blood vessel in my body. Was he brainwashed? Had he flipped sides? Impossible. Liam was the most loyal, righteous person I knew. During a massive earthquake rescue mission, he had thrown himself into danger without hesitation. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been selected for the most dangerous undercover assignments. I quietly rolled over and opened his Facebook page. He was a private person and rarely posted. His latest update was from three days ago. He posted an old photo of us. We were holding a bouquet of flowers, smiling at each other in front of our college gates. The caption read: My girl. Let’s walk together until our hair turns gray. For a man about to get married, this was completely normal. The comments below were all congratulations. My eyelid twitched. Something was wrong. We had a pact. Because of the nature of his work, he couldn’t show his face publicly. Liam was always incredibly vigilant. “I’ve made a lot of enemies. Chloe, you need to be careful too.” Once, I took a selfie that captured half of his profile. He aggressively made me delete it permanently. I was genuinely angry then. “I waited three whole years for you! For three years, I couldn’t tell anyone where you went. You didn’t come to my parties, you didn’t meet my friends. People thought I made up a fake boyfriend!” “That cartel ring was dismantled, Liam! Can’t you just relax?!” But he was stubborn. “The monsters over there are far more terrifying than we can imagine. I’m afraid there are stragglers. Chloe, don’t hate me for being paranoid. For the past three years, my caution is the only reason I’m still alive.” I bit my lip hard and scrolled further down. Half a month ago, Liam returned to his hometown to renovate his family’s old farmhouse for the wedding. On April 26th, he posted a photo of the freshly painted front door, along with a page from a philosophy textbook. It was a book I had accidentally left behind during my first visit to his hometown the summer of our junior year. But why did he post this specific page? Suddenly, I remembered that summer. On a whim, Liam wanted to teach me basic cryptography. He liked tracing the codes on the palm of my hand and making me guess the pattern. I’m extremely ticklish. Every time, I couldn’t help but giggle and squirm into his arms. “Liam, are you just using this as an excuse to touch me? Are you even trying to teach me?” His expression would turn serious, and he’d stare at me intently while tracing three sets of numbers on my palm again. “Numbers correspond to letters. Use the logic I just explained to decipher it yourself.” I thought hard for a long time before blurting out, “I… I love you?” As soon as I said it, I realized I had been played. I angrily started punching his chest. Liam laughed so hard his chest rumbled, his eyes filled with the joy of a successful prank. “Exactly. I love you. Congratulations, Chloe, you’ve mastered it.” The memory slowly crystallized. My heart hammered against my ribs. I zoomed in on that page of the book over and over again. Comparing, dismantling, and reassembling the text line by line. Liam, this has to be for me. It has to be! Following the method he taught me years ago: first extract the first letter of each paragraph, then shift the entire second paragraph back one space, offset the third paragraph by two spaces, and continue sequentially… Finally, from the dense block of text, I extracted a terrifying message. [THE RABBIT HAS HUMAN EYES] [TRUST NO ONE, INCLUDING ME] 3 The blood in my veins turned to ice. A rabbit meant danger. So Liam had already realized something was wrong. Why didn’t he tell me? Was he afraid I’d get dragged into the danger? Why would a rabbit have human eyes? I chewed on those two phrases over and over. Liam, what exactly are you trying to tell me? Who was the person sleeping in the same bed as me tonight? Countless thoughts collided in my head. The more I thought about it, the more panicked I felt. I needed to step outside for some air. My footsteps suddenly stopped. Because I saw a makeshift convenience stand set up outside the old farmhouse. This year was the Year of the Horse on the lunar calendar, but Mr. Chen’s display counter had a tattered, torn poster of a rabbit from the Year of the Rabbit. The rabbit’s eyes had been scribbled over with a marker by a child, drawn to look like human eyes. This was the rabbit with human eyes! I suppressed my surging emotions and pretended to make casual small talk. “Mr. Chen, when Liam was renovating the old house, I bet he bothered you a lot, huh?” Mr. Chen waved his hand and laughed. “What are you talking about? That wild boy has always looked out for me.” “That boy pays attention to detail. My eyesight is bad, and I always have people buying things on credit and never paying me. He came up with the idea for me to set up shop right here. If anyone tries to stiff me, I just go to him.” “Right! He even specially installed a security camera for me! This way, if anyone tries to pull a fast one, I know exactly who it is!” My heart started beating even faster. A camera? So the “rabbit with human eyes” had a double meaning. The second layer meant surveillance! “Could I take a look at it?” I stared intently at the screen, my palms clenched so tight they were slick with cold sweat. April 26th, the day he made that Facebook post. In the footage, Liam rushed inside in a hurry, only leaving with a duffel bag half an hour later. I suddenly sat up straight. It had just finished raining that day. When Liam walked in, his combat boots were covered in mud. But when he walked out, his boots were brand new and perfectly clean! Anger, intertwined with pure terror, rushed back into every blood vessel in my body. I broke out in a cold sweat. The Liam who walked out was a fake. The real Liam had been swapped out within that half-hour window! 4 My brain was buzzing. If the one who walked out was a fake, where was the real Liam? Liam was a former Special Forces operator, and after years undercover, he was a hardened combat veteran. How could he be subdued so easily? What exactly happened to him? I made a split-second decision and called Liam’s handler at the agency. After I gave a detailed report, the handler didn’t react the way I expected. “Ms. Davis, are you saying the Liam who came back is an imposter?” He sounded distracted. “Just because he forgot a joke you two made three years ago? And forgot you don’t eat brown sugar?” I was getting desperate. “Please believe me. I don’t know how he did it, but this man is definitely not Liam!” “Do you have any proof? Hard evidence.” My throat went dry. “I… I don’t.” The handler let out a sigh. “Do you have any idea what he went through over the past three years?” My chest tightened. “He said it was classified. He never told me…” “He carried out multiple high-risk missions and barely made it out alive several times. The only thing that kept him going was the thought of you. To help him return to a normal life, we used mild hypnosis to suppress his most traumatic memories.” The handler’s tone suddenly turned serious. “Of course, we also ran identity verification protocols. There is absolutely zero chance he was replaced.” My eyes welled up, but my conviction didn’t waver. “If he survived for me, then his memories of us aren’t traumatic. He wouldn’t forget them.” “Because I love him, I can tell this man is not Liam. I’ll send you this security footage. Once you watch it, you’ll know.” After a moment of silence, the handler finally agreed. I watched the progress bar on the video transfer tick up slowly. Until it hit 98% and froze completely. The cell reception in the mountains was terrible. Just as I was about to shift positions, a voice spoke from right behind me without warning: “It’s useless. You won’t be able to send it.” My blood ran cold, and every hair on my body stood on end. I stiffly turned my head. Liam was standing there with one hand in his pocket, looking at me calmly. I had no idea how long he had been standing there. “Chloe, a mudslide just wiped out the cell tower in the village. The network will be down for 48 hours.” His voice was so gentle I couldn’t detect a single hint of malice. “Perfect timing. We can have a completely uninterrupted honeymoon.” “Isn’t that just wonderful?” 5 Terror washed over me like a flood. “Baby, who were you just on the phone with?” The man stared at me, asking coldly. My brain went into overdrive, desperately trying to suppress the sound of my ragged breathing. “Who else? My boss. He wanted me to write some copy for a video. Unbelievable. I can’t even get a break on my honeymoon.” “Is that so?” The fake Liam clearly didn’t believe me, and snatched my phone straight out of my hand. In that moment, I forgot how to breathe. The screen lit up, showing a work group chat with 99+ notifications. The fake Liam checked every single app before finally smiling and handing the phone back to me. “Ignore people like that. If it gets to be too much, just quit. Your husband will support you.” I forced a smile and agreed, turning back toward the bedroom acting as if nothing happened. The second I closed the door, I collapsed onto the floor. Thank God. I had sent the video using a burner phone. It was currently hidden in my jacket pocket. But the bad news wasn’t over. The village was nestled in a valley between two mountains. There was only one dirt road connecting it to the main highway, and right now, that only exit was blocked by a landslide. The village was completely cut off from the outside world. I’m trapped. That was the first coherent thought in my mind. No internet, no road. Stuck for 48 hours. I used a chopstick to peek through a tiny slit in the bedroom curtains. Through that gap, I realized Mr. Chen’s convenience stand was gone. In its place were several small, makeshift vendor stalls. The vendors were not focused on attracting customers; instead, they constantly glanced toward the farmhouse. I was being watched. I forced myself to calm down and assess the situation. First, making a run for it blindly was a dead end. I didn’t know the terrain, this was a premeditated operation, and I had no idea how many accomplices they had out there. But the question remained: why had they replaced Liam and gone through so much trouble to get close to me? For what? I was just a regular corporate employee. What could they possibly want from me? Or… did Liam have something they wanted? Maybe evidence against the cartel, or some classified secret. They suspected I knew and were trying to pry the answer out of me. In a flash of inspiration, a crazy idea formed in my head. What they wanted might just be my way out. I had to take the offensive. 6 I called the fake Liam into the room. I asked him to help me count the wedding cash gifts from yesterday. Halfway through, I casually said, “Honey, when we get back, let’s put this money in the safe and use it to renovate our new place.” This was a double lie. First, we had already agreed to live in my current apartment, which required no renovations. Second, we didn’t even own a safe. I controlled my tone carefully to sound natural, even though my back was drenched in cold sweat. The man’s hands paused almost imperceptibly while counting the cash. “A safe?” He took the bait. My heart was hammering so hard it felt like it would leap out of my chest. “Yeah, the one you always use to store your documents.” A glint gathered in the fake Liam’s eyes, but he was cautious, replying ambiguously: “You don’t think it’s a hassle to keep cash in there?” I complained intentionally, “You’re the one who thinks everything is a hassle! Then why did you go through all the trouble of building a hidden compartment for it? And you insist on only using cash when we go out, saying you don’t want to ‘leave a paper trail.’ I didn’t even want to mention it, but we’re not in Central America. You don’t need to be so paranoid about everything.” The fake Liam found an excuse to step outside to make a phone call. When he came back, he grabbed his car keys. “We’re driving back now?” I acted shocked, glancing at the terrible weather outside. “How are we going to get back? Didn’t you say the road was blocked by a mudslide? That’s too dangerous.” “The village chief just said there’s a backroad. You’re busy with work, it’s not good to be unreachable without internet.” The fake Liam displayed an irrepressible excitement, grabbing my arm with a grip that brooked no argument. “We’re leaving right now.” 7 The rain was pouring down in buckets, obscuring the road ahead. I was looking for a chance to escape, so I purposely didn’t put on my seatbelt when I got in the car. The fake Liam noticed immediately and leaned over. Our eyes met, and I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Chloe, you always follow the rules when you sit in the back. What’s wrong today?” I felt like I was sitting on pins and needles. The backroad was incredibly rugged, full of sharp twists and turns. The fake Liam was stepping hard on the gas, and taking a sharp corner, the rear wheels got stuck in deep mud. He glanced at me. “Go get the tire iron from the trunk.” The moment I opened the car door, the wind and rain nearly ripped the umbrella out of my hands. The man squatted on the ground, struggling with the tire. I gripped the heavy metal tire iron tightly, my heart in my throat. I knew very well I only had one chance. If I missed, there wouldn’t be a second one! Just as the man reached up to grab the tire iron and turned his head— I pulled a hammer from the back of my waistband and smashed it down on his skull! THUD— I was positive I made solid contact, but the man just stood up as if nothing happened. “Oh my, so you figured it out. Where did I slip up?” His tone was mocking, his eyes venomous. At this moment, the man had completely dropped his gentle facade. I turned to run, but he violently tackled me to the muddy ground. A wave of sharp pain erupted across my body as the man pinned me down, his hands wrapping tightly around my throat. Muddy water rushed into my nose. Black spots danced in my vision, and I asked, nearly drained of all my strength: “What did you do to him…” “Ah, on the verge of death and still thinking about your man. You want to know where Liam is? Then trade his secret for it.” He leaned in close, his breath carrying the metallic stench of the rain. “Spit it out. What exactly did he leave with you? Hand it over, and I might consider letting you go.” He coaxed me, while his grip on my throat continued to tighten. I struggled, tears streaming down my face. Just as my vision blurred completely, my hand finally reached the pocket knife hidden in my cargo pants. I swung my arm up and plunged the knife deep into his abdomen! “You stupid bitch—” As the small blade sank into his gut, the man let go of his grip. I used the opening to roll down the muddy slope and ran for my life. The fake Liam’s screams were swallowed by the howling wind and rain. I didn’t dare stop. I lost my shoes in the torrential downpour, my bare feet sliced open and bleeding profusely. Just as I was about to collapse from hypothermia and exhaustion… A figure lunged out from the tall grass. It was a man dressed in black. He aggressively covered my mouth and dragged me deeper into the brush. “Shh, don’t make a sound.” “I’m Liam’s unit commander. I’m here to rescue you.” 7 (Part 2) The man introduced himself as Agent Vance, Liam’s direct supervisor. His voice sounded exactly like the one on the phone, and he had a badge from the agency. I was… rescued? I hadn’t even processed the terror before this, and everything felt surreal. “But how did you know I was here? Isn’t there no cell service?” “Because we hadn’t received your file transfer, we were worried something happened, so we came looking. Since the main road was blocked, this backroad was the only way out. I saw the abandoned car and followed the trail here.” Agent Vance was highly experienced in field operations. He could determine our direction just by observing the bark on the trees and the way the grass was bent. I followed him as we navigated through the forest. “The top bosses of that cartel faked their own deaths in a car crash to escape. Liam uncovered their plan, which is why he’s in danger.” My heart sank. I grabbed his arm and asked desperately, “Then how is he doing now?” “He should be at the safe house. Don’t worry, once he’s in the safe house, communication is strictly one-way. He can only contact us. During this time, you must keep whatever he gave you completely secure. It’s the key to taking them down.” I felt like I had been hit over the head with a baseball bat. The world spun. “What did you say?” “I’m saying, the agency might have a mole. To be safe, it’s better if you hold onto it.” My blood ran ice cold. I didn’t have anything. And I had never mentioned having anything on that phone call. The man standing right in front of me was working with the fake Liam! 8 Which meant my escape was also part of their plan. They wanted to give me a glimmer of hope when I was at my most desperate, thinking I would spill all my secrets. The freezing rain soaked through my body, straight into my soul. The speed at which someone matures when hovering between life and death is unimaginable. Right now, I was far calmer than I thought possible. After about half an hour, Agent Vance found his concealed SUV and told me to get in the passenger seat. After he started the engine, a flash of inspiration hit me. He hadn’t put on his seatbelt. I put on a fragile, pleading tone. “Agent Vance, I’ve thought about it, and it’s safer if you hold onto it. Liam trusts you so much, and I can’t handle this by myself.” After begging him a few times, Agent Vance reluctantly agreed. “Alright, if you say so.” As the car navigated a sharp bend, I mumbled something softly. Because the rain was so loud, Agent Vance couldn’t hear me clearly and instinctively leaned his body toward me. Now! I violently grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it hard! The car instantly lost control and plummeted down the embankment. Agent Vance was thrown forward violently by the impact, smashing his head against the dashboard and instantly knocking himself out. I struggled to unbuckle my seatbelt and squeezed out of the wreckage. But I barely made it a few steps before I collapsed, unable to stand. A massive shard of glass had embedded itself deep into my thigh. Agony ripped through my entire body, and black spots consumed my vision. Then, I completely lost consciousness. 9 When I woke up in the hospital, three days had already passed. I was incredibly lucky to have been found by a group of hikers. At the time, I was suffering from severe blood loss and hypothermia. If I hadn’t been rushed to the hospital in time, I would have died out there. “Ms. Davis, hello. I am the real Agent Vance.” I struggled to open my eyes. The man standing in front of me was wearing a police uniform, projecting a strong, authoritative aura. “The imposter who posed as me was a fugitive from the cartel. He wanted to kidnap you to retaliate against Liam, but we’ve already apprehended him.” What did that mean? Had they found Liam? Was he… still alive? I had so many questions, but my body felt like a puddle of mud. I could only manage to force out the words, “Did you… find Liam?” Agent Vance smiled and said, “Of course. Hasn’t he been by your side this entire time?” I froze, and the next second, I felt like I was plunged into a freezer. The door opened, and Liam rushed in, taking the steps two at a time. The moment I saw him, I understood everything. I let out an inhuman scream. “He’s a fake! He’s an imposter!” I practically shrieked, “He’s not the real Liam! He’s an imposter!” Agent Vance and the nurses all looked at me with exasperation. “Ms. Davis, Liam hasn’t eaten or slept in the three days you’ve been unconscious. He was worried sick about you. How can you say something like that?” I stared dead at the man. He put on a face full of concern, his eyes swimming with hurt and grievance. “He has a stab wound on his abdomen. I stabbed him during our fight. If you don’t believe me, run a fingerprint analysis on the handle of the pocket knife.” Agent Vance explained, “Ms. Davis, his wound was from struggling with the man who impersonated me. That man has already confessed to everything he did. You must be experiencing memory confusion from being in a coma for so long.” To my shock, the usually silent “Liam” spoke up. “You’re right. I’m not your Liam.” Then, he slowly dropped to his knees beside my hospital bed. His eyes were red, his face full of pain and grievance. “It’s true, I’m not the man you loved three years ago.” “Three years undercover completely altered my personality. I became paranoid, hyper-vigilant. I’m not the Liam from your memories, and it’s all my fault!” “I swear, I’ll never forget that you can’t eat brown sugar again, and I won’t forget a single word you’ve ever said. I’ll turn back into the man you love. Just give me a little more time. Forgive me, accept me, please?”

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I am my company’s “lucky charm,” the boss’s ultimate talisman. To keep me around, the boss tried to seduce me with his looks. When that failed, he offered me a monthly salary of $88,000. I didn’t have to do any actual work. My everyday routine was just slacking off and getting paid for it. Half a year later, the boss had a whirlwind wedding, and his new wife was helicoptered in as the Executive Vice President. Seeing how much free time I had, and finding out her husband used to aggressively pursue me, she decided to kick me out while he was away on a business trip. “I don’t tolerate freeloaders in my sight. HR, give her a standard severance package and tell her to get lost!” My colleagues frantically pleaded for me: “VP, please reconsider! She’s our lucky charm, a living four-leaf clover. The company literally cannot survive without her!” The boss’s wife was furious at their pleading and stubbornly accused me of sleeping with the boss. I wasn’t going to take that kind of insult. I went straight for the jugular. “Give me three months’ severance, and I’ll leave immediately!” Hehehe. My best friend had just started a company right upstairs, and I was stressing over how to find an excuse to quit. Thank you, Mrs. Boss, for the generous triple-salary severance gift! 01 My name is Penny Cash. Before I turned eighteen, I was a total magnet for bad luck. After starting college at eighteen, I met my roommate, Goldie Price, who was just as unlucky as I was. Two negatives make a positive. On the very first day we met, we bought a boba tea that came with a promotional scratch-off ticket, and we won $88,000. From that day on, our bad luck vanished, and we finally got to live normal lives. After graduation, I submitted hundreds of resumes, all of which sank to the bottom of the ocean. I was exhausted. Let it all burn. I laid around at home like a corpse for three months, and the more I laid there, the happier I felt. Just as I was about to abandon the idea of working altogether, determined to comfortably live off my four retired grandparents as a useless freeloader, the boss of a soon-to-be bankrupt company found me. “Ms. Cash, I’m begging you to save my life. Come work for my company, name your salary!” I thought it was a scam and flatly refused. This boss pulled a “persistence pays off” routine and staked out my house for eight days and eight nights. I called the cops. It turned out to be a massive misunderstanding. The boss finally revealed the truth. “My company is on the verge of bankruptcy. I suspected it was an occult issue, so I hired a top-tier psychic. The psychic pointed me to a solution: find a 22-year-old recent female college grad with the last name Cash living in Apartment 8B, Building 8 of Emerald Estates. Bring her in as a lucky mascot, and our luck will turn around.” “Ms. Cash, I’m at the end of my rope. Science can’t solve this, so I have to try the occult. Otherwise, my company goes under, I go bankrupt with tens of millions in debt, and the hundreds of employees under me will be jobless. In this terrible economy, what are they supposed to do…” The more he spoke, the more heartbroken he got. By the end, he was literally wailing and sobbing in front of me. The cops couldn’t do anything and told us to resolve it ourselves. I went to his company for an on-site inspection. After looking at his various corporate licenses and certificates, confirming he was indeed the boss, I decided to help him out. “A monthly salary of $8,800. We’ll sign a one-year contract first. I’ll just be a lucky mascot. I won’t do anything, just lay flat and slack off every day, okay?” “Oh, by the way, I don’t want standard weekends. I want a four-day workweek. I’ll pick one weekday every week to take off.” Based on the current market rate for fresh college grads, and compared to my classmates’ salaries, $8,800 was definitely upper-tier. I had no skills, and I didn’t want to do anything. I was already very satisfied with this salary and benefits package. The boss, Harrison Cole, was also very satisfied. He agreed to all my demands and immediately signed the contract with me. I originally thought I just had dumb luck and ran into an idiot boss who had been brainwashed by a con artist. But right after we signed the contract, the Sales Director burst in, announcing that the major client he had been chasing for two months had agreed to sign—and was willing to increase the upfront deposit to 50 percent. The deposit from that order alone was enough to bring the company back from the dead. The boss dropped to his knees right there and gave me three loud, resounding kowtows. “My dear God, from now on, you are my Goddess of Wealth!” 02 Where there’s a first time, there’s a second, and then a third. The first resurrection from the dead could be called a coincidence. But in the days that followed, any business negotiation I attended was a guaranteed success. Any difficult client could be handled as long as I was there. Even when colleagues ran into stubborn clients, all they had to do was walk past my desk, chat with me for a bit, and when they went back, the client would instantly become incredibly agreeable. I, Penny Cash, was just that mystical! I coasted like this for half a year. My status in the company was even higher than Harrison’s. Everyone said: You can offend the boss, but you absolutely must not offend me, or you’ll definitely be cursed with bad luck. This point was proven three months into my employment. An intern saw me doing absolutely nothing all day. I don’t know if she felt unbalanced or if she just had bubbles in her brain, but she insisted on “cleaning up the workplace.” She used me as a target, a negative example, and fiercely criticized me. In the conference room, she tore me down to nothing, scolding me mercilessly. Because she was telling the truth, I didn’t dare make a peep. I was as quiet as a quail. She left feeling incredibly satisfied. As a result, on her way home from work that very night, she got into a car accident. She lay in the hospital for half a month. When she came back, she refused to believe in the curse and tried to cause trouble for me again. Unsurprisingly, before the workday was even over, right after she tried to mess with me, she tripped over her own feet and face-planted hard, her arm violently smashing into a desk. Well, that did it. She earned herself a fracture, a three-day hospital stay, and a cast for half a month. It all happened too coincidentally. If I wasn’t the person involved, I would have thought this intern was a paid actor I hired. After this incident, the legends about me in the company became even more bizarre. Everyone practically wanted to build a shrine for me. Especially that intern—her attitude did a 180-degree turn, and she became one of my most loyal sycophants. In just six months, the company on the verge of bankruptcy not only came back to life but scaled up to the point of preparing for an IPO. Because of this, my reputation as a lucky charm spread wildly through the CEO circles. Quite a few bosses wanted to poach me. The offers they threw out kept getting better and better. Harrison Cole, of course, knew this. To keep me, in my fifth month, he confessed his feelings to me, hoping to use his looks to tempt me. But he wasn’t my type. I wasn’t interested in this older, father-figure type of man. After I politely rejected him, he agonized over it, losing sleep every night and showing up to work with panda eyes. I couldn’t stand watching it, so I gave him a tip. “Mr. Cole, I may not like you, but I love money!” His eyes burst with joyful light. He finalized it on the spot. “Great! Liking money is great! I’ll give you a raise!” “A monthly salary of $88,000. Let’s get rich together, it’s a lucky number!” It was indeed very lucky. The month after my raise, the company’s performance was better than the previous five months combined. Because he was single-mindedly pursuing love, thirty-year-old bachelor Harrison finally found the girl of his dreams that very month. He had a whirlwind wedding. He brought us a boss’s wife, hired her into the company, and gave her the position of Executive Vice President. A lot of people in the company knew that Harrison had pursued me. So, in front of the boss’s wife, Victoria Lodge, people rarely brought me up. Harrison himself didn’t dare bring me up either. Victoria always assumed I was just some low-level employee earning a cheap salary to do nothing. Until the payroll was distributed that month. Victoria, on a whim, audited the employee payroll and discovered my astronomical salary. She was a fiery, impulsive woman. When she encountered a problem, she had to resolve it on the spot. But that day, Harrison happened to be on a business trip deep in some remote, mountainous area for a week-long project inspection, completely unreachable. Victoria spent two days investigating me. Finally, she reached a conclusion. I was an overpaid, useless parasite coasting by on my looks, waiting to die in the company. And someone who could potentially replace her position as the boss’s wife at any moment. 03 She was furious. She couldn’t sit still. She gathered all the company’s employees in the conference room for a meeting. Once everyone was present, she slammed my six-month payroll statement onto the conference table. “Slacking off from morning till night, doing absolutely nothing! Penny Cash, what gives you the right to take a high salary of $88,000 a month?” “The rest of your colleagues work themselves to the bone every day, and the most they make is thirty or fifty grand! What gives you the right? Do you feel at peace taking this money? Doesn’t your conscience hurt?” The conference room was dead silent. Victoria thought her words had stirred everyone’s emotions and looked quite pleased with herself. “You earn what you work for. Penny, you do absolutely nothing all day and have contributed nothing to this company. So I’ve decided: starting next month, your salary will be reduced to $800.” “The original $88,000 will be used to give an across-the-board raise to all the employees!” “Nobody has a problem with this proposal, right?” Huh? Wait a minute? Using my salary as a favor to buy people’s loyalty for herself? Is this human behavior? You can touch me, but you can’t touch my money. I slammed my hands on the table and stood up. Just as I was brewing my emotions and thinking about what to say, my dear colleagues couldn’t sit still anymore. First was the Director of Sales Department 1. A forty-something rough-and-tumble guy from Texas, Mike Dawson. “VP Lodge, I disagree. Giving employees a raise is your own prerogative. What gives you the right to deduct from Penny’s salary?” “Being generous at someone else’s expense, do you have bubbles in your brain?” “Let me make my stance clear right now. I don’t want this money. Don’t give me a raise!” After he spoke, the other colleagues nodded in full agreement, stating they didn’t want this raise and that my salary couldn’t be cut. “Penny has made the biggest contributions to the company. You can’t cut her pay. That $88,000 is exactly what she deserves. It’s lucky!” “VP Lodge, you’d better wait until Mr. Cole gets back to discuss this, otherwise, you’re definitely going to cause a massive disaster!” Everyone chimed in, one after another, fully defending me. Victoria’s face turned livid with anger. She slammed the table and kicked a chair. “Enough! Shut up, all of you!” “I don’t tolerate freeloaders in my sight. HR, process her severance with a standard package, and tell her to get lost!” Not cutting my pay anymore, now she’s making me resign? As soon as these words came out, the conference room exploded even more. “VP, you can’t do this! Penny cannot leave!” The Director of Sales Department 2 almost freaked out. “Penny is our company’s lucky charm! If she leaves, what happens to our business? How will we close future deals?” The other colleagues echoed her sentiments. “Yeah, VP. If we don’t have Penny, how are we supposed to handle difficult clients in the future?” “Exactly! If we don’t have Penny, when we meet a tough client, won’t I have to revise my proposals until I drop dead? You can’t do this, VP, please spare my miserable life…” “VP, you can’t drive away our mascot! When Mr. Cole gets back, he’s definitely going to lose his mind!” “Boss’s wife, she’s our lucky koi! The company literally can’t survive without her!” … More and more people pleaded for me. Victoria’s face grew uglier and uglier. The way she looked at me became extremely dark. I accidentally made eye contact with her and it gave me the chills. So scary. Victoria banged on the table twice. “All of you, shut your mouths!” “What’s wrong with all of you? Every single one of you protecting her? What? Am I your boss’s wife, or is she?” “I knew she was sleeping with Harrison! You’re defending her so hard, you must have taken plenty of bribes from her before, right?” “You, you, and you—the ones yelling the loudest. Have you slept with her too?” A warrior can be killed, but not humiliated! You can hit me or scold me, but you absolutely cannot start dirty rumors about me! I’ve been single since birth for twenty-three years, a pure, super innocent little girl! Seeing the people she named turning red with anger. I slammed the table. “Enough, Victoria!” “Give me three months’ severance, and I’ll leave right now!” 04 The noisy conference room fell instantly silent. Everyone looked at me. Director Mike Dawson looked at me in disbelief, appearing as though he was about to cry. “P-Penny, what did you say? You want to leave? You’re abandoning us?” The Director of Sales Department 2, Lily Henderson, lunged over and hugged my arm in a death grip. “Penny, you can’t go! If you leave, how am I supposed to survive…” The usually aloof, professional woman was crying like a child in front of me. I patted her head. “Ah, well, all gatherings must come to an end. Since the VP doesn’t like me and finds me to be an eyesore, staying at the company would just be a thorn in her side, wouldn’t it?” “Anyway, I’m tired of this job too. As long as she can give me three months’ severance, I’ll pack my things and leave immediately.” “Lily, don’t stop me. We’re talking about over two hundred and sixty thousand dollars here…” Saying this, I looked at the crowd with a bright smile. “Plus, everyone knows that a lot of companies have been trying to poach me. The offers they’re giving aren’t any worse than here…” Victoria let out a cold scoff. “You? Other companies want to poach you? You must be dreaming.” “Once you leave our company, you useless piece of trash, you won’t even find a job paying a thousand bucks!” At this point, everyone clearly saw that Victoria was not someone to be reasoned with. If I stayed, there would definitely be endless conflict. So everyone stopped trying to make me stay and instead offered me their sincere blessings. “Penny, wishing you a bright future. Keep in touch, and come back to visit us when you have time.” I smiled and thanked them. Laughing secretly to myself, of course I’d come back to see them. After all, my front foot steps out of this company, and my back foot steps right upstairs. Hehehe. Finally, I met Victoria’s gaze. “VP, do you accept my proposal? Three months’ severance, paid immediately. As soon as I get the money, I walk.” There was a reason I insisted on getting paid immediately. My best friend, Goldie Price, told me two months ago that she was opening a company, and she picked the location right upstairs from us. It officially opened just two days ago, and she had already rushed me several times, asking when I was going to come work for her. I was stressing over how to break it to Harrison Cole. Now this was perfect. Victoria handed me a pillow just as I wanted to sleep. But I was still worried that when Harrison came back, he’d refuse to honor it, and use withholding the triple severance to force me to come back. So, it was definitely better to settle it instantly. Victoria’s brain was currently a bit scrambled from being stimulated by the colleagues’ defense of me. She finalized it on the spot. “Fine! Three months’ severance it is! As long as you’re willing to leave, it’s just over two hundred grand. I can afford it!” HR processed my resignation on the spot and wired me my final paycheck and severance, totaling $264,000. The moment I received the money, my colleagues cast sympathetic looks at Victoria. At the same time, they started worrying about their own futures. I happily counted my bank balance, turned back to my desk, and began packing. All my colleagues watched me leave. The two Sales Directors escorted me out, flanking me on the left and right, as we walked out the company doors together. Victoria followed right behind us, keeping a distance of about two meters. The three of us had just stepped out the door, while she was just reaching the entrance. Suddenly, the company’s sign hanging overhead detached and plummeted straight down toward Victoria. A chorus of gasps erupted. “VP!” “Get out of the way!” Victoria realized something was wrong, looked up, and let out a terrified scream. “Ah!” “Help!” 05 By the time the three of us turned around to look, the sign had already crashed right at Victoria’s feet. Although it didn’t hit her, it scared the living daylights out of her. The colleagues who hadn’t stepped out of the office yet silently took a step back, their faces full of lingering fear. At the same time, they started whispering to each other. “It’s starting, it’s starting. The last person who offended Penny, Sophie… if I recall correctly, it was a car accident followed by a broken bone, right?” “Yeah, yeah, Sophie had it rough! Our mascot Penny’s authority is absolute!” “I tried to warn the VP not to be so impulsive. Look, she just kicked Penny out, and a second later she almost got crushed by the sign. Yikes…” “I feel like the VP is going to suffer some serious bad luck lately… she might even face a bloody disaster…” With everyone murmuring, Victoria, who was just scared half to death, instantly flew into a rage. She lifted her leg, stomped fiercely on the fallen sign, and glared viciously at the colleagues still inside. “A bunch of superstitious, filthy trash! This was just an accident! What does it have to do with Penny Cash?” “You say I’m going to have bad luck, but what bad luck did I have? The sign didn’t hit me, did it? You all saw it, it grazed right past me. It fell so close but missed. Shouldn’t you all consider me the lucky mascot instead?” She actually started feeling smug about it. The other colleagues who witnessed the whole thing weren’t buying it. They rolled their eyes to the ceiling. The receptionist standing closest, Rainy Adams, mumbled softly, “Grazed you? That sign fell inches from your face. If you weren’t flat-chested, it definitely would have knocked you over. You probably would’ve broken every bone in your body.” As she spoke, she proudly thrust out her own impressive chest. At a 36D, she certainly had the capital to be proud. The look in Victoria’s eyes was murderous. She stormed over to her viciously and slapped her right across the face. “You bitch! You dare say I have small boobs? Who the hell do you think you are? You think having a big chest makes you special? I’ve hated you since the first day I saw you. Strutting around the office all day with your chest pushed out, who are you trying to seduce?” “HR, get your ass over here, give her a standard severance package, and tell her to get lost too!” With that slap, everyone was stunned. Rainy clutched her cheek, taking a long moment to process it. “You hit me? Victoria, you dare hit me?” I silently lit a candle in my heart for Victoria. A lot of people in the company didn’t know that Rainy’s mother was actually the landlord of this entire premium office building. No, more accurately, this entire block of office buildings belonged to Rainy’s family. And Rainy, after hearing about my reputation, had shamelessly begged to be the receptionist at our company. She said her mom had hired someone to read her fortune this year. It said she would face a fatal disaster at age twenty-four. The only way to resolve it was to find a female college grad in her early twenties with the last name Cash living in Apartment 8B, Building 8 of Emerald Estates, and spend at least half the month with her. When Rainy told me this, I seriously suspected the fortune teller her mom hired was the exact same feng shui master Harrison Cole had used. Because of this, she even moved into the apartment right below mine. We commuted together every day, and she brought me homemade lunches daily. Her cooking was amazing. The thought of leaving the company and potentially missing out on her cooking made me feel quite melancholy. But Victoria saying she wanted to fire her actually played right into my hands. 06 Victoria was acting incredibly arrogant, one hand on her hip, the other pointing right at Rainy’s nose. “I hit you, so what? I’m the boss’s wife, I can hit whoever I want!” The HR manager, who also knew Rainy’s background, quickly tugged at Victoria’s hem. “VP, you can’t fire Rainy, she’s…” “She’s what? What kind of incredible background could a crappy receptionist have?” Victoria looked incredibly annoyed, threatening HR. “If you dare say one more word, believe it or not, I’ll fire you too?” The HR lady rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She gave up trying to persuade her and solemnly confirmed with Victoria. “VP, are you absolutely sure you want to terminate Rainy Adams without cause and pay out her severance?” Victoria nodded firmly, “I’m sure.” “Stop wasting time and process her paperwork right now!” HR obediently did as told. While the paperwork was being processed, Rainy swiftly packed her things, hugged her cardboard box, and stuck to my side. “Penny, I told you we were meant to be. We even got fired on the exact same day, hehehe.” She giggled foolishly. Victoria looked at us and sneered coldly. “Everyone, take a good look. This is the consequence of offending me. If you don’t want to get fired and want to keep working here, you’d better keep your eyes open from now on and know who the real master of this company is!” Since I joined this company, profits were good, and bonuses were plentiful. The colleagues’ salaries and benefits also rose. It was a coveted workplace in the industry. Many people wanted to work here, but the hiring standards were high, so there wasn’t much new blood coming in. Unless someone was exceptionally talented, they couldn’t get in. Now that Victoria had laid down the law, many colleagues kept their mouths shut. After giving me a hand signal, they quickly returned to their desks. Sitting rigidly upright, terrified Victoria would go crazy and implicate them. Victoria was very satisfied with the employees’ tactfulness. She crossed her arms, looking at us standing by the elevators, and mocked us. “I want to see what kind of good jobs you two can find after leaving this company! Two useless parasites relying on your looks to coast by!” She denied our abilities, but she acknowledged our beauty. That… actually made it kind of hard to hate her. I exchanged a glance with Rainy and almost couldn’t hold back our laughter. “VP, thank you for the compliment. Best of luck to you.” A flash of confusion crossed her eyes, but we didn’t bother explaining. We stepped into the elevator and went upstairs. 07 My best friend, Goldie Price, was already waiting for me in her office. As soon as we stepped into the company, confetti rained down on our heads, wave after wave. “Welcome, welcome, a warm welcome!” My bestie rushed forward and gave me a massive bear hug. “Penny, I finally waited for you! From now on, us sisters are going to build a massive empire in the city!” The employees standing on both sides of the main entrance applauded thunderously. Rainy Adams stood behind me, dumbfounded. “As expected of a mascot. This is the kind of grand reception a mascot deserves!” She knew Goldie had opened a company upstairs, considering she was the one who signed the lease for this entire floor over to us. I held Goldie’s left hand and turned back to hold Rainy’s right hand. Standing beneath our company’s sign, my heart surged with passion. “Golden Fortune LLC.” A glittering, gold-plated sign. It looked grand and prosperous. Not bad at all. I was very satisfied. The company had been open for three days. Employees were in their positions, working systematically. As the co-owner with 45% of the shares, I couldn’t just slack off and lay flat like I used to. But clearly, Goldie understood me perfectly. She handled all the company’s affairs wonderfully; there was absolutely no need for me to do anything. When I started dozing off looking at documents for the Nth time, she poured me a glass of water. “Sister, if you really can’t take it, why don’t you go lie down for a bit? I’m terrified you’re going to hit your head on the desk.” As noon approached, Rainy brought food in from the room next door. She walked to the dining table with easy familiarity, setting out the dishes as she spoke: “Penny, you worked hard all morning. Come eat. I made your favorite sweet and sour spare ribs and wild ginseng chicken soup.” Rainy’s current position was still the company receptionist. But the actual receptionist role out front was already filled, so she didn’t have to stay at her post all the time. Both Goldie and I had experienced her culinary skills. So, on the second day after we onboarded, we built a small private kitchen right next to my and Goldie’s offices specifically for her. The aroma of the food finally drove the sleepiness out of my brain. Full of energy. “Alright!” Three dishes and a soup. It was the perfect amount for three girls. Just as we were eating, the other receptionist rushed frantically into our office. She looked genuinely panicked, forgetting to even knock. “Ms. Price, Ms. Cash, this is bad! There’s a man outside claiming to be Ms. Cash’s boss causing a scene, insisting we hand Ms. Cash over!” Oh my. I had forgotten about that. Harrison Cole, who was inspecting a project deep in the remote mountains, was scheduled to return to his company today. But with delicious food right in front of me, I couldn’t let it go to waste. I swallowed a mouthful of chicken soup. “Let him wait. The sky could fall, the earth could crack, but eating is the most important thing. Don’t let him interrupt my meal.” The receptionist hesitated. The next second, Harrison burst in. With a sliding kneel. He dropped straight to his knees right in front of us. “Penny! My Goddess of Wealth, please come back! The company can’t survive without you!” A thirty-year-old grown man, currently crying like a complete idiot. I rolled my eyes and spit out a chicken bone.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “426731”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

For a prank on a variety show, the producers made me unblock the first person on my phone’s blacklist and send a greeting. I bit the bullet, pulled my ex-boyfriend out of the block list, and sent: “Hi.” The other side instantly exploded. “Oh, what a rare honor! You finally letting me out for some fresh air? “Spit it out, what do you need from me? “Harper Vance, if you’re begging to get back together right now, I’ll tell you a secret. “Can you reply? If you don’t reply, I’m putting you back on the blacklist! “Whatever, I’ll just tell you. Your daughter gave birth. Are you going to come back and see her or not?” The live chat: [Contact name Ashton Cole? The Best Actor Ashton Cole?! DAUGHTER???] 1 Guys, I am completely stupefied right now. I have absolutely no idea how to clean up this mess. Before I came here, nobody told me this variety show was so authentic that there wasn’t even a basic script. I figured Ashton Cole would have blocked me a long time ago. Who knew he’d reply so fast, it was like he was sitting on top of a Wi-Fi router. And the guy was losing his mind. “You used to ignore me, but the me of today is out of your league! “No, seriously, is it a felony to reply to a text where you are? “Don’t tell me you lost a game of Truth or Dare. I don’t believe it. You just miss me. “If you block me again, I will literally go hang myself under an overpass with your daughter. “Okay, okay, you intentionally sent one word just to bait me, right? Fine, I took the bait, now reel me in!” The continuous buzzing of my phone didn’t just make my palm numb. I felt like my brain was going numb, too. The speed at which the live chat was scrolling was terrifying. [Ashton Cole?! This has to be a prank!] [Don’t tell me my husband is actually involved with this D-list actress. Harper Vance will do anything for clout!] [This is 100% scripted. They’re so brave, casually joking about having a daughter. God knows who’s actually on the other end of that phone. If it’s really Ashton Cole, I’ll do a handstand and eat dirt!] [Upstairs, stop trying to scam a free meal.] [The contrast is so cute! It’s actually kind of sweet. Pure neutral bystander here, waiting for the plot twist.] The show host seemed unable to watch me suffer any longer. He quietly reminded me, “So, Harper, shouldn’t you reply with something?” I nodded and typed back to Ashton: “I’m on a show. Lost a game.” I hoped he would understand. I was filming a show! Ashton replied instantly. Without a single second of hesitation: “No. I don’t believe you.” [LMAO, the ultimate denier.] [If this is really Ashton Cole, I will laugh at him for the rest of my life. Mr. Cold and Aloof?] [Harper Vance waking up in the middle of the night: No, seriously, is there something wrong with his brain?!] 2 As for how the show finally ended, my memory is a hazy blur. Unsurprisingly, when I opened X (formerly Twitter), the top trending topics were all about me. #HarperVanceCloutChaser! #Breaking!HarperVanceRumoredToBeBestActor’sEx# #TheUntoldStoryOfHarperVanceAndAshtonCole# The further I scrolled, the more absurd it got. #HarperVanceSecretChild# #HarperVanceAge38DivorcedWithTwoKids# Seeing this, I posted a tweet: “There are many people in the world with the exact same name.” Whatever. I already have plenty of haters, one more scandal won’t hurt. I’ll just treat it as if I intentionally used the Best Actor for clout. Meanwhile, my manager, Maggie, had lost her mind. She was delirious with joy. She ran over, grinning from ear to ear, telling me exactly how many brands had already contacted her. I couldn’t even force a fake smile. I muttered under my breath, “I’m afraid you’re celebrating too early.” After all, I was the one who dumped Ashton Cole. Who knows if he’ll be so angry when he sees the trending topics that he’ll want to kill me. And that so-called “daughter”? It was actually a Samoyed we raised together when we were dating, named Billi. When we broke up, we each took one dog. The one I took is named Milli. Maggie asked me, “This is such huge news, you’ve gone viral, Harper! Why aren’t you smiling?” I patted Maggie’s shoulder and sighed. “You know me. I’m just not a smiler.” For two days, Ashton didn’t come looking for trouble. He also didn’t go out of his way to clear up the rumors online. I was confused. Even if he wasn’t online, what was his PR team doing? However, on the third day, his Twitter account, which hadn’t been updated in a year, posted a highly passive-aggressive photo and caption. “My daughter gave birth, and her baby mama didn’t even come to take a single look. “It’s fine. I’m not tired, just cursed with a hard life.” The attached photo showed Billi with two newborn puppies. [Bro, who is the baby mama?!] [Please don’t tell me it’s actually Harper Vance.] [If it really is Harper Vance, I’ll accept her as my sister-in-law right now. I honestly think she’s pretty.] Ashton actually replied to that third comment. He said: “I’m still on probation. Can’t say who it is. I don’t want to get blocked again. (Folded hands emoji)” I was done. What the hell was he trying to do?! Stop torturing me, just give me a quick death! Right when everyone was frantically guessing who the “sister-in-law” was. The girl-next-door actress, Blair Sterling, posted a tweet. Caption: “Bought some dog food for my baby, dropped by to visit a friend’s newborn puppies on the way~” Attached photo: She was wearing a white dress, holding a basket of dog treats, posing in a carefully calculated, flattering angle. 3 For the entire month of Billi’s postpartum recovery… I mailed her tons of supplements, various treats, and toys. After all, she was the fur baby I raised with my own hands. If it weren’t for the fact that I genuinely didn’t want to see Ashton, I definitely would have gone to visit her. Later, I learned from Ashton that Billi was pregnant with Milli’s puppies. One day, when I was walking Milli, he got super excited and sneaked off for half an hour. It just so happened that Billi had also run away during that exact same time frame, and later Ashton discovered she was pregnant. The internet has no memory. A month was enough time for everyone to forget a lot of things. I thought my drama with Ashton would finally die down. But unexpectedly, Maggie booked me on a live-streamed variety show. It was a pet-themed show called Furry Family, which had already aired one episode with great reviews. Relying on my sixth sense, I cautiously asked, “This show… Ashton Cole isn’t going to be on it, is he?” “He is! The production team specifically asked for you, figuring they could milk the leftover hype between you two. If Ashton wasn’t on it, we wouldn’t have snagged such a lucky break.” I wanted to cry without tears. You can keep this lucky break. See if you dare take it! Ugh. I pour my heart out to you, and you play mind games with me. Ultimately, crushed by the threat of a massive breach of contract fee, I went on the show. It was absolutely not because they paid me too much! The first day of filming. I had to get up at the crack of dawn. It was so early I wanted to scream. I felt the profound rage of a corpse having its coffin lid ripped off. But I really needed the cash. So, I apologized to my utterly worthless resentment. [Why is she here? Don’t tell me she’s here for our Ashton!] [Can Harper Vance just leave the industry? No specific reason, I just can’t stand her.] The moment I stepped on screen, I received a grand chorus of insults. It couldn’t be helped. That’s how it is when you’re incredibly popular. I’m used to it. I could tolerate Ashton being on the show, but Blair was here too. [Our Blair hid this so well! When did she get a dog behind our backs?] [Toxic shippers back off, our Blair and the Best Actor are the only true match.] [Curious, was Blair really visiting the Best Actor’s daughter last time?] Actually, when I scrolled past her tweet back then, I was confused too. I had a rather unpleasant experience working with Blair once. There was a Golden Retriever acting on set, and Blair’s behavior clearly showed she disliked dogs. How could she possibly own one? 4 Besides the three of us, there were two other guests. The five of us came onto the set first. The dogs were with the production crew. The crew arranged an opening mini-game. The five of us stood behind a screen, letting the dogs find their own owners. When Billi and Milli came out, the two dogs immediately rubbed their faces together affectionately. Standing behind the same screen, Ashton gave me a deeply meaningful look. The two dogs cuddled for a bit, then walked straight toward my side. [These two dogs look like they’re on a dating show.] [Huh? I feel like they know each other really well. Have they met before?] [The person upstairs loves to overthink. A dog is just like its owner. Harper Vance’s dog is just as shameless as she is. Am I the only one who thinks this is disgusting?] [Yes, it’s just you. Build up some good karma, will you? We all know you have a mouth, you don’t need to prove it.] The live chat erupted into a fierce and unfriendly debate over this. Meanwhile, Billi and Milli were already standing on either side of me. I gave Ashton a look, signaling him to take Billi away. He pretended not to see it, playing dumb. Equally out of the loop was Blair’s Border Collie, named Cubby. Billi and Milli stuck to me, and the other guests’ dogs found their parents. Only Cubby was wandering around the perimeter, refusing to go near Blair. Blair looked embarrassed and called out softly, “Cubby.” Cubby remained completely unmoved. Blair raised her voice a bit. Cubby stood in place, pondering for a moment. Then, he slowly ambled over to Ashton’s side. [Aren’t Border Collies supposed to be super smart? Why does it feel like Cubby doesn’t know Blair?] [Cubby went to Ashton! Does Ashton play with Cubby a lot off-camera?] [Oooooh~ I knew it. I totally ship it.] The production crew spoke up, telling us to each retrieve our own “kids.” Blair jogged over to Ashton. She smiled apologetically. “Sorry about that. I don’t know what’s wrong with Cubby today. He must just really like you.” Blair tried to put a collar on Cubby, but he was extremely uncooperative. When she finally got it on, he sat firmly in place, refusing to walk with her. Blair said something deeply suggestive to Ashton. “Looks like I’ll have to let Billi and Cubby have more playdates in the future.” 5 Ashton took a step back. He walked toward my side. “Our Billi is only friends with Milli.” [He’s literally spelling it out! Certain fans of Blair need to stop barking.] [Billi and Milli (Billion and Million). Isn’t that clearly a couple’s name?] [I’m calling her sister-in-law first.] [The people upstairs must be Harper Vance’s brain-dead fans, right? Believing everything they hear.] [Who’s the brain-dead fan, and who’s the one throwing a tantrum? I won’t say. Those who know, know.] Ashton took Billi’s leash from my hand. The man and the dog took three steps, looking back at me with every step. Milli wanted to follow them, but I firmly held him back. I instantly felt like the evil, unreasonable mother-in-law in a melodramatic novel, tearing star-crossed lovers apart. Blair walked over with Cubby and reached out to pet Billi. Billi barked at Blair and dodged her hand, showing absolutely zero respect. Blair awkwardly pulled her hand back from mid-air. She forced a laugh and tried to save face: “It’s been so long since I saw Billi, she’s grown distant from me.” I watched from the sidelines with great interest. Blair was clearly aiming for Ashton. She wanted to be Billi’s stepmom. But finding a two-faced fake who didn’t even like dogs? I would sneak in and steal Billi back in the middle of the night! Ashton frowned and looked confused. “Actually, I wanted to ask earlier. Do we know each other?” [Oh snap. I think I hear the sound of someone’s face getting slapped.] [Is the Best Actor really a player? That’s not how you keep your distance!] [To the people commenting earlier: I declare your cerebrum completely undeveloped, and your cerebellum underdeveloped.] The smile on Blair’s face was crumbling. She froze for several seconds. When she recovered, she said, “Ashton, we worked together last year on First Love.” Blair’s screen time in that movie was minimal. She had a brief cameo as the male lead’s deceased first love—a grand total of maybe three scenes. Ashton thought for a moment. “Oh, what a coincidence.” He dropped that sentence, brushed past Blair, and walked back to his spot. My secondary embarrassment was flaring up. Blair, probably trying to ease the awkwardness, shifted her gaze to Milli. Her tone was odd: “It must be nice having a light acting schedule, Harper. Even your dog is raised plump and chubby. Unlike me. I have to strictly control my diet every day, and Cubby is such a picky eater.” What did that mean? So she hit a wall, and now she’s trying to find her ego by stepping on me? I patted Milli’s head. “My dad really loves green tea. Excuse me, Blair, do you have any vintage pick-me tea at home? I’ll pay top dollar for some.” 6 That night, around midnight. There was a knock on my door. When I opened it, Ashton quickly pushed his way inside. It was as if he was terrified I’d lock him out. I was trapped between the wooden door and his chest. He looked down. “It’s so hard just to see you. Why did you break up with me back then?” I pushed against his shoulder, but he didn’t budge. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “Your mom gave me a million dollars to get lost, and when I walked out the door, your ex-girlfriend threw another million at me. I love money.” “If you’re going to lie to me, at least pick a better excuse.” He grabbed my wrist. “Besides you, what ex-girlfriend do I have? And my mom is practically begging for me to get married.” I stayed silent for two seconds. I asked him back, “Back then, juggling me and your career… didn’t you find it exhausting?” When Ashton debuted, his first TV show was a minor hit. Over the next two or three years, his popularity skyrocketed, naturally attracting intense scrutiny. Even though I was a nobody actress, it was inevitable that rumors would start flying. Eventually, it began to affect our normal lives. Since Ashton couldn’t make a choice, I made it for him. Facts proved my departure was the right move. Ashton became more and more famous, and I’m not doing too badly myself now. Hearing my question, Ashton’s brow furrowed tightly. He sighed. “You know back then I…” “Forget it,” I interrupted him. “Let the past stay in the past. Aren’t we both doing better now?” With that, I opened the door, signaling for him to leave. Ashton didn’t put up much of a fight. But right before he left. He said, “Harper Vance, it’s not over. Sooner or later, I’m going to tie us together again. Proudly and publicly.” Even after Ashton left, I stood at the door, feeling a bit dazed. Fine. Let him do whatever he wants. My mindset right now is purely zen. 7 The next day, the producers organized a beach mini-game. Dog treats and toys were buried in the sand in front of us. The rules were simple: the dogs had to find them, and the team that found the most won. [Look at Billi and Milli. Just based on those two, I refuse to believe Ashton and Harper are strictly platonic.] [Wait, what is Blair doing?] [Is she crazy, or am I crazy?] [Is no one going to stop her? I’m so anxious I want to crawl through the internet and grab her!] I looked over at Blair. Cubby had just dug up a dental chew bone. Blair patted his head, then pulled a piece of chocolate out of her pocket, ready to reward him. Wait, chocolate? I took a massive step forward and smacked the chocolate out of her hand. “Harper Vance, what are you doing?!” Blair yelled at me. “Don’t you know dogs can’t eat chocolate?” She hesitated for a few seconds, then mumbled, “What does it have to do with you?” [What’s wrong with Harper Vance? Did nobody teach her how to speak politely?] [She’s just bullying our Blair. Poor Blair, don’t be mad~] [Can the people upstairs stop acting like everything is a catfight? I’m so sick of it. What benefit does it bring you?] [Let’s look at the facts. Does Blair actually know how to raise a dog?] Another female guest, Zoey, walked over. She was a cute girl with her hair in a bun. She spoke up: “That should be common sense for anyone with a pet. Doing that could literally kill the dog.” Blair kept her head down, acting like we were ganging up on her. 她 intentionally made her shoulders tremble, her voice taking on a tearful tone. She said, looking incredibly wronged: “But Cubby always eats it! He loves chocolate, he eats a lot of it every time.” I exchanged a speechless glance with Zoey. Our silence was deafening. Blair’s acting addiction kicked in. Her tone grew more and more pathetic: “I just wanted to reward Cubby. You guys are making me feel so awful. After all, every dog’s body is different.” [Exactly, every dog’s body is different!] [To the person upstairs: I just got pregnant with your child. Wire me a million dollars in child support immediately.] [Are you sick in the head?] [After all, everyone’s body is different.] Blair was completely immersed in her own little world until Ashton wandered over. She stared at the treats in Ashton’s hand. “Ashton, they won’t let me feed Cubby his favorite chocolate. Could you share some of your treats with me?” I rubbed my temples. If the sky falls, we don’t have to worry, Blair’s mouth will hold it up. I patted Blair on the shoulder. “If I ever need someone to shovel BS, I’m calling you. You’re a natural.” 8 Glancing at Ashton again, I linked arms with Zoey and walked away. “Ashton.” Blair tugged at his shirt. “You’re the best.” Ashton looked like he was facing a lethal threat, swatting at the goosebumps rising on his arm. He looked like he was breaking down. “No, listen, I’m calling you ‘Sis’, okay? Don’t ruin me. My journey to win my wife back is already long and hard. If you pull this crap, I’m going to completely lose my cool persona.” [Is the guy who said this was scripted earlier still here?] [LMAO, how do you know it’s not a script now?] [Even a hundred years after you’re cremated, your mouth will still be intact and arguing.] I hadn’t even walked two steps away. My ears heard everything perfectly, and my mouth twitched uncontrollably. Ashton hurried to catch up with us. “Harper, you have to believe me. I graduated top of my class from the Loyal Boyfriend Academy. You know this. I have a certificate.” I pulled Zoey along, walking even faster. Save me, I’m terrified. [So Ashton was holding it in all day yesterday?] [No, seriously, if no one clarifies this, I’m going to start spreading rumors.] [If you spread rumors, I’m going to have to repeat them.] [Then I’m going to believe them.] Ashton had completely let himself go. He followed close behind me the entire time, neither too close nor too far. Zoey’s Corgi, Sugar, seemed to really like me, constantly rubbing against my pant leg intentionally or unintentionally. Zoey herself seemed to have found her tribe, sticking to me like glue. Being a girl is great. You can casually cuddle with pretty girls and get a positive response. After spending some time together, I realized Zoey really liked to launch herself into my arms like a hungry tiger. And once she was in my arms, she’d always sneak in a few extra nuzzles. [I have something to say, but I don’t know if I should.] [Did Zoey ever say she plays for the other team?] [Blind man, you’ve discovered the blind spot.] [What do I do? I just love shipping people everywhere.] Ashton saw the live chat and launched himself like a rocket. He grabbed Billi, who was eating nearby, and charged straight at me. He pulled the little Corgi out of my arms and shoved Billi’s massive, fluffy head in instead. Ashton said, “Billi absolutely insisted on finding you.” Billi still had crumbs of freeze-dried meat on her mouth. She looked at me, utterly confused, and let out a pitiful little awoo. Zoey pouted and leaned on my shoulder. “Why is Ashton being like this? He’s not mad at my Sugar, is he?” Ashton frowned. “Does your family sell green tea too?” I tsked. “What nonsense are you talking about?” I’m putting my cards on the table. I have a double standard. 9 Ashton grabbed Billi in his arms. “Fine, fine, is this how we’re playing it? “My poor Billi. Abandoned by her ruthless mother. She finally finds her real mom, only to discover her mom is out here flirting with everyone, surrounded by flowers, without a care in the world! “My poor Billi has been so depressed she’s only eating three meals a day! She’s so hungry she gained two pounds recently! How am I supposed to survive as a single father?!” Me: “…” This guy was acting unhinged again. I think I saw Zoey looking at me, her eyes asking: Is there something wrong with Ashton’s brain? Right then, Blair chimed in: “Harper, how can you act like this? If it were me…” I raised my hand, cutting off Blair’s words. I made an inviting gesture. “Come on, the floor is yours. Start your performance.” Zoey followed suit, holding a leash in one hand and my hand in the other. “Then we’ll leave it to Ms. Sterling. We’re going.” Blair clearly hadn’t expected me to refuse to play by her script. Ashton let go of Billi. He looked up at Blair and asked, “Did I ever offend you somewhere?” Blair: “I…” [Honestly, I feel like Blair has just been doing confusing things this whole show.] [I’m un-stanning. This is too cringe.] [But Blair didn’t do anything wrong! If the guy I liked liked someone else, I wouldn’t be able to handle it either.] [Did~ nothing~ wrong~] Facts proved that all of Blair’s vague online insinuations were entirely orchestrated by herself. The fans who shipped her and Ashton practically all jumped ship. Modern netizens really can turn any variety show into a dating show. After today’s shoot ended. I organized some cute photos of Milli from today. I arranged them into a 3×3 grid and posted them on Twitter to build some engagement. The hype had been high recently, and shortly after posting, I got a ton of comments. The most eye-catching one was the top comment, which had been furiously liked by everyone. The name Ashton Cole jumped out at me. He commented: “Billi misses you.” I pretended not to see it and ignored it. When I clicked back in after my shower. I saw the second highest-liked comment right below it. Ashton: “I commented on your post, and you won’t reply. It seems our relationship has reached the point where we need to avoid suspicion.” I mean, sometimes being a person on the internet is just a really helpless experience. After a moment of thought, I replied with an ellipsis (……).

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“Just because I helped her sign the attendance sheet, and not you?” “Yes.” Ethan’s tone was still cold. “Fine. Suit yourself.” He lowered his head to continue typing his code, not sparing me another glance. And because of that, I never got the chance to tell him. Because I failed that attendance check, my grade dropped, and I completely lost my guaranteed spot in our university’s graduate program. I had no choice but to apply out of state. We would be separated by thousands of miles, making it incredibly hard to ever see each other again. Before I left, I threw everything related to Ethan Vance into the trash, including the promise ring we bought together. Later, I heard the rumors. The brilliant, neat-freak golden boy of the Harvard Computer Science department absolutely lost his mind. Just for a single ring, he dug through a literal mountain of garbage with his bare hands until dawn. 01 “Just because I helped her sign the attendance sheet, and not you?” The lecture hall was completely empty. Ethan Vance looked up carelessly, his eyes meeting mine. There was barely a trace of emotion in them. I nodded. “Yes. So, we’re done here.” Ethan’s gaze lingered on me for two seconds. But only for two seconds. He lowered his head and went back to the unfinished project on his laptop. He didn’t look at me again. “Fine. Suit yourself.” Even Chloe, the junior standing innocently beside him, looked at me with a hint of concern. But I was his girlfriend of three years. He still hadn’t noticed that I had been running a high fever for three days, my face flushed to an unnatural degree. I gave a self-deprecating smile. I turned to leave, but Chloe grabbed my arm: “Senior, he only helped me sign in because we pulled an all-nighter for a project all week. He knew I was just running out to grab coffee and bagels, so he did it as a favor… He even asked me to bring you a coffee too. It’s really not what you think.” I was already dizzy from the fever. Caught off guard by her pull, I stumbled and fell hard onto the floor. My knee scraped painfully against the edge of the lecture hall steps. The sharp, stinging pain cut through my physical exhaustion, and my eyes instantly welled up with tears. “Senior!” Chloe hurriedly tried to help me up. Her eyes kept darting anxiously toward Ethan, trying to gauge his reaction. But she clearly didn’t understand the kind of person Ethan was. Hearing the commotion, Ethan looked up blankly, his brow furrowing slightly. “Chloe, do you have too much free time?” Chloe, who had just been about to explain that it wasn’t on purpose, froze in place. “Huh?” “If you have so much free time, come over here and finish your part of the code.” I met Ethan’s dead, ripple-less eyes. I finally accepted it. He would always be an unshakeable mountain to me. No matter what happened, I couldn’t move him an inch. 02 “This might be for the best. For your specific research focus, besides our university, the only other place that really fits is maybe Columbia. “Since you lost your guaranteed spot here… “Going out of state or applying to a totally different environment is the better choice.” Hanging up the phone with my advisor, I pushed through my illness to start preparing my application materials. Just like my professor said. My research direction was a bit niche. If I stayed on the East Coast, my only real options were Harvard or Columbia. But if I opened up to a totally different system—like moving across the country to California—suddenly there were a lot more universities to choose from. I was actually torn on where to go. A single thought can open up the world. I suddenly didn’t know why I had been killing myself to secure a grad spot at my own insanely competitive university. What was it all for? My phone lit up. A notification popped up. It was from my “Favorites” list: Ethan’s Instagram. Ethan never posted on social media. Even when he agreed to date me, he never made it public. When I begged him to post about us, his tone was cold and impatient: “My private life is private. Why does it need to be put on display?” I told him everyone else did it. Isn’t it nice to share your happiness and get blessings from friends when you’re in a relationship? I said so much. But in the end, Ethan didn’t even bother looking at me: “Flora, Professor Davis from the Philosophy department is offering a Logic seminar this fall. I suggest you enroll.” I shut my mouth. The conversation was dropped. So, what exactly was worthy of Ethan making a post? I tapped the notification. [Project finished. First place.] Attached was a group photo of his project team at their celebration dinner. Ethan held the phone carelessly, his face a bit blurry. It seemed he was looking down at his phone and only looked up at the camera because someone called his name. But it still couldn’t hide how incredibly handsome he was. Effortlessly handsome. The kind of handsome where, as long as you looked at the photo, your eyes would instantly lock onto his face. It was no wonder that a talent agency had offered him a massive contract to become an idol back in high school. My gaze shifted slightly. Chloe, the new junior on his project team, was also in the photo. She stood out, too. She was the only one not looking at the camera. She was sitting right next to Ethan, well past a normal, platonic distance. Her eyes were focused intently on him. The love practically poured out of the screen. There were a few comments below, asking if Ethan finally got a girlfriend and if this was a soft launch. Ethan didn’t reply. The bright glow of my phone screen grew dimmer and dimmer. Until it suddenly went black. I snapped out of my daze, unlocked my phone, removed Ethan from my favorites, and blocked him. I finally understood the question I had asked myself earlier. Why did I kill myself trying to secure a spot at my own university? Because of Ethan. Of course it was because of Ethan. He could easily get a guaranteed spot, and I wanted to prove that I could stay with him forever. That’s why I worked so desperately. Just like in the beginning. When I and a bunch of other girls confessed our feelings to him, he looked annoyed, his frown practically screaming, Another one? So annoying. In the end, he gave me a dismissive look: “I don’t like girls with bad grades. “If you can get into my university, I’ll consider dating you.” He was a teenage prodigy, already guaranteed early admission to Harvard. The bar was so high that his words were enough to make anyone back down and walk away. But I didn’t. I studied like my life depended on it during my junior and senior years. I pushed myself so hard my parents literally begged me to stop. I will never forget the day I moved in as a freshman. I walked right up to Ethan: “I got in. It’s time for you to keep your promise.” He looked up at my expression. For once, he was genuinely stunned. 03 I went to the campus print shop to get my application materials, and by the time I got back to my apartment, my fever had spiked dangerously high. I just collapsed into bed and passed out. When I woke up. Ethan was sitting right beside me. The curtains fluttered in the breeze, the light in the room dim and golden. It felt like a dream. He reached out to feel my forehead. There was a glass of hot water and an opened pack of cold medicine on the nightstand: “Why didn’t you tell me you had a fever? Do you still feel awful?” It really was a dream. But for some reason, tears started falling from my eyes, one by one. Ethan froze in place. After a long time, his expression softened. His voice took on an almost illusion-like gentleness: “Why are you crying?” I cried even harder, sobbing as I called out his name, over and over. “Ethan, I like you so much, I really do… “But I can’t hold on anymore, Ethan. I really can’t… “I’m so tired, Ethan…” We had been together for three years. But it had been five years since I first started liking him. Over those five years, I had walked step by step to stand beside him. Only I knew how agonizingly hard it was. Some friends felt sorry for me. What kind of girl simps this hard for a guy? But when I said it was Ethan Vance, they all sighed in defeat. After all, it was Ethan. Countless girls liked him. Weren’t there girls prettier and smarter than me? What was I to him? What did I even count for in his life? But I just couldn’t let him go. I was too stubborn. My parents, my friends, my teachers—they all said the same thing about me: I wouldn’t turn back even if I slammed into a brick wall. In the dream, the aura around Ethan seemed to grow heavy. But he leaned in and hugged me anyway. His voice was softer than it had ever been: “If you’re tired, then get some sleep. It’s okay. Just rest.” I drifted back to sleep in his soothing embrace. Right before I passed out, I asked: “Ethan, did you… did you ever… actually like me?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I just felt something cold lightly flick my forehead. The touch was cold. The tone was even colder. “That’s a punishment for being an idiot.” 04 When I woke up, I realized there actually was an opened pack of medicine on the nightstand. I guess I was just delirious with fever the night before. I must have gotten up in the middle of the night, grabbed the medicine, and swallowed it myself. Things like that. It wasn’t like they hadn’t happened before. Since my name was on the lease with Ethan, but he was always working late in the labs and had an extreme obsession with cleanliness (he thought our apartment was too big and annoying to clean), he still mostly slept in his dorm. When I got sick, I was the only one taking care of myself. I got a call from the admin office urging me to submit my application forms quickly. I finalized the universities I wanted to apply to. When I went to turn in the forms, I happened to run into a senior from my department. He kindly offered me some advice. “If you’re interested in this topic, I actually recommend going to a major university in California. The West Coast system fits your research style perfectly. “Of course, if you’re looking at your long-term career, moving across the country to a completely new environment is a great choice.” He gave me a bright smile. “After all, our junior Flora is so brilliant, your future is limitless.” I stared at him, a bit dazed. Brilliant? Me? “Yeah. Flora Bennett. The genius who finished all her thesis research and drafts so early—everyone in our department knows you.” The only impression I had of this senior, Liam Hayes, was that he was in the same volleyball club as Ethan. Every time I went to watch a game, I’d see the two of them fiercely competing, neither giving an inch. Such a near-stranger. Yet his evaluation of me was so much higher than Ethan’s. I smiled, feeling a sense of relief. Just as I was about to thank him. I heard a voice: “Senior?” I turned my head. Chloe was standing right next to Ethan, probably dropping off some paperwork too. She was standing very close to him. In his hand, he was holding a blind box collectible figure—the exact one I had mentioned wanting in our text messages numerous times over the past few weeks. “Senior, what a coincidence running into you here. “I heard you were sick. Are you feeling any better?” Ethan didn’t say a word. He just kept his gaze locked steadily on me without shifting. … For a split second. I actually thought Ethan was jealous. Because there was one time I went to watch him play volleyball, and Liam happened to be there too. When Liam saw me, he greeted me enthusiastically, calling me “Junior Flora,” and happily took the bottle of water I handed him and took a drink. At the time, Ethan just gave him a cold, fleeting glance. But during that match, almost all of his high-speed spikes were aimed directly at Liam. Ethan was a neat freak who hated sweating and looking messy, so he chose to be the setter. His playstyle was light but devious, constantly sending the blockers running in circles. That night, he completely destroyed Liam’s team, making them genuinely angry. He didn’t even look sideways. He just patted my head, took my water bottle, and said: “Let’s go home.” I thought he didn’t care. But when we got home, I realized Ethan was incredibly… Aggressive. It was like he wanted to break me apart. Deep into the night, I was so exhausted I couldn’t even make a sound. I lay in bed, panting softly, even my fingertips numb. When I opened my eyes, I met a pair of eyes that shone brightly even in the dark. Before I could even wonder why Ethan was staring at me. He leaned down. And pulled me into a long, deep kiss. The second round felt just like that kiss—stifling, slow, and tormenting. Right before I passed out, I finally managed to process it: “Ethan, are you upset?” A very, very long silence. Followed by a very faint: “Mm.” 05 I opened my mouth, just about to call Ethan’s name. But then I saw Ethan hand the blind box in his hand to Chloe. Her face instantly flushed red, and she gasped in surprise, “Senior, is this for me?” Ethan gave a simple “Mm.” He turned and walked away without a second of hesitation, his back disappearing from view almost immediately. The name that never made it out of my mouth was swallowed back down. I smiled forcefully at Liam. So stupid. I almost thought Ethan actually cared about me. I handed my prepared application forms to the admin office. The administrative counselor confirmed with me one last time: “Flora, are you absolutely sure you don’t want to change this? Think it over carefully. Once you submit this out-of-state application, it can’t be withdrawn or reversed.” I nodded: “I’m sure. I won’t change it.” 06 When I got back to the apartment, I was surprised to find Ethan there. He was sitting on the sofa in the unlit room, his dark eyes staring at me intently: “…Why did you go to the admin office today?” I was a bit surprised. How rare. Ethan was actually initiating small talk. I brushed him off casually: “Senior Liam is applying to schools out of state. I was helping him figure out which universities fit his research focus.” “What’s there to look at?” I was almost tempted to snap back. Not everyone in the world is a genius like you, where everything goes perfectly and every honor or bright future is just icing on the cake. We normal people have to work hard for everything, worry about everything, and still face setbacks. But a sudden, heavy exhaustion spread through my entire body. I just nodded. Too tired to speak. I was calculating in my head: if Ethan was going to stay here, I needed to pack my bags and ship them out as soon as possible. “Flora.” Ethan’s voice was low and cold. The moment I stepped into the room, my wrist was grabbed tightly, and I unexpectedly stumbled into his embrace. The next second, he bit my lower lip, so hard it made my eyes widen. After a while, he let me go. I looked at him, almost forgetting that when we shared our first kiss three years ago, he had looked like a martyr facing a firing squad. He was a neat freak and incredibly difficult. We had dated for three months without a single kiss. It was only on my birthday, when he was too busy and forgot to get a gift, that I asked how he was going to make it up to me. And we finally shared our first kiss. After the kiss. He froze for a long time, a faint blush on his face. His final action was to stare at me, then use his thumb to wipe his glossy lips. “Flora, do you have something you want to say to me?” Ethan’s voice pulled me back to the present. He stared dead into my eyes. Probably because he realized I wasn’t simping for him like I usually did, and sensed something was wrong. Something to say? Of course I had something to say. But Ethan, what do you want me to say? Should I talk about how you rarely spent a birthday with me, but before the clock even struck midnight, you rushed off because of a project? Or how you bought me a birthday cake with mango filling, knowing I’m deathly allergic to mangoes out of everything in the world, sending me to the ER? Or how I stayed in the hospital for nine days, and you didn’t send a single text, didn’t answer a single call, and made me miss the most important departmental exam because of the allergic reaction? Or how, if I failed one more core class, the three years of effort I put into securing my grad school spot would be completely ruined? Or how I dragged myself back from the hospital through a high fever, begging you to sign me in for that one crucial class, and you completely ignored me, only to sign in your obviously lovestruck junior instead? I looked up at Ethan, my eyes heavy with exhaustion: “Ethan, I’m really, really tired.” I pushed away the slightly stunned Ethan. And walked further into the room. But halfway there, I suddenly stopped. I asked Ethan: “Do you like Chloe?” Ethan frowned, looking very unwilling to answer the question, his voice cold and hard: “No.” I nodded. I figured as much. Knowing Ethan’s personality, if he actually liked someone, he would have told me to get lost a long time ago. I paused for a moment. My voice softened: “Then… do you like me?” Ethan looked as if the question offended him, his tone impatient: “Didn’t I answer that question a long time ago?” I nodded. I remembered the time during the high school track meet when I suddenly collapsed from low blood sugar, and Ethan, a student volunteer, carried me to the nurse’s office. I fell in love with him at first sight. And then, like all the other girls, I confessed my feelings to him. He rejected me, just like he rejected everyone else. “I don’t like you.” “I know.” 07 Fortunately, because Ethan’s previous project was a massive success, he was given another major assignment and traveled out of town with his mentor. He didn’t have time to come back to the apartment we rented together. If this project successfully launched, he would soon achieve financial independence. He truly was the absolute best among our peers. People like me could only look up to him from a distance. The complications from my allergic reaction finally cleared up. I threw myself wholeheartedly into preparing for my out-of-state move. During this time, Ethan actually started texting me proactively: [Didn’t you always want to go to Boston with me for a trip?] [After this project is over, I’ll go with you.] After a long pause, another message came through. [Okay?] He had never asked me like this before. Both Ethan and I knew that he held absolute control in this relationship. He could be as willful and arrogant as he wanted. And I would always just gaze at him, forever unable to leave him, bound by my hopelessly deep love. I stared at the phone screen in a daze for a long time. Go to Boston? I really did always want to take Ethan to Boston. I wanted to show him all the moments I fell in love with him. Under the oak trees, sitting outside the cafe across from the campus bookstore, watching Ethan for an entire afternoon, day after day. The wind blew through the trees, and when the boy walked away, a leaf perfectly drifted down. It brushed past his shoulder and fell away. I took that leaf home and pressed it into a specimen to keep forever. My friends said I was absolutely insane. “Do you really like Ethan that much?” I really, really liked Ethan that much. I was a pure liberal arts major, dealing with philosophers all day. People always assumed we were deeply rational and clear-headed. Not at all. I was hopelessly, irrevocably, and vulgarly in love with Ethan. The night before the SATs, I saw Ethan. During my senior year, I studied until I severed all my emotions. Even in the last fifteen minutes, I closed my eyes to review everything I had mastered. But the moment I walked out of the library and bumped into Ethan, who was home on break from his elite university, my heart still skipped a beat uncontrollably. I felt like… That was the best gift God had ever given me. I rushed forward eagerly, calling his name: “Ethan! Ethan!” He stopped, looking confused, and took out his earbuds to look at me. He still didn’t recognize who I was. Seeing my high school uniform, he realized I was a junior student. He nodded politely, gave a distant “Good luck on the SATs,” and walked away. Okay. Good luck on the SATs. I performed exceptionally well, so well it was unbelievable, and actually got into Harvard. I took out the candy Ethan had given me the day I fainted from low blood sugar. Ethan just looked at me, confused: “What?” It was obvious. He didn’t remember me. When Ethan handed me that candy, he was still looking down at a complex math problem. His voice was indifferent: “The nurse said eating a piece of candy will help you recover faster.” He didn’t even look up at me. But, as if possessed, I didn’t eat that candy. I kept it safe, preserving it until it rotted and could no longer be eaten. I thought my love for Ethan might be like that too. I carefully maintained and preserved it all this time, but what remained in the end was nothing but a rotten, spoiled lump of sugar. Maybe it was still sweet. But eating it would definitely poison me. In the end, I didn’t reply to Ethan’s invitation to Boston. I blocked him and deleted his number again. I changed the passcode on my phone. To make absolutely sure he could never change it back himself. 08 The day I left seemed to be the exact same day Ethan’s project finished. For a project of that scale, the fact that Ethan could finish it so quickly proved his genius wasn’t just a rumor. I threw everything related to Ethan into the garbage. Including the promise ring we impulsively made on a date, which had a candy shape he hand-carved on it. My luggage had already been shipped out. I took one last look at the apartment we rented. It was spotless, not a speck of dust. I couldn’t help but smile. Ethan had OCD and never really liked this apartment. Now it was perfect, he would definitely love it. Before boarding my flight, I received a friend request from an unknown number. It was Chloe. After hesitating for a long time, she sent a message. [Senior…] [I actually really do like Ethan.] I took a sharp breath. What? Was I actually experiencing this dramatic, soap-opera trope of the “other woman” provoking the original girlfriend? Chloe: [But I know he… he will never like me.] [I know I definitely caused trouble for you. I’m sorry, Senior.] [There is absolutely nothing between me and Ethan. He only posted that picture on Instagram because our mentor wanted everyone to post something to celebrate. I never expected my feelings to be so… obvious. I feel like an idiot.] [I’m so sorry, Senior. I really am. I know my presence makes you uncomfortable. I can’t control the fact that I like him, but I will control myself and stay away from him.] [You and Ethan are truly a perfect match. I can tell that he actually likes you a lot. If it weren’t for him rushing to finish the project to get back to you, we wouldn’t have finished it so fast.] [He really loves you.] [Once this project is officially over, I’ll leave the team. I thought about it a lot, and I felt I had to apologize to you. Please believe him, and please don’t fight with him anymore. Seeing you guys fight makes me panic too. Between him and me, there is absolutely nothing going on.] [Also, please take care of your health. Both times I saw you, you looked sick. You have to take care of yourself. Heart emojis.] It felt like there was no right way to reply. The reason things between Ethan and me had reached this point wasn’t because he would fall for someone else. It was because his life had been too smooth; he had never learned how to love someone. I could say without hesitation that I loved him. I could even boast that out of everyone who claimed to love him, I loved him the most. I loved him for five years, and tolerated him for three. But I am human too. I get tired. I honestly didn’t know if Ethan would ever have a sudden epiphany, stop walking ahead of me leaving me only his back, and finally turn around to embrace me. I wasn’t even sure if that day would ever come. Hopelessly. Waiting for love to arrive, day in and day out for five years. Only to end up like a gambler who lost absolutely everything. So pathetic. You’re too pathetic, Flora. [It’s fine. Ethan and I already broke up.] [Whatever happens next is strictly between you and him. Good luck.] After sending that message. I turned off my phone and boarded the plane heading for California. I remembered what Senior Liam said: maybe a different academic environment would suit me better. But honestly, I was also a bit practical. I wanted success and recognition. I had done enough things with terribly low returns. I didn’t want to do them anymore. 09 The plane ascended, then finally landed. The houses below turned into tiny models, then vanished into the clouds, until new houses appeared. The city I landed in. There were no oak trees, but the palm trees grew lush and vibrant. 10 In a completely new environment, thousands of miles from home, everything was a bit of a struggle, but not overwhelmingly so. I followed in Ethan’s footsteps. It was exhausting, but the rewards were tangible. Thinking about it, if I hadn’t worked so hard for the grad program, pushing to finish my research and thesis early, my journey here probably wouldn’t have gone so smoothly. Realizing that, I felt a little less miserable. I integrated into the local culture, continuing to battle with various academic theories, running across campus with a croissant in my mouth to catch my next class. I brought a thoughtful welcome gift to a brilliant, young British professor who had already become a leading figure in her field. She raised an elegant eyebrow. She asked me what my name meant. She wanted to remember the meaning behind every student’s name. “Flora. Flora… um… it relates to plant life…” How was I supposed to explain the complex meaning of my given name to a foreigner? I stumbled over my words. But suddenly, a very quiet, cold voice sounded behind me: “Flora means the blooming of flowers, flourishing and full of life.” The English definition was precise, the pronunciation perfect. The British professor understood immediately. “That is indeed a very fitting name for you, Flora.” But I froze in place. I forgot to even turn around. The British professor was very enthusiastic: “And you are?” “Hello, let me introduce myself. I’m Ethan Vance. I’m the new visiting professor the university invited.” The British professor voiced my exact inner thought: “Such a young visiting professor?!” I finally snapped back to reality and turned around. Ethan, in a loud and chaotic place like California, looked like a cold, elegant stalk of bamboo. His features were detached, his face so unreasonably handsome it was impossible to look away. He tilted his head slightly. His gaze landed on me. It felt like it carried the weight of a thousand tons. “Flora. Long time no see.”

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