When I was nineteen, my brain hadn’t quite caught up to its latest system update yet. Seeing the trendy craze of “sponsoring a needy college student,” I gleefully jumped on the bandwagon. Out of all the candidates, Chen Xu stood out the most: handsome, hardworking, and more than willing to do all my group projects for me.

The only problem? Cheng Si’ang forbade me from dating early. He cut off my allowance, forced me to board at school, and micromanaged me like a minor. To protest his tyranny, I decided to jump off the building and commit suicide… from the second floor.

The result: I didn’t hit the ground; I landed squarely on top of Cheng Si’ang, who was watering flowers below.

Me: minor scrapes.

Him: broke both legs.

From that day on, Cheng Si’ang was confined to a wheelchair, yet he stubbornly brainwashed me every single day: “Be a good girl, sweetheart. Don’t date so young. It’s too easy to get played.”

The breaking point arrived at Shen Yingying’s birthday party. Attending in his place, I accidentally drank a spiked carton of milk. Instead of heading to the hospital, I sobbed and begged to go home. My best friend handed me a box of “protection” and… sprinted for the hills.

That night, I completely lost control. I tied Cheng Si’ang’s hands to the headboard and went full wild-west cowboy, riding the bucking bronco all night long.

By morning, he was lying beneath me, looking like a shattered ragdoll. His legs, which hadn’t even fully healed yet, were practically on the verge of breaking a second time.

Panicked, I fled the scene and ran straight to Chen Xu, seeking “emotional solace” under a pouring rainstorm. He looked at me and said:

“I’m sorry, but I’m a traditional man. I can’t accept being cheated on. I wish you happiness.”

He handed me his umbrella and walked away into the downpour. That was the first time I ever learned what real heartbreak felt like.

A hand with well-defined knuckles waved in front of my face, snapping me back to reality. Shen Yingying had vanished somewhere along the way. Cheng Si’ang gently wiped away my tears.

“Who made you unhappy? Was it that brat Cheng Yu?”

“No! It was… the onions! They made my eyes sting!” I pushed him away, scrambling for a clumsy excuse.

He took off his dress shirt, tied on an apron, and moved with the easy precision of a professional chef. “Put the knife down. The kitchen is greasy; let me handle it. Go watch a movie.”

I sniffled, secretly thinking: You really are a good husband… Once we’re divorced, I wonder if I can still drop by for free meals?

That evening, over drinks, my adoptive father had a heart-to-heart with Cheng Si’ang. He suddenly got emotional. “Thank god you didn’t end up marrying Shen Yingying back then. That family is a sinking ship.”

I listened, a strange sense of dissonance settling in my chest. Wasn’t I the one he so adamantly refused to marry back then?

I remembered how, after the night of the “accident,” my adoptive father reamed him out in the study. Pressing my ear to the door, I only managed to catch one line: “You WILL marry that girl!” At the time, Cheng Si’ang fought back fiercely, even going on a three-day hunger strike.

On the third night, I snuck through his window to deliver a carton of milk. In the dark, his eyes burned brightly as his hoarse voice rasped out, “Diệu Hàm… I’ll marry you.”

Terrified, I shook my head violently. “You don’t have to! It was my fault!” He opened his mouth to say something, but being so starved… he fainted right then and there.

My adoptive mother’s voice cut through my trip down memory lane. “Exactly. That Yingying girl was secretly entangled with Chen Xu overseas for years. Our Hàm Hàm is the sweet one, she even risked her life to give the Cheng family a grandson. All that deep devotion you poured into her wasn’t in vain, Si’ang.”

I froze in the hallway. It seemed… I had gotten a few things terribly wrong for a very long time.

Whose “deep devotion” was my mother actually talking about?

My body was a bit “rare.” The doctor had warned me that getting pregnant with Cheng Yu was like hitting the mega-jackpot; if I terminated it, I could kiss my chances of ever having another child goodbye.

When I found out I was pregnant, Cheng Si’ang and I had just gotten our marriage license—mainly to appease our parents. I knew he hated kids. The proof? Years ago, when my parents adopted me, his face was as dark as a storm cloud. But I wanted to keep the only blood relative I had left.

“Let’s get a divorce,” I told him. “Don’t worry, the baby and I won’t bother you.”

Cheng Si’ang’s fingers tightened around the ultrasound image, his voice dropping low. “I respect your choice. But you need someone to care for you while you’re pregnant. We divorce after the baby is born.”

When delivery day came, I suffered severe complications that nearly cost me my life. Right before being wheeled into the operating room, I instructed my best friend, “Keep an eye on Cheng Si’ang for me.”

Sure enough, he didn’t disappoint: he was crying a river of tears, yet his hands looked like they wanted to… strangle the newborn Cheng Yu. (Talk about a unique display of fatherly love!)

Afterward, he stayed up all night nursing me back to health. The word “divorce” sat on the tip of my tongue, but looking at his bloodshot eyes, I swallowed it back down.

He rasped softly, “Be good. You’re still weak. We divorce after his one-month party.”

Combine that with my chronic, terminal procrastination, and the divorce somehow got dragged out all the way until now.

After a heavy dinner, I slipped out to the balcony to catch a breeze. A warm coat was gently draped over my shoulders. Cheng Si’ang took my wrists, turning me around to face him.

“Do you want to help the Shen Group?” I asked. (What I really meant was: Do you want to help Shen Yingying?)

He answered with a question of his own. “Are you planning on abandoning your husband and child to run back to Chen Xu?”

I let out a long breath, letting every bit of pent-up grievance spill out. Once I explained that I just wanted to go see the Northern Lights, not run away with another man, his shoulders perceptibly relaxed.

“Sweetheart, I never said I liked Shen Yingying. I’m not young like Chen Xu, and I don’t know how to pamper you, but I refuse to let you get played again. So… I could only selfishly keep you by my side.”

He slipped the “pigeon-egg” diamond ring off my finger and set it back into its box. The soft click felt like a needle plunging straight into my heart.

“You’re an adult now. I can let you go. If you want to leave, then go. I won’t stop you anymore.”

Right on cue, Cheng Yu pressed his face against the glass door, ruining the moment. “What’s wrong with Dad? Mom, come eat late-night snacks!”

In unison, both of us barked, “GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

I decided to meet Chen Xu one last time.

He dropped to one knee, proposing to me with a diamond… the size of a sesame seed. (Compared to the pigeon egg back home, it was a literal visual insult.)

I used my fork to block his hand, asking three cold questions.

First, his impoverished background? He admitted he made it all up to gain my sympathy.

Second, the spiked milk years ago? He lowered his head and confessed. Turns out he and Shen Yingying had colluded to ruin me, all so he could climb the social ladder and become the Cheng family’s son-in-law.

Third: Did he love me, or did he love the Cheng family behind my back?

“Diệu Hàm, we’re the same kind of people,” he sneered. “We both have to rely on others to survive.”

Listening to him, I wanted nothing more than to slap my past self for my blind, foolish youth. Right at that moment, our favorite side-character, Shen Yingying, burst into the room brandishing a kitchen knife.

One provided money, the other provided connections; one leaked explicit videos, the other threatened mutual destruction. The result? A classic dog-eat-dog showdown. Both ended up escorted hand-in-hand to the police station for a nice, long chat.

The melodramatic saga I had orchestrated in my own head finally came to a ridiculously anticlimactic close.

And now, I knew exactly whose abs I was going home to touch.