Back to the present. He’d just promised not to give Xiao Mu a hard time, yet here he was, meddling in his marital affairs again. My face went cold. Cutting him off mid-sentence, I walked out and headed straight for a hotel.

He trailed right behind me. Once inside, I latched the door with the security chain, rendering his keycard useless. But the man was relentlessly persistent, knocking on the door every three minutes until the whole hallway was buzzing with commotion. Irritated beyond belief, I finally yanked the door open and let him in.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized instantly.

I could tell he didn’t have a clue what he’d actually done wrong. That fake-obedient look on his face left me completely speechbound, choking back my anger with nowhere to direct it.

“I didn’t mean to make things hard for Xiao Mu… He’s an adult now, it’s about time he got married…”

He kept droning on with his explanations. Meanwhile, I stood staring out the window at the vibrant neon lights bleeding across the cityscape. My mind quietly drifted back to a distant memory…

The night of our graduation party. The exact moment when everything between us had almost turned out differently.

Through a haze of alcohol, the memory of that graduation night flickered into vivid detail.

Back then, Jiang Shuo had his hair slicked back perfectly, holding the mic and singing A Little Happiness with utter devotion. The crowd erupted into wild whistles and cheers, but his gaze was pinned on one very specific direction.

Zhao Qian picked the song, and he sang it. Standing side-by-side, they looked like the picture-perfect couple. By then, Zhao Qian’s circle of friends had already started icing me out. They probably thought I was the villain trying to play spoiler, but the truth was far more pathetic: I was the one who had set them up in the first place.

For two whole months, Jiang Shuo had cornered me every single day just to talk about her. Seeing how much he seemed to like her, I played matchmaker and pushed him to go after her. The end result? They got together, and I got pushed out of the frame. Saying it didn’t sting would be a lie, but my stubborn pride wouldn’t let me ask why.

Snapping back to reality, I looked at Jiang Shuo and let out a soft, bitter laugh. “Jiang Shuo. Sing a song for me.”

He froze for a second, then silently turned on the TV. The familiar melody drifted through the room: “I hear the raindrops fall on the green grass…” Still the exact same song. A wave of bitterness bloomed from my heart and seeped through my chest. Was it the alcohol that tasted bitter, or was it just me? Four years later, and he was still in love with her. First loves really were etched into your bones forever.

Stumbling up to head back to the bedroom, I couldn’t help but whisper as I brushed past him, “If you still love Zhao Qian… why marry me? Why keep messing with my head?”

Jiang Shuo lunged after me, his voice laced with panic. “I don’t love Zhao Qian!”

I collapsed onto the bed, completely tuning him out. Our relationship was doomed from the start anyway.

I dreamed that night—a dream so terrifyingly real my head throbbed. The Jiang Shuo in my dream wasn’t arrogant at all. In fact, he was… accusing me.

“Back in senior year, when your seatmate confessed to you, you cut him off like the plague and severed ties with all your mutual friends. You were so ruthless… I was terrified. I was scared that if I made one wrong step, I wouldn’t even be allowed to stay your friend.”

His voice grew faint, cracking with emotion. “But I still couldn’t stop myself from wanting to get close to you… Yet you cut me out of your life for Xiao Mu’s sake. How is that fair? I knew you first…”

Jiang Shuo was crying. Really crying. Tears streamed down that ridiculously handsome face, making my heart turn completely to mush. He said he loved me. That it had always been me.

My immediate takeaway at the time: A handsome guy crying is an absolute weapon of mass destruction. He looked breathtaking, yet made you want to tease him relentlessly.

I wrapped my arms around him and coaxed softly, “Stop crying… You’re making my heart itch… I kind of want to bully you now.”

Jiang Shuo laughed through his tears, his eyes shining like stars. “Really? You want me?”

He leaned down and murmured into my ear, “Will you change into something else? You’ll… like it better.”

In the hazy blur of the dream, we were suddenly back in our high school uniforms. He loosened his tie, his gaze dropping to look at me with raw, unfiltered affection. “Like this… does it feel like old times?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Yeah—a gorgeous face combined with tears was a fatal hit. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one suffering from unrequited love all along.

I slept straight through until the afternoon, waking up thoroughly dehydrated. The second I opened my eyes, I spotted a thermos of warm water neatly set on the nightstand. A single sip soothed my parched throat.

Flashes of memory. Fragmented. Disjointed. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream.

Dragging myself into the walk-in closet to look for a change of clothes, I froze dead in front of a small drawer. Inside lay a high school uniform—an exact replica of the one from my dream. Rummaging further through the suite, I uncovered a treasure trove: rabbit ears tucked into the sofa cushions, a delicate chain under the window, handcuffs resting on a bar stool…

So last night wasn’t a dream after all. It was a carefully scripted reality. A script titled: Jiang Shuo is head over heels for me.

The second that thought popped into my head, it took root like a seed hit by spring rain, sprouting wildly out of control. I jumped into my car and drove straight to his company. But standing right outside his office door, my feet glued themselves to the floor. Slipping into the stairwell to hide, I caught the tail end of a conversation between Jiang Shuo and his friend:

“Dude, you ground through a seven-year program in four years and practically begged your parents to orchestrate an engagement. Now that you’ve finally bagged the girl of your dreams, how’s it feel?”

Jiang Shuo exhaled a plume of smoke, his voice lazy yet resolute. “Feels amazing. Every single day abroad was sheer torture. Waking up to her face every morning… makes it all worth it.”

I stood there frozen, my brain buzzing like a flock of ten thousand pigeons taking flight all at once. So this wasn’t some forced corporate marriage after all. The person he had been in love with, from the very beginning to the absolute end, was me. Missing me so damn much that he forced himself to finish seven years of school in four—just to come back and marry his “sworn enemy.”