Chapter 3: Devotion

Gu Si-yan cupped my chin, forcing me to look straight into his eyes. They were shining so intensely it was enough to melt anyone’s resolve. I averted my gaze, trying to sound composed. “It’s not.”

“Silly Tue-Tue,” he chuckled softly. “I heard every word.”

He pulled me into his arms, murmuring against my hair, “Say it again, please? I want to hear it.”

I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, and every drop of grievance I had bottled up over the years burst forth like a breaking dam. “Gu Si-yan… loving you was so exhausting. I don’t want to love you anymore.”

“Tue-Tue, I’m so sorry… I was wrong,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I was a coward. I was so terrified that if you knew, you’d pull away, so I let you suffer in silence for all this time. Beat me, yell at me, do whatever you want… just please don’t be sad anymore, okay?” He held me so tightly it felt as though he was afraid I might vanish into thin air.

Once we got home, he kept me curled up right in his lap. When he finally realized that the letter from back then was meant for him, not Jiang Tian, he let out a heavy, regretful sigh. “Silly girl… do you have any idea how devastated I was when you told me that letter belonged to someone else?”

“Hmph,” I pouted. “Who told you not to keep your distance from other women? Who told you to… mmph…”

My protest was cut short as his lips found mine. The kiss wasn’t overly long, but it was more than enough to make me forget every complaint I had saved up.

“If I had just confessed earlier… maybe we wouldn’t have lost so many years.”

“I’m to blame too.” I looped my arms around his neck, offering a soft smile. “All those years we missed… we’ll just spend the rest of our lives making up for them.”

This time, tears spilled over for both of us—not out of pain, but out of pure relief that after all the storm and misunderstanding, we had finally found our way to each other.

—

Under my mother-in-law’s strict supervision, I continued my duty as the dedicated delivery girl, bringing nourishing soup to his office. But that afternoon, I ran straight into Mu Ya right in the building’s main lobby.

Still dripping with arrogant condescension, she held up a photo of Gu Si-yan carrying her at the hospital, trying to get under my skin. “Don’t you want to know what really happened that day? Your marriage is nothing but a business transaction! The one who isn’t loved… is the real third party here.”

I looked at the photo, completely unbothered, and let out a small scoff. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but I was actually there that day and caught your whole little performance. And you’ve got it backwards—the one who isn’t loved doesn’t even qualify as a third party. In my husband’s eyes, you never even existed.”

Mu Ya’s face drained of color, completely blindsided by my backbone.

“Well said, sweetheart!”

A round of slow applause echoed through the lobby as Gu Si-yan strode over. He took my hand, beaming with shameless pride. “My wife performed exceptionally well today.”

Then he turned to Mu Ya, his gaze instantly turning bone-chillingly cold. Grasping my wrist, he swung my hand through the air, Snap!, and landed a crisp slap right across her face.

“With people like this,” he remarked nonchalantly, “a physical response is just faster.”

He leaned down, gently blowing on my fingers as if I had just touched something unsanitary. “Mu Ya, if I ever catch you getting between me and my wife again, you won’t like what happens next.”

Watching Mu Ya tremble as she scurried away, a sudden realization washed over me. Back in high school, it wasn’t that I lacked the courage to confess, it was that I had always seen how ruthlessly cold he could be to others, and it scared me. But I had been dead wrong. That ruthlessness was reserved exclusively for people he didn’t care about.

For me, he saved every ounce of tenderness and protection he possessed.

Gu Si-yan held my hand tightly as we walked straight up to his private office, leaving the entire floor of stunned employees gaping. I tried to tug my hand back out of embarrassment, but his grip only tightened.

“Let them see,” he murmured. “I want everyone to know there isn’t a single crack between us for anyone else to slip into.”

The moment the door closed behind us, he lifted me onto his lap and buried his face in my neck like a giant, needy cat. “Tue-Tue, I missed you.”

I burst out laughing, teasing him that he sounded as if we’d been apart for years, but he just rubbed his cheek against mine. “A minute without seeing you feels like an eternity, and a second without touching you drives me crazy.”

As it turned out, my husband needed absolutely zero help from Mrs. Zhang’s restorative soups. His energy levels were… entirely off the charts. He wore me out so thoroughly that I ended up bedridden for days, officially joining the ranks of the hopelessly lazy.

While I was enjoying my newfound state of utter laziness, a viral headline caught my eye: *[Gu Corporation CEO Suspected of Having Secret Child?]*. Attached was the photo of him carrying Mu Ya at the hospital. Paid internet trolls were flooding the comment sections with nasty remarks, telling me to “get lost” and make room for his childhood sweetheart.

I stared at the screen and let out a dry, sarcastic laugh.

I was just about to roll up my sleeves and dive into the comment section to fight them myself when Shen Zhi-zhi called, practically screaming into the receiver. “Tue-Tue! Quick, get online! Gu Si-yan just posted!”

Two hashtags had rocketed straight to the top of the trending list: #GuSiYanResponds and #GuSiYanExposesTheTruth.

His post was practically an essay, meticulously listing every single scheme Mu Ya had pulled from high school up until now. As it turned out, she had been orchestrating her own tragic heroine narrative for years. At the very end of his post was a single line that turned my heart to mush:

“To my wife: I’m sorry my confession came so late. But the road ahead is long, and I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

Smiling, I left a comment below his post: “My heart matches yours; our devotion will never be in vain.”

Instantly, he didn’t just hit the like button, he went on a rampage, replying to every single comment that had insulted me. He might be a cold, imposing CEO in real life, but online, he was a ruthless keyboard warrior.

—

It was well past midnight when Gu Si-yan finally dragged himself home, carrying a faint scent of alcohol. He sank beside me, resting his head heavy against my shoulder as he wrapped his arms tightly around my waist.

“Wife… I let you take the fall again,” he murmured softly. “From now on, no one gets to bully you. Ever.”

His voice dropped an octave, his kisses falling slow and tender before deepening into a feverish heat. I didn’t pull away, letting myself sink entirely into his solid, safe embrace. We had built a foundation of steel and concrete around our love, no outside noise could ever shake it again.

Before Jiang Tian boarded his flight to move abroad, he asked to see me one last time. This time, Gu Si-yan came with me.

Taking in our tightly intertwined fingers, a fleeting shadow of sadness crossed Jiang Tian’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a gentle, relieved smile. “Wen Tue, seeing you happy is all that matters. I wish you both the best.”

“We will be extraordinarily happy,” Gu Si-yan answered for us, leaning down to press a firm kiss onto the back of my hand to mark his territory.

What a petty, jealous man.

I laughed under my breath, bade Jiang Tian a final farewell, and dragged my green-eyed husband away. If we stayed any longer, I was genuinely worried he’d try to handle his old rival right then and there.

The golden light of the setting sun stretched our shadows long against the pavement. As it turned out, after all the misunderstandings and lost time, the sweetest ending was simply walking hand-in-hand with the person you love, all the way to the end of time.