Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Zhou Chi was a man of his word.

On the day before Christmas, I received that gift as a matter of course.

It had a crisp cut, soft fabric, and a vibrant color.

The System breathed a sigh of relief:

[I almost let you pull a fast one on me. Luckily, the male lead went to the mall to buy it. Hahaha, you didn’t expect him to be such a germaphobe, did you? Who would buy second-hand clothes someone else has worn? Only someone whose head was kicked by a donkey like yours…]

The System mocked me mercilessly, but I didn’t care.

“You said he went to the mall to buy it.”

After Zhou Chi went bankrupt, he was targeted by his former competitors.

He couldn’t get into any big companies, and he couldn’t find a decent job.

He could only go to construction sites, warehouses, and docks to do grueling manual labor for daily wages.

Meanwhile, as his delicate and vain wife, I would squander his wages the moment I got my hands on them.

I pursed my lips. “Four thousand yuan… where did he get that kind of money?”

Soon, I found out where the money came from.

Someone had posted a photo online. Because the person in the photo was exceptionally handsome, it quickly went viral for a brief moment.

[Look at the guy our neighborhood management found to wash the windows. Handsome, right?]

[Holy crap, I want a hottie to come to my door too… ahem, I mean, why doesn’t our management offer window cleaning? One star!]

[I live in the same complex. The person living above him was so inconsiderate; they left a flowerpot outside the window, and it fell and hit the guy. There was such a long gash, blood just sprayed out. It scared me to death.]

[Exactly. The guy was good-tempered, too; he only asked for private compensation. If it were me, I definitely would have exposed them and let the netizens see what kind of classless neighbor they are!]

That night, I quietly slipped into Zhou Chi’s room.

Calling it a room was a stretch; it was actually just a folding bed set up behind a temporary curtain in a corner of the living room.

It was another one of my misdeeds-occupying the bedroom and refusing to let Zhou Chi inside.

I lifted his sleeve, and sure enough, there was a wound nearly ten centimeters long, hideous and terrifying.

Suspended twenty-six stories high, clinging to the outside of a window…

Dangling by a single rope, moving from top to bottom…

While facing the scrutinizing gazes of others as he cleaned windows house by house…

Zhou Chi, had you already decided then that you were going to the mall to buy that coat?

“You didn’t even tell me you were hurt.”

The wound had only been crudely treated. Zhou Chi acted as if nothing was wrong.

During dinner, Zhou Chi gave me an apple to eat, but he didn’t peel it like he usually did. He said, “A Christmas Eve apple should be eaten with the skin on. That’s the only way the peace you pray for stays whole.”

It wasn’t that the skin couldn’t be peeled; it was that his left hand was injured.

He couldn’t hold the knife, so he fabricated a clumsy lie.

And that lie only fooled the stupid, wicked me.

As I applied medicine to the wound, I carefully brushed over the lingering scars on Zhou Chi’s wrist.

This one was from when I had a fever and needed a doctor; he went to a construction site to move bricks and got cut by a tool because he wasn’t used to the work.

This one was from when I forced him to buy me a gold necklace; he went to help someone in a fight and was hit on the left shoulder with a steel rod.

And this one, and that one…

I tried to control my emotions, but the more I tried, the more my tears fell.

The System tried to comfort me:

[Stop crying. If you ask me, you’re the unlucky one. If you’d married him a year ago, you could have been a wealthy socialite. The dowry alone would have been several buildings. Instead, you got nothing out of it. You ended up in a basement the moment you arrived. What’s wrong with spending a bit of his money?]

I should have resented Zhou Chi. Resented his bankruptcy, his poverty, and his inability to give me a good life.

But what about Zhou Chi? Once a favored son of heaven, he had fallen into the mud.

Mocked, humiliated, and enduring all sorts of strange looks while doing hard labor under the scorching sun.

And when he returned, he was met with the spoiled accusations of his wife:

“You’re such a loser, so useless. You can’t even buy me jewelry. If I were you, I would have killed myself long ago.”

In the silent dead of night, Zhou Chi, when you look up at the dilapidated, damp ceiling…

Do you remember yourself from a year ago-high-spirited and with a limitless future?

The bleak winter wind blew outside, while the man lying inside had trembling eyelashes.

I pressed my cheek against Zhou Chi’s palm, my tears slowly soaking his wrist.

“System, when will Zhou Chi ask me for a divorce?”

I didn’t want to do bad things anymore, and I didn’t want to bully the male lead anymore.

This Christmas Eve was dim, and the apple was bitter.

If he could just divorce me…

Would Zhou Chi stop needing to work so desperately?

Would he stop needing to work three jobs a day?

And would he stop getting hurt?