Chapter 2

The rest of that night was anything but pleasant.

Cheng Yu and I talked in the living room while Tang Shiyu stayed in the bedroom.

Because I refused to sit on the bed they’d just been rolling around on.

Cheng Yu did his best to persuade me. “It’s not like I’m short on money. I’ll just give you more, all right? Your parents already bought you one apartment. Do you really have to cling to this one too?”

Am I short of that little bit of money?

I’d overseen every step of buying and decorating this place with my own two hands. I’d even gone to more than a dozen stores just to settle on the curtains.

Now I was supposed to hand it over for the sake of some shameless ex? On what grounds?

Bottom line, this apartment is my asset. Why should I give it to him?

As charity?

“I like this one,” I said.

Seeing I wouldn’t budge, Cheng Yu lost his patience. “What’s the point of dragging this out? I don’t like you. Do you understand?”

I was stunned.

He made it sound like I was madly in love with him.

Did he actually think the reason I refused to back down was because I wanted him back?

We hadn’t even gotten our marriage certificate, and we’d never gone any deeper than the surface.

Right now, he was the one in a hurry to marry Tang Shiyu. That made me, ironically, the least anxious party.

I smiled. “Both our names are on the deed. Either you take my money and get your name removed, or we keep dragging this out.”

The bedroom door flew open with a bang, and Tang Shiyu strolled out like nothing was wrong.

She grabbed Cheng Yu’s hand and swung it a little, speaking calmly. “Don’t stoop to her level. It’s not like I don’t have a place. Come home with me.”

Oh, the ‘place’ she meant was a rental.

Girls her age probably think a man’s favor is all it takes to walk tall.

True love is priceless?

But what she didn’t know was that when faced with reality, favoritism is worthless.

Cheng Yu left, dragging Tang Shiyu with him, the door slamming behind them.

That night, I got a call from Cheng Yu’s mom.

“Xiao Xu, did you and Cheng Yu have a fight?”

“Yes, Aunt Cheng. I’m planning to break up with him. I’ll transfer your money for the apartment back later. Once Cheng Yu helps me with the transfer procedures, that’ll be it.”

“You have to at least give me a reason.”

“Auntie, you should ask him instead.”

Aunt Cheng hurriedly hung up, and I went back to discussing with my parents how to return all the wedding gifts and cash we’d received.

Cheng Yu really had ‘backbone’-he actually moved in with Tang Shiyu.

Not that they moved far. It was in the same residential complex.

On my way to and from work, I’d often run into them walking the dog together.

That dog was vicious, always barking at me.

Tang Shiyu gave a mocking little smile. “Look at this little guy, he can tell who’s good and who’s bad.”

The next day, I filed a complaint with property management.

The property staff went to talk to her. “Please make sure you keep your dog under control next time. If it scares the owners, we can’t be held responsible.”

Tang Shiyu was unhappy. In the main owners’ group chat, she openly tagged me. “If you’re that timid, just don’t go outside. You can’t expect every dog in the world to dodge around you, can you?”

Basically, she was calling me pretentious.

Her goal was to rile up the dog lovers and sic them on me.

Sure enough, people started chiming in:

“She’s right. Girl, if you’re afraid of dogs, just steer clear. Mutual respect, you know.”

“Yeah, our dogs are on leashes. How are we bothering you?”

My neighbor across the hall suddenly jumped in to defend me. “But her dog isn’t on a leash. My kid got scared last time too. Real classy.”

The group went quiet for a moment, then the same people who’d just attacked me turned around and tagged Tang Shiyu.

“You walk your dog without a leash?”

“You’re making all of us dog owners look bad.”

Cheng Yu spoke up. “Sorry, we’ll be more careful next time.”

But he’d forgotten to change his group nickname. Both his and my accounts were still labeled with the room number 102.

The group owner was puzzled. “Mr. Cheng, which unit do you actually live in? Aren’t you in 102?”

My messages lagged, so the video I’d meant to send as proof that Tang Shiyu walked her dog without a leash went out a full minute late.

It ended up appearing right beneath the group owner’s question.

In the video, the dog was barking like crazy. Behind it, Tang Shiyu, trying to provoke me, was yanking on Cheng Yu’s tie and kissing him without a care in the world.

The group went dead silent.

Then someone asked, “Uh… I remember 102 is a married couple, right? They just got married a few days ago. So what is this?”

Cheng Yu suddenly sent me a private message. “Can you retract that?”

I ignored him. When I switched back to the main group, it was already blowing up.

“No way, the husband’s messing around with another woman? And this openly? This provocatively?”

“Homewrecker and she’s still this shameless?”

“Even the dog’s bullying people?”

“So cheap.”

The neighbor who’d seen everything that day really got into it.

She sent a voice message.

“Oh, I saw it. That day, that shameless little girl drove into the wedding car. After the crash, the groom got out and went straight to her. She literally crashed the wedding.”

“Anyone who owns a dog knows this: if a dog is that friendly to someone, it has to know them well. They were probably fooling around way before. Miss 102, you’d better dig into this.”

Having played dead this whole time, Tang Shiyu couldn’t keep up the act anymore. She tried to defend herself. “We dated before, okay? Before he met the bride.”

My neighbor asked, “So you two lied your way into a marriage?”

Someone posted the dashcam video from the day of the wedding, the rear-end collision.

With the two videos side by side, Tang Shiyu’s story fell apart completely.

The group was furious. Messages flew by nonstop.

Then the owner of the unit she was renting finally spoke. “Knowing him before doesn’t mean you can destroy someone’s marriage. Tang, move out next month.”

“Exactly. Do people just not have any bottom line anymore?”

“Shameless.”

People flooded the chat with one word: “Agreed.”

These apartments are in a prime location. They’ll never sit empty.

I knew Tang Shiyu’s landlord. We’d had dinner together once.

She messaged me privately. “I thought she was just a weak little girl trying to make it on her own, so I barely charged her anything. Didn’t expect her to be a proud homewrecker and an idiot on top of that.”

When I went back to the main group, I saw that Tang Shiyu had already been kicked out.

A while later, Cheng Yu left the group on his own.