004

The living room fell silent for a few seconds. Yang Xue seemed momentarily stunned by my words, but soon a cold smile spread across her face. [What else can you do besides threatening me with divorce? I've already made it clear—Mu Chen and I broke up a long time ago. Our relationship is purely innocent!]

[Before I get really angry, you'd better apologize to Mu Chen right now.]

Yang Xue glared at me, her tone commanding.

I fought back the dizziness and replied indifferently, [Then tell me, who gets married and still revolves around their ex-boyfriend? Who gets married and still keeps a room for their ex-boyfriend, especially the master bedroom?]

Faced with my interrogation Yang Xue wanted to refute but found she had no ground to stand on.

But that didn't stop her.

Yang Xue always liked to stand on her moral high ground, criticizing me unreasonably. If she found herself at a disadvantage, she would shift the blame.

[Let's not talk about the facts. Don't you have any fault in this? Marriage is built on trust. If you can't even trust me, why did you propose to me in the first place?]

[You need to reflect on your mistakes. If you don't apologize to Mu Chen, don't expect me to forgive you!]

After saying this, she angrily pulled Mu Chen back onto the sofa, deliberately clinging to his arm to provoke me.

Mu Chen gave me a subtle smile, his provocative look unmistakable, his demeanor filled with arrogance, as if I, the substitution, was beneath his notice.

With just one word from him, Yang Xue would completely side with him.

I was nothing but a defeated opponent.

In the past, I would have lunged at him in a fit of rage, but Mu Chen would play the victim, and Yang Xue would tear into me, calling me immature and unmanly.

This kind of scenario had happened countless times over the past three years.

Instead, I was made to feel like the mistress, the joke.

Not only was I bullied by Mu Chen and berated by Yang Xue, but I also had to apologize.

I had lived this kind of life for three years.

Staring at that arrogant face on the sofa, the face that had dragged me from one hell into another, I realized I couldn't hold on any longer.

Yang Xue deliberately got close to Mu Chen, trying to force me to back down.

This was her usual tactic. Even when she did something extremely wrong, she would find a way to shift the blame onto me.

But this time, I chose silence. No hysterics, no question, no pleading. I simply turned around and walked back to the study.

There had been two times in the past when Yang Xue and I had almost divorced.

The first time was right after we got married. My mom came to the city to visit me, bringing a bunch of homemade goods from the countryside. She just wanted to meet her daughter-in-law properly.

But Yang Xue looked down on my mom for being from the countryside. She refused to even sit at the same table to eat with her.

My mom worked hard to prepare a table full of dishes, but Yang Xue ordered takeout instead.

That night, she kicked my mom out of the house, claiming that having her mother-in-law around would only lead to arguments.

But the very next day, when Mu Chen's mother fell ill, Yang Xue rushed to the hospital, tending to her every need, even more attentively than her own daughter.

Back then, I was too infatuated with Yang Xue's face, and my mom begged me to make the marriage work, so I chose to forgive her.

Yang Xue seemed to realize she had gone too far, so she bought me a gift as a way to make amends.

But the condition was that I had to apologize first, and only then would she say she forgave me.

The second time was when my grandfather, who had always doted on me, was critically ill. On his deathbed, he wanted to see his grandson's wife. I practically begged Yang Xue on my knees to go to the hospital.

Yang Xue made an excuse, saying she had a big project at work and couldn't leave.

My family, in the end, didn't push the matter.

But on the day of my grandfather's funeral, I came across Mu Chen's Weibo post. It turned out that Yang Xue's so-called "big project" was actually accompanying her first love to an amusement park.

That was the closest we had ever come to divorce.

Later, Yang Xue was scolded by the elders in the family and reluctantly went to pay her respects at my grandfather's grave. Only then did the matter settle.

By then, we had been married for a year and a half, but it felt like half a lifetime.

It was too long, too unbearable.

Perhaps because there had been too much hurt, my heart had grown numb. I lay in bed, closed my eyes to rest for a while, but was soon woken up by a phone call.