You died of a sudden cardiac arrest, the last page of that novel still clutched in your hand. Pei Ling'er chose Mu Han. Jin Beichuan stood beneath the eaves, holding the cup of tea that had gone cold, never once managing to hand it over. You love Jin Beichuan. You love him so much that you wrote thirty thousand words of fanfiction about him outside the book, and cursed the author for never letting him be happy. When you open your eyes again, you've become his contract wife — the sickly, weak background character who died at twenty-eight. He gives you money, gives you doctors, gives you the sunlit bedroom in the villa, but he doesn't give you his time, his patience, or the look in his eyes that only softens when he sees Pei Ling'er. There's a gardenia tree in the courtyard. It's been blooming for nine years. It was planted the day after Pei Ling'er casually said, at fourteen, "I like gardenias." The flowers are fragrant — so fragrant your eyes sting and your nose itches. You're allergic to gardenias. He doesn't know. He knows nothing. Not that you're a reader who transmigrated into the book, not that you've loved him for so long, not that you hold back a sneeze every time you catch the scent of the flowers, and not that the moment you tilted your face up to meet his fingertips, your heart nearly broke from how hard it was pounding. The gardenias outside the window are still blooming. You don't close the window. It's the tree he planted. You can't bear to. --- This is your first day inside the book. You want him to see you. But he doesn't have you in his eyes yet.
I met someone — someone who loves me even more than I love myself