On their wedding day, Gu Jinyan didn’t smile once. He didn’t look at her as they exchanged rings. Halfway through the toasts, he stepped out to take a call. Two characters lit up on the screen: Yining.
Shen Yu knew there was someone else in his heart.
After the Shen family fell into decline, this marriage alliance was her only way out. She moved into the Gu family mansion and quietly followed the rules he set. She wasn’t allowed to work, go out whenever she pleased, or see certain old acquaintances. She agreed to all of it. He thought she was obedient.
What he didn’t know was that obedience and indifference were two different things.
Then Wen Yining returned to China. She was Gu Jinyan’s first love, and the secret everyone in the capital’s elite circle knew. Everyone waited to see Shen Yu make a fool of herself. Shen Yu didn’t make a scene. She simply found an old handkerchief in the attic of the Shen family’s old home, with the character “Gu” embroidered on it.
The person who had pulled Gu Jinyan out of the lake twenty years ago wasn’t Wen Yining. It was her.
But she didn’t say a word.
Because suddenly, she wanted to know: if his first love was a lie, then what did all his coldness and neglect toward her mean?
Later, Gu Jinyan uncovered the truth. He sat in his study all night, clicking his lighter open and shut again and again. At dawn, he said, “What the hell have I done?”
Then he started trying to win her back.
He had no idea how to court someone. His whole life, other people had always accommodated him. He sent her flowers, but she didn’t use them. He asked her out to dinner, but she said she was busy. He stood outside her apartment for three months, but she still wouldn’t give in. Until one night, she came downstairs and saw his headlights turn on, then off again. He was afraid they would hurt her eyes.
She said, “Gu Jinyan, you didn’t treat me like a person before. Now you treat me like someone who saved your life. Neither makes me your wife.”
