When Love Is Misplaced

When news came that my childhood bride had died, I didn’t cry or make a scene. I immediately reclaimed her shares and had a death certificate issued. I did it because I had been reborn. In my previous life, my father worried that all the women outside would set their sights on me, the son of the richest man in the country, so he chose three childhood brides for me. I picked the most outstanding one, Shen Jinmo, and married her. But just three days after our wedding, she suddenly died. Heartbroken, I listened to the other two and gave up on marrying again, remaining celibate for the rest of my life. Then, at the age of eighty, I returned to Provence, the place where we had pledged our love, and saw Shen Jinmo, who had been dead for sixty years! She was with my long-lost former chauffeur, surrounded by grandchildren and living a life of bliss. Realizing I’d been deceived my whole life, I was so furious that my vision went black. I died of a brain hemorrhage. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the news of her death arrived. Now I’d like to see how a nameless dead woman plans to go on living.