Weiyang Garden

I first met Gu Chengyuan on my eighteenth birthday, when I was sent to a sterile ward.

“Sign this, and you can live forever in the springtime of a greenhouse.” When the man pushed the marriage agreement in front of me, the blood I'd coughed onto his cuff still stained his fingertips.

My family traded my frail body for his protection, and I was the rose he painted inside a cage.

Then came the night of the storm. His dark red eyes appeared on the gallery's security monitor. For 365 days and nights, it played on a loop: my bent figure, painting at my desk.

“Had enough?” I pulled the IV needle from the back of my hand. A bright red drop splashed onto the white canvas. “Now it's my turn to paint you.”

Trembling, he clutched my bleeding wrist and frantically tore apart surveillance chips worth hundreds of millions.

Later, headlines around the world showed the head of the Gu family, who controlled half the planet, kneeling outside my hospital room for three days and nights, begging me to accept a new paintbrush.

“Don't be angry.” His hands holding the brush were as steady as if he were making an offering to a god. “Let me watch you paint. I won't enter your spring.”