One moment, I was an influencer with millions of followers, doted on by my domineering CEO husband. The next, I’d transmigrated into an ancient farming family and become a young wife whose mother-in-law expected her to get up at four every morning. Beneath the red wedding veil, my husband, who had transmigrated with me, clasped my hand and vowed, “Wanwan, in this life, you’re still the only one I want.”
We made a plan: he would sit the imperial exams, I would sell embroidery, and together we’d save up to find a way home. My Su embroidery skills became my golden finger, earning him the title of provincial graduate. But I never got pregnant, until I discovered that the “tonic soup” my mother-in-law brought me every day contained a poison that would make me barren. Meanwhile, the husband who had once sworn himself to me began taking concubines and maids as if it were only natural, composing poetry and drinking with the daughters of powerful families.
He said taking a concubine was just a temporary measure and that I would always be his principal wife. But when his concubine entered the household dressed in bridal red, when he demanded I raise his illegitimate son, and when he called me a “madwoman” for gathering evidence, I understood: the husband I’d had on the day I transmigrated was already dead.
I burned the diagnosis and spent ten years embroidering an astonishing masterpiece. On the night of the Nine Stars aligned, my younger brother, a general who had fought his way back through a mountain of corpses, burst in covered in blood. “Elder Sister, I’m taking you home!” Before the light swallowed everything, the last thing I saw was him embracing his new concubine, eyes bleary amid the music and revelry.
When I opened my eyes again, I was waking up in a hospital bed in the modern world. Outside the intangible cultural heritage studio, a young scholar pointed at my embroidery, his voice trembling. “This stitch... I’ve been searching for it for years.” Beside me, the boy my parents had adopted tugged at my sleeve. “Sis, don’t be afraid.”
So someone had crossed the stars and turned the words “I’ll protect you,” left unsaid in my past life, into “I’m here” for every day of this one. And on the news, the entrepreneur Lu Shenxing, who was always coming to ask about buying my embroidery... When the monitor began to shriek, all that remained was one broken murmur: “Wanwan... come home...”
