I'm Done Being a Substitute

In my last life, I was the stand-in fiancée. The day his first love returned from abroad, I dutifully gave up the engagement banquet, the family heirloom bracelet, and the surgery money I’d saved from three years of wages to pay for his mother’s treatment. When his first love was two months pregnant, he said with reddened eyes, “Ru Mei is frail. Be reasonable.” So I dutifully disappeared. Later, I died beside a machine at a military factory. A heart attack. No one noticed. When the night-shift workers came to relieve me, I was slumped over the blueprints, my cheek resting on half a cold steamed bun. My gravestone didn’t even bear the words “engineer.” So this was the end of being “reasonable”: dying without even a proper burial. Reborn on the day of the engagement banquet. He slipped the family heirloom bracelet onto his first love’s wrist in front of everyone, then turned to me. “Su Qing, you won’t blame me, will you?” I smiled. I slammed the silver bracelet I’d worn for three years onto the table. Then I turned and knocked on the door of the fiercest man in the entire military district. Huo Zheng. The living King of Hell, rumored to have caused the deaths of three fiancées, so fearsome even the real King of Hell would step aside for him. He stood in the doorway, warm yellow light spilling from behind him. I looked up and asked, “Are you still looking for a partner?” He looked down at me. He was silent for a long time. So long I thought he was about to throw me out. Then he spoke. “...I am.” Just two words. In my last life, I waited three years for him to say, “I’ll marry you.” This time, he answered me in two seconds.