On the very first day Shen Zhiwei became a widow, she started planning her escape.
She had the mind of a modern architect and a cool, clear-headed plan. As long as she got out of the capital, the world was vast, and no one could find a woman who had deliberately disappeared.
But halfway through crawling through a dog hole, someone grabbed her by the back of her collar and hauled her out.
In the moonlight, Pei Yan smiled casually. “Madam Shen, that's certainly an unusual way to take a stroll.”
He was the most powerful playboy in the capital, and the man who had locked her in the Orchid Garden. He said she was a little trinket he'd picked up, giving her money when he was pleased and not even a bowl of porridge when he wasn't.
Shen Zhiwei refused to believe him.
She ran three times. He caught her three times.
The first time, she crawled through a dog hole, and he was waiting outside the wall.
The second time, she tried to escape across the lake, and he sealed off the entire city.
The third time, she changed her name and hid in an embroidery workshop, washing cloth. She thought she had finally succeeded.
But after work that day, she opened the door to her room and saw a packet of still-warm Ding Sheng cakes on the table.
He was sitting in the chair.
He was so thin he was barely recognizable, with dark circles under his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping stone:
“Shen Zhiwei, I've been looking for you for seven months.”
She thought he was chasing after her.
Only later did she learn that he had been waiting for her to turn back.
And while he waited, he had let himself fall to pieces.
