My Late Husband Was Love-Struck

From the outside, Song Hanzhi and Gu Yanci’s betrothal seemed a perfect match. The Song family was wealthy, Gu Yanci was the newly named third-place graduate in the imperial examinations, their families had been friends for generations, and the two had grown up together.

Only Song Hanzhi knew that Gu Yanci did not love her.

He married her only to repay an old debt to the Song family.

Though disappointed, she did not change her ways. After they married, she carried on doing business and visiting the song houses, living life to the fullest.

Gu Yanci never interfered. He even quietly took care of her business for her, gentle and considerate as a still pool.

She had to admit he was a good husband.

That was, until she ran into the man she had once loved from afar.

That night, she pushed open the door and saw Gu Yanci waiting for her beneath the lamplight, his gaze dark.

“Song Hanzhi, you married me. Don’t even think about having someone else.”

Only then did she realize that all those old romances that had fizzled out, all those flirtations she had even forgotten about, had disappeared without a trace.

She had never wondered how they had ended.

She began to test him. But the very next day, he was back to his usual self.

Just as she thought she was getting close to the answer, he was gone.

She wept bitterly, hating him for leaving her behind.

But there was nothing to be done. Life had to go on.

Half a year later, someone new appeared at her side. He was a little like Gu Yanci, though she could not say exactly how.

After Gu Yanci died, he became a spirit, drifting beside her as he watched her laugh and chatter with her new companion. Jealousy drove him mad, but he could not touch her. At last, he entered the body of a dying man and returned to her side. She treated him wonderfully, even better than she had treated him when he was himself. He reveled in it, yet suffered day and night: she loved not him, but his shadow.

He thought her tenderness could last forever, and he was willing to bear the pain. Until one day, Song Hanzhi looked him in the eyes and said earnestly,

“Let’s get married.”