The Mute

The day I signed the divorce agreement was exactly the third anniversary of my marriage to Dongfang Yan.

I had known him since childhood. Dongfang Yan was mute, and his hearing wasn't very good either. I had no friends, and he was the only person willing to listen to me.

His parents died young. I heard they had left him a large sum of money and instructed him to use it to enter a certain sect and cultivate.

My family was desperately poor, and I wanted a way out. I set my sights on Dongfang Yan. If I could marry him, I could live comfortably on that money, without worrying about food or clothing.

So I deliberately made him fall for me. He was a mute whom everyone looked down on, and it was easy to get what I wanted.

At seventeen, the mute married me and stayed in that little city, cherishing and protecting me above all else.

At eighteen, he discovered that I didn't love him, only his money.

At nineteen, he gave me all his money and handed me a divorce agreement.

Everything had gone exactly as I wanted.

Under his cold, complicated gaze, I signed the agreement without hesitation.

*

That night, though, I had a strange dream. In it, the mute was supposed to have a far more brilliant life. He would enter a sect and cultivate, earn the admiration and adoration of countless people, cure his muteness, and ascend to immortality.

But in that life, I never appeared.

When I woke, I was horrified to discover that I had returned to the age of seventeen, before I had married the mute. I was wearing rags and eating scraps.

But instead of seeking him out, I snuck into his house in the middle of the night, stole his money, and found the sect from my dream.

Everything in that strange dream filled me with such longing that I was going mad. I swore I would have that life too, admired by thousands and ascending to immortality.

If the mute could do it, why couldn't I?

Strangely, I didn't see the mute again until three years later.

At the apprenticeship ceremony, he was there as my disciple.

That's right. I was so talented that in just three years, I had risen to become an immortal of the Sword Peak.

I knew I had stolen his life, but so what?

What could a mute who couldn't even argue back do to me?

Before I was pinned onto a soft couch and roughly used, my body covered in grime and my mind blank, that was exactly what I thought.

The mute suddenly leaned down, his cold lips pressed against my ear.

"I... missed... you... so much."

I snapped back to my senses in terror and clearly saw the hatred in his eyes.

"How could you bear to leave me?"

"Twice."

*The heroine is selfish, and the hero is obsessive. They will both become better people.

Theme: It is never too late to mend your ways.