1.
Jiang Yun lost her memory in a car accident two years ago. When she woke up, she had a husband.
To outsiders, he treated her wonderfully: handsome, wealthy, gentle, and attentive. Aside from being a little controlling, he was perfect in every way.
But only Jiang Yun knew what lay beneath the polished exterior of the brilliant architect, so refined and aloof by day.
On countless moonless nights, he gazed at her body with feverish eyes.
"Relax. Let me take care of you."
Unable to accept the extreme contrast in him, Jiang Yun tremblingly suggested a divorce.
His teeth pierced her skin with pinpoint accuracy.
Jiang Yun shuddered.
The man who had been bending over her raised his face. The sweetness of blood on his lips mingled with the fresh jasmine by the bed, creating an indescribably beautiful fragrance.
"You still want to run away?"
"...Still?"
The corners of the man's eyes, dark with desire, held an inscrutable menace.
2.
After that night, Jiang Yun was trapped at home.
She couldn't go out. The only time she had any contact with the outside world each day was when she opened the door to collect the flowers Jiang Zongyu had ordered.
Pale purple irises, so beautiful they seemed to steal the soul.
She stared at the flowers, lost in thought. She felt as if she'd seen them somewhere before.
In the bathroom, Jiang Yun stood with her back to the mirror and undid her collar. A long surgical scar clung to the back of her neck like a poisonous insect.
Jiang Zongyu had said the surgeon hadn't done a good job stitching it up, and that if she minded, she could cover it with her hair. So Jiang Yun had grown her hair long over the past two years, never once suspecting anything.
She gently lifted her hair and turned around, looking for the first time at the end of the scar in the mirror:
A broken iris branch, blooming in decadent splendor.
As her heart trembled violently, Jiang Zongyu's sullen voice sounded in her ear. "Piaopiao, why won't you listen?"
3.
The floodgates of memory reopened.
Thunderclaps echoed through the mountainside villa, a labyrinth that Jiang Zongyu had built with his own hands.
Jiang Yun broke into the attic, where he had never allowed her to set foot. By chance, she touched a switch, and the sky screen in the ceiling slowly opened.
Rain pounded on the glass, its shadows flowing across the sheets of paper covering the room.
Jiang Yun as a girl, her skirt fluttering;
Jiang Yun at university, looking angry and coy;
Jiang Yun after leaving the hospital, lost and bewildered...
Countless moments missing from her memories returned to her through these images. Jiang Yun collapsed onto the floor.
Behind her, Jiang Zongyu's somber gaze was soaked by the rain. His sigh of grief came like a ghostly whisper. "I only wanted to keep you here."
"Or die together."
*There is no muse in this world, only fate.
*So, Jiang Yun, the cage I built for you has trapped me too.
---Jiang Zongyu
Theme: Fate sometimes takes another form. It isn't necessarily a bad thing.
