The Crematorium Is Open, and the Hopeless Romantic User Has Deleted Their Account

Fang Tang ended his business trip early and got home at two in the morning.

The villa was quiet. He went upstairs and pushed open the bedroom door without turning on the light.

Gu Lingyu sat with his back to the door beside the floor-to-ceiling window, listening on repeat to a recording of an unfamiliar man reciting poetry on his phone.

The voice was deep and gentle, as if soothing the most precious darling in the world.

Fang Tang stood in the doorway, one hand still resting on the handle of his suitcase. He had come back early because he had wanted to surprise Gu Lingyu.

Gu Lingyu sensed something and turned around. The light from the screen went out in an instant.

Gu Lingyu's voice was unusually flustered and tentative. "It's not... it's not what you think."

Fang Tang said nothing.

He was only wondering when Gu Lingyu had last spoken to him in that tone.

It seemed like never.

Just how much had Fang Tang once loved Gu Lingyu?

Enough to accept intimate photos of him with other people, marry him despite his family's objections, and even agree to the absurd demand that they keep their marriage secret. For three years, he had poured all his strength into reaching for one person, believing that if he gave enough, one day the other man would turn around and see him.

But in three years, Gu Lingyu had never said even a single gentle word to him like that.

Fang Tang used to think it didn't matter. Gu Lingyu was just that kind of person: proud, distant, never nervous for anyone. He had accepted it.

But it turned out that wasn't true.

Gu Lingyu was capable of it. The person who made him nervous just wasn't Fang Tang.

Fang Tang stared at the dark phone screen and suddenly felt exhausted.

It wasn't anger or jealousy. It was something more final, as if the breath he'd held for three years had finally left him in the middle of the night.

He thought, let it go.

Early the next morning, a signed divorce agreement lay on the dining table.

Gu Lingyu didn't sign it.

When he refused, he offered no explanation. He simply pushed the agreement back and said, "I won't sign."

Fang Tang didn't ask why. He only wondered whether Gu Lingyu refused to divorce him because he loved him, because of the Fang name, or simply because he thought Fang Tang would never really leave.

It didn't matter. If he wouldn't sign, so be it.

New faces began appearing at the company one after another. Gu Lingyu's name was quietly crossed out on the paperwork for an S+ project that had originally been his, and someone else's was written in its place. Commercial endorsements were handed to others, his screen time on variety shows was edited down to a single shot of his back, and even the newcomers who used to suck up to him now dared to challenge him to his face, buoyed by Fang Tang's support.

Gu Lingyu kept filming as usual and stayed silent as usual, acting as if he hadn't noticed.

Fang Tang read the weekly report his assistant handed him, set it down, and said nothing.

He knew Gu Lingyu too well. What this man was best at wasn't acting. It was enduring. He was waiting for Fang Tang to soften.

Then, at a private dinner party, Fang Tang's childhood friend, who had long held a grudge against Gu Lingyu, raised his glass in full view of everyone and remarked casually:

"Some people always think the world stops turning without them. They never consider that when someone's backing you, you're a star, but without that backing, you don't even qualify to stand outside this private room."

He raised his glass from afar to Gu Lingyu, who was being stopped by a server outside the door. His smile was courteous and cruel. "A toast to Tangtang, and to his ex."

The whole table fell silent.

Fang Tang sat at the head of the table, lowering his eyes to run his fingers over his glass, as if silently permitting it.

"How pitiful..."

"After everything's come to this, has he even looked you in the eye once?"

**Reader's Guide**

1. The gong gets chased after the breakup, but it's too late.

2. Gong-focused.

Theme: Opportunity waits for no one.