The next day, I waited at the cemetery. From sunlight into dusk, and from dusk into the bruised silence of night.
He didn’t come.
Rain fell hard, lightning tearing the sky apart. Of course he wouldn’t risk driving out in weather like this.
But then he came.
Out of the storm’s curtain, Zhao Yichen emerged. Wrapped in a black raincoat, carrying a black umbrella, he looked like a shadow among shadows. But in his hands was a pure bouquet of white jasmine.
Though he had never set foot here before, he walked without stumbling, heading straight for my grave.
A thin, fresh cut slashed across his cheek, still bleeding slightly, unhealed. His grip was steady as he placed the flowers at my stone and set down a box of fragrant fried chicken, still warm.
"I went too late. They had to make it fresh for me. Didn’t have time to cool," he murmured.
He didn’t know I was listening. Didn’t know I was right there.
He lowered the umbrella to shield the jasmine from the rain. His damp hair clung to his forehead, water dripping into his eyes, but he never bothered to wipe it away.
"I thought about it all night," he whispered. "And jasmine felt right."
Tears slid down my face, though no one could see them.
He leaned back against my tombstone, cracked open a beer, drank deeply, then spilled the rest into the soil. His smile was hollow.
"Su Mei, I don’t even know if you liked jasmine. I never gave you any while you were alive. But I thought you must have. Why else would the first fake name you gave me be Jasmine?"
I laughed shakily through the sobs breaking inside me. Yes, that had been the first night I met him. I was drunk, reckless, only chasing the lines of his body. "Jasmine," I’d told him then, not "Su Mei."
"You told me you were an orphan. Me too, more or less no parents worth the name. I thought maybe that made us destined somehow. Heaven’s cruel joke."
He tipped his face to the storm, his voice breaking. "You died too early, Mei. I thought someone like you content, careless would live forever. Was it just that life is merciless?"
His eyes locked on the black-and-white photo carved into my stone, the one where I smiled as if forever were real.
His trembling fingers brushed the wet surface. "Su Mei, are you at peace?"
I wasn’t. I had never been.
The days after, I stayed away. My memory frayed at the edges, blurring into cold fog. Chen Ruyan always warned me ghosts who linger too long will lose their path.
One evening, she found me, her glow dimmer than before.
"I’m leaving, Mei. Reincarnating."
I forced a smile. "So... you finally let go?"
"Yeah." Her eyes were calm. "It’s time."
"When?"
"Tonight."
"Then I’ll send you off."
I held her tight as the Gates of Crossing cracked open in the midnight mist. She whispered against my ear, "Su Mei, please....let go sooner. Don’t let yourself vanish."
"I...." My throat burned, but then I froze.
He was there. The man who had ordered my death.
Wang Yue.
He wasn’t supposed to be free. Prison should have devoured three more decades. Yet here he stood in a clean suit and polished shoes, Nike jacket draped over his shoulders, as if life had never touched him.
My heart turned to ice. He had lived, untouched, unrepentant. But something else clung to him, a shadow, twisted bones, mangled essence. He wasn’t just alive. He was carrying death with him, like a curse.
Ruyan nudged me, worried. "Su Mei? What’s wrong? I didn’t even push hard."
But my lungs shredded inside me. Some awful realization clawed free. I collapsed, clutching my chest, my soul tearing, my tears falling like rain as I gasped the only name that mattered.
"Zhao Yichen...."
Ruyan panicked. "What is it? What’s happening?"
"It’s Yichen," I choked, voice breaking. "It was him...."
Yes. It was him.
That was why he had come late that night, his cheek bleeding, his face pale. That was why he asked me if I was at peace. Because he had made sure Wang Yue paid in his own way.
Yichen.
He was suffering.
He was fighting.
And I realized I had never once been at peace.
When I found Zhao Yichen again, he was hunched over his laptop, typing like nothing in the world was wrong.
When he looked up and saw me, that easy smirk slipped onto his lips.
"So? You’ve been gone for days. Which ghost tried to flirt with you this time was he better-looking than me?"
"Did you kill him?" I cut him off. My voice cracked like glass fracturing under pressure.
He froze for only a second. Then, like the devil himself, he pretended nothing had been said.
"I’ve got to say, while you were away, my dating life actually went smoother."
"Yichen." I bit down on his name like bone. "Did. You.... Kill him?"
The air went taut as a noose. Finally, he turned toward me, his eyes stripped of all jest.
"Yes. The one who just got released."
My soul shattered. Tears blurred my vision until his face broke into fragments.
"Why, Yichen? Why would you throw your life away for this? If you’re caught....what happens now?"
"You killed for me," I wept. "When you should have been living free, brilliant, unstoppable you became a murderer because of me."
His lashes flickered. A bead of moisture glimmered at the corner of his eye. His voice was steady, too steady.
"This is only the beginning."
My sobs wracked me like knives. "No. Stop here. Don’t walk further down this path. If they take you from me, Yichen what am I supposed to do?"
He leaned back, restless, dragging his tongue across his lip as though tasting the last drop of sanity he had left. His tears fell anyway, hot even through my incorporeal hand.
"Su Mei," he whispered hoarsely. His gaze locked on mine, sharp and breaking. "The day you were murdered.... I was planning to propose to you."
The words gutted me.
"One more day," he murmured, trembling. "We were one day away from finally belonging to each other."
He swiped at my cheek, but his hand passed through me. The helpless gesture collapsed what composure he had left.
"Why was it you? Why did it have to be you?" His tears burned, his voice shredded raw. "If it were anyone else, I’d still be breathing instead of drowning."
His gaze hardened again.
"I’ll make them pay."
"How?" I whispered.
Yichen smiled bitterly, almost viciously, as he pulled a small black USB drive from his drawer.
"By dragging it all into daylight."
I blinked, stunned. "Impossible. How how did you even...."
He tilted the drive in his hand, its reflection catching light. "Found it under the old locust tree. Thought it might be important."
That drive. Everything I died for. Every piece of evidence I had hidden.
"Oh my god," I whispered.
Yichen hadn’t just found it. He had been protecting it. Nurturing it. Waiting.
He caught my stunned silence, his eyes gleaming faintly like the wick of a flame.
"Darling... you knew how close I was to ending it. You knew about the pills I stashed. And you never once tried to stop me."
I lowered my face. What could I say?
Chapter 03
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