Later, the truth revealed.
My mother had drugged the soup. She had summoned Yan Ming, hoping to force him into a trap with me, to seal our futures together.
But fate twisted. Yan Ming never came.
It was Shen Weilin who walked through that door.
So the scandal was born.
I was on the floor, wrapped in shame, when my mother dragged me before Madam Shen to beg forgiveness. "Please, we seek no restitution. I will take my daughter and leave the Shen household."
Madam Shen pressed her temples, weary and overwhelmed.
But Shen Weilin stood tall by the doorway, unshaken even under his father’s furious glare.
"I will break my engagement with the Zhao family," he declared. "And I will marry Su Lanying."
The house erupted.
Zhao Yulan herself came later, cheeks pale but eyes steady.
"Uncle Shen," she said with a faint, cynical smile, "it seems destiny has chosen otherwise. I can’t marry him now. Please release me from the betrothal."
I collapsed, choking, words spilling, "Miss Zhao, it’s my fault. I’ll leave. That night was a mistake. It should never have been..."
She cut me off coldly, her lips curling. "Lanying, I don’t want leftovers."
The shame buried me whole.
I had stolen the moon from the sky. How had I dared?
From that day on, guilt became my marrow.
Shen Weilin did as he promised. He married me.
Yan Ming, unable to endure regret, left. He disappeared into wandering exile.
No doubt the Zhao family confronted him; no doubt words were exchanged. But perhaps nothing more than his own shame was needed to drive him away. He would not, could not, trap Yulan in scandal as I had.
Yulan searched. For three years, she pursued him across cities.
She left messages wherever he had been, "Coward. If you dare charm me, dare kiss me, but not dare stay then you are nothing at all."
But she never caught him. He always left the day before she arrived.
Even so, Yulan came to my wedding. She smiled brilliantly through drink, lifting her glass high.
"Tell me, Lanying," she slurred bitterly, "does Yan Ming not like me after all? Then why did he kiss me? Why kiss me, only to vanish?"
I said nothing. None of us dared.
At the end of the night, with tears glinting in her eyes, she squeezed my hand. "Take care of that wooden man of yours. But promise me if you ever see that scoundrel Yan Ming again, hold him for me. You owe me that much."
She waved, laughing, and walked into the white sunlight.
It was the last time I would see her alive.
One year later, an earthquake struck the mountain school where she was teaching. She died at twenty-eight, in her most beautiful season.
Yan Ming lost his mind.
The Zhao family forbade him from attending her funeral, cursing him as her ruin.
But I found him at the edge of the cemetery. Quietly, we knelt side by side, giving her our grief in silence for a whole day.
And in my soul, guilt consumed me once again.
If only I had not silenced him. If I had not barred his love. Or if long ago, I had never come to the Shen household at all.
Perhaps then nothing would have happened.
As the fortune teller said,
Deep love withers quickly.
A brave man without courage fails.
Two souls condemned.
Chapter 08
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