Ten years ago, at Pufenix International School in Li City.
Chi Mi and Feng Yixun had been classmates for half a year.
They had both performed in a stage play performed entirely in English—Cinderella.
But she wasn’t the Cinderella who married the prince, and he wasn’t the prince who found the glass slipper.
Chi Mi played one of Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters in the play.
Feng Yixun played the attendant who tried the glass slipper on the wicked stepsister—the kind with no lines.
From rehearsals to the actual performance, she maintained the same angle.
She’d cast him a careless glance, lift her fair neck, and smile proudly.
Then she’d begin her exaggerated performance—see, this was her shoe, it fit perfectly, she always wore the same size.
When she was finally exposed, her performance grew more and more theatrical—oh, her foot might be a little bigger today, but she’d been dancing all night, hadn’t she!
And his eyes, from beginning to end, remained dark and unreadable.
He knelt before her, his hand holding her pale ankle, gently cradling it.
That glass slipper prop dangled from her toes.
The two of them—she was the school’s most prominent figure, a pampered young lady with a legion of followers, and he was an unknown transfer student, rumored to be the illegitimate son of some wealthy family, his mother French, though he seemed to take after his father more—with short black hair and black-gray eyes, a teenager with a brooding, gloomy air.
After that stage play, Chi Mi lost to this mysterious transfer student in that month’s exams.
It was the first time the proud rose had become second in the school.
She came from a privileged background; foreign languages had always been her strength, and she was also skilled in physics and chemistry.
But on several identical exam papers, she couldn’t beat him.
Chi Mi was furious about this.
On one later occasion, she ran into him again.
He was walking silently, his face expressionless.
She called out to him, greeting him with a smile as bright as a flower.
“Classmate Feng, long time no see!”
He only stopped and replied with a single “Mm.”
Chi Mi kept smiling. “I heard you got first place this time.”
He said nothing.
Chi Mi walked closer to him, lifted her leg, and stepped onto the low flowerbed edge between them.
She tilted her head up slightly and said, “Classmate Feng, I don’t think I like it when someone beats me.”
The teenage Feng Yixun stared at her steadily, then noticed her shoelace had come undone.
He hesitated for a few seconds, then silently knelt before her and tied her shoelace for her.
Chi Mi was stunned—she hadn’t even noticed her own shoelace was loose, and her cheeks flushed red in an instant.
For the following months, she didn’t speak another word to him because of that inexplicable sense of shame.
And he never got first place again.
…
Recalling this incident, the thought that this man was now her husband filled her with fear.
In all the years of their marriage, he might have been violently forcing her to tie shoelaces every night, just to get his revenge.
The two of them left the Feng family villa in somewhat of a hurry.
She hadn’t even had a chance to meet anyone, nor say a word to her daughter, before she was shoved into the back seat of the car. Feng Yixun sat beside her but didn’t speak to her.
Chi Mi curled up, trying to stay as far away from him as possible.
She’d never realized before that this man could be so handsome.
But she had a feeling he wasn’t someone easy to get along with.
After arriving at the private hospital, Feng Yixun found her a doctor who seemed quite familiar with him.
He was a very young man, around thirty years old, with a name tag on his chest that read—Li Haowei.
The doctor performed a brain CT scan, an endoscopy, a blood test, and carefully examined her pupils.
After a highly efficient round of examinations, Li Haowei reached his conclusion.
In the medical office where only the three of them were present, silence hung in the air.
Li Haowei finally spoke, addressing the woman sitting across from him who was playing with her fingers. “There’s no structural damage to the brain. Based on the current situation, it’s poisoning from an isazole-derivative or bio-alkaline complex toxin. This type of toxin has a toxic effect on the central nervous system…”
Chi Mi was still somewhat dazed, as the anesthetic from the endoscopy hadn’t fully worn off.
Her complexion was as pale as it had been that morning, her gaze hazy, carrying a hint of detachment.
She stared at her own fingers and murmured, “Did I eat something poisonous?”
Li Haowei said, “It’s not that simple, but you could also think of it that way. What you ingested may be a newly developed synthetic compound toxin. A larger dose would have been lethal, but the amount you took wasn’t enough to be fatal. You also drank a lot of alcohol, and you likely vomited last night, so in terms of the effects, the situation is somewhat unusual. Your memory function has been partially impaired—you’ve lost the memories of a certain period…”
Based on her feedback, as it stood, the toxin had caused her to lose ten years of memories.
This could be temporary, or it could be permanent.
As he spoke, Dr. Li cast a meaningful glance at Feng Yixun, who was standing off to the side.
Chi Mi furrowed her brow, staring at her manicured nails with a cautious, timid expression.
The nails were beautifully done—the tiny seashells on them looked lifelike and expensive.
She asked in a low voice, “Will I get better?”
Hearing this, Li Haowei’s brow furrowed even deeper.
Her poisoning was, in a sense, a difficult and complicated case.
He looked at the several reports in front of him, thought for a moment, and said, “Honestly, I’ve never encountered a case like this. My current recommendation is to start with regular check-ups, and I’ll decide on the rest after further observation. There are some questions I’ll need to discuss with specialists in this field.”
Chi Mi looked up at him, suddenly looking pitiful.
“So… am I going to die?”
Li Haowei hesitated for a second.
This Mrs. Feng certainly had a long-term way of thinking.
“Uh… clearly not. Your condition right now is that the toxin has already taken effect.”
She murmured, “How could this happen…”
Chi Mi’s mind was a muddled mess. For the moment, she couldn’t tell which was more serious—having married a man who clearly disliked her, or the fact that she’d been poisoned.
If some villain had wanted to harm her and poisoned her, shouldn’t she call the police? But then, what would that even uncover? In her current state, she didn’t seem capable of handling this matter. There was even a possibility that the her from ten years later had found life so painful that she’d chosen to poison herself. Thinking about all of this, she was lost in boundless confusion.
Li Haowei flipped through the reports in front of him and suddenly added, “Also, Mrs. Feng, you have atrophic gastritis. You need to be very careful with your diet from now on, and it’s best if you stop drinking alcohol altogether…”
Before he could finish, Feng Yixun spoke up.
“She has gastritis?”
Chi Mi looked at him blankly, then turned her dazed gaze to Dr. Li.
She hadn’t known she had gastritis either.
Li Haowei shrugged and said, “Seems like your husband here isn’t doing a very good job.”
Feng Yixun glanced at Chi Mi inadvertently.
He furrowed his brow and said coldly to Dr. Li, “This is not within the scope of your duties.”
Li Haowei instinctively shrank his neck and pursed his lips to show his stance.