When Lin Yumo woke, her father Lin Weicai’s curses filled her ears.
“How dare she try to kill herself in front of the Mu family?! That’s the Mu family, at the very top of A City’s wealthy elite! If she marries into it, our Lin family can turn things around overnight!”
“But Mu Linhan is a cripple!” her mother, Li Yuan, sobbed. “Our Momo is only eighteen. She’s supposed to start university in the fall. Weicai, why don’t you return the one million in betrothal money? We can earn more money!”
“Bullshit! What good will getting into that damned music academy do her?! If she marries into the Mu family, she’ll live in luxury for the rest of her life and never want for anything! Utterly foolish!”
“Mom, Dad’s right. If Big Sister marries into the Mu family, I won’t have to worry about money when I get married.”
“…”
Lin Yumo sat up and looked around in confusion.
This was… the room she’d lived in before her wedding?
Wasn’t she dead?
The scene before her death remained vivid in her mind.
She had leapt from the Mu family’s clock tower. Mu Linhan had appeared behind her at some point and grabbed her skirt, only to be pulled out of his wheelchair and fall with her.
At the time, he had held her tightly, wrapping his arms around Lin Yumo protectively as he murmured words of comfort.
“…Don’t be afraid.”
Lin Yumo’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Why?”
Why had he sacrificed his life to save her?
They had been married for three years and had no feelings for each other.
Shouldn’t Mu Linhan have been hoping she would die as soon as possible?
Three years earlier, he had been a key heir to one of the most prominent wealthy families when a car accident severely injured his thoracic spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.
The favored son of heaven, cast down from his lofty heights in a single day.
Afterward, at her parents’ insistence, Lin Yumo was forced to give up her studies and marry into the Mu family at a young age. They called it a marriage to bring Mu Linhan good fortune.
That year, she had just turned eighteen.
She wasn’t even old enough to marry legally.
But the Mu family didn’t know she suffered from severe depression and mania. She was in no condition to care for Mu Linhan.
After her father-in-law died, her mother-in-law sent the two of them to an old clock tower in the most remote corner of the Mu family estate, claiming the young couple needed peace and quiet to recuperate.
In truth, it was a form of imprisonment.
Their “recuperation” lasted a full three years.
Without medication to control her condition, Lin Yumo’s illness grew increasingly uncontrollable.
She had frequent episodes, beating and berating Mu Linhan at the slightest provocation and smashing things to vent her anger, leaving him covered in injuries.
Mu Linhan was powerless to fight back. Whenever she did something outrageous, all he could do was watch the ugly spectacle unfold with those deep, unfathomable eyes.
For three years, he rarely had enough to eat or enough warm clothing. He also had to endure the psychological and physical torment she inflicted on him. His health deteriorated, and he grew gaunt and emaciated.
She had thought Mu Linhan must hate her terribly.
So much so that he never wanted to say another word to her.
But in the final moments of her life, Lin Yumo had never imagined that Mu Linhan would be the one to protect her.
Mu Linhan—the man she had bullied for three whole years…
It seemed she had never really understood him.
The last image seared into her memory was Mu Linhan’s shattered body and the scarlet blood covering the ground.
Even as he died, he never let go of her.
Lin Yumo’s heart twisted as if pierced by a knife.
Mu Linhan… How could you be so foolish?! Giving your life to protect the woman who bullied you?!
Endless remorse pressed down on her until she could hardly breathe.
“What right does she have to refuse?!”
“Even if it’s for the Lin family, she has to!”
“Do you know how hard it was to raise her? Now it’s time for her to repay us. Marriages are decided by parents and arranged through matchmakers! Let her try to defy me!”
“…”
Hearing the familiar roars outside her bedroom, Lin Yumo glanced instinctively at her left hand.
Her slender, pale wrist was wrapped in layer upon layer of gauze, with a trace of blood faintly showing through.
…That was right.
She had inflicted that wound on herself at eighteen, in front of both families.
She had been reborn.
That year, she had finally passed the entrance exam for A City’s top music academy, the one she had dreamed of attending for so long. But the Mu family’s visit had made her father choose to destroy her future.
Lin Yumo already had bipolar disorder and depended on medication. When she learned she would be barred from studying and forced to marry a crippled man, she had slashed her wrist in front of both families.
The act had frightened the Mu family badly.
But they had consulted a fortune-teller, who said Lin Yumo and Mu Linhan were well matched by birth charts and that she would bring good fortune to her husband. The wealthy had always placed great importance on fate and feng shui. To bring good fortune to Mu Linhan, who was paralyzed and bedridden—and after Lin Weicai had gone to great lengths to explain that she had only acted rashly and done something foolish—the Mu family ultimately let the matter go.
After all, who could accept being forced to marry a disabled man at such a young age?
Lin Weicai had already accepted one million in betrothal money. No matter how much Lin Yumo resisted afterward, he eventually secretly fed her sleeping pills and forced her into the Mu household.
Memories of her past life surged back like a tide.
Lin Yumo suddenly laughed.
Heaven had taken pity on her and given her another chance.
In this life, she would never make the same mistakes again.
And Mu Linhan…
She owed him so much. Far, far too much.
Given another chance, she would make it up to him.
Lin Yumo got out of bed and opened the door.
Then, as if she had expected it, she tilted her head aside and dodged the drinking glass flying toward her.
Crash!
The glass hit the floor and shattered.
“So you’re finally awake?!”
Lin Weicai snapped, “Lin Yumo! Do you have any idea how much you embarrassed me in front of the Mu family?!”
Three people sat in the living room: her father, Lin Weicai; her mother, Li Yuan; and her younger brother, Lin Zhengze.
“Weicai, calm down!”
Li Yuan hurried to her feet to stop him, but Lin Weicai shoved her forcefully onto the sofa. “You’re still going to spoil her?!”
Lin Zhengze crossed his legs, ready to enjoy the show.
Lin Weicai was clearly furious. He didn’t care that his daughter had only just escaped death; all he wanted was to vent his anger.
He walked up to Lin Yumo, still holding an admission letter.
Riiip—
The next moment, the letter was torn in two.
“I’m telling you, I won’t spend a single cent on your damn music studies! You’re coming with me to the Mu family to apologize right now. Otherwise, I’ll smash that piece of junk you call a violin!”
Lin Yumo looked at him in silence.
Then she bent down and picked up the torn admission letter.
Lin Weicai would never know how much effort she had put into earning that thin slip of paper.
Her father was a violent domestic abuser.
All her life, he had beaten and cursed her and her mother.
In her previous life, he was largely to blame for her mental illness.
When Lin Yumo was a child, Lin Weicai had squandered the vast family fortune passed down through generations. The company went bankrupt, and overnight, the whole family was forced to leave their villa and cram into this dilapidated old house.
For years afterward, Lin Weicai drank and gambled, beating his wife and daughter. Back then, Lin Yumo often spent the night alone outside, covered in bruises.
Only the neighbors’ help had kept her from freezing or starving to death.
When she was eight, Lin Weicai got drunk and casually grabbed a kettle of boiling water and hurled it at her.
Lin Yumo hadn’t managed to dodge completely.
The left side of her face was badly scalded.
Although Li Yuan had tried to treat the injury, they hadn’t taken Lin Yumo to a hospital.
From then on, the left half of Lin Yumo’s face was covered with red scars from the burn.
The trauma left her deeply scarred as a child, and she grew increasingly irritable and strange.
By the time Li Yuan realized what was happening, a physician had already diagnosed Lin Yumo with moderate depression. She had to take medication to keep it under control.
And the only thing that could save her was the violin.
Over the years, her love of the instrument had gradually helped her wounded heart heal and kept her condition from worsening.
But learning the violin was expensive, and her family couldn’t afford to support her studies. All she could do was find books on the subject in the library and teach herself bit by bit.
To fulfill her dream of studying at A City’s finest music academy, she practiced day and night. Her fingertips blistered until they bled, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.
But her dream had turned to ashes.
Having lived through the scene once before, Lin Yumo was perfectly calm now.
With or without the admission letter, she had no way to go to school at present.
The only thing eighteen-year-old Lin Yumo could do was obediently marry into the Mu family and look for a chance to turn her life around.
“All right. I’ll go apologize.”
She lowered her gaze submissively and said,
“I’m willing to marry into the Mu family.”
No.
Not that she was willing to marry into the Mu family.
She was willing to marry him—
Mu Linhan…
Wait for me.