When Lu Yanjing regained consciousness, he found himself in a hospital.
Yet he wasn’t lying on a hospital bed; instead, he was sitting on a bus bench outside the hospital building.
Panic washed over him. He looked left and right, studying his surroundings closely until he realized this was nowhere near the place where he had just been stabbed.
At that thought, he immediately looked down at his chest. There was no blood. He rubbed the area frantically and even pulled back his shirt to check—not a single scratch was to be found.
Lu Yanjing froze, his mind momentarily incapable of processing what was happening.
What was going on?
It was only then that he noticed his clothes had changed. Looking closer, he realized he was wearing a shirt he had bought back in his final year of college.
College graduation?
His head spinning, Lu Yanjing turned around and caught sight of the bold, oversized characters: “Shengde Hospital.”
In his memory, he had only ever set foot in Shengde Hospital once—right after Shen Ruxia’s miscarriage, when he came to check if that woman was playing another trick on him.
He still remembered the fierce argument they’d had in the hospital room. An argument in name only, really, since it was just him shouting himself hoarse, accusing Shen Ruxia of being a vicious woman who schemed against him at every turn, while the pale, utterly exhausted girl kept her head down and barely uttered a word.
Even the dullest person would have realized by now that something bizarre was happening.
Lu Yanjing pulled out his phone. Sure enough, the date had rolled back ten years, to just two months after his wedding to Shen Ruxia.
A wave of wild elation rushed over him, but he didn’t even wait to savor it before sprinting toward the entrance of Shengde Hospital.
He had said far too many cruel things to Shen Ruxia just moments ago. His newlywed wife had just lost their child, lying weak and frail in a hospital bed, and had endured a full half-hour of his berating.
Overwhelmed with guilt, all his memories suddenly snapped into sharp focus—so vivid that he instantly remembered her room number was 1108. Like a child who had just recovered a priceless lost treasure, he ran all the way, tearing down the hallway toward the person etched into his heart.
The door to room 1108 was pulled shut. Just as he reached out his hand to push it open, the sound of an argument drifted out from within.
“Dad, I’ve told you many times, Yanjing is good to me. You don’t need to go around saying he’s irresponsible. I’m doing fine, and he takes good care of me.”
It was Shen Ruxia’s voice. Hearing it sent a sharp pang through Lu Yanjing’s chest.
Only Shen Ruxia and he knew that every single word she had just spoken was a lie.
“Good to you? He leaves you all alone in the hospital! You carried his child, and when you lost it, it was your body that suffered while he was nowhere to be found. And you have the nerve to tell me he takes good care of you? I honestly don’t know what you saw in this poor kid. So what if he has a pretty face? At the end of the day, he doesn’t give a damn about you.”
Shen Zhenxing’s fury was palpable. Even standing outside, Lu Yanjing knew that the moment he stepped in, he was in for a severe tongue-lashing.
“Dad, I’m an adult. I don’t need someone hovering over me every single second. Yanjing just graduated; he’s not unemployed. He can’t just drop his work to sit by my bedside. Please stop looking for reasons to hate him. He’s good to me, he’s ambitious, and I love him. We’re going to make a good life together.”
Standing in the doorway, listening to Shen Ruxia fiercely defend him—listening to her say she loved him—Lu Yanjing understood for the very first time that every single time he had abandoned her over the past ten years, she had been fighting with her last ounce of strength to hold their fragile, storm-tossed relationship together.
“Damn it all, why on earth did my daughter have to fall for a penniless nobody? How did I end up with such a stubborn girl, giving your heart to a guy who dumps you in a hospital without a second thought? You’re just a fool…”
Hearing no more, Lu Yanjing shoved the door open, strode into the room, and locked eyes with Shen Ruxia, who was sitting propped up against the pillows, her face deathly pale.
The room instantly fell silent.
The expressions on all three of their faces were a study in contrast.
Shen Ruxia looked even more shocked than her father.
Why was Lu Yanjing here?
“Dad.” Lu Yanjing looked at Shen Zhenxing and finally offered a greeting.
Although they hadn’t crossed paths all that often in his past life, they were old acquaintances by any measure, so calling him “Dad” didn’t feel entirely unnatural.
“Lu Yanjing, let me tell you something—my daughter begged me a hundred times over before I agreed to let her marry you. Otherwise, a guy like you wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of marrying Shen Zhenxing’s daughter in ten lifetimes. I’m warning you—”
“Dad, are you done?” Shen Ruxia cut in, stopping her father from spewing anything worse.
Interrupting her father so bluntly only fueled Shen Zhenxing’s anger further.
“Fine! I’m washing my hands of this. Do whatever you want!” With that, he stormed out of the room without looking back.
Left behind in the room were just Lu Yanjing and Shen Ruxia.
It felt like a lifetime apart—because, in truth, it literally was another lifetime.
Seeing Shen Ruxia’s face again, a thousand things rushed to the tip of Lu Yanjing’s tongue, leaving him momentarily speechless, unsure where to even begin.
Sensing the awkward tension, Shen Ruxia was the first to break the silence.
“Did you… forget something here?” she asked, her voice impossibly cautious.
That brought Lu Yanjing back to reality. Seeing the wary, doe-like panic in her eyes sent a dull ache through his heart.
“No, I didn’t,” he hurried to deny.
“Is there something else you wanted to say to me, then?”
Shen Ruxia’s fingers tightened white-knuckled around the bedsheet. She was terrified that Lu Yanjing had come back to demand a divorce.
After all, he had only agreed to marry her because of the baby. Now that the baby was gone, their marriage naturally had no reason to continue.
“There are a few things I want to say to you.”
Lu Yanjing walked over to the bedside, pulled up a chair, and sat down. He instinctively reached out to tuck the blanket back around Shen Ruxia where it had slipped.
Yet the moment his hand lifted, Shen Ruxia flinched and instinctively shrank away, her expression flashing with terror.
She thought he was going to hit her.
Lu Yanjing’s heart sank.
No matter how poor of a husband he had been, he had never laid a hand on a woman. Throughout their ten years of marriage, aside from subjecting her to cold violence, he had never touched a single hair on her head.
“I was way too out of line earlier. I’m sorry, Xiaxia. I’m truly sorry.”
His apology was entirely sincere. To Shen Ruxia’s utter bewilderment, he reached out and gently, naturally took her hand in his.
Her hands were freezing. Though the winter chill was giving way to spring warmth, Shen Ruxia’s hands remained as cold as ice. Once again, Lu Yanjing was struck by the realization of what a worthless husband he had been.
“You…”
Too stunned for words, Shen Ruxia stared fixedly at him, trying to read whether the man in front of her had suddenly been possessed by a ghost.
And what had he just called her?
Xiaxia?
Why was he suddenly being so tender? Didn’t he usually open and close his mouth with accusations of you vicious woman?
What kind of game was he playing today?
The panic inside Shen Ruxia mounted by the second.
“You don’t need to apologize to me. It was entirely my fault. Now that the child is gone, you have every right to be angry.”
Shen Ruxia instinctively touched her lower stomach, a wave of profound sorrow washing over her. She had loved that baby so much—especially since it was conceived with the man she loved most in the world.
Yet she had been so clumsy; she took a fall, and just like that, the child was gone.
Lu Yanjing had every right to be furious. When all was said and done, it was her own doing.
She had been the one to hand him the drugged glass of water, the one who engineered their intimacy, the one who trapped him into marriage with a pregnancy, and now, right after the dust had settled and they were legally husband and wife, she had tripped and lost the baby.
Any man faced with such a scenario would think her deeply calculating, scheming, and manipulative. The few harsh words Lu Yanjing had thrown at her were already the height of restraint.
“Don’t dwell on it. In the future…”
Lu Yanjing had been about to say we can always have more children, but he suddenly remembered from his past life that Shen Ruxia never conceived again over the next decade. The miscarriage had likely damaged her body beyond repair.
So, to prevent her from torturing herself with guilt and anxiety over not being able to have children, he abruptly changed his tune: “A child isn’t an absolute requirement for a marriage. Even without kids, we can still grow old together.”
When those words reached Shen Ruxia’s ears, they stirred a chaotic storm of complex emotions in her chest.
She understood his hidden meaning loud and clear: Lu Yanjing had no intention of ever having children with her.
Well, of course. He had never loved her in the first place, and this marriage was entirely her own forceful imposition. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to share children with a woman he didn’t love.
Just then, a nurse’s aide walked in carrying a basin of warm water.
“It’s time to clean the patient up. Could you please step outside for a moment?” the aide said, looking at Lu Yanjing.
“I’m her husband. I’ll do it.”
Lu Yanjing naturally reached out and took the basin of warm water from the aide’s hands. At his casual declaration, Shen Ruxia panicked completely.
While the aide called it “cleaning the patient up,” it actually involved washing her lower body—a necessary post-miscarriage hygiene routine. Lu Yanjing probably didn’t even realize what it meant, but even if he did, why on earth would he suddenly volunteer to wash her like that?