When I jolted awake, I half expected the scratchy white ceiling of the hospital suite. Instead, there were hand-embroidered peonies overhead, petals blushing across the pale blue silk canopy that had not been in style since my adolescence. I turned my head—abrupt, almost violent—and the heavy brocade of my pillowcase crackled in protest. I was back in the Lin family mansion.
The shock hit in two waves: first, the impossible crispness of air, faintly sweet with osmanthus even in the dead of night; second, the aching certainty that I was not supposed to breathe at all. The last thing I remembered—the true last thing, not the lingering impressions that trailed from bad dreams—was a cold floor, the taste of iron, Guo Lian's voice purring, "She never learns," and the immense, crushing weight of Gu Shenyan's indifference as he watched the scene unfold from the threshold.
But here I was: heart jackhammering, lungs greedy, hands twisted into the sheets. Moonlight crept across the carpet, painting shadows of the antique dressing table and the inlaid armoire, both so familiar they ached in my peripheral vision. The room was too ornate for any real child, an exhibition more than a sanctuary, every gilded molding and lacquered screen calculated to communicate the Lin family's taste and status to their social rivals. I reached for the edge of the comforter, fingers numb, and marveled at the sickly smoothness of my skin. No scars, no brittle ridges of self-defense. Just flesh, soft and compliant.
The air tasted faintly of formaldehyde, and for a moment I wondered if I was dead after all—if hell's first punishment was returning you to your most humiliating era. But the way my pulse hammered in my ears felt too vital for the afterlife. This was something else.
I clawed my way upright, fists clenching around the fabric until I left tiny crescents in the percale. My hands were trembling; I hated the weakness, the visible evidence that fear was still a physical force inside me. I let the cold seep up through my bare feet, grounding myself with the discomfort. Then I looked around for confirmation, because memory was a tricky thing and I had trained myself, in the end, not to trust it.
Everything was too perfect, preserved like a bug under resin. The row of porcelain rabbits on the window ledge, their ears chipped by a long-forgotten cousin. The bundle of school medals tarnishing in the jewelry tray, an accusation more than a trophy. The closet door still slightly off its hinges from where my mother, in a fit of "character-building," had slammed it during an argument about my university applications. There was no denying it: this was my old bedroom, down to the last imperfection.
My breathing slowed, but my mind raced. If this was a dream, it was weaponized—painfully, mockingly detailed. If it wasn't…
I forced myself to lie back, counting the racing beats as I stared at the moonlit patterns on the ceiling. The panic began to mutate into anger, a familiar evolution. I remembered everything: the dinner at Jade Pavilion, the contract my father signed with hands that shook even more than mine, the wedding morning with its sour symphony of champagne toasts and veiled threats. I remembered Gu Shenyan's eyes, the shade of stormclouds, as he stared through me at our engagement photos like they were nothing more than marketing collateral for the family brand. I remembered the cold burn of betrayal when, barely a year in, I discovered the careful web Guo Lian had woven between herself and my husband, each thread silken and invisible until it was too late to struggle.
Most of all, I remembered the night I died. The realization unfolded in my chest, slow and inexorable. I was not simply dreaming or hallucinating. I had been given another chance—a replay, perhaps, or some cosmic error with my name scrawled across the ledger.
A bitter laugh stuck in my throat. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to drop me five years back into this body: thin, compliant, ignorant. The version of me that had never known what was coming, never once suspected the world could be rigged so thoroughly against you by people who wore your name.
A sudden, hysterical urge to test the boundaries struck me. I scrambled for my phone on the nightstand, the movement almost toppling the lamp. The device was not the sleek, glassy monolith of adulthood, but the plasticky, rose-gold knockoff I'd used for college. The date on the lock screen stabbed me in the eye: September 10, 2019. I stared at it, too stunned to process the string of numbers, until the battery warning beeped and I fumbled the charger in with hands still not quite steady.
On the other side of the room, the curtain twitched in a draft. I watched the sway of the lace—delicate, intentionally aged, dust gathering at the hem—and it occurred to me that I could simply walk out, right now, and find the nearest open window. I didn't. Instead, I wrapped my arms around my knees, letting my body remember the contours of its former misery. If this was some divine joke, I would not give it the satisfaction of another breakdown.
A slow, vicious smile spread over my face as the next thought landed: if I really was back, if all the misery and humiliation lay ahead, that meant every betrayal was still unwritten. Every knife wound could, theoretically, be redirected. I could build my own arsenal.
I closed my eyes, but this time, the past did not ambush me with its sharp edges. I imagined Guo Lian's face—first in its mask of concern, later in the rictus of triumph when she finally stepped over my corpse to claim the place she'd always coveted. I would see that expression again, but next time, it would be her turn to be caught off guard.
My pulse steadied. The moon crept another inch across the carpet, ghostly and indifferent. I lay back on the bed that had been my childhood throne and prison, and I waited for morning.
The morning sunlight cut through the clouded windows, lighting the air in thin, pale stripes. I waited for the dread to settle. It didn't. There was a trace of nausea, but even that was familiar—performance anxiety, not existential terror. I lay in the silence until the house began to stir, the faint rush of water through pipes, the shuffle of slippers outside my door, the clatter of porcelain far down the hall.
I moved as if in ritual, limbs obeying some ingrained choreography. The dressing table waited opposite my bed, a grandiose monstrosity of carved cherry and beveled glass, designed to make a girl feel like a portrait before she ever left the house. It had always made me uncomfortable; now it felt like a challenge.
I sat before the mirror and faced myself.
The effect was immediate, vertiginous. I saw the girl I used to be—heart-shaped face, luminous skin, not a hint of the hollows that would one day gutter my cheeks. My hair was glossy and black, heavy with the oil and sleep I'd inherited from the day before. The last time I'd looked in a mirror, it had been with the angry resignation of someone who could map her own decline, who watched the flesh fail before the spirit ever did. I'd stopped caring about makeup, about symmetry, about what message my face was broadcasting to the world. Now, it broadcast innocence.
I leaned closer, peering for some mark, some physical record of all that had happened—should have happened—to this body. There was nothing. I reached out, half afraid my fingers would pass through, and pressed a fingertip to the faint dimple at my chin. It was soft, not even a suggestion of the sharpness I'd come to expect. I prodded my jawline: still babyish, untouched by the thousand clenched nights and the grinding friction of an unhappy adulthood.
A laugh snorted out, brittle as glass. I traced the line of my lips, still plush and pink, not bitten bloody from habit. I poked at the undereye, marveling at the absence of purple bruising, the tiny constellation of freckles that hadn't yet been sanded off by prescription creams. This was a face designed for compliance, for family photos and debutante teas and all the saccharine rites of passage I'd loathed and, finally, outgrown.
I let my eyes rest on the mirror, letting the silence stretch until the only movement was the subtle flutter of my own lashes. My mind flickered back to the last year—how the skin had tightened over my bones, how my hair had grown brittle, how even my nails had cracked and refused to regrow. How my reflection had become, not just a warning, but a record of attrition.
Not this time.
I watched myself, waiting for some trace of fear to show. Instead, there was only calculation. I flexed my hand—steady now—and pressed it to my chest, feeling the heartbeat slow to a cool, manageable rhythm.
"Good morning, Lin Yuexin," I said to the girl in the mirror, voice steady enough to pass a sobriety test. She said nothing back, but her lips curled just slightly, the old arrogance reasserting itself. It felt like a dare.
I straightened my spine, shoulders back, chin lifted just enough to convey that I would not be apologizing for my existence today. This was not muscle memory. This was discipline.
The dress I'd been meant to wear—ivory lace, with a neckline calculated to please an army of aunties—waited on its hanger. I eyed it with a mix of disgust and amusement, then made a mental note to let them think I would play along, for now.
One more moment in the mirror. I squared up to my reflection, matching its gaze. No more playing victim to the past. I would meet the future head-on, with open eyes and bare teeth if necessary.
I closed the compact, dusted off the faint debris of a former self, and set out to greet my new day.
The phone started buzzing the second I reached for the door. The screen flashed a familiar name, though the number had been scrubbed from my contacts after the first round of damage control. The old reflex: a clutch of dread, anticipation, a breath held in case it was my mother's assistant with yet another revision to the guest list or a new list of "reminders" before the engagement banquet. Instead, it was Mei Ruo. As ever, right on time to intervene in my emotional life.
I let it ring twice, savoring the suspense. Then I answered.
"Xin! Oh my god, you're awake, right?" Her voice was always half a shout, even when she was whispering through library stacks or church basements. "Tell me you're awake. Please don't tell me you're actually going through with this—"
"Mei-Mei." The nickname came to my lips unbidden, a fossil from the years when we'd lived attached at the hip, shuttling each other between study sessions and collective self-pity at the local café. I heard her breath stutter on the line. She was waiting for me to cry, or beg, or at least spiral into indecision. Not this time.
She launched in, barely pausing for punctuation: "Xin, listen to me, my cousin's friend from Shanghai said if you need to run, she can get you a train ticket by this afternoon. We can meet you at the South exit—no one checks ID on the local lines, I swear, and if you just—"
"Stop." My tone was sharp enough to slice through her monologue. It stunned her; I felt the aftershock. There was silence for two full beats. "I'm not running."
"But—" Mei Ruo fumbled, searching for an angle that could pierce whatever armor she imagined I'd constructed overnight. "You don't have to do this, okay? Nobody does arranged marriages anymore. You can just… leave! You always wanted to see Paris, right? I can call my aunt, she has those student connections—"
"I'm not going to Paris. I'm getting married." There, I'd said it. The words had once tasted like bile. Now, they tasted like strategy.
Mei Ruo was silent, recalibrating. I could practically hear the thoughts clattering in her head: This isn't the script. This isn't how my friend cries for help. "You don't sound like yourself," she finally said, voice pinched with suspicion and fear. "Did they drug you or something? Are you okay? Just tell me where you are, and—"
I smiled, which she couldn't see, but would have terrified her if she could. "I'm fine. I'm at home. And you're right—maybe I wasn't myself, before. But things are different now."
She didn't answer immediately. When she did, her voice was uncharacteristically small. "Is it… is it because of your parents? Did they threaten you?" Then, escalating in fury: "I knew it, those—"
"Mei-Mei." This time, the gentleness was deliberate. "My parents are who they are. But this isn't about them. It's about me. I'm choosing this."
There was a silence, but I could feel her eyes narrowing through the receiver. "You hated Gu Shenyan," she whispered. "Last semester you called him an 'ambulance-chasing egomaniac with the personality of a conference table.' You said he made you feel like glassware in a cabinet."
I remembered that. I remembered everything.
"Maybe I did," I said. "Maybe I still do. But I'd rather be glassware in a cabinet than chipped tea set on a garage sale table. I'm going to make this work, Mei. I have to."
Mei Ruo exhaled, shaky and unwilling. "Okay," she said, unconvinced. "But if you need anything—anything—promise you'll call."
I paused, letting her hang there. "I promise," I said. "But next time, you might want to check on Gu Shenyan instead."
A beat. "What does that mean?"
I hung up before I could answer, savoring the first clean break in our long, co-dependent script. I looked down at the phone. My hand was steady. The tremor, it seemed, was permanently gone.
The house had settled into the rhythm of late morning, quiet except for the distant clang of utensils and the occasional footstep in the corridor. I stayed in my room. For once, no one barged in to drag me to an early-morning beauty regimen or force me into a series of pre-nuptial self-improvement tasks. I wondered if my parents were plotting their own escape, or if they simply assumed their daughter was resigned to her fate. Either way, their absence left me alone with my arsenal.
The dressing table was no longer a vanity—it was a war desk. Spread across the lacquered surface were the relics of my impending wedding: cream-colored invitations embossed with the Gu family crest, longwinded letters from distant relatives dispensing "wisdom," and, most importantly, a sheaf of legal papers weighed down by the fountain pen my father had given me when I started university. He called it "a tool for adulthood." It felt more like a bayonet.
I sorted through the invitations first. Each one was a silent bell toll: announcing my fate, reminding me of the choreography to come. Names blurred past—second cousins, fourth-tier business partners, socialites so interchangeable their RSVPs barely needed to be checked. I set them aside, mind already drifting to more urgent matters.
The correspondence was next. Mostly bland, with occasional flashes of sincerity I recognized as attempts to probe for gossip. My favorite came from a distant aunt, who attached an entire page of aphorisms about marriage, then followed with "I trust you will uphold the family dignity." She might as well have said, "Don't embarrass us like you did last time." I smiled, then shredded it into strips and dropped them into the trash.
Then came the contract.
I lifted it carefully, as if it were radioactive. In a sense, it was. The document looked innocuous—fine rag paper, letterhead in tasteful blue, the opening lines written in flowery legalese: "In order to ensure the lasting alliance between the Lin and Gu families, it is agreed…" My vision tunneled as I scanned the first paragraphs, and suddenly the room dropped away, replaced by sharp flashes of memory.
I remembered the meetings: the Gu family's attorney, sharp-nosed and precise, never smiling unless it was to offer the illusion of mercy. My father, alternating between grandstanding and deference, never once looking at me when the terms were read aloud. My mother, fingers white on her pearl clutch, occasionally interjecting to request "gentle language" for anything that alluded to dissolution or scandal. I remembered signing on the line, the act so anticlimactic I'd almost laughed.
And then, the years after: every clause enforced like the bylaws of a secret society. Financial dependence baked into the structure, with my own assets managed by a trust administered by—who else—the Gu patriarch's hand-picked board. Behavioral stipulations: weekly reports to the Lin matriarch, "in the spirit of transparency and mutual respect." Escape clauses that only ever favored the groom's family, with punitive damages so extravagant even my own mother once called them "unseemly." The contract wasn't just a marriage agreement. It was a blueprint for captivity.
I read each clause again, line by line, feeling the old humiliation tighten around my ribs. I let it. Then I picked up the fountain pen.
The original document was sacred, untouchable. But this was a copy, one of many, as my father believed in redundancy above all else. I began marking it up, not with the hesitation of a girl fearful of censure, but with the ruthless clarity of someone who knew the traps firsthand. I crossed out entire paragraphs, scribbled notes in the margin:
— "No external employment for first year of marriage" became "Will pursue MBA full-time, at own discretion."
— "Joint property to be managed by designated financial advisors" became "Funds held in escrow, with equal signatory power."
— "All disputes to be settled by elders' committee" became "Mediation by neutral third party."
— "Dowry in lump sum, returnable on divorce for cause" became "Lump sum irrevocable; divorce terms subject to equal discovery."
With each edit, my breath came easier. The old contract crumpled under my palm; I let it, then smoothed the sheets with deliberate care. It was not a sacred text. It was a negotiation.
The room was silent except for the scratch of my pen. I wrote fast, letting the ink and adrenaline carry me. Each revision was a thumb in the eye to the ghosts of my last life.
When I finished, I set the pages aside and stared at my handiwork. I should have felt fear—at the audacity, the risk of open rebellion. Instead, a cold amusement crept in. I pictured my father's face when he saw my edits. I pictured Gu Shenyan, eyebrows arching in cool surprise. I pictured Guo Lian, already anticipating her own ascent, frozen in place by the fact that her target was suddenly no longer the hapless victim of a farce, but a moving, unpredictable mark.
I tapped the pen against my chin, then leaned back and let out a sound that was almost a laugh.
Not this time.
I rolled the words on my tongue, then spoke them aloud, letting the finality ring in the air: "This time, I make the rules."
The sunlight caught the edge of the mirror, flaring bright and harsh. I caught my own eyes in the glass, and for the first time in years, they looked unbreakable.
The new contract was still a rough draft, but it was a start. It was my start.
Let them try to take that away.