Epilogue
Three years later, Xue Zhenzhen was dying.
In those three years, my parents had gone to see her at first.
But she had remained half-mad the entire time—spitting curses at me and at them, drowning in hatred and insults.
Gradually, they stopped going.
Only I visited occasionally.
A year earlier, Lin Xiangsheng had finally died.
Now it was Xue Zhenzhen’s turn.
When I arrived, she lay on the bed, skin and bone, eyes dull and cloudy.
Seeing Shang Zhiyuan and me enter hand in hand—seeing the way he cared for me—something fierce flared in her dead eyes.
“Bitch… Bitch!”
She cursed again and again, insisting she was the author.
“So what?” I said flatly.
Xue Zhenzhen froze.
Then her face twisted.
“I’m the author! I should have been the female lead! I should be the center of the world! I should have everyone’s favor!”
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”
“This world is real. No one is the female lead. No one is the center.”
I stood beside Shang Zhiyuan and looked down at her, cold and calm.
“Xue Zhenzhen, all you can do now is lie here and wait for death.”
Her pupils contracted.
She glared at me, throat rasping, reaching out with a withered hand.
Then her hand fell.
The light in her eyes went out—still unwilling, still unsatisfied.
“It’s over,” I said.
Outside, the world had turned white with snow.
Shang Zhiyuan pulled out the cloak he had prepared and draped it over my shoulders.
Yes.
It was over.
I lifted my hand and caught a drifting snowflake.
Heaven and earth were white—covering everything.
“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s go home. We’ll have hotpot.”
In the snow, two sets of footprints stretched out side by side.
From now on, there were no more shackles.