My husband was a transmigrator. The System had sent him into this novel to pursue the designated female lead, but he fell in love at first sight with me, her best friend.

After we got together, the System tried to tear us apart by engineering a car accident meant for me.

I was burned. Disfigured. Fitted with a catheter bag. I would never stand again.

Even so, my husband still loved me.

So the System bankrupted him.

Without money, he took care of me himself.

During the hardest stretch, he survived on a single bread roll over three days, yet made sure I received IV nutrient bags that cost three thousand dollars each.

It broke my heart. I tried to kill myself.

After they brought me back, he held me and sobbed so hard he could barely breathe.

"Cat, I can't live without you. If you die, I won't go on either."

For his sake, I threw myself into physical therapy. The progress was almost nonexistent.

Still, I believed that one day I would get better.

Until the day Polly Drake came to visit me, and I accidentally took a few too many pills.

He snapped.

He grabbed a bottle of pills and shoved them into my mouth.

"I already told you there's nothing between her and me. Why do you keep making a scene?"

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have lost everything. You want to die so badly? Fine. Then go ahead and die!"

After forcing the entire bottle down my throat, he stormed out and slammed the door.

His System appeared before me. It said he had already fallen in love with the female lead and asked whether I was willing to die so they could be together.

I thought about it for a moment.

"Yes."

——

The System froze for a few seconds, then spoke. "I didn't actually mean for you to die. You must have felt it too—all Neville feels for you now is obligation. If you're willing, I can send you to another world and give you a new body."

"Stop," I said. "Just give me a way out."

The moment the words left my mouth, a fruit knife appeared in my hand.

I was about to plunge it into my chest when the bedroom door swung open.

Neville Stephens had come back.

First, he pried my mouth open and dug out the pills.

I hid the knife while he wasn't looking.

Then he brought over a basin of water and brushed my teeth, washed my face, wiped down my body.

Before, he would have kissed me while he cleaned me up, murmuring, Your husband was mean to you today. I'm so sorry.

But this time, after he finished everything, he turned off the light, lay down on the cot beside my bed with his back to me, and took out his phone. He didn't say a single word.

In the darkness, I turned my head to look at him.

"Neville."

The instant I called his name, a voice rang out from his phone—

"Neville, today I..."

He silenced it quickly, but I had already heard.

The message was from Polly Drake. The designated female lead of this world. Neville's assigned target.

I didn't know which world Neville had come from, but the very first time I met him, he confessed his feelings.

He told me he was from another world, that he had been sent here to pursue Polly. But I was too beautiful, he said. He liked me too much. So he wanted to give up on Polly and come after me instead.

At the time, I thought it was a joke.

It wasn't until Neville and I were actually together—married—that his System appeared inside my mind.

It told me that if I gave Neville up, it could guarantee me a happy marriage, a successful career, and a long life.

I refused without hesitation. The next second, the car accident happened, and I became this wreck of a person.

Remembering what the System had said earlier, I couldn't help myself. "Neville, have you fallen in love with Polly?"

The room went quiet for a few seconds. Then Neville suddenly sat up.

Just as I thought he was about to say something, he took his phone and walked out of the bedroom.

The door did nothing to block sound. I heard Polly on the other end of the line, begging him for help.

"Neville, I had a little too much to drink tonight. Can you come pick me up?"

Neville said something in a low voice, but I couldn't make it out.

By the time he walked back into the room, he was fully dressed.

"Cat, something came up at work. Go ahead and sleep."

The excuse was pathetic.

Ever since the System bankrupted him, nearly every door had been slammed in Neville's face. To make money, he'd had no choice but to take a construction diver job doing manual labor on-site. That kind of work only required twelve hours during the day. No overtime. On top of that, I needed to be turned over every two hours at night, so Neville had never once gone out after dark.

By the time I came back to my senses, I had no idea how long he'd been gone.

I pulled the knife from under my pillow.

It was a System-issued product, after all. The blade looked razor-sharp. It should slice through my artery in no time.

When I'd had my car accident, I woke up to a diagnosis of spinal cord injury. I couldn't move anything except my head and my hands. After three years of rehab, I could barely sit up on my own and manage a wheelchair by myself.

I'd been planning to surprise Neville on his birthday with that progress. Now it didn't matter anymore.

Dying in bed would be messy. Neville would probably have to clean up for a long time.

I forced myself upright and into the wheelchair, then rolled into the bathroom.

I took out the knife, pressed it against my wrist, and cut.

The bathroom light flicked on, illuminating Neville's ashen face.

"Catherine, what are you doing?"

Before I could react, the knife was wrenched from my hand.

The next second, Neville's palm cracked hard across my face.

"You're insane! What did I ever do to you for you to do this to me?"

His voice was sharp as a blade, but his eyes were bloodshot.

He flew into a rage, smashing everything in the bathroom to pieces. When the fury finally drained out of him, he came to stand in front of me. He crouched down and looked into my eyes.

"Why?"

There was perfume on him. The exact same scent Polly had been wearing when she visited me earlier that day.

I thought about it for a moment, then spoke. "Did you go see Polly?"

Neville froze. After a long silence, he admitted it. "Is that what this is about?"

"Catherine, can you stop being jealous over nothing? I already told you there's nothing between us. I went to see her because—"

"Neville." I cut him off. "Just let me die. I want it to be over."

His face went rigid.

A few seconds passed. Then he said okay.

Just when I thought he agreed that this life was a kind of torture, he suddenly grabbed the knife off the floor, shoved it back into my hand, and pressed my grip against his chest, right over his heart.

"You want to die? I'll grant your wish. But only if you kill me first."

I was terrified. I tried to pull my hand back.

"Neville, let go."

"You're not the only one suffering, Catherine. You think taking care of you isn't hard on me?" His strength was frightening. I could feel the blade's tip breaking through his skin. "You want to die? Fine. We die together."

Something warm and wet soaked my hand.

My entire heart felt like it was being crushed in a fist.

Seconds later, I broke down sobbing. "I was wrong, Neville. I won't do it. I won't die. I won't."

The knife clattered to the floor. Blood seeped through the front of Neville's shirt.

A few minutes later, he seemed to regain his composure. He reached out and stroked my hair, and then, completely out of nowhere, said, "Cat, will you stay with me for one more birthday?"

Neville's birthday was three days away.

After that night, he gathered up every sharp object in the house. Even the plates and bowls were swapped out for plastic ones.

He still took care of me, same as before. But he rarely spoke to me anymore. Most of the time, he just sat there scrolling through his phone, typing away at conversations I wasn't part of.

He still went to work during the day and stayed with me at night.

The difference was that before, he'd actually been going to work. Now, he was spending his days with Polly.

Polly's social media had been updated constantly over the past few days. There were posts of Neville picking her up after work, the two of them at an amusement park, and photos of them checking in at a couples' restaurant.

In the pictures, the corners of Neville's mouth curved upward, showing those familiar little canines of his.

I stared at those photos for a long time, because I could no longer remember what Neville looked like when he smiled at me.

The night before his birthday, Neville came home very late.

He'd had too much to drink, and Polly had brought him back.

The bedroom door was open, so I could see everything happening in the living room.

I watched Polly help him out of his jacket and carefully wipe his face with a warm towel.

Neville kept mumbling, "Nobody better bully my Polly. I can drink for her."

Polly laughed softly. "Okay, okay. Polly's drinks are all yours. And so is Polly."

Neville murmured something in reply, too low for me to hear.

It must have been something sweet, because Polly smiled so happily.

After getting Neville settled, Polly actually came into my room.

She saw that I was awake and froze for a moment, then glanced back at Neville on the couch. She understood instantly that I'd seen everything.

"Cat, don't get the wrong idea. I have a competition tomorrow. You know how the people in the company are—they love throwing these pep-rally parties before a show. Neville was worried I'd be off my game tomorrow, so he took my drinks for me."

Polly and I had been friends since childhood.

We'd learned ballet together, gotten into the same dance academy, and after graduation, joined the same company.

I knew which competition she was talking about. It was the biggest ballet competition in the country. Place well, and you'd secure the position of principal dancer. If you were lucky, you might even get scouted by a top international company.

If not for the accident three years ago, I would have been on that stage this year too.

Polly seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she'd just ripped open an old wound.

She turned off the light and lay down on the cot where Neville usually slept.

"Cat, Neville drank too much tonight, so let me take care of you instead. If you need anything, just call for me."

I murmured a quiet acknowledgment.

I thought the night would simply pass like that. Then Polly spoke again.

"Catherine. Have you ever thought about dying?"

My breath caught.

Polly continued. "You know, right? Neville was supposed to be with me. If he were with me, he'd be incredibly successful—rich, everything going his way. He wouldn't have to live the way he does now."

"Do you know what he does on those job sites? He's a construction diver."

My heart lurched.

A construction diver. One of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The work meant descending into deep shafts to retrieve dropped drill bits, except the shafts weren't filled with water—they were filled with mud. The only thing keeping them alive was a single oxygen line.

One wrong move, or one person with bad intentions, and they'd never come back up.

When I didn't respond, Polly's voice turned sharp.

"Catherine, do you understand? Neville told me he loves me, but because of you, he can't be with me. So could you just go ahead and die? Stop clinging to him."

The System had told me the same thing.

Even though I'd heard it before, the pain tore through my chest all over again.

I knew how exhausted Neville was, taking care of me.

I knew Neville would be so much better off without me.

Most importantly, I knew Neville didn't love me anymore.

So when Polly said she could get me sleeping pills, I nodded through my tears.

The next morning, Polly tucked a full bottle of sleeping pills under my pillow and slipped out before Neville woke up.