The dim basement.

The woman curled up, her face pale as paper.

After freezing all night, I touched the iron chain tied around my neck, and my head throbbed with pain. Even my right artificial eye ached intensely. My vision began to blur.

"Guess who Xie Rui will choose?"

Shen Jiao Jiao looked at me with cold eyes. Despite her pale complexion, she couldn't hide her satisfaction.

"I heard you accompanied him for ten years?"

Even through the monitor screen, I could see the fear and unease in Xie Rui's eyes. When he shouted "Shen Jiao Jiao," I silently lowered my head and covered my chest.

I forced a smile, pulling at the corners of my lips, but inside my heart, it felt like a deep wound, filled with chilling winds.

Shen Jiao Jiao touched her protruding belly and chuckled softly. "Why is it that as soon as I appear, he abandons you?"

I laughed along but tears welled up in my eyes.

"He's despicable."

"So are you. Back then, you were eager to torment him, wishing he would die, afraid of bringing shame to the Shen family."

"Now that he's successful, he sneaks back like a coward."

The woman's face turned red with anger, and she raised her hand, delivering a crisp slap.

Shen Jiao Jiao was Xie Rui's predestined fiancée, and she was the one who led the bullying and abuse against him when he fell out of favor.

The once proud and arrogant Xie Rui, now reduced to mud, was even trampled upon by his childhood sweetheart, Qing Mei. Xie Rui's heart turned cold, and he disregarded morality and law. After Shen Jiao Jiao returned to the country, he had her kidnapped and tortured to death, only to die himself while holding her ashes in the harsh winter.

But the young Xie Rui wasn't like that.

That day, when I inexplicably transmigrated into this book, it was at the moment when Xie Rui was being crushed under Shen Jiao Jiao's fingers, barely clinging to life at the alley entrance. His face was sickly pale, and I was shocked by the surging ruthlessness in his eyes, realizing that he would embark on an irreversible path.

In addition to the task assigned by the system in my mind—to redeem the male lead—I thought it over and brought him home.

I taught him kindness, helped him avoid enemies, and knelt down to apologize on his behalf.

I watched him emerge from the darkness, rise against the odds. I thought the task would soon be over, and I even revealed my identity, contemplating staying with him in this world.

But then, Shen Jiao Jiao appeared, and the young man I held dear immediately abandoned our ten years together. Anyone with eyes could see that this kidnapping was orchestrated by Shen Jiao Jiao, yet Xie Rui refused to gamble with her life.

How absurd. The malicious childhood sweetheart who once pushed him into the abyss became the silent support that sustained him throughout my years of care and redemption.

It turns out I was just an NPC living in my own delusion.

In the surveillance camera, Xie Rui lowered his head and spoke to Shen Jiao Jiao, his expression appearing devout and focused.

"As long as you're safe."

"Don't worry about Li Zhi. She's a transmigrator. She can't die."

It's true that when someone is heartbroken to the extreme, they can't cry. The immense regret and pain in my heart rendered me speechless, and my vision gradually blurred. In the last moments before my consciousness faded away, an ethereal electronic sound echoed in my mind.

"Due to the host's accidental death, time reversal initiated..."

I regretted it.

Back then, he should have died in that alley.