It has been forty-nine days since my car accident, and I have remained in a coma.

My soul floats in the air, watching my motionless body lying on the hospital bed. Though I can breathe on my own, and my pulse, body temperature, and blood pressure are normal, I have no ability to speak, think, or move. Medically, this state is called being a “vegetative person.”

Living like this… it’s better to just die.

I believe I’m not the only one who feels this way. I assumed the woman who I thought loved me deeply shared this same thought. She was my first love. To be with her, I had even started a family rebellion. Even though, due to various circumstances, I had to marry my ex-wife, she remained the most special person in my heart.

After my divorce and a series of twists and turns, we met again. This time, it wasn’t the wild, passionate love of our younger years. What I longed for was a deeper, lasting affection. I swore to give her the best life possible, to make her happier than any other woman.

Ah, Jasmine!

I cherished this beautiful flower so dearly. My body, my heart, my wealth—everything I had—I would offer it all in the palm of my hand for just a single tear from her.

I loved her so much!

On the day of the car accident, I had planned to propose to her. I had prepared flowers, a ring, and even a new home for us after the wedding. But just as I was feeling most triumphant, disaster struck from the heavens. In that moment, I couldn’t think of anything, except to use my body to protect her, trying my best to minimize the impact of the collision and prevent her from getting hurt.

I succeeded. She only had minor scrapes on her arm and thigh, but I suffered severe trauma to both my head and chest, leaving me in a coma.

When I regained consciousness, I found myself floating above, my soul separated from my body. My awareness hovered over my own form.

Jasmine was crying, her tears like delicate snowflakes falling from a branch. Even in her tears, she was so beautiful and graceful, her makeup tragically exquisite.

My heart ached for her. I desperately wanted to return to my body, crashing down from the air again and again, but it was all in vain.

“Jasmine, don’t cry. I’m still alive. I will wake up soon.”

I screamed anxiously, floating around her, but naturally, she couldn’t hear my voice.

At first, she came to the hospital every day to see me, crying her eyes out. But gradually, she stopped crying. Now, when friends or colleagues came to visit me, she would shed a few tears, but otherwise, she was busy with her iPad. Initially, I thought she was handling work matters, after all, she was my secretary at the company. With me in a coma, there must be a lot of work for her to take care of.

I was grateful for her dedication and felt sorry for her hard work.

But slowly, I began to sense that something was off. Rather than reading documents or answering emails, she seemed to spend more time chatting with someone online. Occasionally, she would even laugh out loud.

You have to understand, Jasmine was a professional and capable secretary at the company, always composed and serious. Only in front of me did she reveal her softer, more feminine side. But now, in front of her computer, she smiled sweetly, a flirtatiousness deep in her very bones.

One day, she received a phone call in the hospital room. I didn’t know who was on the other end, but from her soft and coquettish tone, I could tell it was definitely a man.

They flirted playfully, and the once-sweet lips I had adored so much now spewed sharp words that pierced my heart—

If a vegetative person even had a heart.

I was in pain, blankly watching her and this man plot to seize the shares of my company. I watched as she came to my hospital room day after day, putting on an act, pretending to be the heartbroken woman devastated by her lover’s coma—until one day, she got tired of it. She had a big argument with my brother, who rarely visited me.

My brother, Zongxin, though we share the same father, is my only remaining blood relative. We never had much of a relationship. When he needed money, I would impatiently give him some pocket change.

He only ever called me “brother” when he needed my financial help, and we both knew it.

Zongxin came to the hospital, not really to visit me, but to find Jasmine. He wanted her to organize the necessary documents and hold an emergency board meeting so he could act on my behalf and wield my shares.

My father had built his business from the ground up, starting with a small traditional parts factory and gradually expanding. Now, the company produces various types of heavy precision machinery, renowned for its quality and performance.

After my father’s death, he left all his shares to me. This had always frustrated Zongxin, but what could he do? He was reckless and irresponsible, constantly getting into trouble, while I had always been the outstanding, capable brother.

Zongxin must have been planning to take advantage of my coma to call a board meeting and remove me as CEO, seizing control of the company.

Jasmine paid him no attention, mocking him with disdain. After a heated argument, Zongxin left, and Jasmine immediately called that mysterious man.

Neither Zongxin nor Jasmine glanced at me lying in the hospital bed. To them, I was probably no longer relevant—better off dead and gone.

If I still had a heart, it would surely have shattered by now. I no longer wanted to see them, and they granted my wish by no longer visiting, no longer putting on their nauseating display of affection.

Day after day, the only thing accompanying me was the monitor, with its precise readouts proving that I was still alive.

Alive, but better off dead.

To be honest, I had lost the will to live. Better to die than to continue staring at my ever-thinning body day after day.

It seemed the heavens heard my wish, because on the twenty-seventh day of my coma, my breathing suddenly became erratic, and the hospital issued a critical condition notice.

Jasmine, Zongxin, and even my stepmother, whom I hadn’t seen in ages, rushed to my bedside, crying and shouting. But I saw the greed in their eyes, barely concealed.

They were calculating how much of my estate I would leave behind…

I survived once more. After emergency treatment, my vitals returned to normal. I watched as Jasmine’s beautiful face froze, and I no longer felt any heartache.

After the medical staff left, I heard Jasmine murmur softly, “Why hasn’t he died yet? How much longer is this going to take?”

Before long, I was left alone in the room once again.

I thought that was it. No one would care about me anymore, whether I lived or died. I planned to live out my days without a heart or soul…

But then, she came.

After everyone else had left, after even the ones closest to me abandoned me, she quietly slipped into the hospital room, standing beside the bed, gazing at me in a daze.

She was my ex-wife. I had always seen her as a burden in my life, and from the day we married, I wished I could get rid of her.

I never loved her. I married her only because I slept with her after a drunken night, she got pregnant, and my seriously ill father, threatening to die, forced me to marry her.

I always believed that the reason I ended up in bed with her that night was because she drugged my drink. She had always wanted to cling to me, as her father’s business had failed, and she needed my family to help pay off their debts.

I hated her!

She was the reason I had to let down Jasmine; she shattered a young man’s most precious first love.

After we got married, I refused to touch her and subjected her to emotional coldness. Perhaps the oppressive atmosphere at home became too much for her, and she had a miscarriage.

She was devastated by the loss of the child, but I couldn’t stand her daily self-pity and sorrow. Every time I looked at her, I was reminded of the lost child. And now, without the baby, what was left to bind us together?

I asked for a divorce.

She refused.

Her reason was that she couldn’t bear to hurt her family and didn’t want to worry my ailing father. Enraged, I grabbed whatever was on the desk and threw it in a fit of anger, and when I came to my senses, I saw blood trickling down her forehead.

I panicked and didn’t know how to face her, so I turned and left.

I never brought up the divorce again until three years later, when my father passed away, and her father, having remarried, left with his new wife to rebuild his fortune in Vietnam. She finally signed the divorce papers and placed them on my desk.

She declined the alimony I offered and quietly left on her own. I thought we’d never see each other again.

But why is she here now?

“Zong Yue,” she softly murmured, gazing at my pale, emaciated face. “You never imagined you’d end up like this, did you?”

Betrayed by everyone, left alone and desolate—I truly hadn’t imagined it would come to this.

She reached out and gently touched my dry, cracked lips. Only then did I realize how gaunt and frail she had become. Her face, devoid of any makeup, appeared even more haggard than mine.

“Zong Yue, do you not want to live anymore?”

No, I didn’t want to live.

“Don’t be like this. You were once so proud and handsome. You can live a carefree life.”

Proud and handsome?

I stared blankly as she sat down, carefully using a cotton swab to moisten my lips. She didn’t mind the exhaustion or the mess, tenderly massaging my stiff body inch by inch. She quietly watched my sleeping face and, without a sound, let a tear fall.

That was the first genuine tear I had seen since falling into a coma.

It felt like a burn inside my chest, a faint but undeniable pain, enough to remind me that I was still alive.

I was alive.

Every two days, she would come to the hospital to see me, silently bathing me, wiping my body, combing my hair, massaging me. She performed all those tedious tasks that even professional caregivers might not have the patience for.

“You need to wake up, Zong Yue. Keep going,” she gently encouraged me.

I didn’t understand why she was being so kind to me. How could she? I had never spoken a kind word to her, never shown her a friendly face.

I had only ever given her disdain, coldness, and humiliation.

During those three years of marriage, I saw it as a stain on my life—being forced to marry a woman I didn’t love. I felt wronged.

But she, when everyone else had abandoned me and secretly hoped I would die completely, stayed by my side, slowly piecing my shattered heart back together.

Her name was Zhong Xinkuo, with the nickname “Yuanyuan.”

She wasn’t round at all. She was so thin it was unsettling. What kind of life had she been living all these years? How had she become so frail?

At that moment, I began to hate myself. How had I never thought to inquire about her, to ask how she was doing?

Yuanyuan, Yuanyuan…

“Let’s make a deal!”

On the forty-ninth day of my coma, the death god responsible for my soul approached me with a proposition. He said that, according to the Book of Life and Death, I was supposed to remain comatose like this until, ninety days later, I would stop breathing for good.

But he was willing to give me ninety days of clear consciousness, where I could move freely, if I agreed to donate half of my wealth to a specific orphanage of his choosing.

I agreed.

I exchanged half of my fortune for ninety days of freedom. Even though I would still die at the end of it, at least in those ninety days, I could do whatever I wanted.

I could take care of Yuanyuan, feed her properly, and make her plump and lovable again. And then, I would find her a good man, someone better than me, someone kinder, someone who would treasure and protect her the way she deserved. That man would give her the happiness I couldn’t.

I now had ninety days, the last of my life.

Because of that one true tear from Yuanyuan, I decided that, for the next ninety days, I would live for her.