Chapter 3: Lipstick Stain

The air was stagnant for a few seconds before Lu Jin’s voice finally broke the silence.

“Why do you want a divorce? Because of last night?”

Xu En’tang lifted her gaze and looked straight at Lu Jin. A trace of lingering tenderness still flickered in her eyes, mingling with a rare clarity and sincerity.

“Did you marry me because you liked me?”

Lu Jin frowned slightly, remaining silent for a moment.

Xu En’tang curled her lips faintly, almost amused.

Why did she even bother asking?

The crease between Lu Jin’s brows deepened. “I don’t agree to the divorce.”

Xu En’tang didn’t say anything.

Just then, Lu Jin’s phone rang.

She moved to get up from his embrace.

Lu Jin grabbed her arm. “Where are you going?”

Xu En’tang replied calmly, “Aren’t you going to answer your phone?”

The two remained in a standoff. The ringing phone was the only sound in the room.

When the call eventually went to voicemail, the silence was fleeting—until the phone started ringing again.

After a brief pause, Lu Jin released Xu En’tang’s arm and picked up his phone, his frustration evident.

Xu En’tang glanced at the caller ID.

It was one of his childhood friends.

Lu Jin answered, his tone sharp. “You better have a damn good reason for calling me.”

Now free from his grasp, Xu En’tang got up, casually picking up a piece of clothing and draping it over herself.

Just as she was about to leave, she vaguely caught the name—Zhao Man.

Her fingers hesitated for a fraction of a second.

The voice on the other end of the call did most of the talking.

After a few brief exchanges, Lu Jin hung up and reached for his shirt.

Xu En’tang’s voice remained steady. “Are you going out?”

Lu Jin gave her a deep look. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

The moment he left, the composure Xu En’tang had been struggling to maintain finally crumbled. Tears slipped down her face.

She should have known. There were so many people who liked Lu Jin—how could a man like him ever truly change?

And even if he did, it wouldn’t be for her.

That night, Xu En’tang had many dreams, all about Lu Jin.

She dreamed of the first time they met.

They were twelve years old, at her grandfather’s funeral.

She couldn’t accept that the man who had cherished her was gone. But she didn’t want her grandmother to see her grief and feel even worse, so she ran off to sit alone on a bench in a nearby park.

Not far away, a boy in a white T-shirt was talking on the phone. His accent wasn’t local, and he carried himself with a kind of defiant arrogance.

“You think I wanted to come to this godforsaken place? The old man insisted on dragging me here.”

Xu En’tang wanted to argue. Licheng was not a godforsaken place.

Her grandparents were here.

The thought of her grandfather made her eyes well up with tears.

Not long after, she noticed a white T-shirt appear in her peripheral vision.

“What was your name again? Xu something Tang?”

Xu En’tang looked up. It was the boy.

Choking back her tears, she asked, “Do you know me?”

He replied, “Your grandma is looking for you.”

Xu En’tang suddenly remembered—some of her grandfather’s old friends had brought their grandchildren from Beicheng for the funeral.

“Could you tell her I’ll be back soon? She doesn’t need to worry.”

“Got it.”

The boy walked away, and as soon as he was gone, Xu En’tang couldn’t hold back her sobs.

But just a few minutes later, he returned.

Xu En’tang wiped her tears and looked at him in confusion.

He stood in front of her without saying a word, tapped his phone a few times, and made a call, putting it on speaker.

A voice soon came through.

“Hey, A’Jin, you already miss me after just one call?”

The boy lifted his gaze to Xu En’tang, then turned the phone toward her and said to the person on the other end, “Tell a joke.”

He was trying to cheer her up.

This was the beginning of her downfall.

“Tangtang… Tangtang?”

Half-asleep, Xu En’tang heard a voice calling her. She groggily woke up.

Seeing the person in front of her, she froze for a moment.

Lu Jin’s grandmother?

Madam Lu smiled kindly. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost there?”

Xu En’tang instinctively turned to look out the car window.

The winding mountain road was shrouded in darkness, illuminated only by scattered lights—this was near Fuyuan.

Madam Lu said warmly, “It’s been a long journey. Get some good rest tonight.”

Xu En’tang struggled to process the situation.

Why was she in this car?

Just as she was about to ask, she suddenly realized something was off—Madam Lu looked much younger than she remembered.

Then, her gaze shifted to the car’s display screen.

The date read August 26th.

It was clearly spring now—April.

Yet, the year displayed on the screen was from ten years ago.

A malfunctioning display wasn’t impossible.

Everything felt strange. Just as Xu En’tang was about to ask, the car came to a stop.

Fuyuan had arrived.

The driver got out and opened the door.

Madam Lu said, “Let’s go.”

Her legs weren’t in the best condition, and out of habit, Xu En’tang reached out to support her.

As she stepped out of the car, she caught sight of the driver unloading a suitcase from the trunk.

It looked incredibly familiar.

It was one she had used before.

Then, recalling the date on the screen—August 26th—Xu En’tang suddenly froze in place.

This scene… it looked exactly like the day she first arrived in Beicheng.

How was this possible?

Seeing her stop abruptly, Madam Lu called out, “Tangtang?”

Xu En’tang snapped back to reality and tentatively asked, “Am I going to live here from now on?”

Madam Lu patted her hand reassuringly. “Just treat this as your home.”

Whether this was a dream or reality, Xu En’tang didn’t want to walk into Fuyuan like she had ten years ago—didn’t want to meet Lu Jin again.

But she was already at the doorstep, and she had nowhere else to go in Beicheng.

“…Let’s go.”

Meeting Madam Lu’s affectionate gaze, Xu En’tang finally stepped up the stairs.

Madam Lu, drained from the trip, gave her a few instructions before heading off to rest.

The one who led Xu En’tang to her room was Aunt Zhou.

Everything was exactly the same as she remembered, down to the very room she had stayed in.

Once Aunt Zhou left, Xu En’tang checked again and again.

This wasn’t a dream.

She had truly been reborn.

Reborn on the very day the Lu and Tan families had brought her to Beicheng.

Her grandfather had been a close friend of the patriarchs of both the Lu and Tan families.

The three had met when they were sent to the countryside during their youth.

Her grandfather had passed away when she was twelve.

Four years later, her grandmother followed.

Before she passed, her grandmother entrusted Xu En’tang to the care of the Lu and Tan families.

And so, at sixteen, Xu En’tang was brought to Beicheng.

Both families wanted her to live with them, and it was said that the two old men nearly argued over it.

At the time, they had called to ask for her opinion, but Xu En’tang didn’t have a preference. She simply said, “Either is fine.”

In the end, they decided she would alternate between the two households, staying two months at a time.

And from the moment she moved into Fuyuan, she had been following Lu Jin’s footsteps ever since.

Yet fate had brought her back to this exact moment.

If she had returned just a little earlier, she would have chosen to stay with the Tan family.

If it had been two months earlier, she could have seen her grandmother one last time.

On the first night of her rebirth, Xu En’tang couldn’t sleep.

Thinking of her grandparents, thinking of Lu Jin—she was overwhelmed with emotions and cried.

Tossing and turning until the early hours, unable to fall asleep, she finally left her room.

Madam Lu was from the south, and Fuyuan was designed as a replica of her ancestral garden, embodying the essence of Jiangnan-style landscaping.

Within Fuyuan, there was a pond filled with water lilies—Xu En’tang’s favorite place.

As she approached the pond, she saw a tall, slender figure standing there.

It was Lu Jin.

He was wearing a white T-shirt, standing under the lamplight, head lowered as he looked at his phone.

That long-lost aura of youthful recklessness made him look just like he did when they first met.

The moment Xu En’tang stopped in her tracks, Lu Jin lifted his gaze.

What he saw was a delicate girl in a white nightdress, her eyes red, looking fragile under the moonlight.

It was as if he was trying to place her, thinking for a long moment before he finally spoke. “Xu En’tang?”

Xu En’tang noticed the faint smudge of red on his collar—subtle yet glaring.

A lipstick stain.

In her past life, she only learned later that the day she arrived in Beicheng was also the day Lu Jin and Zhao Man broke up—the day Zhao Man left the country.

He had gone to see her off.

That lipstick mark was left by Zhao Man.

A pang of bitterness swelled in Xu En’tang’s heart.

Since fate had given her a second chance, she wouldn’t let herself sink any deeper this time.

“Staying up late isn’t good for your brain.”

She tossed out the remark indifferently and turned to leave.

Lu Jin: ?