“Ouch…”  

Zhou Qiqiu was sound asleep when she suddenly felt a burning pain on her back, as if she had taken a hard fall.  

Dazed, she opened her eyes and found herself in a dimly lit bathroom.  

A man stood at the door, looking down at her.  

He had just finished showering, a towel casually draped over his shoulder. Beads of water trailed down his well-defined chest muscles, converging into tiny streams along the ridges of his abs, darkening the military-green polyester fabric of his pants.  

On his waist, a fierce old scar lurked, rising and falling with his breath.  

“You…”  

The man’s thin lips pressed into a tight line, his Adam’s apple bobbing heavily in the shadows, his cold eyes glinting like frost.  

Zhou Qiqiu felt her nose grow warm. She swallowed hard and, as if possessed, reached out a hand.  

“A virtuous woman like me who’s done good deeds all her life deserves to dream of such a top-tier man!”  

But the moment her fingers touched his icy skin, the door behind her slammed open with a loud bang.  

Instinctively, she burrowed into the man’s arms, only to hear a shrill shriek from behind.  

First, a man’s voice: “Zhou Qiqiu! You’re my Xu family’s child bride—how dare you cling to another man like this?”  

Then a woman’s voice: “Shen Huaichuan! You… you… weren’t you here to file a marriage report with me? What are you doing?!”  

What the hell?  

Zhou Qiqiu turned to look at the door and saw a man and a woman standing there, howling like ghosts.  

One wore a dark blue work uniform, the other an outdated floral dress.  

Behind them, a crowd of onlookers pointed and whispered, their eyes full of disdain.  

This dream… was way too intense.  

In this dream, she was actually a married woman?  

And she’d been “caught in bed” with someone else? This was beyond ridiculous!  

She shook her head, trying to wake herself up, but an overwhelming sense of grief suddenly surged in her chest.  

Then, a flood of memories that didn’t belong to her rushed into her mind.  

The memories came too suddenly—she didn’t have time to process them before her vision went dark, and she passed out.  

Just before losing consciousness, she felt a pair of strong arms scoop her up.  

……  

When she woke again, it was already the next morning.  

The setting was no longer the hotel but a hospital reeking of disinfectant.  

After being unconscious for so long, Zhou Qiqiu had mostly pieced together what had happened.  

Last night wasn’t a dream.  

After pulling an all-nighter, she had transmigrated into the body of a woman with the same name in the year 1982.  

Zhou Qiqiu was a child from a blended family—unloved by her father and neglected by her mother. She had grown up fiercely independent, with an adaptability that was second to none.  

Knowing that self-pity was useless and that living well in the present was what mattered most, she quickly accepted the original owner’s memories.  

After learning about the original owner’s life, she wanted to carve the word “TRAGIC” on her forehead.  

To be fair, the original owner had a relatively happy childhood at first.  

Her mother was a village schoolteacher, and her father was a hunter. Both parents doted on her endlessly.  

But when she was seven, her parents fell seriously ill one after another, and there were no other relatives to rely on.  

On her deathbed, her mother entrusted her to the neighboring Xu family, along with all the Zhou family’s possessions.  

The original owner moved into the Xu household, becoming the child bride of the eldest Xu son, Xu Shu, who was five years her senior.  

At first, out of gratitude for the Zhou family’s assets, the Xu family treated her decently.  

But the Xu family had many children, and the work points they earned weren’t enough to feed so many mouths.  

Gradually, Mr. and Mrs. Xu’s attitudes changed.  

They treated her like a servant, making her cook for the whole family and dumping all the heavy labor on her.  

The slightest mistake would earn her beatings and scoldings—sometimes they even withheld food.  

Luckily, Xu Shu was kind to her. He often sneaked her food, took her fishing, and caught cicadas with her.  

Seven years passed like this. When Xu Shu turned nineteen, he was recruited by a provincial construction team and left for the city.  

At first, he would come home during holidays.

But later, as the construction team moved around for projects, he traveled all over the place. Aside from occasionally sending money home, he never returned.  

By the time the original owner turned eighteen, Mrs. Xu was eager for them to marry and have children. She wrote over a dozen letters to Xu Shu, but he kept putting it off, claiming he was too busy.  

This dragged on until the original owner turned twenty. Unable to wait any longer, Mrs. Xu sent her on a long journey to find Xu Shu—with the explicit demand that she return pregnant.  

After a difficult trip, the original owner finally located Xu Shu and arranged to meet at a hotel.  

But who could’ve guessed that night, she walked into the wrong room and was publicly “caught in bed” with another man?  

Humiliated by the scandal, the original owner felt she was “tainted” and proposed calling off the engagement with Xu Shu.  

Instead, Xu Shu, acting as her family, pressured the other man to take responsibility for her.  

Coincidentally, that man had also come to the hotel to meet his fiancée.  

After witnessing the scene, his fiancée called off their engagement.  

The man agreed to marry the original owner but said he still had unfinished missions. He left her a letter and his military ID, telling her to find him at his army unit.  

For thirteen years, the original owner had seen Xu Shu as the only light in her life. She couldn’t accept this outcome.  

Overwhelmed by shame and anger, she took her own life.  

And that was when Zhou Qiqiu transmigrated into her body.  

Perhaps due to temporal fluctuations, she arrived slightly earlier—right at the moment of the “scandal”—but the situation remained largely unchanged.  

After she fainted, the other parties involved had already settled the matter without her.  

Now, after sleeping through the night, the military officer was gone. Only Xu Shu remained by her hospital bed, waiting to explain things before sending her off to the army.  

“Qiqiu, you’re awake! How do you feel? Does your head still hurt?”  

Seeing her eyelids flutter, Xu Shu immediately leaned in with concern.  

Zhou Qiqiu opened her eyes and stared straight at Xu Shu.  

After seven years apart, he was much fairer than she remembered. He wore a brand-new dacron shirt, his short hair slicked back with pomade. His peach-blossom eyes tilted slightly upward, their hazy, misty gaze making him look perpetually affectionate.  

No wonder the original owner had been fooled by his pretty-boy act.  

She really thought she was the one who had wronged Xu Shu.  

But while the original owner was blinded by love, Zhou Qiqiu saw right through him.  

Last night, both she and that man had gone to the hotel to meet their respective partners—one in room 6, the other in room 9.  

She had the key to room 9 but somehow opened room 6’s door.  

The man had been showering when someone bumped into her as she entered, sending her crashing into him.  

And just then, Xu Shu and the man’s fiancée showed up, witnessing everything.  

How could there be so many coincidences?  

Moreover, she clearly remembered seeing Xu Shu standing suspiciously close to the other man’s fiancée—their hands nearly touching.  

This was 1982. Even in a crowd, unmarried men and women wouldn’t stand that close unless they were involved.  

She suspected they knew each other. But suspicion alone wasn’t enough.  

“I’m fine,” she said softly. “Just a little thirsty.”  

“I’ll get you water!”  

Xu Shu hurriedly poured warm water from a thermos into an enamel cup.  

Parched after a night without drinking, Zhou Qiqiu took the cup and sipped slowly but continuously.  

Xu Shu mistook her silence for guilt and took her free hand reassuringly.  

“Qiqiu, no one wanted this to happen. We grew up together—don’t I know you better than anyone? I won’t hold it against you. Even after you marry, I’ll still be your family, your brother. I’ve even prepared your dowry…”  

Zhou Qiqiu pulled her hand away in disgust but caught sight of a black “telephone cord” hair tie on Xu Shu’s left wrist.  

She’d seen these in a fashion magazine before transmigrating. In the early 80s, right after China’s economic reform, these elastic hair ties had just made their way from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the mainland. They were expensive—costing at least one yuan each, enough to buy over six pounds of grain.  

Not something an average person could afford.  

And unless she was mistaken, the woman standing beside Xu Shu last night had been wearing the exact same hair tie!  

So not only did they know each other, but that woman was likely subtly marking her territory.  

A mischievous smirk curled Zhou Qiqiu’s lips as she tugged Xu Shu’s sleeve, feigning delight.  

“That’s great, Brother Xu! Since you don’t mind, let’s get married!”  

(Don’t worry, folks—she won’t actually stick with this scumbag.)