NovelNext Chapter 2: So This Is How Much He Hates Me
Chapter 2: So This Is How Much He Hates Me
The red candles from our wedding night were still burning when Percy Sullivan shattered the ceremonial wine cups.
"Get out," he snapped, standing three steps away from the bed we were supposed to share. His voice was ice-cold.
"Who let you in here?"
I gripped the hem of my wedding dress so tightly that my nails broke the skin of my palms.
The bright red double happiness symbols plastered across the room felt like a cruel joke.
Three days later, Mr. Sullivan found me sitting alone in the ancestral hall, incense curling through the air.
He handed me a thick envelope—medical records.
"Percy has severe mysophobia and aversion to physical contact," he said, coughing into his hand.
"The last caregiver assigned to him died of a heart attack last week."
My throat closed as I stared at the diagnosis stamped on the paper: Asperger's Syndrome.
That day, I became his shadow.
At dawn, I sorted his pills by color.
His lunch had to be warm congee—exactly 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The carpet in his study had to be precisely 1.2 inches thick.
Once, I forgot to wear gloves while handing him his Montblanc pen. He threw it into the courtyard fountain without a second thought.
But even the coldest ice starts to crack.
On a rainy autumn night, I found notes scribbled in the margins of my teaching materials—his handwriting.
On my birthday, I came downstairs to find a plate of dragon's beard candy waiting on the table—just like the kind my mother used to make.
In the fifth year of our marriage, on the first day of spring, the kapok trees at the old estate burst into bloom.
Mr. Sullivan spiked the Biluochun tea that evening.
By the time I heard the bathroom door unlock, it was already too late to run.
Percy's eyes were bloodshot, wild. He slammed me against the frosted glass.
When his teeth sank into my shoulder, he whispered someone else's name.
By morning, I'd counted twenty-seven bruises across my skin—one for every shattered piece of porcelain on the floor.
It was the fifth tea set he'd destroyed after waking up and remembering nothing.