His Canary Gave Birth, and I Leapt to My Death
I began to loathe his embraces, his kisses, his touch. Even the thought of handling his belongings filled me with a sickening revulsion.
The day the chandelier fell, his first instinct was to shield his female secretary.
The System watched me with pity.
[Host has been detected as abandoned by the male lead ninety-nine times. The next instance will result in repatriation to your original world.]
I breathed a sigh of relief.
No one knew.
I was the one who had deliberately loosened the chandelier wire.
1
When I arrived, Tanya was feeding Vincent his medicine.
Seeing me, the man spoke in a flat tone.
"Give the medicine to my wife. You can leave."
Tanya's eyes immediately reddened. She looked at Vincent, her face a mask of wounded vulnerability.
He showed no sign of softening.
"Leave."
Tanya put down the bowl and fled the room in tears.
I spoke calmly. "Why bother with this act for my benefit, Vincent? It's only going to take you more effort to comfort her later."
He lowered his gaze, motioning for me to take Tanya's place.
Suppressing a wave of nausea, I scooped up the herbal medicine and brought the spoon to his lips.
He was handsome. Devastatingly so. So handsome that women at his company, fully aware he was married, still threw themselves at him.
Tanya was one of them.
I, too, had once been utterly captivated. During nights wrapped in his arms, my fingers would trace the sharp, perfect lines of his jaw, his brow, his cheekbones, over and over.
But now, it took every ounce of my self-control not to vomit at the sight of his face.
"I wasn't saving Tanya," he said, his hand moving to stroke my hair. "I was saving the child in her womb."
He looked at me, his eyes pleading for understanding. "The child is innocent, isn't it, Helena?"
I took a step back. "Can I go now?"
Vincent frowned. "I'm your husband, lying here in a hospital bed. Where else would you go?"
A ghost of a smile touched my lips. "If I leave, your perfect little family of three can finally be reunited."
His jaw tightened, a flicker of anger in his eyes. But then he sighed, the anger dissolving into a familiar, weary resignation.
"Helena Shen," he murmured, "you only act this way because you know how much I love you."
2
"You only act this way because you know how much I love you."
The eighteen-year-old Vincent had said those exact words to me once.
It was right after he discovered I was a task-runner, a plant sent to complete a mission.
"So all of it... was just a game?" he'd asked, his voice raw. "Buying me lunch every day, bringing me water after basketball practice, saving up all your money to buy me that RTX 4090... it was all just a mission to make me fall for you, so you could break my heart?"
The usual carefree arrogance was gone, replaced by a vulnerability that made his lean, youthful frame seem fragile, on the verge of shattering.
I stood before him, pale and speechless, the excuses dying on my lips.
"You're cruel, Helena," he finally said. "You win."
"From now on, you and I have nothing to do with each other."
He forced a laugh, trying to slip back into the persona of the untouchable, wealthy heir. But as he turned to walk away, I saw the tell-tale redness rimming his eyes.
He never looked at me again.
The System informed me that his affection meter had dropped to zero.
A heavy, suffocating weight settled in my chest. It wasn't about the fifty-million-dollar prize money. It wasn't about failing to go home.
What was it, then?
It was the realization that I, Helena Shen, was a coward. I didn't have the courage to admit that I had genuinely fallen in love with the vibrant, rebellious boy from the story.
From that day on, Vincent threw away every gift I'd ever given him. He rejected my apologies, my attempts to reconcile. If he saw me in the hallway, he would physically recoil as if I were something filthy.
I thought a man as proud as him would never forgive me.
But when a group of thugs with iron pipes cornered me in an alley, their leering faces a blur of malice...
Vincent didn't hesitate. He charged in, shielding me with his own body.
After the brawl, as he lay bleeding on a stretcher, he shakily pulled something from his pocket. Something I thought he had thrown away long ago.
A simple black hair tie.
My hair tie.
"You're free now, Helena."
[Congratulations, Host. Mission successful.]
The two voices spoke at the same time.
I collapsed beside him, holding his hand and sobbing, a bittersweet ache blooming in my heart.
That day, eighteen-year-old Helena made the boldest decision of her life.
Looking straight at Vincent, she spoke to the System with unwavering certainty.
"I'm not leaving."
"I'm going to marry him."
And now, at twenty-eight, looking at the man lying in the hospital bed, I said calmly, "Let's get a divorce."
3
Vincent grabbed the back of my neck and crushed his lips to mine. The kiss was savage, desperate. Fresh blood immediately soaked through his bandages, but he didn't seem to feel the pain, his teeth grinding against my lip.
When he finally pulled away, he asked me how it felt.
I considered it for a moment.
"Revolting," I said honestly. "The thought of this mouth having been on God knows how many other women... I'm thinking of scheduling an HIV test."
His face darkened completely, his patience gone.
Just as I reached the door of the hospital room, his voice, laced with casual mockery, stopped me.
"Do you even remember how many times you've asked for a divorce?" he taunted. "A hundred? A thousand? Have you ever actually left?"
"Stop the drama, Helena. You gave up your chance to go back to that other world. Without me, without our home, where could you possibly go?"
My feet felt rooted to the floor. The trust I had once placed in him had become the very weapon he used to impale me. A suffocating pressure tightened around my heart.
I turned back and gave him a bright, brittle smile.
"Back to my own home."
A crack appeared in his composure. He was about to demand what I meant, but just then, his phone rang with Tanya’s unique ringtone.
By the time he hung up, the room was empty.
4
Sitting in the back of a taxi on the way back to our villa, I drifted, wondering.
When did it all go so wrong between us?
Perhaps it started the day the System suddenly reappeared.
[If you wish to return home, I can offer you another chance.]
At the time, Vincent and I had been married for a year, deep in the honey-sweet haze of our newlywed life. My biggest complaint was that the man had the stamina of a wild animal in bed.
I had laughed and refused without a second thought. "No, thank you. I'm happy. I don't want to leave."
The System was silent for a long time before making a new pact.
If Vincent abandoned me one hundred times, I would be free to go home.
But how could that ever happen? This was a man who would side with me against his own mother in an argument. I dismissed the strange pact and forgot about it.
Then came the third year of our marriage.
Vincent hired a remarkably capable new female secretary. She was his right hand in the boardroom and the one who prepared his perfectly balanced lunches.
She told me not to make him greasy chicken soup.
She told me not to waste his time with frivolous shopping trips.
She told me not to call him during his lunch break.
At first, I was annoyed, but I didn't think much of it. After all, Tanya was thirty-eight, dressed in plain, modest clothes, and never wore a speck of makeup. The office staff called her 'The Iron Abbess' behind her back.
Then, while I was pregnant, a series of graphic photos were sent to my phone.
The man working up a sweat on top of 'The Iron Abbess' was none other than my husband, Vincent, the same man who demanded a good-morning kiss from me every single day.
5
"We were both drunk."
"Neither of us meant for it to happen."
Vincent begged, pleaded, and apologized. He even got on his knees.
But nothing could quell the storm of rage and betrayal inside me. Like any woman scorned, I stormed into his office and slapped Tanya hard across the face.
But the man who was so docile and accommodating at home, in front of everyone, returned the slap with one of his own.
I was stunned. My cheek swelled instantly, and a sharp pain shot through my abdomen.
Vincent’s voice was ice. "You can take out your anger on me all you want, but you will not involve Tanya. She's a victim in this, too."
A victim?
The person who had sent me the photos…
…was her.
After that day, nothing changed. Vincent continued to take Tanya to business dinners, on work trips. They were inseparable, acting as if nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, I became a paranoid wreck, monitoring their every move like a hawk, earning the label of 'the crazy wife.'
Before my child was even born, I was diagnosed with severe depression.
When I showed Vincent the diagnosis, my voice was hollowed out by exhaustion. "Let's separate."
That's when he finally panicked. He knelt again, begging me, his voice cracking with desperation. He fired Tanya, even offered to sell his company to focus on me.
I was the one who stopped him.
"Just come back to our family," I had said. "Cut off all contact with that woman. Nothing else matters."
He nodded profusely, thanking me, calling me the best wife in the world.
We were about to leave for a reconciliation trip to the Maldives.
Then, Tanya attempted suicide.
She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills while wearing a wedding dress.
Her suicide note read: "Vincent, I hope in the next life, I meet you first."
That night, Vincent left me alone in a foreign country and took the first flight back.
Tanya didn't die.
But my baby did.
The shock sent me into premature labor and I hemorrhaged. When the doctor told me I would never be able to carry a child again, I summoned the System.
"That pact we made," I asked calmly. "Is it still valid?"
Ticking off the hundred abandonments was surprisingly easy. All it took was a little nudge in Tanya’s direction, and she would perform beautifully.
A sudden heart palpitation on our wedding anniversary.
A terrified phone call during a thunderstorm.
A bidding war over the final piece at a charity auction.
Every single time, Vincent would first try to placate me with a half-hearted excuse.
Then, he would follow his heart.
6
"We're here," the taxi driver said.
I nodded.
I pushed open the door to the villa and collapsed onto the bed.
Right on cue, a message from Tanya lit up my phone.
"They say cravings for sour things mean a boy, and spicy things mean a girl. But I want to eat everything! I wonder what this one will be."
Another message followed.
"Still, no matter what it is, it's better than a useless lump of flesh, don't you think?"
My knuckles turned white as I gripped the phone.
After her 'suicide attempt,' Tanya had been rehired, promoted, and given a raise. A few months ago, they had another 'accidental' drunken night. Tanya 'accidentally' got pregnant.
Vincent promised me that after the child was born, he would cut ties with her for good.
I could only laugh.
The System's voice suddenly echoed in my mind. [Congratulations. You can go home now.]
I froze.
Weren't we one short?
The System projected a screen before me. It showed Vincent’s hospital room. His friends were there.
"I never thought I'd see the day things got this bad between him and Helena," one of them said with a sigh.
Another friend elbowed him. "Dude, not now."
"No, it's true! Back then, Vincent's leg was completely shattered for her sake…"
Just then, Tanya walked in, smiling. "What are you all talking about?"
The room fell silent.
After everyone else had left, Tanya spoke again. "Is it true? What he said? Did you really get your leg broken for Helena?"
Vincent, eyes closed, grunted in affirmation.
Disbelief washed over Tanya's face, and she slowly covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Wincing, Vincent got out of bed and pulled her into a hug. "What's wrong?"
"Promise me," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "Promise me that if it ever happened again... even if Helena were about to be gang-raped... you wouldn't sacrifice yourself to save her. Promise me."
Vincent froze.
I held my breath, my hands trembling.
Seeing his hesitation, Tanya took his hand and placed it on her swollen belly, her eyes red and pleading.
"Promise me?" she asked again.
Looking at the tear-streaked face of the woman in his arms, Vincent finally relented.
"I promise," he said, his voice heavy.
"If it happened again, I wouldn't be so stupid."
I laughed. I laughed until the tears streamed down my face.
So pathetic, Helena.
But if it happened again…
I wouldn't be so stupid, either.
First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "255633" to read the entire book.
MotoNovel
Bookworm