Chapter 1

After my rebirth, I never delivered lunch to my plant-manager wife again.

When she left through the south gate for meetings, I took the long way around the north gate.

In my past life, I knew Sharon only married a country boy like me to secure her transfer recommendation to the city. Yet, I still stubbornly made her my wife.

I foolishly believed that a cold heart could eventually be warmed.

Instead, Sharon treated me with polite indifference our entire marriage.

Whenever I tried to be affectionate, she would hand me a book with a cool gaze.

"Read more," she would say. "Stop giving people reasons to look down on you."

Even when I gathered the courage to embrace her after drinking, she merely stiffened beneath my touch.

"This is my duty as your wife," she would whisper coldly.

Decades later, as I lay dying in a hospital bed, I finally read her published memoir.

She described our decades together as years trapped in a suffocating swamp.

She wrote that if there were an afterlife, she hoped to never cross paths with me again.

My heart shattered, and I closed my eyes in pure agony.

When I opened them again, I was back to the day the rumors about her and the plant's foreign-educated technician first began.

This time, I did not scream or beg.

I calmly asked for a divorce.

1.

The moment the word left my mouth, Sharon lost her cool composure for the first time.

Beside her, the smug smirk on Austin's face froze before instantly turning into a look of deep remorse.

"Caleb, please do not misunderstand," Austin stammered, stepping forward.

"Sharon only appreciates my technical talent. We are completely innocent."

"I came here with her today just to clear things up. If you are angry, take it out on me!"

As he spoke, his knees buckled, making a show of kneeling before me.

Sharon caught his arm in a panic and whipped around to glare at me.

"Caleb Hayes! Are you ever going to stop?"

"It is a minor misunderstanding! How could you humiliate him like this? Apologize to Austin right now!"

Before I had uttered a single accusation, I was once again painted as the petty, unreasonable villain.

In my previous life, whenever Austin and I clashed, I was always the one to blame.

Sharon unconditionally defended him, turning every dispute into a public spectacle.

Everyone in the plant whispered that I was just a bitter, small-minded country bumpkin.

"I have not said a word. What am I apologizing for?"

I scoffed, my voice flat.

"If his spine is made of jelly and he wants to drop to his knees, am I supposed to stop him?"

Austin blinked in surprise, clearly not expecting me to stay calm instead of flying into a rage.

His eyes instantly welled with theatrical tears.

"Caleb, you have to believe me. Sharon and I really..."

I cut him off, sick of his pathetic performance.

"Save it. I am divorcing her, which clears the way for you, does it not?"

My gaze dropped to his wrist.

"If you two are so innocent, why are you wearing the luxury watch Sharon saved three months of her salary to buy?"

"When you overact, the lie becomes obvious."

Austin flinched as if burned, hurriedly covering his wrist with his other hand.

I recognized that watch all too well.

The day Sharon bought it, she treated it like a sacred treasure, hiding it in the cabinet and hand-crafting a wooden box for it.

Her delicate hands, which never touched a kitchen knife or needle, blistered all over just smoothing that wood.

Back then, I foolishly thought my birthday was coming up in a few days.

I believed it was the first birthday gift she had ever prepared for me.

I waited with a racing heart, counting down the days.

On my birthday, I waited from dawn until the dead of night, watching the dinner grow cold on the table.

Finally, I saw her and Austin walking side by side beneath the streetlights.

The look in her eyes as she gazed at him was filled with a tenderness and warmth I had never seen before.

And Austin was proudly flaunting that very watch on his wrist.

Sharon looked away, dodging my eyes.

"It was Austin's birthday a few days ago," she said defensively. "It was just a birthday gift. Stop making wild assumptions."

Even though I had already decided to let go, her words still stung like a knife to the chest.

In six years of marriage, she had never once remembered my birthday.

Yet she had known Austin for barely a month.

I remembered the words in her memoir about how every day with me had been sheer torture.

The last trace of my lingering regret evaporated into thin air, leaving only bone-deep exhaustion.

"I truly want a divorce," I said, looking straight into her eyes.

"Sharon, let us stop tormenting each other."