Chapter 1: “You Should Call Me ‘Wife,’ Like He Did”

Shi Yanchi’s husband had died in a car accident.

The blood that poured from his body spread across the asphalt of the main road, staining every passerby and everyone who tried to get close to him. Just as he had in life, Tu Lin had made friends with everyone.

It was May 27, 2026, seven days after his dead husband, Tu Lin, had been buried.

The old-timers around Harbor Bay always said that the dead returned on the seventh day. As Shi Yanchi drifted off to sleep, he thought that if it were true, Tu Lin would come back tonight.

—

At 3:56 a.m.—four minutes and forty-four seconds before four—Typhoon Medea made landfall directly at Harbor Bay. After a month of suffocating, humid weather, the coastal city finally got the torrential downpour everyone had been waiting for. The rain didn’t let up all night.

At that very moment, the scent of damp, acrid incense ash spread through the room, and a familiar voice came from nowhere, right beside Shi Yanchi’s ear.

“A-Chi…”

He opened his eyes and sat bolt upright. After fumbling for his glasses and putting them on, he turned toward the voice: the wide bedroom window.

He hadn’t drawn the curtains last night, leaving the yard in full view. The spacious grounds held only a single pomegranate tree, planted on a whim by Tu Lin two years ago.

Rain-washed leaves blended into the grass beneath them. Only the blossoms stood out, a vivid red against the haze of moisture. As the rain battered the tree, it swayed and rocked like a headless ghost whose bones had been severed, with only the skin holding it together. Wind and rain could do as they pleased; it made no sound, only nodded or shook its head.

Then Shi Yanchi remembered: the day he found that ill-tempered, unruly snake had been just like this—rainy, with the pomegranate tree thrashing in the wind.

He’d just returned to the villa from Tu Lin’s funeral. As he passed through the yard, he noticed something red moving beneath the tree, like fresh blood pumping from a severed artery.

When he went closer, he found a snake crawling out from beneath the roots.

It was no thicker than two of his fingers, but the moment it saw him, it opened its mouth and hissed, baring its sharp fangs as if to show him how dangerous it was.

So he brought it home. On a whim, he named it Tu Lin.

Tu Lin. An ordinary name.

There might be a million people in the world named Tu Lin.

“What are you looking at?”

The voice sounded again, this time from behind him. Clear as day.

He turned at once. A familiar figure sat in the chair.

Tu Lin.

The real Tu Lin.

He held a book in his hands, his shoulder-length hair neatly tied in a low ponytail, a few loose strands falling beside his temples.

The scene was almost exactly like one from more than two years ago.

“How are you here?”

The words slipped out before Shi Yanchi could stop them.

“This is my home. Or do you think I shouldn’t be here? I suppose that makes sense. As far as everyone else is concerned, I’m dead.” Tu Lin closed his book and stood. He approached slowly and asked in a hushed voice, “A-Chi, are you happy I died?”

Shi Yanchi turned his head, expression cool. “Don’t talk nonsense.”

As Tu Lin drew nearer, Shi Yanchi got a better look at his face.

Pale skin. Lips so red they looked bloodstained. Deep, ink-dark eyes. Beneath them, a pair of symmetrical, dark-red beauty marks like drops of blood. His face was so gorgeous it bordered on the uncanny, like a pomegranate blossom beaten into pulp by the rain.

His answer seemed to upset Tu Lin. Two trails of bloody tears slid down his face, and his steps grew strange.

“A-Chi, do you really not want to be with me?”

“Our marriage was an accident.” Shi Yanchi’s mouth betrayed him again, answering without permission.

The whites of Tu Lin’s eyes vanished, leaving only a foggy gray. Red lines appeared across his pale face, like cracks.

He ignored Shi Yanchi’s answer and kept asking, “A-Chi, why did you bring something else into our home? Why did you give it my name? Why did you let it sleep in my bed?”

Two fangs sprouted from Tu Lin’s mouth. Bright-red beads of blood seeped from the cracks in his face as he hurried toward Shi Yanchi.

“A-Chi, come with me. Die with me!”

Shi Yanchi’s breath caught. He swung his legs out of bed and hurried backward.

He’d barely taken a few steps when his back hit something cold, like a wall of flesh.

Before he could turn around, something cold and slick wound around his waist.

He looked down. A tail.

A bright-red serpent’s tail, covered in tiny scales.

It tightened around him, pinning his arms and legs. All Shi Yanchi could do was watch Tu Lin, drenched in blood, draw closer and closer—until the beads of blood falling from his face dripped between Shi Yanchi’s lips.

It was cold, but it didn’t taste like blood.

Rumble—

A clap of thunder split the sky. Shi Yanchi shuddered, and the scene before him vanished. Everything dissolved into a thick, spreading darkness.

Then he woke from the dream.

But the face before him wasn’t the familiar ceiling. It was the face of someone he knew.

“Tu Lin?!”

Shi Yanchi’s heart lurched. He scrambled backward until his back hit the headboard.

Thunder still rumbled outside, and every flash of lightning lit the room as bright as day. At last, Shi Yanchi saw how the figure before him differed from Tu Lin.

His inky-black eyes had become golden, slit-pupiled ones. Blood-red scales covered patches of his pale cheeks. More importantly, he had a human torso and a serpent’s tail—the same bright-red tail from the dream.

It was 4:44 a.m.

“Are you Tu Lin, or… Tu Lin?”

Tu Lin: his dead husband.

Tu Lin: the venomous snake he’d brought home.

The creature didn’t answer. He glided toward Shi Yanchi, radiating an oppressive presence.

With the wall behind him, Shi Yanchi had nowhere to go. He could only watch as he came closer.

The tip of his tail pressed against his foot, colder than it had been in the dream. The scales scraped his skin with a dull ache. Then the tail slowly, slowly crept upward, winding around his ankle, calf, thigh, and finally his waist. It tightened little by little, slowly squeezing the breath from him.

He let out a muffled groan. The creature loosened his tail and bent down, flicking out his tongue.

The cold, slick tongue brushed Shi Yanchi’s face, gliding over his brows, eyes, nose, and lips before pausing at the flesh-colored mole on his lower lip.

Then, wearing the face of Shi Yanchi’s dead husband, he mumbled two words.

“Mas…ter…”

Shi Yanchi’s pupils contracted. Without thinking, he slapped him. “Quiet. You should call me…”

The creature looked so startled that Shi Yanchi was suddenly reminded of Tu Lin, three years earlier, just after they’d gotten married.

What had Tu Lin called him back then?

It had been…

“Wife.”