Upon examining her, the doctors concluded she was suffering from temporary amnesia, likely a result of the shock and her three-month-long coma. Beyond that, they had no other explanation for her behavior.
They exited quietly, instructing a nurse to arrange for a CT scan and MRI.
The room settled back into stillness.
Zhao Ming sat with it all, turning the pieces over slowly in her mind. She was in a different body. A different world. A different life entirely. Perhaps the heavens, taking pity on her tragic end, had granted her a second chance. She wasn't sure yet whether to call it mercy or misfortune.
She had just turned to Yu Mei, hoping for answers, when the door swung open.
Yu Mei straightened immediately, surprise flickering across her face. "Master," she greeted, her voice catching slightly.
Jin Liwei didn't respond. His eyes moved briefly to Yu Mei, and he gave the smallest tilt of his head toward the door.
Yu Mei hesitated for just a fraction of a second. Then she bowed quietly, cast one uncertain glance toward Zhao Ming, and slipped out of the room, pulling the door gently shut behind her.
The click of the latch was very loud in the silence.
Zhao Ming watched the door for a moment. Then she turned back to the man who had just dismissed the only familiar face in the room without a single word.
He filled the doorway without trying to. Gray checked suit, impeccable posture, a face that looked like it had been carved with deliberate precision. Strong jaw, fair complexion, dark eyes that swept the room and landed on her with an icy, assessing calm.
Zhao Ming went still.
Those eyes. Cold and unreadable, carrying the kind of detachment that didn't need words to make itself felt. For a moment, something old and painful stirred in her chest.
Ji Cheng had looked at her like that once. Like she was a problem he hadn't yet decided how to solve.
Jin Liwei crossed the room toward her, taking in her pale face and slight frame on the hospital bed. Something flickered briefly in his expression, too quick to name, before it was gone.
'She's looking at me like she doesn't know who I am,' he thought, irritation threading through him. 'Is this some new act?'
"So you've finally awakened," he said, his voice clipped and cold. "Xie Ming."
She looked at him steadily. "Who are you? Have we met before?"
He stilled for just a moment. Then his expression hardened.
"Still performing," he said flatly, almost to himself. He pulled up a chair, turned it around, and sat with his arms crossed over the back, looking at her the way someone might look at a problem they were finally about to resolve.
"Let's skip the theatrics," he said. "I've come to end this."
His eyes moved over her slowly, cold and assessing. "Parties every night. Scandals every other week. Showing up to public events dressed like you wanted to start a fight."
A short, humorless breath. "I spent my days cleaning up after you, explaining to everyone around me why my wife behaved the way she did."
Zhao Ming said nothing, watching him with those calm, unreadable eyes.
It seemed to irritate him more than any argument would have.
"You never wanted this marriage," he continued, voice dropping lower. "You made that clear from the very beginning. So let's stop wasting each other's time."
He reached into his jacket and dropped the divorce papers onto the bedside table.
"Sign these."
She glanced at the papers.
She knew what they were, or at least she understood the concept. In her world, the dissolution of a marriage existed, too. But it had never been kind to women. A husband could cast his wife aside for the smallest reason, for failing to produce a son, for a perceived slight, sometimes for no reason at all.
Women had no such right. They endured. They stayed. And if they were cast out, they left with nothing. No home. No standing. Simply discarded.
"I'll give you alimony," Jin Liwei continued, his voice clipped. "A bungalow. Money enough to live comfortably for the rest of your life. You won't lose anything."
She looked up at him slowly.
In her world, a woman cast aside would have wept with gratitude for a single coin. This man was offering her a house. A life. And he said it like it was nothing, like he was simply settling an account.
She didn't touch the papers.
"And that stunt with the pool." A cold smile crossed his face. "Did you really think jumping in would change anything? That I would come running, full of guilt?" His eyes narrowed. "Was that the plan? Get my attention? My sympathy?"
"Everything you've ever done has been about getting my attention, hasn't it? The fights, the scandals, the scenes in public. And when none of it worked, you tried this."
Zhao Ming blinked slowly. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said quietly.
He let out a short laugh, cold and unconvinced. "Of course you don't."
"Sign the papers," he said, standing. "It's over."
The room was silent.
Zhao Ming looked at the papers. Then at him.
She had woken up in a stranger's body, in a world she didn't recognize, with no bearings and no allies. And this man had walked in, dismissed the only familiar face in the room without a word, and flung contempt at her before she had even had a glass of water.
She was no stranger to being spoken to as if she didn't matter. She had endured years of it in the palace, folding herself smaller and smaller in the hope that one day it would be enough.
It never was.
And she was not that woman anymore.
She straightened slowly against the pillows, her chin lifting just slightly, her eyes finding his with a calm that seemed to catch him off guard before she even spoke.
"You claim to be my husband," she said, her voice quiet but unhurried. "And yet while I lay unconscious in this place for three months, you were nowhere to be found."
Jin Liwei's jaw tightened.
"You stand here listing my failures." She held his gaze without flinching. "But where were you?"
"A husband who cannot be found when his wife nearly loses her life, then walks in the moment she opens her eyes to hand her divorce papers." A pause, measured and deliberate. "Tell me, which one of us has truly neglected this marriage?"
The silence that followed was a different kind than before.
Jin Liwei stared at her.
He had prepared for tears. For shouting. For the performance he had come to expect from her. He had braced for all of it.
He had not prepared for this.
She wasn't performing. There was no hysteria, no calculation hiding behind her eyes. Just a stillness that sat in her gaze like something old and unshakeable. Something that hadn't been there before.
He didn't know what to do with it.
The sight of tears shimmering faintly in her eyes caught him off guard. Her voice, though quiet, carried an unwavering steadiness he had never heard from her before. He had never seen such resolve in her eyes.
He clenched his fists at his sides. Why was she like this? She had despised him from the start and made that abundantly clear. So why did something about the way she looked at him now feel like it was pulling at something he couldn't name?
He said nothing more.