It Started with a Bouquet

“When can my husband divorce me, System?” I held a cotton swab, my tears falling one by one onto Colin Chapman’s injured arm.

After the male lead went bankrupt, the System wanted me to be the most vicious, overbearing wife he could have—constantly humiliating him and demanding things from him.

But every time I bullied him according to the script, I would hide somewhere and cry. Late one night, I slipped into his room again.

As I put medicine on his wounds, I asked the System when we could get divorced. The System looked at the male lead’s arm, wet with my tears, then at his faintly trembling lashes.

It sighed. [You’re still thinking about divorce?] [He’s going to love you for the rest of his life.] Chapter 1 “I’m so glad nobody took them. See? I told you they were pretty.

The bow’s tied so nicely, too.” It was already ten at night. I stood under a streetlight, holding the flowers I had just retrieved, delighted to have found them.

The System’s only response was a sneer. [Roses at a dollar twentyfive a stem, jasmine at two dollars a bunch, and twofifty for the wrapping.] [Cheap junk that cost no more than twentyfive dollars, and you sneak out in the middle of the night to dig through the trash for it.

You might as well climb in there yourself.] I was quiet for a moment before saying softly, “System, you say such mean things.” It sneered again.

I couldn’t say that with much conviction, though. Not long before, I had said things just as cruel to Colin. I had hurled the flowers to the floor right in front of him.

When the male lead bent down to pick them up, I snapped at him again. “Other women get nine hundred and ninetynine roses. What do I get?

If you can’t afford gifts, stop trying to copy people who can. They’re ugly, they’re in the way, and they’re embarrassing.” “Can’t you earn more money? You’re so broke.

Marrying you was the worst luck I’ve ever had.” It hadn’t just been flowers. There had been a box of fresh strawberries, too.

A supervisor had handed them out during a visit to the construction site. Colin hadn’t eaten his. He had brought them home instead.

The System rolled its eyes, particularly disgusted that I had sneaked out to retrieve the flowers. [Can you stop caring about things that don’t matter? Stay in character!

You’re an overbearing, vicious supporting character. Your only purpose is to humiliate the male lead.

I am so sick of you being this stupid!] It kept impatiently urging me to go back. I pretended not to hear.

Crouching down, I leaned closer to the flowers and carefully pressed the jasmine into a bookmark. Only then did I slowly head home. Strawberries he had saved instead of eating.

Flowers he had gone out of his way to buy.

If those things the System despised meant nothing, what did mean something? [Your next task: make the male lead buy you a coat before Christmas.] That was the System’s answer.

For once, Colin had gotten off work early. He was standing on a stool, fixing the broken light. The place was old, with faulty wiring.

He would fix it, it would break, and he would fix it again. “I bought a little table lamp. I fully charge it before I leave every day. If the light goes out again, don’t touch it.

Use the lamp and wait for me to come home.” I stood behind him with a cup of hot orange juice, looking soft and delicate with my fair, smooth face.

Colin’s fingers, once so pampered, were covered in grime. Little cuts were gradually spreading across his palms.

I began, “I…” Chapter 2 After a long stretch of mumbling and hesitation, I finally delivered my scripted lines. “Christmas is coming.

You have to buy me an expensive coat so I can dress up.

How else am I supposed to have a proper Christmas?” I showed him the screenshot on my phone, trying to sound fierce. “This one. You have to buy it for me.

If you can’t, don’t bother coming home, you loser.” Colin washed his hands before coming over to take the phone. He studied it for a long time, then looked up.

His tone gave nothing away. “Just this one?” At the same moment, the System let out a piercing shriek. [Holy shit. Two hundred dollars? Are you fucking crazy?

Where did you find a coat that cheap?] The brand in the script was too expensive. Luckily, I had been clever enough to look on a secondhand marketplace.

Sure enough, someone had slashed the price of a thousanddollar coat to two hundred, with free shipping.

Cutting the price to two hundred could save Colin a few days of work and a lot of sweat. “Just this one?” Colin asked again.

It was only much later that I understood the emotions I hadn’t been able to read in his eyes. Once, two hundred dollars wouldn’t have bought a single button on his clothes.

But there I was, crammed into a shabby basement with him, eagerly looking forward to dressing up in that expensive coat. I had received none of his gifts when he was riding high.

Now that he was down, I was suffering through every hardship with him. I hadn’t understood that at the time.

I thought he found it too expensive, that I had gone too far in bullying him. Shame can make you blurt out things without thinking. “Oh.

Oh, then… then I’ll try bargaining some more. Maybe I can get it for less than two hundred.” I had almost forgotten to stay in character.

All I could think about was haggling, and how frightened I felt. Suddenly, my hands were empty.

Colin took my orange juice, warmed it again, and handed it back. “Lipstick, a hat, a headband, a Christmas tree, a Christmas apple, a little cake.” Cold gusts blew outside, but inside our tiny home, everything was peaceful.

Still dazed, I let him guide me to the couch.

Colin crouched in front of me, and I found myself looking into a pair of beautiful dark eyes. “You need those, too,” he said, “to have a proper Christmas.” Colin was a man who kept his word.

The day before Christmas, I received the gift he had treated as a matter of course. It had a structured cut, soft fabric, and a vivid color.

The System breathed a sigh of relief. [You nearly pulled one over on me. Good thing the male lead went to the mall to buy it. Ha! Didn’t know he was a clean freak, did you?

Who wants secondhand clothes somebody else has worn?

Only a complete idiot like you…] It mocked me mercilessly, but that wasn’t what I cared about. “You said he bought it at the mall…” Ever since Colin went bankrupt, his old competitors had been targeting him.

He couldn’t get into a big company or find a decent job. He could only pick up day labor at construction sites, warehouses, and the docks.

And I, his spoiled, vain wife, squandered his pay the moment I got my hands on it. I pressed my lips together. “A thousand dollars. Where did he get the money?” I soon found out.

Someone had posted a photo online. The man in it was so goodlooking that it briefly attracted quite a bit of attention. [Our apartment management hired him to clean the windows.

Hot, right?] Chapter 3 [Damn, I want a hot guy making house calls, too… Ahem. I mean, why doesn’t our apartment management offer window cleaning?

Terrible service!] [I live there, too. Someone upstairs has no consideration for anyone. They left a flowerpot outside the window, and it fell right on the poor young guy.

Such a long cut—blood came spurting out. Scared the hell out of me.] [Seriously. That young guy was so nice about it, too. He just asked them privately to compensate him.

I would’ve exposed them online and let everyone see what an inconsiderate neighbor they are!] That night, I slipped into Colin’s room.

I called it a room, but it was only a folding bed in a corner of the living room, behind a makeshift curtain.

Another awful thing I had done: I had claimed the bedroom and refused to let him in. When I lifted his sleeve, there it was—a gruesome gash nearly four inches long.

Colin, you were dangling twentysix floors up, pressed against the outside of the windows, with only a rope holding you.

You worked your way down, cleaning one home’s windows after another while people stared.

Had you already decided then to buy that coat at the mall? “You got hurt and didn’t even tell me.” The wound had only been hastily tended to, yet Colin had acted as though absolutely nothing was wrong.

At dinner, he had given me an apple without peeling it as he usually did. “You have to eat a Christmas apple with the skin on,” he had said. “That way, your wish to stay safe stays whole, too.” So it wasn’t that the apple couldn’t be peeled.

It was that his left hand was injured. He couldn’t hold a knife, so he had made up that flimsy lie. And the only person it had fooled was his stupid, vicious wife.

As I put medicine on the wound, I carefully brushed the scars still marking Colin’s wrist. This one was from when I had a fever and needed a doctor.

He had gone to carry bricks at a construction site, but he hadn’t known what he was doing, and a tool had cut him. This one was from when I had forced him to buy me a gold necklace.

He had gone to help someone in a fight, and a steel rod had struck his left shoulder.

And this one, and that one… I tried to get my emotions under control, but the harder I tried, the more I cried. The System attempted to comfort me. [Stop crying.

If you ask me, you’re the unlucky one. If you’d married him a year earlier, you could’ve been a rich wife. The wedding gifts alone could’ve bought several buildings.

Instead, you got nothing and had to live in a basement from day one. What’s wrong with spending a little of his money?] I was supposed to resent Colin.

Resent his bankruptcy, his poverty, his inability to give me a good life. But what about Colin?

One day he had been on top of the world; the next, he had been dragged through the mud.

People laughed at him, humiliated him, looked at him in all sorts of ways as he did backbreaking work in the blazing sun.

Then he came home to accusations from me, his spoiled wife. “You useless loser. You can’t even buy me jewelry.

If I were you, I’d have bashed my head in and died by now.” Colin, when you stared at that shabby, damp ceiling in the silence of the night, did you think about who you had been just a year ago?

So full of confidence, with such a bright future ahead of you? The wind blew cold and bleak outside. Inside, the lashes of the man lying in bed trembled faintly.

I rested my cheek in Colin’s palm. Slowly, my tears soaked his wrist. “System, when is Colin going to ask me for a divorce?” I didn’t want to do bad things anymore.

I didn’t want to bully the male lead anymore. That Christmas Eve was dark, and the Christmas apple was bitter.

If Colin could divorce me, would he no longer have to work himself to the bone for money? Would he no longer have to work three jobs a day? Would he stop getting hurt?

I was still thinking about it over breakfast the next morning. The System was evasive. It only said the story hadn’t reached that point yet. Chapter 4 It was always like that.

So quickwitted when it was insulting me, then suddenly playing dead when I asked anything that mattered. I stirred my millet porridge, distracted.

A coat, lipstick, a hat, a headband… Colin had given me so many gifts. I ought to get him something, too. But what? And what excuse could I give for buying it?

We were supposed to get divorced. I should give it to him before that, shouldn’t I? Wouldn’t it be strange to give him a gift after we divorced? Right.

When exactly were we getting divorced? At some point, Colin had come to stand beside me. “What are you thinking about?

Your porridge is cold.” I was so distracted that my brain didn’t catch up in time.

Without thinking, I said what was on my mind. “About when I can divorce you…” My heart lurched the instant the words left my mouth. Luckily, the light went out again just then.

A sharp crackle covered my voice. It also gave me an excuse. Guiltily, I searched for something to say. “That light is so annoying. Last time it broke, it kept flickering.

It scared me so much I was afraid all day…” Colin went to fix it again. He probably hadn’t heard what I’d said. He didn’t bring it up afterward, either.

He hurried through breakfast, then went back out to work. It was very late when he returned, long after dark.

Lately, he had been leaving earlier and earlier and coming home later and later. “I found a new place.

We’re moving tomorrow afternoon.” He looked at me, his voice calm. “It’s spacious. Big windows in both the living room and the bedroom.” Nothing like this dark, damp basement.

We had to keep the light on even in broad daylight, and I was always terrified it would break. The System sounded excited. [Here it comes! Here comes the plot!

You can’t stand the hardship, so you have a huge fight with the male lead.

You demand that he move, threaten to jump off a building if he won’t, and make him feel utterly humiliated. Wait, why is he bringing it up first? Whatever.

As long as we get through the plot…] It rambled on for a long time without getting a response from me.

Following my gaze, it discovered I was looking at Colin’s arm. “The wound opened up again,” I murmured to myself. And it wasn’t just his arm.

There were plenty of fresh bruises on his shoulders, too. Last time, he had been hauling cement for someone. What had it been this time? Tiles?

A whole truckload of powdered joint compound? “Where did the money come from?” I asked him. “What did you do