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The rain in Taipei didn’t wash things clean; it just made them heavy.
Inside the suffocating quiet of the small apartment, the air smelled of ozone, damp concrete, and the bitter, lingering scent of cheap cologne that didn't belong to her. On the bed lay the glowing screen of a smartphone, displaying a string of text messages that had effortlessly dismantled her entire world in less than thirty seconds.
Another lie. Another boyfriend who took her absolute devotion, looked at her boyish, fiercely loyal heart, and decided it was something cheap to play with before moving on.
Wang Yuning didn’t cry. The tears had dried up somewhere around the three-minute mark, leaving behind a hollow, cavernous silence in her chest. She walked into the cramped bathroom, her bare feet clicking against the cold tiles, and stood before the stained, water-spotted mirror.
She looked at her reflection. She looked at the soft curve of her cheeks, the long hair she kept tying back out of convenience, and the exhaustion weighing down her eyes. For twenty-four years, she had lived as a woman who trusted too easily, a woman who bent herself backward to be loved, only to be left behind in the ruins of someone else's carelessness.
Nicole is weak, a voice whispered in the dark corners of her mind. Nicole lets them break her. If the world only respects strong, unyielding things, then Nicole has to die.
It wasn't a thought born of panic; it was a cold, crystalline epiphany. A survival instinct kicking through the numbness. If she couldn't find the man she needed to protect her, she would simply have to build him herself. She would become the type of great man written by a woman—gentle, strong, and entirely safe.
The front door burst open with a loud, frantic rattle.
"Nini!" Shuhua’s voice slammed through the apartment's heavy silence, followed immediately by the hurried footsteps of Rui. They had seen the frantic, cryptic message she sent before her phone went dead. They expected to find a shattered girl face-down on the bed.
Instead, when they pushed the bathroom door open, they found her standing perfectly still, staring into the glass with a dead, manic determination.
"I'm leaving," Yuning said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried a terrifying weight that made Shuhua freeze in her tracks. "I'm killing off Wang Yuning. I'm going to Japan, and I'm going to live as a man."
Rui didn't call her crazy. He didn't lecture her about the legalities, the hormones, or the sheer, agonizing physical toll of what she was suggesting. He simply walked forward through the shadows of the bathroom, wrapped his arms tightly around her trembling shoulders, and let her lean against his chest.
"Then I'm going with you," Rui whispered against her hair. "I'll handle the logistics. I'll be your gege through every single doctor's appointment."
Beside them, Shuhua let out a sharp, watery breath, already pulling out her phone to look up international flight rates to Tokyo. "No one is leaving this room without me. If we're rebuilding you from scratch, we do it together."
Yuning closed her eyes, letting the warmth of her chosen family anchor her to the floorboards. In the dark behind her eyelids, she said her silent, final goodbyes to the ghost of the girl she was leaving behind.
The next time she looked into a mirror, she wouldn't see a victim. She would him, Wang Yixiang.