Chapter 1 Gratitude of an Ungrateful Female Lead 1: Heaven Is Watching¹

Author’s Note: Because of the plot setup where the female lead is making a post online, part of this chapter is written in the first person only. The following chapters will all be in the third person.

[Question] My boyfriend has been supporting my schooling since high school, and now I’m about to finish graduate school. I’ve realized he’s preparing to propose, but I’ve also realized that I don’t actually love him. Should I break up with him?

Additional explanation:

Honestly, I’m torn up and miserable about this too. I know people will definitely say I’m kicking away the ladder after climbing up, and I know breaking up with him now would be pretty unfair to him. But how can feelings be forced?

I’ve read a lot of answers from women on questions like “What’s it like to marry someone you don’t love?” To be honest, the lifeless, walking-dead marriages those women described sounded like a nightmare, and a nightmare they built with their own hands.

I can pretty much foresee that if I soften for a moment and really do marry him, I won’t be happy for the rest of my life.

It’s true that he supported me, but I can’t sacrifice my whole life because of that, can I?

So people online can give me better advice, I’ll briefly explain what happened between us.

My boyfriend and I were neighbors.

His parents ran a small business in town. Their family had a self-built house with two storefronts attached. One was a little restaurant, and the other was a convenience shop. They’d been running them for many years, and business was decent. In our town, their financial situation counted as fairly good. Of course, it was nothing compared to the city.

My family background was pretty unfortunate. My grandparents favored boys over girls, and that mindset rubbed off on my father too. My mother was in poor health, and after giving birth to me, she was never able to have a second child. My grandparents disliked my mother and me quite a bit. On top of that, my eldest uncle’s wife had two children, both boys. Compared to them, my father didn’t think much of me either. But my mother was gentle, capable, and hardworking, so life was still barely manageable.

But when I was eleven, my mother fell ill and passed away. My father quickly remarried, and that same year my stepmother gave birth to a younger brother. I became the only girl of my generation in the family. Oh, my aunt’s family had sons too. Anyway, I was the one with the lowest status in the family. Life under my stepmother wasn’t easy. Taking care of my younger brother, doing housework, running errands, everything you can think of that a nanny does, I’d done it.

Living under someone else’s roof, I smiled and fawned over my stepmother and tried every way I could to please her, but life was still hard.

There was no need to mention tuition, school miscellaneous fees, workbook fees, uniform fees, or living expenses. If she could delay paying, she would. Even at home, it was rare for me to catch a hot meal. Even if there was fruit or snacks, I didn’t dare touch them, and I didn’t dare reach for the better dishes either.

To save money, I basically didn’t eat breakfast on school days. At noon, I walked home and reheated whatever dishes they had left over from breakfast.

My boyfriend’s mother was a very kind person. If I happened to be there while their family was eating, she’d call me over to join them.

My boyfriend was four years older than me. Maybe because his mother had told him to, he often shared his breakfast and snacks with me back then.

If he saw me doing heavy work, he’d usually lend a hand too. But after he went away to college, we had very little contact. We only ran into each other during winter and summer vacation.

When I was in my second year of high school, my eldest uncle’s wife played matchmaker, and a relative from her side of the family came to my house to propose marriage.

That man was thirty-five, divorced, and had no children. Because his ex-wife couldn’t have children, he wanted to find someone younger.

His family ran a brick factory, and business was pretty good. Their household was doing fairly well.

My father agreed. After talking with him, he asked for a Bride Price of 168,000 yuan.

Some people might think this sounds fake, because I was only sixteen at the time. But in rural areas, this is very common. Most people don’t even get the marriage certificate until their children are already a few years old.

Everyone in the family was satisfied, but how could I marry someone like that? I would almost be repeating my mother’s old path.

I had very good grades. Getting into college was definitely not a problem. I had already planned it out. I could take out student loans for tuition. Living expenses would be more troublesome, but I could work part-time in my spare time, apply for grants, and do my best to earn scholarships. Even if I had to eat worse food and wear worse clothes, this was the twenty-first century. Surely society wouldn’t let a hardworking, motivated college student starve to death.

I only needed another year and a half. I was just one last step away from escaping that family that held no warmth for me at all, but fate played this joke on me.

I thought about going to the relevant authorities, but this kind of thing happened among civilians, too many to count. When everyone does it, the law can’t punish them all, and no one could manage it. With my ID card and household registration booklet² confiscated, I couldn’t even run away.

I tried begging my father, hoping to stir whatever paternal love he might still have had.

But I underestimated this man’s values. The last trace of care he showed me was finding me a family decent enough to marry into.

“What’s the point of studying? Look at that guy from the Wang family. Didn’t he just graduate this year? He couldn’t even pass the village official exam³, and he ended up with a sales job making 1,200 yuan a month. His family still has to cover his rent and living expenses, and he doesn’t even dare get a girlfriend. What’s so bad about this marriage? Once you marry into that family, you won’t have to go out and show your face or do anything. Just stay at home, tidy up the house, and take care of the children. You’ll live an easy life. It’s close to home too. Their family wouldn’t dare hit you or bully you.”

With values so different, there was simply no way to communicate.

By the end of it, the negotiation had completely broken down.

My father flew into a rage out of humiliation and told me directly that if I wanted to keep studying, fine, but he wouldn’t support me anymore. And I would have to come up with 168,000 yuan. It was basically his way of severing ties with me. How could I possibly come up with that kind of money?

Yes, you read that right. I came this close to ruining my entire life over 168,000 yuan.

The turning point came a few days later, during winter vacation, when my boyfriend came home for the New Year.

I remembered the breakfasts and snacks he had shared with me, remembered him helping me with work, remembered how his mother had once said something like, “If only you were my daughter.”

I thought he probably liked me, because sometimes the way he looked at me had the exact same light in it as the boys in my class who had confessed to me, and the same evasiveness I showed when I looked back. But I had no idea how much that liking could actually do.

I was truly out of options and grasping at straws.

So I went to him and begged. I told him about my predicament and helplessness. I told him I liked him, and that if I had to marry, I wanted to marry him.

I’m not very clear on what happened afterward. I don’t know how he talked to his parents, but early the next morning, the three of them went to my house.

Before lunch even arrived, I had become their family’s future daughter-in-law.

That relative from my eldest uncle’s wife’s side of the family had offered 168,000 yuan, to be paid in three installments. My boyfriend’s family paid all at once, and added another 20,000, making it 188,000 yuan. Their condition was that as long as my in-laws didn’t mistreat me, my birth family would have no say in how the other family arranged my life.

With the extra 20,000 yuan, my stepmother and father were both very pleased. They told me to take my younger brother outside to play while they discussed the details of the wedding banquet.

My boyfriend’s mother, who I later called Auntie, said, “I’ll be blunt first. Since she’s already our family’s daughter-in-law now, from now on she can only work for our family. The two homes are close, but in the future you are not allowed to order her around.”

At the time, hearing that made me a little unhappy. It made me feel like I was some kind of item being bought and sold, with ownership transferred.

But later, Auntie told me she had said it on purpose so my family wouldn’t keep ordering me around whenever they pleased.

After winter vacation, my boyfriend had to go back to school, and Auntie and Uncle also felt that with my grades, I should go to college. In any case, I was still too young to register a marriage. But to make it natural for me to move in with them, the two of us did hold an engagement banquet.

To make it easier for me to keep in touch with my boyfriend, they even bought me a phone.

I successfully got into college. When it came time to fill out my university application, my boyfriend and his family both made it very clear that they wanted me to apply to the city where he was studying. It gave me a feeling of being coerced, which made me uncomfortable.

So I applied to a university in the provincial capital of my home province, and told them that staying in-province gave me a safer chance of being admitted.

After I started college, my phone bills were all paid with money he earned. More accurately, aside from the Bride Price and the engagement banquet expenses, every bit of money spent on me was paid by him, because he said he didn’t want to add to my parents’ burden.

I am still very grateful to him.

The year I was about to graduate from college, his family was preparing to hold our wedding officially, but I wanted to go to graduate school. I told my boyfriend, and he supported me. He was also the one who talked to his family about it.

They also wanted me to go to my boyfriend’s city.

I told them it would be easier for me to continue on at my own university, and I was already familiar enough with my advisor.

So I didn’t go, and he said that was fine too. He said he usually had to work part-time, so he wouldn’t have time to keep me company anyway.

When my graduate school exam results came out, Uncle and Auntie were especially happy. They wanted to hold an admission banquet and said I was the most highly educated person in their family.

I stopped them, and though they felt sorry about it, they let it go. They also said I didn’t have to be so sensible.

The city where my boyfriend works isn’t far from me either. It’s only a little over an hour by high-speed rail, and he often comes to see me on weekends.

I used to be pretty happy about it. He’d take me shopping and out for good food.

But now I’ve realized that we have less and less to talk about, and he isn’t romantic at all. Back when I had little experience, I saw him as my savior because he promised to marry me and still let me continue studying. But as I’ve gotten older and broadened my horizons, I’ve realized he’s nothing like I imagined. He’s just ordinary.

Even from the practical perspective of a conventional matchmaking setup, he doesn’t have much of an advantage.

Bachelor’s degree, small-town guy, twenty-nine years old, no house, no car.

His only real advantage is probably that he’s fairly good-looking.

Now every time I see him or answer his calls, I feel miserable.

That’s our story.

What I want to ask now is:

1. Should I break up with him?

2. If I do break up with him, how should I bring it up to minimize the hurt to him? He really does like me and care about me.

3. If we break up and things turn ugly and there are financial disputes, how can I protect my own rights and interests? According to the new Civil Code⁴, I know that if the engagement is canceled, the Bride Price must be returned. I won’t deny the debt, but I don’t have that much money right now, so how can I persuade my boyfriend to let me pay in installments or delay the payment? As for the other money he’s spent on me over the years, do I need to pay that back too, and if so, how much? After all, we were in a serious relationship, and I also provided emotional support.

That’s all. I hope all you all-powerful netizens can give me some advice. Thank you so much!

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1st floor⁵: Break up. Hurry up and do it!

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2nd floor: Of course break up. After all, love is the most important thing, right? [eye roll]

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3rd floor: I can’t even be bothered to curse you out anymore. Breaking up is fine. After all, he’s only twenty-nine. That’s a lot better than you dragging him down into his thirties or forties. For him, it’d count as cutting his losses in time.

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4th floor: Speaking as a webnovel junkie, whenever there’s a plot where a bad person suddenly grows a conscience and decides to wash their hands of everything, the next chapter is basically them getting offed. Best wishes to you~

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5th floor: From your second year of high school to graduating with a master’s, that’s been ten years. I just want to ask, OP, how exactly do you plan to repay that foolish man’s youth?!

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6th floor: I won’t comment. I’ll just quote two parts of OP’s original words for everyone to appreciate.

1. “More accurately, aside from the Bride Price and the engagement banquet expenses, every bit of money spent on me was paid by him, because he said he didn’t want to add to his parents’ burden.”

2. “So I didn’t go, and he said that was fine too. He said he usually had to work part-time…”

OP is actually willing to give up a man with such an incredible sense of responsibility, a man who, while still in college himself, took on the burden of a family and another person’s future? He didn’t even go to graduate school himself, yet he supported you all the way through yours.

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7th floor: Don’t hesitate, break up now. If you’re afraid of going through with it, send me your boyfriend’s number. I’ll be his girlfriend. The kind who doesn’t want any Bride Price and can get the marriage certificate right away.

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8th floor: So when the country selects highly educated talent now, they don’t even assess moral character anymore? What a disgrace to graduate students.

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9th floor: There are gods three feet above your head. You’ll get what’s coming to you.

Translator’s Notes