Chapter 1

I transmigrated into a high school romance novel as the devoted second male lead.

At eighteen, my memories completely awakened.

The girl I had grown up with since childhood turned out to be the female lead.

Back then, to be with me, she had fought tooth and nail against the invisible chains of the plot, resisting the script with everything she had.

Yet six years into our marriage, she cheated on me with the male lead.

"Why, Vivian... why?"

My voice shook uncontrollably as I looked at her, choking back a sob.

Once, she was the girl who would cry her eyes out with worry if I so much as got caught in the rain. Now, she simply looked away, cool and indifferent.

"Ethan, I'm carrying his baby."

Staring at the stack of sickening photos spread across the table, I still couldn't bring myself to believe it.

The woman I had been married to for six years had actually had an affair.

"You're back."

Hearing the familiar click of a key turning in the deadbolt, I didn't even turn around. I knew it was her.

Her footsteps drew closer. I hadn't bothered hiding the photos on the table; they were sprawled out in plain sight.

"So, you know?"

She didn't seem panicked at all. Cool, calm, and collected—nothing like someone caught cheating.

My fingers gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white, as I searched the face I had known for twenty-eight years. I was desperately trying to find a shred of evidence that she still loved me, some flicker of remorse or guilt. But...

Nothing.

There was only cold, dead calm.

She stood there in a tailored mermaid dress, porcelain skin, painted lips, looking just as breathtaking as she always had.

Time might spare a beautiful face, but over the years, it can completely warp a person's soul.

A faint, bitter smile touched my lips as I noticed the smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth.

It looked like a brand left behind by a rough, passionate kiss.

She had always cared deeply about her looks. She knew how to present herself flawlessly, and after winning Best Actress, she guarded her public image like gold.

There was no way she didn't realize her lipstick was smeared.

She had left it on purpose.

No matter how hard I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, a choked sob broke through.

"Why, Vivian... why?"

Looking into those once-beloved eyes, I felt like I was looking at a total stranger.

Our wedding vows still seemed to echo in the room, yet she was the first to tear them apart.

Tears spilled over my lashes, hot and uncontrollable.

Once, she was the girl who would break down crying if I just caught a cold in the rain. Now, she merely averted her eyes, detached.

"Ethan, I'm carrying his baby."

Her hand gently rested over her stomach. When she thought of him, her features softened, and a tender smile graced her face.

It was the exact same smile the seventeen-year-old Vivian used to give me. The tenderness that had once belonged entirely to me.

I hadn't been born with my past memories.

Before I turned seventeen, I had no clue that the world I lived in was just the plot of a trashy romance novel I had read in another life.

A melodramatic story where the original male and female leads break up, only to reunite years later.

And I was just the extra—the unlucky childhood friend destined to lose to the charismatic newcomer, doomed forever to be the tragic second lead.

So even though we grew up side by side, even though Vivian confessed her feelings to me countless times, before seventeen I had only treated her like the sweet little sister next door. And after awakening my memories at seventeen, I kept her strictly at arm's length.

I warned myself over and over: do not fall for her. You cannot love her.

The male lead and the female lead end up together. That's the golden rule of the genre.

Anyone who dares defy that rule meets a terrible end.

In all the web novels I had ever read, the pathetic second male leads either got crushed and impoverished by the male lead, drove themselves crazy pining for a love they could never have, or vanished abroad, never to be heard from again...

Every single one of them ended in misery.

I didn't want that life.