I Was Just His Substitute Wife

I'd been following The Last Words to the World for a long time, and that night a young girl suddenly appeared on the show.

When the host asked her who she wanted to leave her final words for,

her face was pale, and a broken smile touched her lips.

These last words of mine, I want to leave them for my ex-boyfriend.

"Back then I unexpectedly came down with leukemia. I didn't want to be a burden to him, so I pretended to be shallow and greedy, and I broke up with him."

"After we split, his life was hard, and he ended up marrying someone he doesn't love."

"Now my days are numbered. I hope the production team will give him the recording of this show after I'm gone."

"I want him to know that, really, I've loved him this whole time, all along."

As the girl spoke, not a single person in the audience was unmoved. Even the host was brought to tears.

At the very end, the girl held up a photo of herself and her ex-boyfriend to the camera.

The moment I saw it, the hand I was using to wipe my tears froze mid-motion.

The face in the photo was one I knew better than any other.

It was unmistakably my husband of three years, Harry James.

I'd followed this show for a long time.

The whole point of it was to help people whose days were numbered pass on the words they could never bring themselves to say out loud.

Every story the guests brought was moving.

I lifted my hand and swiped it across my face. My fingers came away wet.

But now, all I felt was that I was a joke.

When I got home from the hospital, Harry was already there.

Seeing me come in, he stepped forward and naturally took the things from my hands.

Then he lowered his head and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"You must be worn out from your checkup today, sweetheart. Come eat."

I didn't move. I stood in the doorway, staring straight at him.

Once, this had been the moment I looked forward to most, the happiest part of my day.

Coming home after a long, busy day, Harry would kiss me, tell me I'd worked hard, and have a warm meal waiting.

The girl's words kept circling in my head.

"He married someone he doesn't love"

Harry didn't love me.

My eyes settled on his face without my meaning them to, searching for some faint trace, some tell.

But there was only that gentle, doting smile he always wore. I couldn't catch a single thing out of place.

Could someone who wasn't a trained actor really put on a show this good?

Trust and doubt tore at each other inside my head.

Seeing that I hadn't moved, Harry called to me from across the room by the table.

"What's wrong, sweetheart? Come eat, quick, the food's getting cold."

I walked over to the table and sat down.

Harry picked up a piece of pork rib for me.

"I made your favorite tonight, braised pork ribs. Try it, sweetheart, see if it's to your taste."

I looked at the rib in my bowl, feeling strangely far away.

A distant memory suddenly churned up in my mind.

The truth was, my favorite wasn't braised pork ribs at all. It was durian chicken stew.

But Harry couldn't stand the smell of durian.

This was our third year of marriage, our fifth year together, and it had been five years since I'd last eaten durian chicken stew.

I suddenly thought of what the girl had said on the show.

"He treated me so well. He remembered every food I couldn't eat, remembered that I like cilantro but not onions, ginger, or garlic."

"Even though one whiff of cilantro made him gag, there was always a big bunch of it in the fridge, kept just for me."

I lowered my head and took a bite of the rib. It tasted like ash in my mouth.

Harry didn't notice anything different about me.

He pulled a gift box out from behind him and smiled at me.

"An early birthday present for you, sweetheart."

"I have a business trip in a couple of days, so I might miss your birthday. I wanted to give it to you ahead of time."

If this had been before, I would have taken it, delighted.

Expressionless, I opened the box.

A necklace from some luxury brand's 2026 spring collection.

Expensive, respectable, and no effort at all.

The Harry James of today could get one with a flick of his finger.

I faked delight.

"You actually remembered this!"

"Remembered what?" Harry blinked, caught off guard.

"Three years ago, the birthday gift you were going to give me was a necklace from this same brand. It was a spring release too, what a coincidence!"

"Later you said your project fell through, so you couldn't buy that necklace anymore. I was sad about it for the longest time."

The flawless smile slid back onto his face.

"That's right. I just knew you'd love it. From now on I'll get you the new release every year."

Liar.

I closed the lid and set the gift aside.

He didn't remember at all.

Three years ago, what he'd actually told me was that the project bonus had gone toward gifts for his business partners.

Just bear with the disappointment for now, he'd said. I'll make it up to you later.

Today, I'd seen that necklace around a girl's throat.

She'd told the host,

"This was the birthday gift he mailed me after we broke up."

"Honestly, every year I told him I threw away everything he sent, that he should stop mailing them. But he never listened."

I remembered the price of that necklace perfectly.

Eighty-seven thousand three hundred sixty-two dollars.

I'd caught a glimpse of it on Harry's phone by accident, a number I'd chewed over in private for a long time.

Back then we were crammed into a basement apartment.

It ached, knowing he'd spent enough money to change our lives on a single necklace.

And it made me happy, believing that if he had a hundred dollars, ninety-nine of it would go to me.

In the end, the money and the love, I got neither.

Harry still didn't know about that girl.

I curled up on the couch, watching his back as he moved around the kitchen.

It has to be said sooner or later.

Five years between us.

I'd built everything with him from nothing, all the way to now.

At our lowest, one plate of pickled vegetables and one roll, split between us for two days.

I didn't want to wait until the recording actually arrived at our door and then watch him hold another woman in his heart for the rest of his life.

Before I could open my mouth, Harry's phone rang.

He answered, said a couple of words, and his face changed. He rushed straight into the study.

"Is Phoebe"

He was too frantic to notice the study door hadn't shut all the way.

Out in the living room, I heard every word.

Phoebe. Phoebe Fox. That was the girl's name.

I opened my phone.

A news story was sweeping across every social platform.

The Real-Life Novel Heroine, a Life Buried for Love.

That lukewarm little show had gone viral because of Phoebe Fox's story.

And it had reached Harry too.

"Libby, something came up at the company. I have to go deal with it."

Harry left in a hurry, forgetting even the parting kiss he always gave me before walking out.

Night fell, and the apartment was swallowed in darkness.

I didn't get up to turn on the lights. Only my phone flickered, its glow rising and dying against my face.

Numbly, I watched people online debate the story with feverish excitement.

Praising and mourning their love, hoping the two of them would get back together.

Refresh again.

A new post shot straight to the top of my feed, unstoppable.

Folks, I think I just witnessed a live grovel-to-win-her-back scene.

The video was shot from a hidden angle, yet it let me see the man's face perfectly clearly.

Harry had always been elegant, put-together.

Even the ten-dollar street-stall clothes from back then, he'd worn with restraint and dignity.

But now, he was on his knees in front of Phoebe Fox, pressing his face to her hand, weeping like his heart was breaking.

"Why didn't you tell me!"

"If you'd said something sooner, I wouldn't have just grabbed the first person I could find and married her!"

Just grabbed the first person he could find?

My hands trembled as I opened the timer app I used for keeping track.

Today was the two-thousandth day since I'd met Harry James.

Today was the one thousand eight hundred and sixty-first day since we'd been together.

Meeting Harry had been an accident in my plain, ordinary life.

For him, Ia girl who'd spent her whole life following her parents' plans, step by careful stepworked up the courage for the first time to leave everything behind and come to Capital City with Harry to build a life from nothing.

Back then, everything we owned added up to just enough to rent a leaky basement.

He chose to start his own business. I took a steady job as a clerk.

My salary was six thousand a month. His, some months, was a negative number.

We stretched every dollar into two, and somehow, through all the stumbling, I propped him up until his business finally started to turn.

Later, his company was short on people.

I didn't understand any of that world.

So when he talked business, I was the one drinking at the table.

A woman who'd never touched a drop learned to drink until my stomach was bleeding, and never once let it show on my face.

And now, out of his own mouth, I was just someone he'd grabbed to marry.

The comment section had lost its collective mind over the two of them.

The handful of comments defending me, the wife, got reported and buried at the very bottom.

Before long, someone dug up Phoebe Fox's social media too.

Her latest post had gone up five minutes ago.

Thank you all for helping me reach him. Getting to spend this last stretch of time with him before I go, I have no regrets left.

The photo attached showed a man in an apron, his back to the camera, busy in the kitchen.

The man who not so long ago had carried a plate of braised ribs over and called me to dinner was now washing up and cooking soup for her.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I screenshotted it and sent it to Harry.

Come home soon. We need to talk about the divorce.

Harry didn't answer.

I sat there through the whole night, empty.

He didn't see my message until the next morning.

Wait for me to get home. I'll explain everything properly.

Harry came home carrying breakfast, a luxury shopping bag hanging from his arm too.

I was scrolling through my parents' feed, head down.

Since I'd followed Harry to Capital City, they and I had never spoken again.

Harry set a steamer basket of dumplings in front of me and leaned in close.

"Your favorite dumplings, that place you love. Eat them while they're hot?"

I'd told him just last week that this place had switched chefs and the food wasn't good anymore.

Then he held out the luxury bag.

"Didn't you say yesterday that you liked this brand? This one's new too. See if you like it?"

I'd seen it on Phoebe's social media.

A whole row of the latest luxury pieces. This one was her leftover, the one she'd passed over.

Only then had it made its way to me.

I closed the box, tossed it aside, and turned the laptop on the table toward Harry.

"This is the divorce agreement I drew up. Look it over and see if anything's off."

"If there's nothing, let's go down to the civil affairs office in a bit."

Snap

The usual smile on Harry's face dimmed a shade, and he clapped the laptop shut.

"What is this supposed to mean?"

Over the course of one night, I'd made up my mind.

While Phoebe was still alive, more than half of Harry's heart was tied up in hernever mind what it would be like after.

I didn't want to live the rest of my life in someone else's shadow.

"I don't think there's any point in the two of us going on."

"I can't accept a husband who has an ex-girlfriend he loves this deeply."

Harry let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing the space between his brows as if utterly at a loss.

"Libby, Phoebe doesn't have many days left. I only want her to leave this world without regrets."

Lies.

You've just finally found an excuse to be good to her out in the open.

"Can you not pick this of all times to get jealous and pull something so petty."

The emotions I'd been holding down began to break apart.

Tears slid to the corner of my mouth before I noticed, bitter, so bitter.

Every word of protest I might have thrown back was crushed under the weight of a human life.

I wanted to say I wasn't jealous.

It was because you still had Phoebe Fox in your heart.

It was because you didn't love me.

But in this situation, no matter how I explained it, I would come off as a madwoman who trampled on a dying person's life out of pure spite.

So I only said it again.

"I mean it. Divorce."

"Enough!"

Harry's face went dark, and he slammed the bun in his hand down on the table.

"Libby Curry, how can you be this cold-blooded!"

The greasy smell of the bun rose into my nose and made me want to gag.

"I already told you Phoebe doesn't have much time left! Can't you show a little mercy, let her go with some peace of mind?"

"I'll come back to you sooner or later anyway. For now, I'm begging you, just turn a blind eye, all right?"

They say the dead deserve the highest respect.

The world is always forgiving toward those about to die.

If I were the woman I'd been before yesterday, I could even have accepted Harry seeing Phoebe off on her final journey.

Because I'd been so sure Harry loved me.

But after yesterday, I finally learned what Harry looked like when he truly loved someone.

He would give up the things he hated for her.

Even when money was tight, he would give her the best.

So I couldn't accept it. And I didn't dare gamble on how high Phoebe might climb in Harry's heart down the line.

It hurt, but I had to cut my losses in time.

Harry didn't give me another chance to speak.

His phone rang.

On the screen, the word "Phoebe" flashed over and over.

He threw out one line, "Think it over carefully," slammed the door, and hurried out.

I opened Twitter. Phoebe's account had just posted an update.

Another flare-up, it hurts so much. At least this time I have you here with me.

Fans swarmed under Phoebe's account in an instant.

Oh my god, my heart aches for you. You have to get better soon.

You two really have it so hard. I hope you can be happy in the time you have left.

Do you have any last wishes? Have your husband make them come true! Like wearing a wedding dress or something...

Phoebe replied to that one.

If I could, I really would love to wear a wedding dress for him once.

That comment shot straight to the top.

I knew Harry had seen it too.

Because that same afternoon, more than a dozen wedding-dress photos went up on Phoebe's account.

Married three years, and our own wedding had never even taken shape.

At first, I'd pushed him about it, desperate.

I wanted to invite my parents, to let them see that their daughter hadn't misjudged the man all those years ago.

But Harry always said work was too busy, that there was no time to plan it.

He said he needed to earn more money before he could face my parents, before they would accept him.

I waited and waited.

It took until today to learn that throwing a wedding wasn't so hard for Harry after all.

The next day, they'd even booked the reception.

Phoebe posted the hotel address and a welcome photo on Twitter.

Your brother-in-law booked out the entire hotel. He says he welcomes you all to our wedding. Any of my babies who have time, please come cheer us on!

I looked at their photos.

I kept scrolling through my phone's album, and finally I reached the record of the day Harry proposed to me.

The backdrop was somebody else's wedding.

I'd caught the bouquet at a friend's wedding, and Harry had gone with the moment and proposed to me right there.

We didn't even have a ring back then. We used pull-tabs off soda cans instead.

The photographer hired for my friend's wedding was good at his job, so we ended up with two respectable pictures.

But next to a real bridal shoot, they looked crude, like two kids playing house.

I kept firing messages at Harry.

You're married, and you can still throw a wedding with someone else. You've really got some nerve.

If you want to have one, divorce me first.

Harry, what exactly do I even count as to you

He didn't answer a single one.

After the fight that day, he threw all caution to the wind and paraded his romance with Phoebe Fox all over social media, hiding nothing.

Every topic on every platform was about the two of them, and the gossip accounts kept lining up, one after another, to feast on the traffic.

On the day of Harry and Phoebe's reception, one video that took a different angle cut straight through the noise.

Does nobody feel bad for the first wife of this "brother-in-law"?

A lot of people caught on, late.

Oh. So it turned out there was a first wife in this story.

My name, along with Harry and Phoebe's wedding, climbed the trending list one after another.

Overnight, opinion flipped, and Phoebe was met with a flood of abuse.

They called her scheming. They called her a homewrecker who knew exactly what she was doing.

And I knew none of it.

I hadn't slept for days, and while I was resting at home with my eyes closed, Harry came storming in, enraged, and hauled me up.

He slammed me hard onto the floor and gripped my face, squeezing like he meant to crush the bones.

"Libby, was it you who leaked all of it?"

"How can you be this vicious? Do you know Phoebe collapsed on the spot when she saw the news, she was so upset?"

"She's in the hospital fighting for her life right now. Happy now?"

From his scattered words, I more or less pieced together what had happened.

I just couldn't believe it.

Couldn't believe the trust between us was this thin.

Phoebe had only been with him for two years.

We'd been together five, married three.

And in the end, she was his idealized love.

I was the one who'd swallowed every hardship at his side, and I was the one who was vicious to the core.

It was too absurd.

The heart that had gone numb these past few days started to beat again.

Faster and faster, more and more painful, like it wanted to burst out of my chest.

"Enough, Harry!"

I heard myself scream, hysterical.

"I told you and told you I wanted a divorce, and you're the one who wouldn't agree!"

"We've been married three years. I came all this way to help you build a business, slept in a basement with you, lived on scraps with you."

"And in the end you were thinking about your ex the whole time, and the second she cries you go scrambling right back to her!"

"So tell me, what exactly am I, to be treated by you like this?"

I had never blown up at Harry like this before.

His reason came flooding back, and he looked lost.

"Libby, I"

"Don't say anything. Divorce! Whatever the two of you do from now on has nothing to do with me!"

The area under my nose was wet. I kept wiping at it with my hand, and no matter what I couldn't get it clean.

Then Harry looked at me, terror all over his face.

"Libby, what's wrong with you?"

A streak of vivid red slid into my vision.

Only then did I realize my hand was smeared with blood.

Something was dripping from the tip of my nose, drop after drop onto the floor, carrying a thick, rusty smell.

The room spun.

I saw Harry lunge forward to catch me.

The next second, I blacked out completely.