Chapter 1

After Silas came back, I kept catching a whiff of perfume on him.

His phone wouldn't stop buzzing. I glanced at it; the contact was saved as Capybara.

Silas hugged me from behind and laughed as he explained, "She's a new colleague at the company, really easygoing. We all call her Capybara. Haha, you wouldn't believe it, she can't even do a spreadsheet, she's such a ditz!"

My hand paused over the stir-fry.

Silas kept going, "Your temper's gotten a lot worse these past two years. You're almost as bad as my ex now."

I turned around and gave him a calm look.

"Right, it's all because of you. Anyone who's with you has rotten luck. Your mother ended up paralyzed because she gave birth to you. See? You've been a jinx since the day you were born."

"If you like her, you'd better keep your distance, or one day you might really jinx her to death."

1

Silas was clearly stunned, so I pushed him off and went back to cooking.

A second later his voice blew up behind me. "What the—? Are you sick in the head? Joyce, have you lost your mind?"

I carried the dishes to the table, and he knocked them over with one shove. "Forget eating! You're really sick, you know that? Your mind's filthy, so everything looks filthy to you! She and I are just colleagues! Here, here, look for yourself."

He held out his phone, scrolling through his chat history with this Capybara.

My eyes locked onto the message from around noon.

She'd sent a photo of Silas asleep at his desk.

Just a random shot, do you like it?

Your hands are gorgeous, I set them as my lock screen.

Silas was still flipping through the messages, full of righteous indignation, and suddenly I had nothing to say.

"See? It's all work stuff. You tell me, don't you feel ashamed?"

Ashamed?

"We're about to get married. I really don't get why you're so paranoid." He said it half-jokingly. "Maybe we're just not right for each other."

I sat down next to him and gave a faint shake of my head. "It's not that we're not right for each other. It's that your birth chart is a rough one, you're just garbage. If you count the days, it just takes a little more time."

The moment I finished, I noticed he and the female colleague were already on a video call.

Both of them froze. The girl recovered first.

"I—I heard you two had a fight. I—I just wanted to come explain. Silas and I are just..."

I couldn't be bothered to listen. I looked at the person on the screen. "No need to explain. You're garbage too."

I went back to the bedroom, and outside I could hear Silas soothing her.

His voice was gentle, flustered and nervous.

A normal person wouldn't be on a video call with a colleague of the opposite sex after work hours.

He was a lot more nervous coaxing her than he ever was coaxing me.

When he came into the room, he leaned against the wall and smoked several cigarettes. By the looks of it, the coaxing hadn't gone well.

After a long while, Silas spoke slowly. "Let's go out and grab a bite."

I knew what he wasn't saying was probably: to go apologize to her.

I sat up and looked at him mockingly.

Seeing something was off with me, he softened his voice considerably. "I—I don't mean anything by it. It's just that the department called a team dinner on short notice, and we can bring family, so let's go?"

"I'm not going."

"Come on, baby, I knocked over the food. Just come out and eat with me, please."

I was silent for only a moment before getting up and putting on my clothes.

There was no way around it—he and the third sister were too gracious to refuse, and if I still said no, I'd look like a real killjoy.