I stepped back from the door.
Once.
Then again.
The marble floor felt colder than before, or maybe my feet had simply stopped registering sensation. Inside the room, their voices continued—casual, unguarded, cruel in the way only certainty can be.
They were discussing my life.
As if I weren't real.
As if I had already been decided, folded away, cleared from the board.
I waited for something to happen.
A surge of anger.
Tears.
The urge to burst in and demand an explanation.
Nothing came.
Only a strange, hollow calm—like the moment after a punch lands and the body hasn't caught up yet.
I turned around and walked back toward the ballroom.
The host tapped the microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said with practiced warmth, "thank you for your patience. Tonight is a special evening. Not just a reunion—but the announcement of a future."
Applause followed automatically.
I stopped at the edge of the crowd.
No one made space for me.
No one noticed I wasn't beside my parents where I was expected to be.
The lights brightened.
Gu Chengyi stepped forward.
Of course it was him.
The eldest.
The most responsible.
The one everyone assumed would take on what needed to be handled.
My mother's fingers tightened around her glass.
My father straightened.
I felt something tighten too—but it wasn't hope.
It was instinct.
Gu Chengyi accepted the microphone with steady hands.
"There has been speculation for many years," he said calmly. "Tonight, I'd like to put those rumors to rest."
A hush fell.
I waited.
Not because I believed.
But because part of me still needed to see it end.
Gu Chengyi didn't look for me.
Instead, he turned slightly—and held out his hand.
A woman stood.
Not me.
For half a second, the world didn't make sense.
Then it did.
Gasps rippled through the room like a delayed shockwave. Whispers followed—sharp, excited, hungry.
Cameras lifted.
Phones appeared.
The woman—beautiful, carefully composed—placed her hand in his.
"She will be joining me going forward," Gu Chengyi continued, voice even. "In both my personal life and future plans."
Applause broke out.
Not thunderous.
Not joyful.
But loud enough.
Polite enough.
Enough to bury me.
I stood perfectly still as people turned.
Some stared openly.
Some looked away too quickly.
Someone near me whispered, "What about Lu Yanxi?"
No one answered.
Gu Chengyi didn't glance in my direction.
Not once.
It wasn't oversight.
It was intention.
And that was when I understood.
This wasn't betrayal.
This was removal.
My mother didn't come to me.
She remained seated, smiling thinly, already calculating damage control.
My father didn't look angry.
Only… resigned.
As if this outcome had been discussed somewhere I hadn't been invited.
The applause faded.
The room adjusted.
People always adjusted.
I felt it happening in real time—the story rewriting itself, the assumptions rearranging.
"Oh, so that's why she was quiet."
"She was never the choice, then?"
"I guess the rumors were exaggerated."
Each word stripped something from me.
Not loudly.
Efficiently.
I should have left.
I didn't.
I stood there while the joke everyone had believed finally reached its punchline.
While three families confirmed what they had always known.
While my existence shrank from inevitability to inconvenience.
No one announced my dismissal.
They didn't have to.
The silence did it for them.
Later, someone would say it was unfortunate.
Someone else would say it was misunderstanding.
They would insist it wasn't personal.
But standing there, alone in a room built for alliances, I finally saw the truth with brutal clarity:
I had never been a choice.
I had been a placeholder.
A convenience.
An obligation they planned to discard quietly—
Until circumstances made it necessary to do so publicly.
I lowered my gaze.
Not in shame.
But because something inside me had gone very, very still.
And in that stillness, a thought formed—cold and irreversible:
If this was the ending they had written for me…
Then I would write the next one myself.
And next time—
No one would be laughing.