The windshield wipers fought against the rain in a rhythmic battle they were destined to lose. Su Yiling pressed harder on the accelerator, watching the city lights blur into streaks of gold and white through her tears.
Her hands shook on the steering wheel. Three years. Three years of her life wasted on a man who No. She couldn't think about Fu Yao right now. The image of him tangled with Su Meilin was seared into her retinas, playing on repeat every time she blinked.
But it wasn't just the betrayal that made her chest feel like it was caving in. It was the realization of how completely, utterly stupid she had been.
"You don't need to worry about academics, darling." Her aunt's voice echoed in her memory, sweet as honey and twice as sticky. "A woman like you is beautiful, graceful. Your job is to be the perfect ornament. Let the men handle the serious matters."
Su Yiling had been nineteen then, at the top of her finance program, with professors praising her analytical mind and her grandfather beaming with pride whenever she came home with perfect scores. But Aunt Li had smiled that knowing smile, the one that suggested she held secrets about the world that naive little Su Yiling couldn't possibly understand.
"Look at your cousin Meilin," she'd continued. "She understands that a woman's greatest achievement is landing the right husband. All this studying you're doing is making you too serious. Men don't like women who are smarter than them."
The memory tasted bitter now. How eagerly she'd swallowed those poisoned words, thinking her aunt was sharing wisdom born from experience. How quickly she'd started skipping lectures, letting her grades slip, trading her textbooks for fashion magazines and etiquette classes.
Her parents had been devastated. Her mother's disappointed sighs, her father's confused questions about why his brilliant daughter was suddenly failing classes she used to ace. But Aunt Li had been there with reassurances: this was normal, this was right, this was how successful women operated in the real world.
"Trust me," she'd whispered during one of their afternoon shopping trips. "I know what's best for girls like us."
Girls like us. What a joke. Su Yiling saw now that there had never been an 'us.' There had only been Aunt Li molding her into the perfect failure, the perfect disappointment, while her own daughter quietly excelled in ways no one noticed.
The worst part was her brothers. All three of them had tried to warn her, each in their own way.
Her eldest brother, Su Mingyu, had sat her down during winter break two years ago, his expression grave. "Yiling, you're changing. This isn't you."
Her second brother, Su Jihan, had been more direct. "You're becoming shallow. What happened to my sister who used to debate philosophy with grandfather until midnight?"
But it was her third brother, Su Zhen, who had seen through Fu Yao from the very beginning.
"He's using you," he'd said bluntly, cornering her after yet another failed family dinner where Fu Yao had spent the entire evening checking his phone. "That man doesn't love you. He loves the idea of you, the beautiful, uncomplicated girlfriend who makes him look good at company events."
Su Yiling had been furious. How dare he question her judgment? How dare any of them try to interfere with her happiness?
"You don't know him like I do," she'd snapped. "Just because you can't find anyone willing to put up with your arrogance doesn't mean you get to sabotage my relationship."
The hurt in Su Zhen's eyes had been immediate and sharp. But she'd been too proud, too convinced of her own righteousness to apologize. Aunt Li had been right there to soothe her wounded pride, to tell her that brothers were naturally jealous of their sisters' romantic success.
"Fu Yao is perfect for you," she'd cooed. "Successful, handsome, from a good family. You've achieved exactly what a woman should achieve."
Achievement. The word felt like ashes in her mouth now.
Her grandparents had been the hardest to disappoint. Grandmother Su, with her sharp mind and sharper tongue, had built a small empire of her own before women were supposed to do such things. She'd looked at Su Yiling's declining academic performance with something close to heartbreak.
"I fought so hard so that girls like you could have choices," she'd said quietly during Su Yiling's last visit home. "I wanted you to be stronger than I ever could be."
But Su Yiling had been drunk on Aunt Li's praise, addicted to the simplicity of being beautiful rather than brilliant. She'd brushed off her grandmother's concerns with the same dismissive attitude she'd learned from her aunt.
"Times are different now, Grandmother. I don't need to prove myself the way you did."
The disappointment in those ancient eyes still haunted her.
And Grandfather Su, brilliant, accomplished Grandfather Su who had built their family's reputation through decades of hard work and integrity. He'd tried a different approach, offering her internships at his company, opportunities to learn the business from the ground up.
"Intelligence runs in our bloodline," he'd said, his weathered hands gentle as he'd shown her old photographs of her great-grandmother, who had been one of the first female doctors in their province. "Don't waste the gift you've been given."
But she'd been too busy playing dress-up, too focused on becoming the perfect accessory for Fu Yao's arm at social functions. Too willing to believe that love meant making yourself smaller so that someone else could feel bigger.
The rain was coming down harder now. Su Yiling's vision blurred, tears or weather, she couldn't tell anymore. The speedometer crept higher as her foot pressed down unconsciously.
She thought about Su Meilin's words: "Someone who actually appreciates him. Someone who doesn't take everything for granted the way you do."
Taking things for granted. Yes, she had done that, hadn't she? She took for granted that her family's love was unconditional, that their patience was infinite. She took for granted that there would always be time to make things right, to prove herself worthy of their faith in her.
She took for granted that the people who claimed to care about her actually had her best interests at heart.
The traffic light ahead glowed red through the rain. Su Yiling pressed the brake, but something felt wrong. The pedal went soft under her foot, offering no resistance.
Her heart stopped.
She pumped the brake frantically, but the car continued its forward momentum toward the intersection. Through the passenger window, she caught a glimpse of massive headlights bearing down on her, a truck, running the red light just as fast as she was, its driver probably fighting the same rain-slicked roads.
Time crystallized. In that suspended moment before impact, Su Yiling's mind went perfectly clear.
This was it, then. This was how it ended. Not with achievement or redemption, but with the crushing weight of wasted potential and broken promises.
She thought of her parents, who would blame themselves for not trying harder to guide her back to the right path. Her brothers, who would carry the guilt of their last harsh words. Her grandparents, who would mourn not just her death but the death of everything she could have been.
The truck's horn blared, a deafening sound that seemed to come from another world entirely.
Su Yiling closed her eyes and made a promise to the universe, to whatever forces might be listening in that space between heartbeats:
"If I could do it over again," she whispered into the storm, "I would do better. I would be better. I would honor the faith they had in me."
The impact, when it came, sounded like the world ending.