Lily sat there, frozen—eyes wide, shimmering with unshed tears, her breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
"You're… selling me off?" Her voice trembled, barely a whisper, as if even speaking the words aloud would make them feel too real.
Her father didn't even flinch. "Business requires sacrifices, my dear. You're the last piece I need to finalize the merger with the Shulong Group. You will marry Lihyun Shulong. Son of the head of Shulong Enterprises. No questions asked."
Sacrifices.
That word struck her like a slap.
Like she wasn't a person—but a token, a pawn carved in porcelain, ready to be handed over for the right price. A bitter laugh echoed in her chest, but never made it past her lips.
So this was it.
The reason they had kept her all these years in that golden cage lined with silks and etiquette classes.
The late-night dinners with strangers. The forced smiles at charity galas. The endless lectures about duty, decorum, and legacy.
All a performance. All for this moment.
To be auctioned off like property.
"At last, it all makes sense," she thought, her fingers digging into her palms, nails biting her skin. "This… this was why they never let me choose. Why they kept me on a leash dressed like a pearl in a jewelry box. It was never about love or family. I was leverage. A bargaining chip."
Her father stood gave her a look, as if the conversation was no more significant than a quarterly report. "I'll take your silence as a yes."
Yes. As if she had a choice.
The blood drained from her face. She didn't even realize the meeting had ended until the room emptied around her. Han Liang, her devil of a brother patted her shoulder like she was a pet being sent off to a new home.
Lily sat, unmoving, on the cold marble floor, her limbs numb and trembling. Her ears rang. Her throat burned. Something cracked deep inside her chest—quiet, devastating.
And when she couldn't take it any longer, she staggered to her feet and ran.
The bathroom door slammed behind her, muffling her broken gasps. She barely made it to the sink before she retched, her entire body convulsing. Tears blurred her vision as she clutched the basin like it was the only solid thing left in her life.
This was disgusting. Horrifying.
She was being traded—like a contract, a currency, an object.
The Lily in the mirror didn't even look like her. She was pale, her mascara smeared, lips trembling.
She splashed water on her face, desperately trying to calm the chaos thundering in her chest.
"And who the hell is this Lihyun Shulong anyway?!" her mind screamed.
Heart pounding, she pulled out her phone and furiously typed:
Lihyun Shulong.
Her fingers hovered as the screen loaded.
No results.
Nothing.
Not a photo.
Not a headline.
Not even a whisper.
"You've got to be kidding me..." she breathed, her voice hollow with disbelief.
She slid down to the tiled floor, curling in on herself like a wounded animal, the weight of her future pressing down like iron chains.
Her shoulders trembled as she pressed her forehead to her knees.
Was this all she was worth? A footnote in a merger deal?
Where was the girl who once dreamed of painting sunsets and chasing cherry blossoms in spring?
Buried. Forgotten. Rewritten into a name on a contract.
But somewhere deep beneath the shock—beneath the grief—something flickered.
Anger.
Lily stared at the flickering screen of her phone, her fingers hovering uncertainly. Her reflection in the blackened glass looked tired, broken… but her eyes—her eyes were hard now, burning with quiet fury.
They could take everything else from her. But not her will.
Not without a fight.
With trembling hands, she opened a message thread with Li Meng—the only person she knew and trusted who was capable of doing what she was going to ask for. Her only friend from college.
She typed slowly at first, then faster.
LILY:
Hey…
What's up Li Meng? Hope you're fairing well.
Something happened. Something bad.
They've arranged a marriage. For me. Without asking.
I'm being sold off to someone named Lihyun Shulong like some limited-edition asset in their billion-yuan portfolio.
I can't even find a single damn article or photo on this guy.
Li Meng… I need a favor. A big one.
I need you to dig. Find out everything you can about Lihyun Shulong. I don't care how obscure or buried it is. I want to know what he eats, who he hangs out with, what he's hiding.
Because I'm not walking into this blind.
And I'm not letting them sell me without knowing who's bidding.
Please. Help me.
--------------------------
She hovered over the send button, her thumb hesitating only for a second.
Then she hit send.
A beat passed. Two.
And then, a small green check mark appeared beneath the message. Delivered.
Lily let the phone fall into her lap as she exhaled shakily, wiping her face with the sleeve of her blouse. Her stomach still churned, but her mind had cleared, sharpening like a blade.
They thought they'd broken her.
But all they'd done was wake the girl who had been silently swallowing rage for years.
Just then, the bathroom door creaked open.
Lily flinched, instinctively trying to wipe away her tears, her body still trembling from the weight of it all.
A maid stood in the doorway—young, with soft eyes that flickered with something dangerously close to pity. Pity was rare in this house. Forbidden, even.
"Madam has asked me to get you ready for the charity gala in three hours," the maid said gently. "Please return to your room."
Lily didn't respond. She couldn't. Her throat was raw from retching, her limbs weak and unsteady. The maid didn't move, didn't press, only waited with quiet resignation, her gaze lingering on Lily's crumpled figure on the cold tiles.
Of course. A gala.
They wouldn't give her time to process. To breathe. To scream.
There was no space for breakdowns in the Liang household—only schedules, photo ops, and strategies.
Slowly, Lily pushed herself off the floor, her knees aching. She stumbled a little, but the maid didn't offer help. She couldn't. That too would be seen as weakness—both hers and Lily's.
They walked in silence—past the tall, porcelain vase that cost more than most people's homes; through the grand drawing room, where her father hosted foreign diplomats and pretended she didn't exist; and into the private in-house elevator reserved for family members and trusted staff.
DING.
Her floor. A corridor of dull beige walls and dim lighting.
Lily stepped out. Unlike the opulent upper floors, hers was buried near the west wing—technically "family quarters," but in reality, it was servant housing. She could hear soft voices behind staff room doors, the clatter of dishes being dried, laughter that never quite reached her world.
Her key clicked into the lock.
She opened the door to her room.
The familiar scent of sandalwood and dust hit her first.
Paint peeled from the corners of the ceiling. Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls, half-concealed by posters and fading photos of her younger self—singing on stage, clutching a trophy, laughing into the spotlight.
A version of Lily who still believed this house could one day feel like home.
And there, laid across her neatly made bed like some ghostly offering, was a white tweed dress.
Pristine. Elegant. Stark.
It didn't belong here—not among cracked plaster and outdated speakers and a wardrobe with two broken handles.
It belonged to their world. The curated, controlled world of the Liang family.
A world where charity galas weren't about generosity—they were about reputation management.
Lily had seen it time and again:
A scandal breaks.
A photo leaks.
A whisper spreads in the tabloids.
And within days, the family in question appears at a glittering gala, their children dolled up in designer brands, smiling beside billionaires, holding flutes of untouched champagne while camera shutters flash like gunfire.
It was a performance. A cleanse. A reset.
Charity galas were the chaebol way of rewriting the narrative.
Tonight, she was to be their puppet—a walking apology draped in white. An image of innocence and grace. The "misunderstood daughter" returning to the public eye.
No one would mention the engagement yet—not publicly—but this was clearly the soft launch.
"Smile. Walk two steps behind your father. Keep your chin up but your eyes low. Don't speak unless spoken to."
The instructions echoed in her head.
They had drilled them into her since she was thirteen.
She stared at the dress for a long moment.
Something inside her stirred again—quiet but burning.
They were going to parade her. Like everything was fine. Like she wasn't being sold off to a ghost with a forged name.
Yuyan sat on the edge of the bed, still trembling.
Her fingers brushed the fabric of the dress. It was cold. Just like this house.
Just like them.
___________
MEANWHILE : Shulong Group Skyscraper.
The sleek glass walls of the Shulong Group Business Enterprises Tower reflected the golden hues of the setting sun. From the top floor, the city sprawled like a glowing circuit board, buzzing with ambition and power. Inside the CEO's private office—an austere space lined with towering bookshelves and minimalist furnishings— Jinhai Shulong sat before a screen, brows furrowed in silent discontent.
Tall, sharp-featured, and impeccably dressed, Jinhai sat at the table in the private office. But beneath the surface was a storm of turmoil. As second son of Chairman Shulong, Jinhai had spent his life exceeding expectations. A prodigy by all standards, he had graduated from Harvard at seventeen, but when his father declared his older brother Lihyun Shulong heir to the shulong empire. Jinhai had decided then and there that he would leave the business world behind and pursue what he really wanted.
Jinhai was the ghost son of the Shulong family. The public didn't know of his existence. But he was always there in the background. He used a fake surname 'Su' in public. So as to not be associated with his family.
He had always loved his brother Lihyun dearly. He had looked up to him as his idol and he always looked after his brother.
When his father had declared an engagement between Lihyun and a girl from the Liang family as a merger deal, his brother, Lihyun, his brother had completely lost it. He had completely crashed. His brother was in love with someone else and this was his father's cruel way of taking away his brother's freedom.
"An engagement?" Jinhai muttered under his breath, leaning back in his chair.
The words still felt alien.
Why now? Why Lihyun?
The only light came from the sharp glow of three monitors in front of him, each flashing fragments of documents, archived news articles, and private reports.
He sat, unblinking, top button undone, sleeves rolled slightly up his forearms. A loosely knotted watch hung at his wrist like an afterthought, ticking rhythmically as he scrolled through another page of search results.
Lily Liang.
The name was circled in red in the corner of one screen, as if it offended him by merely existing. He was going to get rid of this engagement for his brother.
"She's barely been in the headlines till yesterday," he muttered under his breath, fingers dancing over the keyboard. "Typical ghost daughter. Hidden in plain sight. Until they needed her."
The bitterness wasn't toward her. It was toward the situation.
His brother was being used like a pawn in some gilded merger sealed over whiskey and handshakes. Engaged. Without consent. To a girl he'd never met. All while his brother was deeply in love with another.
He exhaled through his nose, the breath short and sharp, like a scoff that never fully formed. This week his father would announce the engagement on live TV. A national event. It would act as a way to officially introduce Lihyun to the business world and simultaneously announce his engagement.
The screen flickered as a high-resolution image of Lily loaded.
It was from a school performance three years ago—her in a white silk qipao, mic in hand, mouth slightly parted mid-note. Her long hair caught the spotlight like strands of obsidian, and her eyes—deep, dark, defiant—seemed to look directly into the lens.
Jinhai leaned back slightly.
His expression didn't change, but something imperceptible passed through his steel-grey eyes. A flicker. A pause.
"...Pretty," he murmured.
There was a silence in the room now, carved out of disbelief. He shook his head once, clearing his throat loudly as if clearing the moment away like smoke, and leaned forward again. His fingers resumed their rhythm.
"Pretty doesn't mean anything," he muttered aloud, as if needing to hear the words to believe them. "They can dress her up like a doll all they want. It doesn't mean I'm letting this stupid engagement to my brother play along."
His phone buzzed quietly on the desk.
TEXT – From: Mr. Xu, Head Assistant
'Ms. Lily will be attending the Masquerade Charity Gala tonight. Would you like to attend sir.?'
Jinhai stared at the message for a few seconds before replying.
'Yes, I'm going.'
He placed the phone down, stood, and adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves. There was curiosity in his decision. But more than curiosity there was strategy. He wanted to see her in motion, observe how she played in the world he despised. If she was going to be his brother's "fiancée," then he was going to evaluate her the way he did a business competitor. And calculate the ways in which he could put this miserable engagement to an end.
Still, as he pulled a black mask from the drawer and slipped it into his pocket, the ghost of that picture lingered.
For the first time in years, Jinhai didn't know what he was walking into.