Transmigration; A Mother's Redemption and a perfect Wife.-Chapter 359; Reading scripts 1

THE LOCKED GARDEN

(A screenplay by Wei Xiaoting)

Something about the title made her pause. It felt different, quieter, more intimate. There was a poetry to it that the others lacked.

Tang Fei adjusted her position, settling into a more comfortable position against a cushion. She opened the file, and as the first page loaded, the noise of the audition room seemed to fade into the background.

Her eyes caught the opening line, and suddenly she wasn’t just reading anymore.

She was seeing.

FADE IN:

The hospital smelled faintly of disinfectant and wilted lilies.

Tang Fei’s breath slowed. She could smell that hospital, sterile and sad, where flowers came to die alongside hope.

Lin Ruo sat across from the doctor, her hands folded neatly in her lap, the edge of her sleeve brushing against the white table. The clock on the wall ticked softly, steadily, and mercilessly.

She could hear that clock, could feel the weight of that room where time became both precious and cruel to the dwellers.

"It’s at Stage four," the doctor said gently. "We can begin treatment, but..."

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

The unfinished sentence hit harder than any explanation could have. Tang Fei’s throat tightened involuntarily.

Lin Ruo could only nod, her voice, when it came out, was quiet, steady in a way that made the nurse’s eyes sting.

"How long?"

"Six months. A year, maybe, if...."

"Six is enough."

Three words. Just three words, but they contained an entire ocean of resignation, acceptance, and quiet dignity. Tang Fei found herself holding her breath.

She stood, buttoned her coat, and walked out without a sound. The world outside was too bright, the kind of spring day that smelled like new life, like things that would keep on growing even when she wouldn’t.

"Oh," Tang Fei whispered to herself, her chest aching. She knew this feeling, had lived it in another life, watching teammates fall, knowing her own time was limited. That contrast between death and spring, between ending and beginning, was devastating in its simplicity.

She read on, completely absorbed now.

Her parents didn’t cry. They didn’t hold her or tell her it wasn’t fair, instead, they said, "There’s someone who wants to marry you."

Tang Fei’s eyes widened slightly. The cruelty of it, not intentional perhaps, but crushing nonetheless. To be dying and offered not comfort but transaction. How could they be like this?

At first, she thought it was a cruel joke. But her father’s voice was heavy, trembling with a strange relief. "He’s... wealthy. He lives away from the city. He said he doesn’t mind your condition. He’ll take care of you."

Lin Ruo laughed softly. "He’ll take care of a dying woman?"

That soft laugh contained multitudes, of disbelief, dark humor, and exhaustion. Tang Fei could hear it in her mind, bitter and knowing.

Her mother’s eyes darted away. "He lost someone once. Maybe he understands your current situation."

Lin Ruo didn’t ask further. What did it matter now? Living or dying in someone else’s house was still living and dying, so she said yes.

"She said yes," Tang Fei murmured, her finger tracing the words on screen. Not because she wanted to. Because when you’re already dying, why not die somewhere new? What difference could it possibly make?

The scene shifted, and Tang Fei felt herself being transported.

The car stopped at the edge of the countryside just as the sun began to set.

The mansion rose behind the mist, white walls, long glass windows, and a wide stone path lined with old trees whose branches tangled like veins.

She could see it perfectly, gothic but not frightening, isolated but not hostile. A place suspended between worlds, just like its inhabitants.

At the gate, the wind carried the faint scent of jasmine and rust.

Jasmine and rust. Beauty and decay, intertwined. Tang Fei shivered despite the warmth of the room.

A man stood by the entrance, his posture straight but his eyes strangely hollow. He was Jiang Yan.

He was handsome in a quiet, severe way, like someone carved out of silence.

Someone carved out of silence. Tang Fei closed her eyes briefly, letting the phrase resonate.

She’d met people like that, sometimes, when the weight of his past pressed down on him. People who carried their grief like a second skeleton.

When she stepped out, he didn’t smile. He only said, "You’re early."

"I was told to come today."

He slightly nodded. "Dinner’s ready." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

No greeting... No welcome... Just the practical acknowledgment of arrival.

These were two people agreeing to share space while they waited, one for death, and one for... what? Redemption? A second chance? The script didn’t say yet, but Tang Fei was desperate to know.

There were no servants, only him. He led her through hallways filled with locked doors, and finally into a dining room overlooking a walled garden, an ocean of ivy and wild roses gone untrimmed.

Locked doors. Of course, there were locked doors. This entire story was about things kept shut away, grief, memories, the past itself.

"The garden’s been locked for years," he said, catching her glance.

"Why?"

His lips twitched, almost forming a smile, almost a wound. "Because the one who planted it never came back."

Tang Fei’s breath caught in her throat. Almost a smile, almost a wound. The precision of that description. The weight of grief is contained in a garden left to grow wild, neither tended nor destroyed, just locked away like everything else too painful to face.

She continued reading, and the world around her disappeared completely.

Days passed like mist. Lin Ruo spent mornings by the windows, watching the wind stir the garden. Sometimes she saw the faint outline of someone, a woman, perhaps, beneath the trees, though when she blinked, it was gone.

Ghost or memory? Hallucination or truth? The script didn’t say, and that uncertainty made it more haunting, more real somehow.

Jiang Yan spoke little. He worked in a study...