The Perfect Wife

Lin Wanqing’s fingers brushed lightly over the unfamiliar lipstick stain on her husband’s collar. Ten years of marriage had polished her smile into an unbreakable mask.

That evening, she cooked Chen Ming’s favorite sweet-and-sour pork ribs. “The board approved your promotion to director,” he said, oblivious to the crushed sleeping pills dissolving in his wine.

Three months later, Wanqing accompanied her husband to the emergency room for a sudden “hives outbreak.” As she tenderly adjusted his blanket, she slipped a bottle of vitamin capsules—tainted with peanut powder—into his briefcase. He was deathly allergic to peanuts, and his young mistress,a dance instructor,loved gifting him “health supplements.”

When she discovered luxury hotel charges on Chen Ming’s phone—expenses he’d never mentioned—she quietly forwarded the screenshots to the company’s disciplinary committee. The next day, with teary eyes, she showed the bank manager “evidence of his online gambling addiction,” freezing their joint accounts.

The final strike came as an anonymous letter. When Chen Ming’s mistress received divorce papers from her wealthy husband, Wanqing was trimming the pothos plant he’d given her. Outside, movers hauled away his mahogany desk, while the dance instructor’s advertisements vanished from every tutoring website in town.

At the divorce hearing, Wanqing tearfully pleaded for reconciliation. The judge granted the “devoted wife” full custody and their apartment. That evening, she brewed Chen Ming’s favorite oolong tea, watching the leaves swirl in the clay pot—just like the promises he’d made at their wedding ten years earlier.