On Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend, Mitchell, hosted a party and pitched a partner-swapping game. He called it an innocent icebreaker—a playful way to shake off relationship fatigue and liven up the room. As fate would have it, his junior colleague and self-proclaimed mentee, Tiffany, drew Mitchell as her designated “boyfriend for the night.” Her blind-box wishlist was extensive: blindfolded feeding, an intimate slow-dance duet with fingers intertwined, and being carried on his back through the bustling nightlife strip just outside the lounge. When my face hardened and I moved to shut down the farce, Mitchell let out a heavy, patronizing sigh. “I know this isn’t ideal for you, Helen, but Tiffany’s depression relapsed this week. Everyone is just trying to pull her out of the dark.” “You’re always so generous and understanding. If you throw a fit tonight, people are going to think you’re callous and petty.” “I don’t want them getting the wrong idea about you. Be a good sport, okay?” His friends chimed in right on cue, urging me to “look at the bigger picture” and not kill the vibe. So there I stood, watching my boyfriend carefully hoist another woman onto his back, navigating the crowd with an expression of tender, doting indulgence. It wasn’t until I opened the party’s group chat on my phone that the truth hit me: the so-called random blind draw was entirely rigged. Out of the twelve people in the room, eleven of them were in a secret channel titled “Project Rescue Tiffany”. They had conspired behind my back, orchestrating a sanctioned, public hall pass for the two of them. I looked down at the Valentine’s gift Mitchell had left carelessly on the cocktail table and let out a quiet, bitter laugh. If they loved playing partner-swap so much, she was welcome to keep him. I was done babysitting a hypocrite. … I cast my eyes down and picked up the sleek black gift box beside me. Inside was a limited-edition designer leather belt—something I had spent half a month’s salary on and waited weeks on a backorder list to get for him. Now, holding it felt like holding proof of my own stupidity. I stood up, walked to the nearest trash can, and dropped the box inside. “Thud.” The hollow sound cut through the music. The room instantly fell quiet. Beside Mitchell, Tiffany caught my eye. The hand holding her cocktail glass began to tremble violently. A second later, the glass crashed against the marble table, shattering into shards. She clutched her chest, gasping for air in dramatic, shallow heaves. “Mitchell… I… I can’t breathe.” Mitchell’s face drained of color. He pulled her into his arms, rubbing her back in a frantic circle. Then he turned to me, his eyes brimming with exasperated fury. “Helen, who the hell are you putting on a show for?” A suffocating silence descended on the lounge. The glances thrown my way were heavy with judgment, as if I were the bitter, unreasonable shrew making a scene over nothing. Mitchell frowned, extending an impatient hand toward me. “Helen, Tiffany can’t handle stress right now. Come over here, apologize to her, and we’ll let this go.” Apologize to the girl parading around with my boyfriend? A suffocating pressure settled over my ribs. I brushed his hand away, slung my coat over my shoulder, and headed straight for the exit. “Enjoy your little game. I’m leaving.” “Helen!” Mitchell caught up to me in the corridor, grabbing my wrist so hard his fingers left hot, red welts against my skin. He looked thoroughly exhausted, as though I were the one tormenting him. “Can you grow up for once? You’re going to ruin the entire night over a harmless party game?” My eyes burned as I looked at him. “A game? The one where everyone in the room plotted behind my back while keeping me in the dark?” Mitchell froze for a fraction of a second. Then, pinching the bridge of his nose in sheer irritation, he unlocked his phone and shoved the screen an inch from my face. It was a clinical diagnostic assessment for severe depression. “She is on suicide watch, Helen! You’re a healthy, stable adult—would it kill you to cut her some slack?” “I am trying to save a human life here. When did you become so completely heartless?” His self-righteous indignation made my fists clench until my nails bit into my palms. Because she was sick, I was supposed to swallow public humiliation and smile through it? Right then, a muffled retching sound echoed from the private room. Mitchell’s expression shifted instantly. He let go of my wrist without a second thought and sprinted back inside. Through the cracked door, his soft, cooing murmurs drifted out into the hallway as he comforted her. I stood alone in the autumn draft, the cold air biting through my clothes, feeling an ache that ripped straight through my chest. I walked aimlessly through the midnight streets for hours. By the time I stopped, the friction from my boots had worn raw, bleeding blisters into both my heels. At 2:00 AM, I sat on a hard plastic chair inside a fluorescent 24-hour convenience store. With numb, trembling fingers, I tapped open my phone. There it was: an email sent by corporate HR yesterday afternoon—an executive promotion and long-term transfer to our Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Hong Kong. I stared at the glowing screen for a long time. A single tear fell, hitting the glass. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and clicked “Confirm Acceptance”. At 3:00 AM, I unlocked the front door to our apartment. I expected darkness and silence, but the living room was ablaze with light, and the sharp, pungent stench of heavy chili oil, garlic, and sour bamboo shoots hit me square in the face. My hand froze on my keys. Tiffany was curled up on the sofa, wearing my favorite plush bear slippers. When she saw me walk in, she shrank back with an exaggerated, timid flinch. I didn’t spare her a word, walking past her toward the kitchen to pour a glass of water. The next second, the blood in my veins turned to ice. On the stovetop sat my small, handcrafted ceramic saucepan—the one I exclusively used to brew warm herbal tea during painful menstrual cycles. Inside it, an oily, greasy stew of instant noodles and sour bamboo was bubbling over, splattering red grease across the pristine white enamel. I had never even boiled ordinary ramen in that pot to preserve its finish. Now it reeked of cheap, pungent takeout grease. Mitchell walked in from the pantry carrying two porcelain bowls. Seeing my rigid posture, he gave a careless, dismissive chuckle. “Tiffany hasn’t been able to keep food down in days. She finally got an appetite tonight, and this little pot was the only clean one on the counter.” “I’ll scrub it out for you tomorrow, alright? Don’t make that face.” His tone was so casual, so matter-of-fact, as if I were a child throwing a tantrum over a toy. I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, forcing down the nausea rising in my throat, and turned my head away. Then my gaze fell upon the coffee table. My breath caught in my throat. A surge of pure panic sent me lunging forward. Sitting on the table was a vintage manual film camera. It was the only heirloom my late father had left behind after he died in a car accident years ago. Inside it was the very last roll of film he had ever shot—candid portraits of me throughout my childhood that I had never found the courage to develop. Now, the back door of the camera hung wide open. The dark strip of film had been yanked out to its full length, completely exposed under the harsh fluorescent ceiling bulbs. Ruined. Every single frame, bleached to white. My entire body shook. My throat constricted so violently I couldn’t produce a sound. Tiffany’s eyes instantly flooded with tears. “Helen, I’m so, so sorry… It just looked so vintage and pretty, I only wanted to see how the shutter worked…” “It’s just an old roll of film,” Mitchell sighed, stepping forward. He pulled a crisp hundred-dollar bill from his leather wallet and tossed it onto the glass table. “I’ll buy you a brand-new roll tomorrow. Stop terrorizing her.” A hundred dollars. To replace the last piece of my father left on this earth. A dry, burning bitterness filled my eyes. Carefully, reverently, I gathered the destroyed ribbon of film into my palms. Without a word, I turned toward the master bedroom, dragged my hard-shell suitcase from the closet, and began blindly shoving my clothes inside. Mitchell hurried in after me, slamming both of his hands down onto the suitcase lid. “Helen, are you done losing your mind? What is this psychotic episode in the middle of the night?” “I used a pot and she touched an old camera! Do you really have to tear this entire home apart before you’re satisfied?” A sudden crash of shattering ceramic echoed from the living room. Followed immediately by Tiffany’s terrified shriek. “No! Please don’t yell at me!” Mitchell yanked his hands away so violently that the momentum knocked me off balance, sending me crashing against the sharp corner of the wooden wardrobe. A sharp, blinding pain shot through my elbow, bruising the skin instantly. He didn’t spare me a single backward glance as he sprinted out. I pushed myself up from the floor, leaning against the doorframe for support. Through the doorway, I saw him kneeling on the floor, pulling Tiffany tightly against his chest as she huddled beneath the dining table. He stroked her hair, soothing her, before turning his head toward the hallway to bark at me: “Grab the mop from the balcony and clean up this mess. Tiffany can’t be around broken glass.” I didn’t move. My eyes drifted toward the hidden drawer compartment in the entryway console. The joint savings passbook—the one where we had pooled every penny over five grueling years to save for a house down payment—was gone. The next morning, I walked straight into Mitchell’s corporate office. “Smack.” I slammed a stack of freshly printed bank statements onto his mahogany desk. Fifty thousand dollars. Our entire house fund, built from my father’s wrongful death insurance payout and five years of scrimping on groceries and skipping vacations. Last night, Mitchell had wired every single cent to a private, luxury psychiatric residential retreat. Mitchell leaned back in his swivel chair, utterly unfazed. “You saw.” “Mitchell, that was my father’s death settlement and five years of my life savings! Who the hell gave you permission to touch it?” My voice shook with an uncontrollable rage that rattled my teeth. He stood up, pulled a clinical intake file from his drawer, and slid it toward me. “Tiffany tried to slit her wrists again last night. The public psychiatric wards are overcrowded and trigger her panic attacks. She needed private residential care.” “I did this to save a life! Money can always be made again, Helen. If a human being died because we were hoarding cash, could you live with yourself?” He spoke with such towering moral grandeur. As though wanting to protect my own money made me a cold-blooded murderer. He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass window, pointing down at the open-plan workstation outside where Tiffany was peacefully sketching on an iPad. “Helen, stop prioritizing money over human life. It’s so hopelessly shallow.” That smug, sanctimonious lecture shattered the last remaining fragment of my restraint. I snatched her medical intake file with one hand and grabbed a pair of heavy office scissors from his pen holder with the other. “You wire that fifty thousand dollars back into my account today, or I will photocopy every page of this file and pin it to every notice board in this company!” “Don’t you dare!” Mitchell’s composure shattered. He lunged across the desk to grab my arm. Just as his hands reached me, the office door pushed open. Tiffany stepped inside holding two porcelain mugs of freshly steeped, boiling tea. Seeing the scissors in my hand, Tiffany let out a piercing scream. To shield her, Mitchell grabbed my wrist and wrenched it downward with brutal force. A sickening pop echoed in my forearm as the joint strained. A cry of agony ripped from my throat, and the scissors clattered onto the desk. In his follow-through, Mitchell shoved me back. My hip caught the edge of the desk, knocking over the mugs of tea. A torrent of scalding water poured directly down my bare right shin. The pain was instantaneous and blinding. Within seconds, thick, angry blisters bubbled up across my skin. I collapsed onto the carpet, curling inward as cold sweat drenched my forehead. Mitchell’s immediate, instinctive reaction was to spin around and clap both hands over Tiffany’s eyes. Even as I lay on the floor, trembling in agonizing shock, he did not look down at me once. The commotion drew a crowd of colleagues to the open doorway. They clustered together, taking in the spilled tea, the overturned chair, and the scissors on the desk. “Helen always seemed so professional… why is she acting like a complete psycho?” “The jealousy is out of control. I heard she’s literally harassing a sick girl over medical bills.” Whispers and pointed fingers buzzed around me like flies. I didn’t shed a single tear. Gritting my teeth against the searing fire on my leg, I hauled myself up. Dragging my blistered leg, I pushed through the whispering crowd one step at a time. Under the cold, judgmental stares of everyone I had worked alongside for years, I walked out of the building. At the community urgent care clinic, the doctor finished dressing my second-degree burns in thick sterile gauze. My phone lit up on the counter. It was a photo sent by Mitchell: Tiffany peacefully asleep inside a lavish, sunlit suite at the private retreat. A second later, a banking notification popped up. “Payment received: $100. Memo: Buy yourself some burn ointment and stop causing scenes.” I stared at the cold glow of the screen until the final flicker of light inside me went completely dark. On the third day, I returned to the office to complete my internal handover before my scheduled transfer. The moment I reached my cubicle, Mitchell and Tiffany stepped out to block my path. He dropped a freshly printed document onto my desk. “This is a formal liability release and settlement form. Sign it.” He tapped his index finger against the paper, his expression cool and detached. “Then post an apology in the department Slack channel. State that you had an emotional breakdown and shouldn’t have brandished scissors at Tiffany.” He leaned in, dropping his voice to a patronizing murmur. “Swallow your pride, Helen. I’ll talk to Tiffany’s parents and have them pay back the down payment in installments over time.” “If you make things this ugly with your coworkers, how do you expect to survive in this company?” Tiffany peeked out from behind his shoulder, holding a cheap ten-dollar tube of drugstore burn cream. Her eyes were rimmed with pink. She made a dramatic show of bending her knees, preparing to bow to me. “Helen, it’s all my fault… please don’t take it out on Mitchell…” I let out a low, cold laugh, knocking the tube of cream out of her hand. “Save the performance. You make me sick.” Seeing my reaction, Mitchell instantly yanked Tiffany behind his back, shielding her. He stared at me, his face a portrait of righteous disappointment. “You are truly beyond saving, Helen.” He drew himself up to his full height and pointed toward the department exit. “I’m giving you an ultimatum. If you walk out that door today without apologizing, our five years together are over. For good.” He was entirely certain I would crumble. He was convinced that my world revolved around him and that I would inevitably come crawling back. Across the open floor, coworkers were muttering among themselves. Internal messaging notifications flashed continuously on nearby monitors. People were actively circulating old, out-of-context screenshots of me venting about overtime, painting me as a toxic, vindictive monster who didn’t deserve to be on the core team. I stood in silence, looking at the man I had loved for five years. A faint, mocking smile touched my lips. Slowly, deliberately, I raised my left hand. I slid the silver band—the promise ring I had worn on my ring finger for three years—off my knuckle. Then I let it drop straight into the metal wastebasket beside Mitchell’s shoes. “Clatter.” Mitchell’s pupils dilated. A flash of raw panic flickered across his eyes. Without paying him any further attention, I sat down at my desk, logged into my enterprise account, and unlocked a hidden folder I had been compiling for the past two weeks. Inside was an airtight forensic ledger detailing a year’s worth of Mitchell using his executive authority to funnel lucrative corporate subcontracts to an outside vendor. A vendor registered under the legal name of Tiffany’s immediate family member. In the recipient field, I typed in the direct emails for the Global Internal Audit and Integrity Board. I picked up my packed handbag. Inside my palm, I gripped my one-way boarding pass. I clicked “Send”. “Helen! What the hell did you just do?” Mitchell finally sensed the shift in the air, lunging forward to grab my arm. I didn’t give him a single look as I turned on my heel and walked away. Five rotten years were finally over.
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