Author: Momo Chan

My fiancée had a “perfect crush” she had loved for three years. The day before our wedding, they hooked up and ruined her wedding dress. When I demanded to call off the wedding, she scoffed. “I just didn’t want my youth to end with regrets. After tomorrow, I’ll be yours forever. Can’t you just be the bigger man?” I turned around, prepared a massive “gift” for them, and wished them a lifetime of misery together. Later, she came crawling back, crying for my forgiveness. I flashed my wedding ring. “Sorry, babe. I’m married.” I was at the venue confirming the final details for tomorrow’s wedding when I received a video from an unknown number. I tapped it open. It was Chloe, wearing her wedding dress. A pair of large hands gripped her waist, turning her usually pale skin a flushed, deep pink. The voluminous layers of the gown tried to hide the heavy friction, but by the end of the video, the gorgeous, custom-made dress was ruined with messy stains. A text from the unknown number followed, dripping with malice: [So what if you’re marrying her? I’m the only one she truly loves.] My vision went black. My chest tightened as if wrapped in barbed wire, squeezing the air right out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe for what felt like eternity. Seeing my pale face, the wedding coordinator asked cautiously, “Mr. Vance? Just to confirm, you want her to wear sneakers with the main gown for the reception, correct?” I snapped back to reality, feeling utterly pathetic. When we were planning the wedding, Chloe had whined to me, saying that wearing high heels all day would be absolute torture. To make things easier for her, I had spent a fortune customizing a pair of designer sneakers to match her gown. Just minutes ago, worried her feet might still ache, I was thinking about adding custom gel insoles to the shoes. And what was she doing? Under the guise of having a wild bachelorette party with her girls, she was wearing the custom gown I designed, screwing her long-time crush. That was a dress I spent months of salary on, tailored specifically for her! My heart throbbed with a dull, stabbing pain. I gave the coordinator a mindless nod and dragged my numb body back home. The apartment was decorated with festive lights. Our pre-wedding photoshoot hung on the wall behind the sofa. The bright red accents looked like fresh blood. I collapsed onto the sofa, my mind drifting to the man in the video. I knew him. His name was Tyler Brooks. He was Chloe’s college senior, the guy she had chased for three years—the untouchable “one that got away.” Chloe’s best friend had mentioned him to me before, but I didn’t care back then. It was college. Everyone had a past, right? Besides, Tyler was already married. He was supposed to be a closed chapter, someone who would never interfere with our lives again. I thought I held Chloe’s present and future. I thought we were building a bright, happy life together. But today, that video shattered my delusions completely. I wiped my face hard and dialed Chloe’s number. No answer. I guess she was still “busy.” I called Liam instead. He had gone to the same college as Chloe. He picked up almost instantly, joking, “Getting married tomorrow and the groom still has time to call me?” I got straight to the point. “Liam, do me a favor. Dig up everything you can on Chloe and Tyler Brooks. The more details, the better. I need it now.” Sensing the coldness in my voice, Liam’s tone grew serious. “Ethan, did something happen?” I didn’t answer. I just hung up, feeling completely drained. Two hours later, Liam sent dozens of texts, ending with messages of concern. I ignored his worried questions and focused on one specific link he sent—a secret Snapchat account Chloe had kept from me. An account I never knew existed. She posted on it constantly. Almost every story and post was about Tyler. It was basically a digital diary of her secret affair. On Tyler’s birthday, she had ordered a high-end mechanical keyboard. Her caption read: [A developer’s keyboard. Every line of code holds my secret love.] Tyler had replied in the comments: [Love received. Too bad the wife is watching closely, can’t come pick it up.] Chloe replied: [Crying. Need a hug.] I stared at the picture of that sleek, metallic keyboard. Right now, that exact keyboard was sitting on my study desk. Chloe had given it to me as a Christmas present. I wasn’t a programmer, but my job required heavy typing. When Chloe gave it to me, I was so touched I nearly cried. But it turned out I was just getting Tyler’s leftovers. I stood up, walked to my desk, and peeled off the custom sticker she had placed on the corner of the keyboard. Underneath, a faint “T” was engraved. T for Tyler. I kept scrolling through her secret posts, my heart turning completely to ice. Liam texted: [Is the wedding still on?] I pinched the bridge of my nose, staring into the dark apartment, lost.

At 9:00 PM, Chloe finally called. Her voice was sweet and whiny. “Ethan, babe, something happened.” My voice was flat. “What is it?” “I was trying on the dress earlier and accidentally got it dirty,” she said casually. “Can you arrange another one for tomorrow morning?” My chest tightened. My fist clenched so hard my knuckles popped. She had just finished getting wild with Tyler, and now she was calmly asking me to clean up her mess. She knew how much that dress meant to me. She knew I designed it myself. She just didn’t care. She had absolutely no heart. I took a deep breath. “Sure. I’ll handle it.” Chloe giggled. “I knew you were the best! After the wedding, let’s fly straight to Iceland for our honeymoon.” Going to Iceland to see the Northern Lights was a wish Chloe had made on our second anniversary. They said couples who saw the aurora together would never part. Because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, I worked myself to the bone, pulling endless overtime just to save up enough vacation days and money for the trip. But she always made excuses to postpone it. Later, when she finally wanted to go, I was tied up with a massive project at work and couldn’t leave. She had thrown a massive fit, saying she was going to go with her girls instead and would block me. I felt so guilty back then that I transferred $8,000 to her account for travel expenses. She was thrilled, sending me endless heart emojis. But now, looking at her secret Snapchat archive from those exact dates, I saw the truth. She hadn’t gone with her girlfriends. She had gone with Tyler. In the photos, their fingers were tightly locked under the glowing green aurora. On their last night there, she had posted a picture of a messy hotel bed with used wrappers on the floor. Her caption: [Finally caught my moon.] A wave of nausea hit me. Chloe’s voice chirped through the receiver. “Anyway, the girls are throwing me a last-minute bachelorette party tonight, so I won’t be checking my phone. Love you!” A bachelorette party? Or another round with Tyler? I sneered inwardly and said deliberately, “Have fun. Coincidentally, my ex just reached out. She wants to meet up tonight for some closure.” Chloe immediately exploded. “Your ex? At this hour? What kind of ex asks to meet up the night before your wedding? What are you guys going to do in the dark?” I countered calmly, “Well, if Tyler asked to meet you tonight, would you go? Would anything happen?” Chloe’s voice pitched higher, laced with panic. “That’s a completely different story! That hypothetical doesn’t even make sense!” “And even if it did… it would just be for closure. I just didn’t want my youth to end with regrets. After tomorrow, I’ll be yours forever. Can’t you just be the bigger man?” She wanted me to be the bigger man while she handed me a green hat. I almost laughed out loud. Chloe threw her ultimate tantrum. “If you dare step out of the house tonight, the wedding is off!” Over our four years together, she had always used this weapon. “If you don’t buy me this bag, we’re breaking up.” “If you touch my phone again, we’re breaking up.” “If you aren’t nice to my family, we’re breaking up.” Because I loved her, I had always yielded. I complied with her every whim, coddling her like a princess. She honestly believed I was so hopelessly in love that I would never leave. But she was dead wrong. Love isn’t everything. I was a realist. When I loved her, I could tolerate anything. But the moment she proved unworthy, I could take all my affection back in an instant. The call ended. Chloe sent a barrage of texts ordering me not to take a single step outside tonight. If I hadn’t seen the video and the secret posts, I would have thought she was just incredibly possessive of me. Now I knew it was all a sick show. I didn’t reply. Just then, a frantic knocking came from my front door. I opened it to find Liam and three of my groomsmen standing there. I tried to keep a straight face. “What are you guys doing here?” Liam sighed, stepping inside. “Stop pretending, man. We know.” With that one sentence, my defenses crumbled. A sudden sting rushed to my eyes. Four years of devotion. How could it not hurt? She had been my emotional anchor, the reason I worked so hard. I had practically sworn before God to love her with everything I had. Yet, her betrayal was so cheap, making my pure love look like a total joke. Liam patted my shoulder. “We’re here for you. Just say the word, and we’ll beat that bastard Tyler into the ground.” I covered my face and ran into the bathroom. I splashed freezing water on my face, slowly forcing myself to calm down. When I walked back into the living room, my phone buzzed. Another text from the unknown number. [Great venue you booked. Her flexibility is amazing.] Attached was a photo of the hotel bathroom. My couch was small, and the groomsmen were sitting close. They all saw the screen. These were my closest friends. They stood up instantly, furious, ready to murder Tyler. I held them back, my heart feeling cold and dead. “Don’t dirty your hands on trash. I have a better plan.” I had wanted a clean, dignified exit. But they clearly didn’t want me to have one. All night long, my phone buzzed incessantly. First from the unknown number, then directly from Chloe’s Snapchat. Explicit photos, degrading clips. They would send them and then quickly delete them, followed by lazy texts: [Oops, wrong meme, sorry babe!] Staring at the screen filled with “This message was deleted” notifications, my heart was completely torn to shreds. What did they take me for? A toy in their sick game? I gripped my phone, the very last ounce of affection draining from my soul. Since they chose to play dirty, I had no reason to spare their dignity.

I didn’t sleep a wink. I downloaded every single video and photo the unknown number had sent, combined them with screenshots from Chloe’s secret Snapchat, and edited them into a seamless video. Then, I pulled Tyler’s wife’s phone number from the records Liam found and called her, formally inviting her to the wedding. Lastly, I contacted a local agency and paid them to live-stream my wedding on TikTok. By the time I finished, the sun was rising. I drove to the venue. When I arrived, Chloe was in the middle of getting her makeup done. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes. Seeing me walk in, her face immediately soured. “Why are you just getting here? Do you have any idea how much sleep I lost last night because of you?” Because of me? I stayed silent. I didn’t even have the energy to call out her lie. Sensing my strange coldness, her attitude softened slightly. “What’s with the silent treatment? I was just stressed. It’s my first time getting married, okay? I’m nervous.” I curled my lips into a hollow smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t bother you anymore.” Chloe froze, then stood up from her chair, glaring at me. “What is that supposed to mean? I just complained a little. You’re the one who practically begged me to marry you.” She was blaming me. Blaming me for “forcing” her into this marriage. Yet she was the one who used to paint pictures of our future home. Now, she acted like I was her captor. And she had allowed another man to mock me repeatedly. Did she really think I was so pathetic that I would never walk away? Too bad for her. The only reason I was still standing here was to make sure she paid the price for what she did. I was not her dog. Chloe sneered. “What, now that you’re finally getting me, you don’t value me anymore?” I looked at her calmly and handed over a large garment bag. “Here’s your dress.” Chloe’s expression softened slightly. “At least you’re useful.” But when she unzipped the bag, her face fell. “Why is it the same dress?” “It was too late to find a replacement.” Chloe remained quiet for a moment, then shrugged. “Whatever. It’s your wedding anyway. If you don’t mind looking cheap, why should I care?” The ceremony began shortly after. Soft, romantic music echoed through the hall under the glittering chandeliers. I stood at the altar, watching Chloe walk down the aisle. I had envisioned this moment a thousand times. In my dreams, just thinking about her marrying me would fill me with overwhelming happiness. But now, looking at her, I felt nothing but intense disgust. Chloe’s father placed her hand in mine. “Our Chloe is a sweet, smart girl. You’re a lucky man, Ethan. Take good care of her.” He went on and on with a long, tearful speech. Chloe looked at me, her eyes glistening with tears. She was a brilliant actress. Anyone watching would think she was deeply in love. It reminded me of when we used to talk about this day. I had said, “I’ll probably cry like a baby at the altar.” Chloe had smirked. “Well, marrying me is the best thing that’ll ever happen to you, so crying makes sense. But I’ll tease you about it forever.” But Chloe, today, I won’t shed a single tear. I just hope you can say the same in a few minutes. We stood hand-in-hand before the officiant. The officiant smiled and spoke into the microphone, “Ethan Vance, do you take Chloe Bennett to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as long as you both shall live?” I didn’t speak. Chloe nudged me, her eyes flashing with irritation. “Say it. Are we doing this or not?” I looked at her, smiled, and let go of her hand. I took the microphone from the officiant and spoke clearly into it.

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My mom had just finished her second round of chemotherapy. She wore a wig to attend my engagement dinner. The private dining room door slid open. But it wasn’t the waiter. It was Carter’s assistant, Vivian Ward. Behind her were a few colleagues from the office. The dishes they carried in were leftover scraps packed from the company cafeteria. I could even see half-eaten food smeared on the plastic containers. “Mr. Brooks said the project budget is really tight lately,” Vivian said, her smile dripping with sweet concern. “I personally asked the cafeteria staff to save these for you. These are the premium dishes everyone is usually too broke to order.” I snapped my head toward Carter. He was looking down at his phone, texting. He didn’t even raise his eyelids. “Vivian is right, Chloe. The company is going through a tough time. As the future lady of the house, you need to be understanding.” Vivian suddenly poured a glass of cheap whiskey and walked toward my mom. “Mrs. Vance, I heard your medical bills cost Mr. Brooks a fortune? Let me toast to you. Thank you for raising a daughter who knows exactly how to ‘seize an opportunity.’” I raised my hand to slap her, but Carter grabbed my wrist in a death grip. “Chloe Vance,” his eyes were ice-cold. “If you dare touch Vivian, this engagement is off.”

My dad’s hand shook as he took the glass from her. “Chloe, your mom can’t drink. I’ll drink it for her.” The cheap, burning alcohol made him cough, his eyes turning red. Under the table, my mom gently squeezed my hand. “It’s okay, sweetheart. The food is fine.” Carter threw my hand back, a mocking sneer on his lips. “I knew you’d be sensible.” Vivian immediately wrapped her arms around his, tears streaming down her face on cue. “Carter, did I do something wrong? I just wanted to save the company some money…” She grabbed a handful of the cold leftovers, pretending she was going to stuff them into her own mouth. Carter quickly pulled her into a hug. “Don’t ruin yourself for them!” He turned to my parents, his voice laced with disgust. “You two probably don’t know this, but when I first started my business, I couldn’t even afford leftovers. If you look down on this meal, then Chloe and I are done.” My mom suddenly burst into a violent fit of coughing. A streak of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. My dad panicked, wiping her lips. “We’re fine with it, Carter. Really. As long as you and Chloe are happy…” Vivian smiled instantly. She pushed a plate of cold, soggy shrimp toward my dad. “Then eat up, Mr. Vance.” Before I could blow up, the door opened again. This time, the hotel manager walked in, carrying a steaming, freshly cooked lobster. “Mr. Brooks, the main course you ordered is here.” I let out a breath. At least he wasn’t completely heartless. But Carter redirected the plate right in front of Vivian. “Vivian has been working so hard overtime lately. She needs the nutrients. You guys just eat what you have.” I slammed my dad’s fork out of his hand. “Carter Brooks! You make my parents eat leftovers, and you give your assistant the lobster?” He frowned, annoyed. “Chloe, when did you become so materialistic? Is a lobster more important, or am I?” I helped my parents up and walked toward the door. I stopped right at the threshold. “In my world, nobody gets to humiliate my parents.” “Carter, we are over.” Behind me, the sound of plates smashing echoed through the room. “Chloe Vance, you will regret this!” I took my parents to a quiet diner to get some warm soup. But when we got back to our apartment complex, our belongings were scattered all over the muddy lawn. My mom’s medicine box was smashed, pills rolling into the dirt. I rushed to the door. The smart lock’s passcode had been changed. My dad frantically searched the grass. “Chloe! Your mom’s targeted cancer meds are gone! She has to take them tonight, or she’ll relapse!” I called Carter. Vivian answered. “Mr. Brooks is in the shower. What’s up? Weren’t you so tough and independent this afternoon?” In the background, I heard Carter’s voice. “Who is it?” “Nobody, just spam,” Vivian said and hung up. My mom was already whimpering, curled up in pain on a cold bench. I slammed my fists against the door. “Carter! Open the door! Give me the medicine!” After ten minutes of pounding, the door finally opened. Vivian stepped out, purposely stepping on one of my suitcases. She jingled my car keys in front of my face. “The car is a company asset registered under Mr. Brooks’ name. Want it back? Beg me.” I reached out to grab them. She let out a fake shriek, jumped back, and crushed my mom’s last bottle of medicine under her high heel. “Chloe Vance!” Carter rushed out and kicked my leg. “How dare you put your hands on her!” Vivian threw herself into his chest, sobbing. “I just wanted to bring Mrs. Vance her medicine…” Carter patted her back gently, then looked at me with pure disgust. “Vivian thinks about my company in everything she does. Unlike some people who use their status as a fiancée to run wild.” I laughed out of sheer anger. “I lived in a moldy basement with you for three years! I secured almost all your major clients! And now I’m the one running wild?” Vivian suddenly broke free from his hug. “It’s all my fault. I’ll just leave!” Carter pulled her back and roared at me, “Look at her! Vivian always puts me first! All you ever do is take, take, take!”

I looked him dead in the eye. “So, you think I’m only after your money?” Carter went quiet for a second, then scoffed. “You said it, not me.” Right then, my mom started seizing and passed out. I snatched the car keys to take her to the ER, but Carter blocked the car door. “Apologize to Vivian first.” Vivian brought out a glass of warm tap water. “Maybe Mrs. Vance just needs some water to wake up?” My mom was losing consciousness. Tears streamed down my face as I begged him. “Carter, let me take her to the hospital first. Please.” He didn’t budge an inch. “Apologize.” Looking at my mom’s pale, turning-blue face, I bowed my head to Vivian. “I’m sorry.” Satisfied, Carter took the water cup, pinched my mom’s jaw, and forced the water down her throat. She choked violently. A thick stream of blood gushed from her nose and mouth. He finally panicked. He drove us to the hospital at lightning speed. In the emergency room, the doctor screamed at me, “Who fed water to a gastric cancer patient?! Her esophageal lining is ruptured and bleeding out!” My dad wept. “Her medication… it was lost…” Vivian whimpered from the corner. “I just wanted to help her take her pills…” I grabbed her by the collar. “You touched her medicine?” Carter shoved me away. “She was only trying to help! Can you stop assuming the worst of people?!” When the red “In Surgery” light turned on, I collapsed onto the hallway floor. A nurse rushed out. “We are out of Rh-negative blood! The last unit in stock was just signed off by a Mr. Brooks for his assistant—” I ran up to the third-floor ward. Vivian was lying on a bed, scrolling on her phone with an IV in her arm. “Give the blood back to my mom,” I got down on my knees, begging Carter. “She’s going to die.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is this how you beg someone?” I swallowed every ounce of my pride. “Mr. Brooks, I beg you.” Carter finally softened a bit. “Vivian is just feeling a little dizzy. If you apologize properly, she might give it to you.” Vivian stretched her leg out, tripping me. “How about a little bow first?” I looked toward the direction of the ER. My forehead hit the cold, dirty tile floor. “I’m sorry.” Vivian suddenly ripped the IV out of her arm. Blood splattered onto the floor. “Oops! My hand slipped!” I went crazy, trying to scoop up the blood bag from the floor. But Carter pulled me back. “Are you insane? That’s dirty! I’ll find another way.” In my deepest despair, someone gently pulled me up. Mr. Sterling, the senior partner of our law firm, walked in. He handed a fresh blood bag to the nurse, then turned to Carter, pulling a stack of legal documents from his briefcase. “Mr. Brooks, according to the proxy shareholder agreement Ms. Vance signed before your marriage, the 45% of the company shares she holds through you are now officially revoked.” He then looked at Vivian. “And as for you, Ms. Ward, you are officially notified. The evidence of your embezzlement of company funds is solid.” Carter’s face drained of color. “What shares?!” Mr. Sterling smiled coldly. “The proxy agreement you made Ms. Vance sign. Did you forget?” He supported my shaking shoulders. “Ms. Vance, the board has been waiting for you to return and take charge for a very long time.” When the ER light finally went off, the doctor walked out with a reassuring smile. I took one last look at Carter, who looked like he had just seen a ghost, took Mr. Sterling’s suit jacket, and walked away. My mother’s face was still pale when they rolled her out of the operating room, but her breathing was stable. The doctor took off his mask, his voice grave but relieved. “The bleeding has stopped, but the damage is severe. She needs absolute rest and the best care possible. Ten minutes later, and we wouldn’t have been able to save her.” I held my mom’s cold hand, tears finally spilling over. It wasn’t out of self-pity, but the sheer terror of almost losing her. Mr. Sterling stood quietly by my side. Once I calmed down, he handed me a thick leather folder. “Ms. Vance, here are all the copies of the proxy agreement, the email records of the core project designs you anonymously provided to the company over the years, and the bank statements of Carter Brooks and Vivian Ward offshore transfers.” I took a deep breath and took the files. My fingers touched the cold paper. My heart was even colder. Carter and Vivian were “escorted” to an empty consultation room nearby by the hospital security and Mr. Sterling’s men. When I walked in, Carter was pacing anxiously. Vivian was curled up in a chair, her face white as a sheet, all her previous arrogance gone. “Chloe, what is going on? What shares? Is what Mr. Sterling said true?” Carter spoke first, trying to assume his usual controlling tone, but the tremor in his voice gave him away. I didn’t even look at him. My eyes landed straight on Vivian. “Ms. Ward, or should I call you… Carter’s ‘secret accountant’? You used your position to help Carter embezzle over twenty million dollars of project funds. The evidence is airtight. Do you want to settle this with me now, or should we wait for the white-collar crime division?” Vivian snapped her head up, looking at Carter in horror, her lips trembling. Carter’s face turned purple. “Chloe Vance! Don’t you dare threaten us! The company is mine!”

“Yours?” I finally looked him in the eye, my lips curving into a cold smirk. “Do I need to remind you who used her entire life savings to fund you five years ago when you failed your first startup and had absolutely nothing? Who did it just because she believed in your stupid dream? And who, to protect your fragile, pathetic ego, agreed to sign that proxy agreement and willingly stayed in the shadows to write your business plans?” I stepped closer to him. Mr. Sterling handed me the documents one by one. “The name ‘Nova Tech’ was my idea.” “The core code for your first viral software was written by me during sleepless nights.” “Mr. Harrison—the investor you literally begged on your knees for—was a connection I got for you through my family.” “Carter, without Chloe Vance, you’d still be a nobody eating instant ramen in a rented basement. From the very beginning, the biggest shareholder and the actual brain of the company has been me. You were just a CEO I hired.” Carter stared at the black-and-white documents, his pupils dilating. It was like he was seeing me for the first time. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Right then, the door opened. A few board directors walked in, accompanied by two police officers. “Mr. Brooks, Ms. Ward,” the lead officer flashed his badge. “We received a formal report with verified evidence regarding grand larceny and corporate embezzlement. Please come with us to the station.” Vivian let out a screech and collapsed to the floor. Carter looked at me, his eyes filled with disbelief, despair, and rage. “Chloe Vance! You’re heartless! You’re actually throwing me in prison?! What about our five years together?!” “Our five years?” I cut him off, finding it incredibly pathetic. “Where was that history when you let Vivian humiliate my parents with garbage food? Where was it when you kicked me to protect her? Where was it when you almost choked my mother to death, or when you gave away her life-saving blood to a girl who faked a headache? Carter, what right do you have to talk about our relationship?” My voice wasn’t loud, but every word cut like a frozen scalpel. “Between you and me, it’s strictly business now.” The police dragged the hysterical Vivian and the lifeless Carter away. Mr. Sterling went with them to handle the legal proceedings. Uncle Richard, a board member who had watched me grow up, sighed and walked over. “Chloe, they’ve run the company into the ground these past few months. Several major projects are dead. Everyone… is waiting for you to come back and lead us.” I looked out the window. The sky was turning grey. “Uncle Richard, please hire the best private nursing team to take care of my mother 24/7. Then, notify all department heads. Emergency Zoom meeting at 10:00 AM.” With the best medical care money could buy, my mom improved day by day. During the day, I cleaned up the massive mess at Nova Tech. At night, I stayed in the hospital room with her. My dad finally stopped sighing. He even smiled occasionally. “I always knew my Chloe was capable. You were just letting that Brooks boy play boss…” A week later, I got a call from the detention center. Carter wanted to see me. I went. Across the glass partition, he looked like he had aged ten years. “Chloe… I was wrong. I really was. Vivian manipulated me. She kept telling me you were only with me for my money… I was blinded by my own greed…” I watched his performance in silence, my heart completely numb. Seeing no reaction from me, he got desperate. “For the sake of our five years, please drop the charges, okay? I can’t lose the company! That’s my entire life! You loved me so much, you wouldn’t want to see me with nothing, right?” I finally picked up the phone. My voice was deadly calm. “Carter, you got three things wrong.” “First, Nova Tech is my life’s work, not yours.” “Second, I don’t love you anymore. The moment you chose to sacrifice my mother, we were completely done.” “Third, I will never drop the charges. You’ll get exactly what the law gives you. You and your ‘thoughtful’ assistant earned every bit of it.” With that, I hung up the phone and walked away, ignoring his desperate screams behind the glass.

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In my past life, the sweet neighbor boy who always came over to play sneaked into Chloe’s bedroom in the middle of the night. The next morning, our living room was packed with police officers. Chloe was out of her mind, flinching away from anyone who tried to touch her. Only then did I find out that he wasn’t a young boy at all. He was a twenty-two-year-old man with dwarfism. From that day on, Chloe never stepped foot outside again. Her mental health deteriorated rapidly. Our parents quit their jobs to stay home and comfort her, but Chloe kept hurting herself. Two months later, she slipped out of the house when our parents weren’t paying attention and jumped into the river. In the guest room where the monster had temporarily stayed, the police found countless pages of paper detailing Chloe’s daily routine. Along with a sickening pile of secretly taken photos. It had been a calculated hunt all along. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to when I was six years old. Toby, the neighbor boy, was standing at the front door. He looked up at me with a sweet, high-pitched voice. “Stella, I came to play with you.” Chloe poked her head out from the living room and smiled. “Come on in, Toby. It’s boiling hot outside.” I blocked the doorway with all my might. “I hate you. Go away.”

Chloe froze, holding a plate of freshly sliced watermelon. Toby stood on the porch, clutching a rusty tin box. The box was filled with glass marbles. Red, blue, green. In my past life, these marbles rolled all over the floor. When the police searched his bag, those marbles rolled out from under the coffee table, bumping against my feet. Only then did I realize he hadn’t come to play with me. He was using me as an excuse to get close to Chloe. Chloe set the plate down and came over to pull me back. “Stella, what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” “Doesn’t Toby always come over to play with you?” My lips trembled, and my entire body shook. “I don’t want to play with him.” “I don’t want him inside our house.” Toby lowered his head, his shoulders slumping. He was very short, and his face looked incredibly young. Everyone in our townhouse complex was used to calling him “little Toby.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Chloe, maybe I should just go.” “It seems like Stella doesn’t like me.” He made a move to leave, but his feet remained glued to the porch. I stood firm, blocking the doorway. A look of conflict flashed across Chloe’s face. Waves of summer heat rolled into the house. In the end, she let out a sigh. “Stella, don’t be so rude.” “He lives right next door. What’s wrong with him hanging out for a bit?” I screamed, “No!” Chloe frowned. She rarely showed me a cold face. But our parents had gone out of town to the city hospital for Grandma’s surgery, leaving just the two of us at home. She was already exhausted. She thought I was just throwing a tantrum because Mom and Dad weren’t home. She picked me up and set me aside. Just like that, Toby stepped inside. Chloe closed the front door behind him. An icy chill ran down my spine. Toby placed his tin box on the coffee table and sat meekly on the edge of the sofa. He sneaked a quick glance at Chloe. His eyes traveled from Chloe’s face down to her neck, which was damp with sweat. Then he quickly looked away. If I hadn’t lived through this once before, I probably would have thought it was just my imagination. Chloe turned to go to the kitchen to wash her hands. Toby immediately stood up. “Chloe, let me help you carry the watermelon.” “No, it’s fine. Just sit down.” “It’s okay, I want to help.” He started walking toward the kitchen. I wriggled out of Chloe’s grasp, rushed over, and blocked the kitchen doorway. “You’re not allowed in here!” Toby stopped in his tracks. For a split second, the timid look on his face vanished, replaced by a cold, dark glare. The next second, he put on a pitiful smile again. “Stella, I just wanted to help Chloe.” I grabbed the tin box of marbles from the coffee table and slammed it onto the floor. The colorful marbles scattered everywhere. Chloe walked out of the kitchen, her face darkening. “Stella!” My eyes blurred with tears. “I hate him.” “I just hate him!” Toby knelt down, picking them up one by one. His voice was just loud enough for Chloe to hear. “It’s okay, Chloe.” “It’s normal for kids not to like me.” Sure enough, Chloe’s heart softened. She knelt down to help him pick them up. “She’s usually not like this.” “Maybe she’s just anxious because our parents aren’t home.” Toby paused his hands. He looked up, acting as if he had just heard the news. “Are Mr. and Mrs. Miller still not back?” Chloe replied casually, “Grandma got a fever after her surgery, so they have to stay at the hospital for another two days.” “It’s just me and Stella at home.” I lunged forward, covering Chloe’s mouth. “Don’t tell him!” Chloe froze. Toby looked at me, slowly curving his lips into a smile. “Stella is so protective of Chloe.” My chest tightened. He already knew, but he just loved hearing Chloe confirm it herself. To confirm there were no adults in the house. To confirm that his prey was left with only a six-year-old child.

Toby knew I was guarding against him. So, for the rest of the afternoon, he insisted on clinging to me. “Stella, let’s see who can flick their marble the farthest.” “Stella, I’ll give you this biggest one.” “Stella, let me draw a kitty for you.” For every word he said, I took a step back. Whenever he got close, I hid behind Chloe. Chloe tried to coax me at first. But seeing my cold face, her tone turned slightly reprimanding. “Stella, you don’t have to play if you don’t want to.” “But you can’t keep being this rude.” Toby immediately waved his hands. “It’s fine. I’m used to it.” “People always find me weird when they look at me.” He made himself sound so pathetic. Chloe’s guilt deepened. But I only felt disgusted. In my past life, the police had found an old notebook at his place. It recorded exactly what time Chloe went grocery shopping, what time she hung the laundry, and whether she turned off the living room lights before bed. It was a stalker’s log. As evening approached, the air grew even stuffier. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the hot wind pushed through the gaps in the window. Toby’s phone rang. He didn’t walk away to answer it. He even turned up the volume on purpose. On the line, a woman’s impatient voice came through: “Your dad and I can’t make it back tonight. The road to the countryside is blocked. You’re on your own.” Toby murmured, “Mom, I’m a little scared to be by myself.” “You’re an adult and you’re still afraid of the dark? Stop annoying me!” The call disconnected. He clutched his phone, sitting in the corner of the sofa, silent. As expected, Chloe asked, “Your parents aren’t coming back tonight?” He nodded. “Yeah.” “The breaker tripped at my place a few days ago. It gets pitch black at night, and I can’t sleep.” He looked up at Chloe, his eyes slightly red. “Chloe, can I just sleep on your living room floor tonight?” My brain went entirely numb. That was the exact line. In my past life, Chloe had set up a bed for him because of this very excuse. And then, in the dead of night, he had sneaked into her room. I rushed in front of Chloe. “No!” “He can’t sleep in our house!” “He will hurt you!” Chloe’s expression changed. “Stella!” I screamed through my tears, “I’m serious! He’ll get up in the middle of the night.” “He’ll stand right outside your door.” Toby’s face turned pale for a second. Then he lowered his head to grab his bag. “Chloe, forget it. I’ll go home.” “Stella doesn’t like me. I can’t make things difficult for you.” He moved very slowly. Chloe closed her eyes. “You can sleep in the living room.” “Just head back tomorrow morning.” I looked at her in disbelief. “Chloe!” She knelt down and took me by the shoulders. “Stella, I’ll lock our bedroom door.” “You sleep with me tonight.” “Nothing will happen.” Nothing will happen. She had thought the same thing in our past life. While Toby was in the bathroom washing his hands, I immediately dragged Chloe into the kitchen. I kept my voice low, trembling with urgency. “Chloe, I had a nightmare last night.” Chloe blinked. “What dream?” “I dreamed he slept in our house.” “I dreamed he didn’t sleep at night.” “I dreamed he stood outside your door.” Chloe wanted to comfort me. But I beat her to it. “I also dreamed he did bad things to you.” “Then a lot of police came.” “You kept crying and hiding.” “Mom cried, and Dad cried too.” Chloe’s expression finally shifted. A six-year-old child shouldn’t be saying things like this. Her throat bobbed. “Stella, dreams aren’t real.” I gripped her tightly. “Then watch him. Look at his eyes.” “The way he looks at you is not how a kid looks at an older sister.” The running water in the bathroom stopped. Toby was coming out. Chloe bent down to grab a dishcloth from the table. I saw Toby standing by the door, his eyes locked dead on Chloe’s waist. His gaze was intense and unwavering. Chloe noticed it too. Her hand holding the cloth paused for a second. I knew that doubt had finally taken root in her mind.

At nine in the evening, Chloe set up a makeshift bed for Toby on the living room floor. A thin blanket, a pillow, a sheet, and a glass of water. She was still polite and thorough. But her warmth from the afternoon was gone. I held my small pillow, standing at Chloe’s bedroom door. “I want to sleep with Chloe.” Chloe patted my head. “Okay, you sleep with me tonight.” Toby sat on his makeshift bed, looking up at us. “Stella is getting so big, yet she still can’t sleep without Chloe?” He made it sound like a joke. But my stomach churned with nausea. I hid behind Chloe, ignoring him. Chloe said calmly, “Get some rest, Toby.” “The living room light is on, and there’s water on the coffee table.” We went into the bedroom. The moment the door closed, Chloe turned the lock. She was finally on guard. Only a small nightlight was lit in the bedroom. Chloe sat on the edge of the bed, her phone never leaving her hand. She whispered, “Stella, if you hear any noise tonight, don’t run around.” I nodded. It didn’t take long before soft footsteps echoed outside. Very light. From the living room to the hallway. And finally, they stopped right outside our door. I immediately grabbed Chloe’s pajamas. Chloe held her breath. From outside, Toby’s high-pitched voice called, “Chloe.” Chloe didn’t answer right away. He called again, “Chloe, are you asleep?” Chloe asked through the door, “What is it?” Toby said, “I can’t sleep.” “When I was little, my mom used to tell me stories before bed.” “Can you tell me a story for a bit?” I felt like throwing up. A twenty-two-year-old grown man. Standing outside a young girl’s bedroom in the middle of the night. Asking for a bedtime story. But if this were the Chloe of my past life, her heart might have softened. She might have pulled up a chair to sit in the living room for a bit. She might have gently told him to go to sleep. She would have surrendered her boundaries, step by step. I yelled out loud, “Chloe is tired!” “No stories!” Chloe pressed a hand over me, her voice calmer than before. “Toby, I’m tired too.” “You can listen to the radio. There’s one in the TV stand drawer.” It was quiet outside for a moment. Then he spoke again. “There are so many mosquitoes in the living room.” “Can I come in and sit for a while?” Chloe answered even faster this time. “That’s not appropriate.” “The bug spray is under the coffee table.” The shadow remained under the door crack. He didn’t leave. After a while, he kept making excuses. “Chloe, my stomach hurts.” “Can you come out and help me find some medicine?” Chloe gripped her phone, her knuckles turning white. “The first-aid kit is in the cabinet to the left of the TV.” “The instructions on the bottle are very clear.” Toby’s voice dropped a pitch. “Chloe, do you hate me?” “I know people like me annoy everyone.” I was so angry I wanted to rush out and scream at him. But Chloe didn’t let him manipulate her. “No, I don’t.” “But it’s late.” “We need to sleep.” The noise outside stopped completely. Footsteps slowly faded away, but they were incredibly slow. It sounded like he was measuring the distance. Chloe sat on the edge of the bed, her face ghostly pale. It took a long time before she asked me, “Stella, in your dream… what else did he do?” I looked at her, tears spilling over. I wanted to say that he ruined your entire life. I wanted to say that you never dared to open a window again. I wanted to say that you sat in a dark room, cutting your arms over and over. But I couldn’t say it. I could only hug her tightly. “Chloe, don’t sleep.” “He’s waiting for us to fall asleep.” Chloe’s body stiffened. Then, she held me incredibly tight. “Okay.” “I’ll stay awake with you.” In my past life, I couldn’t wake her up. In this life, she had finally woken up on her own.

Chloe didn’t waste any more time. She put her phone on silent. First, she texted Mrs. Gable downstairs. Mrs. Gable had a spare key to our place. Our parents had left it with her years ago in case I lost mine on the way home from school. Chloe typed rapidly: “Mrs. Gable, if the police come, please give them the spare key. Do not come upstairs to knock on the door.” After sending it, she sent a location pin to our dad. “Dad, Toby is staying over at our place, and something is wrong. Stella and I are locked in the bedroom. If I don’t answer your call, call 911 immediately.” After doing all this, she kept her phone screen on the 911 dial pad. Her hands shook violently as she pushed the study desk against the door. The floor of the old apartment was uneven, and the desk legs scraped against the wood, making a sharp, screeching sound. With every push, she stopped to listen to the noises outside. The living room was silent. It seemed as if Toby had really gone to sleep. But I knew he hadn’t. Monsters like him were experts at waiting. Chloe then tilted the small wardrobe to wedge it against the door. She dug out a pair of scissors from the drawer and slid them under her pillow. Then, she wrapped me in the blanket. “Stella, if something really happens, hide under the bed.” I shook my head. “I want to stay with you.” Chloe’s eyes welled with tears. “You’re only six.” “A six-year-old can call 911 too.” I gripped her hand tightly. “I won’t sleep.” “I’ll never sleep that heavily again.” Chloe stared at me, stunned. I knew I had let something slip. But she didn’t ask. She just pulled me into her arms. The clock on the wall ticked away. At 1:00 AM, the summer cicadas outside stopped chirping. Suddenly, a faint sound came from the living room. My entire body froze. Chloe immediately switched off the nightlight. Darkness swallowed the room, and then came the footsteps. One step. A pause. Another step. And finally, they stopped right outside the bedroom door. The doorknob was slowly pressed down. Once. It didn’t open. A second time. Still didn’t open. Chloe placed one hand over my mouth and tapped the call button with the other. The call connected. She kept her voice incredibly low but spoke with absolute clarity. “Someone is trying to break into my bedroom.” “My six-year-old sister and I are trapped inside.” “The address is Oakridge Townhomes, Block 2, Unit 3, Apartment 4B.” “The man outside is Toby. He’s our neighbor. He’s a grown man.” The dispatcher told her to stay on the line. Do not hang up. Do not go near the door. A few seconds later, a thin scratching sound came from the keyhole. Like a piece of metal scraping against bone. Chloe whispered, “He’s picking the lock.” The noise outside stopped abruptly. Toby called out softly, “Chloe?” No response. He spoke again. “Are you on the phone?” “Did you misunderstand me?” “I was just worried about you guys. I wanted to check in.” My tears fell onto Chloe’s palm. Chloe spoke to the dispatcher, “He’s trying to lure me into opening the door.” “He might have tools.” Toby’s tone completely changed. “Chloe, are you guarding against me?” “I’m sleeping in your living room, and you lock the door on me?” Chloe held me in a death grip. The next second, the door was slammed hard from the outside. The study desk skidded backward. I shook with terror. Chloe bit her lip, forcing herself not to scream. “He’s throwing himself against the door,” she told the dispatcher. “Please hurry.” Outside, Toby let out a low curse. His voice didn’t sound high-pitched or childlike at all. He rammed the door again. The wardrobe tilted, and the door frame groaned. The third hit. The latch cracked, revealing a sliver of an opening. Chloe grabbed the scissors from under the pillow and blocked me with her body. The man outside was panting, his voice chillingly cold. “Open the door.” “Don’t make me force my way in.” On the fourth strike, the door swung inward violently. The desk was shoved back half a foot. A small hand reached through the gap, gripping the edge of the door.

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When the guy on our blind date got up, I thought he was just going to the restroom. It wasn’t until the server stood in front of me with a $6,000 bill that I realized the truth. He had slipped out the back door and blocked me on Snapchat. I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t cry. I calmly paid the bill, asked for the security footage, and had the server pack up everything he ordered—the leftover King Crab legs, the black truffle tacos, and the untouched Wagyu steak. Half an hour later, I was standing in the middle of the local park with a rented tailgate speaker and two massive bags of gourmet leftovers. Right there, in the center of the outdoor Zumba class led by his mother. I started a TikTok Live, turned the megaphone to maximum volume, and pointed it at the crowd. “Hey, Linda! I brought you the dinner your son was too broke to pay for!” When my mom sent me Julian’s photo for the third time, I was sitting in my office breakroom, chewing on a stale turkey sandwich. On my screen, a man in a crisp white shirt and gold-rimmed glasses stood under a maple tree outside his government office, smiling warmly. My mom sent three voice notes in a row. “Chloe, honey, he’s perfect. He works as a senior analyst for the city council. Only child. His parents have amazing government pensions.” “His mom told me he was raised with impeccable manners. He never takes advantage of anyone, especially women.” “Stop being so picky. Just go grab a coffee with him. You have nothing to lose.” I took another bite of my sandwich. It tasted like cardboard. For six months, my mom had been on my case about settling down. It went from “you’re not getting any younger” to “it’s harder for a woman once she hits thirty,” and finally to “I’m not pressuring you, I just don’t want you to end up alone.” I was too exhausted to argue anymore. Fine. I’d go. A thirty-minute coffee date. If there was no spark, I’d come right back to the office to finish my overtime. I texted back a single word: “Okay.” After Julian added me on Snapchat, he seemed even more decent than his profile suggested. His bitmoji was professional, and his stories were filled with posts about hiking, book clubs, and screenshots of massagers and vitamins he bought for his mother. He spoke very politely. “Chloe, my work keeps me busy, but I’m very serious about finding a partner.” “My mother raised me to be a gentleman. A man should take charge on the first date and make sure the lady feels comfortable.” “I’m not the type to pinch pennies.” I stared at that last sentence for a second and let out a dry laugh. The people who brag about not being cheap are usually the ones setting up their own disclaimer. I replied: “Let’s keep it simple. Just coffee.” Julian immediately sent a location pin to an upscale French fusion restaurant downtown. “Coffee is too casual,” he wrote. “I’ll handle the first date. Don’t worry about a thing.” I clicked the link. The average spending there was easily $300 per person. I frowned and typed: “That’s way too expensive. We don’t need to go there.” Julian replied instantly. “Chloe, don’t be like that. It’s my treat. Just show up.” “My mother always says a man shouldn’t be cheap on a first date.” Before I could decline, my mom’s FaceTime call popped up. “Chloe! The boy wants to take you to a nice place because he respects you. Don’t be a party pooper.” “Mom, it’s $300 a plate.” “He has a great job and wants to pamper you. What’s wrong with that?” “It’s just a first date, Mom. It’s unnecessary.” “Can you please just make things easy for me once? His mother has been raving about how polite her son is in our neighborhood group chat. Don’t scare this one away.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “Fine. I’ll go.” That evening, the autumn wind was freezing. By the time my Uber dropped me off at the restaurant, Julian was already seated in a private booth. He wore a light gray wool coat. A set of Audi keys lay on the table, and the watch on his wrist caught the light. When he saw me, he stood up with a warm smile. “Chloe?” “Julian?” “You look even better than your photos.” I offered a polite smile. The moment I sat down, he waved over the server. “Do you have the Alaskan King Crab tonight?” “Yes, sir.” “We’ll take one. Steamed.” I froze. Julian kept flipping through the menu, ordering with the confidence of someone who had memorized it. “The black truffle lobster tacos, the caviar platter, the dry-aged Wagyu ribeye, and a bottle of your best vintage Champagne.” I looked up. “It’s just the two of us. That’s way too much food.” Julian smiled,patting my hand as if comforting a child who didn’t know any better. “It’s fine. We can always box up the leftovers. I want to make sure you’re well fed.” I watched the server quickly note down the order. I asked one more time, “Julian, are you sure about this?” He raised an eyebrow, looking slightly offended. “Of course. Chloe, relax. It’s completely normal for a man to buy a lady a nice dinner.”

The dishes arrived one after another, quickly crowding the table. The thick crab legs were pre-cut, revealing juicy white meat. The scent of black truffles drifted from the warm tacos, and the caviar sat on a bed of shaved ice like little black pearls. Julian ate heartily. He scooped a generous portion of caviar onto his plate and began his interrogation. “What’s your current salary?” “Do you have a mortgage?” “How’s your parents’ health?” “Would you be okay with living with my parents after marriage? My mom’s health isn’t great. She’s super open-minded, but as an only child, I can’t live too far from her.” I took a sip of my sparkling water. “Your mom leads the outdoor Zumba class in the park every evening, doesn’t she? Her health seems pretty great to me.” Julian’s fork paused in mid-air. He quickly recovered his smile. “That’s just for exercise. But as women get older, they need care. Don’t worry, my mom is easy to get along with. She always says she’ll treat her future daughter-in-law like her own daughter.” He paused, then added, “Of course, as long as the girl knows how to show respect.” I nodded. “You sound like a very devoted son.” He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “Family values are everything to me. I was raised in a strict household. I don’t care for girls who play games.” I didn’t answer. Halfway through the dinner, he took two phone calls. One was from his mother. He took it right in front of me, his voice instantly softening. “Hey, Mom. Yeah, I’m at dinner.” “With Chloe.” “She’s alright.” He glanced at me when he said “alright.” I couldn’t hear what his mom said, but he laughed. “I know, I know. You told me to be generous. I ordered the whole menu.” He hung up and shrugged. “My mom. She worries too much.” Looking at the table full of barely touched, expensive food, I suddenly asked, “Do you come here often?” Julian looked down, cutting his steak. “Occasionally.” He avoided my eyes. When the server finally brought the bill, the total came out to exactly $6,000. Julian glanced at the number, his face showing absolutely no surprise. He set his fork down, picked up his phone, and grabbed his wool coat from the back of the chair. “I’m going to use the restroom.” I stared at the coat in his hand. “You need your coat to go to the restroom?” He stiffened for a fraction of a second, then smiled smoothly. “It’s a bit drafty near the hallway. And I need to make a quick work call anyway.” Before I could say anything, he turned and disappeared around the partition. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. The steak on the table grew cold, and a thin layer of grease began to form on the crab legs. The server came by to refill my water for the third time, her expression shifting from polite to deeply awkward. I dialed Julian’s number. “The number you have dialed is currently unavailable…” I opened Snapchat and sent him a message: “The bill is here. You need to come back and pay.” A red exclamation mark popped up instantly. Chloe is not a friend of Julian on Snapchat. Add him to send a message. Sitting before that cold, ridiculously expensive feast, the truth hit me like a slap in the face. Julian never saw me as a date. He saw me as a walking credit card—someone he assumed would quietly pay the bill out of sheer embarrassment, fear of making a scene, and a desperate need to save face. The server stood nearby, her voice barely a whisper. “Ma’am, about the bill…” I looked up and smiled. “I’ll pay.” As I handed over my card, the server leaned in and whispered, “The gentleman… he left through the back exit.” My hand didn’t shake as I signed the receipt. “Do you have security cameras?” The manager rushed over. I took photos of the transaction, the itemized receipt, and the order slip. Then, I requested the digital invoice. For the billing name, I wrote Julian Miller. The manager hesitated. “Ma’am, do you want us to call the police?” I shook my head. “No need. Not yet.” I pointed at the table. “Box everything up.” The server blinked. “Everything?” “Everything.” “Even the leftover soup?” “Yes.” “There’s still a lot of King Crab left.” “Pack it all.” Julian was betting that I’d be too embarrassed to make a scene. Too bad for him, he bet on the wrong girl.

By the time I walked out with two heavy, insulated catering bags, my wrists were aching from the weight. The freezing night air hit my face, and the burning humiliation I had been suppressing came rushing back. I wasn’t crying over the $6,000. I was furious at myself for actually believing that a recommended “decent guy with family values” could be anything other than a pathetic parasite. I sat on the bench outside, waiting for my ride, and texted Pam, the matchmaker. “Hey Pam, are you free to chat?” Pam replied almost instantly. “Of course, Chloe! How did the date go? Are you guys still together?” I stared at the screen and slowly typed my reply. “We just finished.” “I think Julian is… really something special.” She sent back a string of heart-eyes emojis. “I knew it! Julian is such a gentleman, and his mother, Linda, is just lovely. She raised him so well.” I stared down, my expression hardening into ice. “Yeah, his upbringing is definitely unique.” “We actually had to wrap up quickly, and I forgot to ask. Does his mom still lead those outdoor Zumba sessions at Central Park?” Pam’s reply was eager. “Yes! Linda is famous around here. She’s the head instructor for the park Zumba squad. They practice every Friday night at 7:30 PM sharp.” “She’s super loud and energetic. Everyone in the neighborhood follows her lead.” I replied: “Is she there tonight?” “Oh, absolutely. It’s Friday, they’re practicing a new routine.” Pam’s next text was conspiratorial. “Chloe, do you want to go meet her? Is it going that well?” I looked at the two heavy bags of cold, expensive food at my feet. “Yes. I really want to meet her.” “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Pam was practically screaming through her texts. “If you like Julian, meeting his mom early is a great sign. Linda keeps saying she wants to meet you anyway.” I smiled. “Could you meet me there? I’m not sure where their usual spot is.” “Sure! I’m actually playing bridge nearby. I’ll be there in ten minutes!” After locking my phone, I leaned back against the restaurant’s glass wall. My reflection showed a pale face, a dark coat, and two bags of leftovers worth six thousand dollars. I looked like someone who had just lost a battle. But I was about to win the war. I scrolled through the screenshots my mom had sent me of the neighborhood group chat. Linda had posted Julian’s photos multiple times. “My Julian never takes advantage of girls.” “A real man is always generous on the first date.” “Girls these days are so materialistic, but my son has class. He’d never embarrass anyone.” The fake smile vanished from my face. Tonight, she was going to witness her son’s “class” firsthand. When Pam arrived, she was wearing a bright purple puffer jacket, her face beaming with excitement. She froze when she saw the catering bags. “Chloe, what’s all this?” I said sweetly, “Oh, Julian ordered way too much. I packed the leftovers.” “Aw, Julian is always so generous!” Pam cooed. “His mom taught him well. He’d never let a girl go hungry.” I nodded. “He definitely made sure I’ll never forget tonight.” Pam didn’t catch the sarcasm. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the street. “Come on, let’s go. Linda is bound to be in the center of the park. It’s always packed on Fridays.” “But don’t be nervous. She’s loud, but she has a good heart.” I replied, “I’m not nervous at all.” As we crossed the street, I suddenly stopped. “Pam, give me a second. I need to rent something from that shop.” She looked confused. “Rent what?” I pointed to the party equipment rental shop across the street. “A tailgate speaker.” “Why do you need a speaker?” “There are going to be a lot of people in the park. I want to make sure Linda can hear me clearly.” Pam stared at me, completely bewildered. I walked into the shop. The owner was eating a slice of pizza. He looked up at me and the two heavy food bags. “Renting a speaker?” “Yes.” “How big?” “Big enough to drown out a park fitness class.” The owner stopped chewing. He looked me up and down. “For a fight?” “For a debt collection.” He was silent for two seconds. Then, he rolled out a massive, heavy-duty Bluetooth party speaker with wheels and handed me a wireless microphone. “This one. High volume, heavy bass, long battery life. You can blast it across three football fields.” I scanned the QR code and paid. When I stepped out, Pam’s face had finally begun to pale. “Chloe, what are you actually doing?” I looked at her and smiled. “Just going to see Linda.” “And returning the ‘class’ her son dropped.” I opened TikTok, set up my account, and hit “Go Live.” I usually only posted work rants, so I had less than two thousand followers. I titled the stream: My blind date ran out on a $6k bill. I’m delivering the food to his mom. Within ten minutes, about fifty people had joined. The chat started rolling. “Is this staged?” “People actually dine and dash on blind dates?” “What do you mean by delivering food?” I didn’t explain. I just panned the camera over the two massive food bags and the giant rolling speaker. “Stay tuned,” I said to the camera. Pam stood next to me, her face completely white. “Chloe! You said you liked him!” I muted the stream and turned to her. “Oh, I do.” “I like him so much that I need his mother to see exactly how amazing her son is.” The live chat paused for a second, then exploded. “Holy crap.” “The matchmaker is right there?!” “Girl, do not back down! Turn that mic on!” “This is better than reality TV.” By the time our Uber pulled up to Central Park, the sky was pitch black. From a distance, the booming bass of high-energy Zumba music echoed through the cold night air. Pam tried to stop me the whole way. “Chloe, please listen to me. Can we just settle this privately?” “I’ll call Julian. I’ll make him pay you back.” “You’re a young girl. If you make a scene in the park, what will people say about you?” I dragged the speaker, carrying the heavy bags, and took one steady step after another. “Pam.” “Yes?” “Didn’t you say Linda values good upbringing more than anything?” Her lips trembled, but she couldn’t find any words. I looked up at the brightest spot in the park. Right in the middle of the front row, a woman in a sparkly red top was dancing to the beat. Julian’s mother, Linda. I dropped the food bags, rolled the speaker to the edge of the grass, and cranked the volume dial to the absolute maximum. A sharp screech of microphone feedback tore through the upbeat Zumba track. The next second, I raised the microphone and yelled into the crowd: “Hey, Linda! I brought you the dinner your son was too broke to pay for!”

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On the day my wife gave birth to her terminally ill first love’s child, my Mr. Hale and Mrs. Halesent ten hired thugs to guard the maternity ward. But even after the delivery was over, I still never showed up to cause trouble. My Mrs. Haleheld my wife’s hand and sighed. “Don’t worry, Chloe. With us here, we absolutely won’t let him come near you.” “Your dad brought people to guard the hospital entrance too. If he dares come and stop you from having this baby, we’ll call the police!” My wife looked weak and pale, but still subconsciously glanced toward the elevator. When she saw no trace of me, she finally let out a breath of relief. She couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just understand her, when all she was doing was helping her first love leave behind an heir. Looking at the newborn crying in the nurse’s arms, she smiled with satisfaction. She thought that if I came to see her tomorrow, she would let go of all our past arguments. And she would also be willing to let me become the child’s father. But what she didn’t know was that I had just submitted my report to go to the United Nations. Seven days later, I would give up my citizenship, become a borderless doctor, and never come back.

The day Chloe walked out of the postpartum care center, I had just finished handing over my work at the hospital. As soon as I reached the door, I heard laughter coming from inside. “This baby is so pretty. Those big eyes are clearly from his father’s best features.” My Mrs. Halehappily teased the baby in her arms, while Kevin came out of the kitchen carrying a steaming bowl of broth. “I made this soup myself. Your body is still weak, so you need to eat more.” He sat by the bed and fed Chloe with obvious tenderness, and the whole scene looked exactly like a warm, happy family. My Mr. Hale was holding a rattle, smiling so hard he could barely close his mouth. “This kid is so likable, just like his dad. Good thing he isn’t like Ethan, so gloomy and dull. Having a doctor for a father would be such a headache.” My hand on the doorknob instantly tightened. I remembered the first time I met my Mr. Hale, when he patted my shoulder and said being a doctor was a good thing. He even said he had been a doctor once too, and if his hand hadn’t been injured in a hospital dispute, he would never have retired so early. But now, he was saying doctors didn’t deserve to have families. I had only been away for further training for a year, and this family had already completely shut me out. I lowered my head and gave a bitter smile. I had been married to Chloe for three years, and she said she didn’t want kids, while I also understood how dangerous childbirth could be for women, so I never forced her to have one. I still remembered the day I left for overseas training, when she cried her eyes out and said she couldn’t bear to part with me. Clearly, for this past year, we had called each other every day and shared our lives, and even our colleagues joked that we had been married for three years, yet still acted like a couple in the honeymoon phase. But a month ago, I finally managed to get leave and come home. Even after an eight-hour flight, I never once said I was tired. Who would have thought that when I rushed home, I would see Chloe with a huge belly, standing beside her first love, the man she had always had a soft spot for. My thoughts were pulled back by Kevin’s words. “Ethan, when did you get back? Why are you standing at the door and not coming in?” At his words, the others in the room also turned to look toward the door. When my Mr. Hale saw the resignation report in my hand, his brows knitted even tighter. “I really don’t know why I chose to trust my daughter to someone like you in the first place. What bad luck. Now that you’ve quit your job, are you planning to have us two old folks support you?” “Is that how you behave as a husband?” My Mrs. Halejoined in criticizing me too. “You quit? You couldn’t even keep this job. Tell me, what else can you do?” “Chloe’s body isn’t convenient right now, but she and the baby will need money for everything. If you don’t work, are the three of you supposed to live on air?” Hearing that, I only found it laughable. “Whoever’s wife and kid they are, that person should be the one to support them.” “What did you say, Ethan? Why do you have no sense of responsibility at all?” Chloe finally couldn’t hold it in anymore. Her eyes were red as she shouted at me, and because she was too worked up, she clutched her chest and started coughing violently. “If Kevin hadn’t saved me from that car crash three years ago, I might have died already. His parents are both gone, and now he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In a little while, no one in this world may even remember him anymore.” “Why do you always have to target him? In your heart, do you really think I’m that filthy and disgusting of a woman?” Kevin rubbed her back with obvious distress, then turned to look at me. “Ethan, say less, okay? I know it’s all my fault. I promise I won’t appear in your lives again from now on, but don’t let me ruin the relationship between you two, okay?” Looking at the four people in front of me, who had clearly already unified their front, I felt even more like laughing. So this was what a real family looked like. Just then, Chloe suddenly said, “Ethan, my patience has limits too. If you dare keep targeting Kevin for no reason in the future, then don’t come back to this family!” “If you still want to stay with me, then calm down. I can let you be this child’s father.” Next week? I glanced at the baby already asleep in the stroller. Next week, I would be leaving for overseas. But before I left, I didn’t mind giving them a surprise they would never forget. Without changing my expression, I nodded. “Fine.”

After that, I ignored their reactions and turned around to go back to the bedroom to pack my things. Since I had already decided to leave for good, I didn’t want to leave behind any trace of myself here. The laughter from outside the living room came through the door, and my hands folding clothes paused slightly. “Kevin, I want this baby to keep your last name. That way, even if he calls someone else dad in the future, he’ll still always remember that you’re his real father.” Even without seeing it myself, I could imagine the deep affection on Chloe’s face when she said that. And my heart had already been left by her in ruins. I suddenly thought of last month, when I had rushed home with souvenirs I had specially bought for Chloe overseas. But at the doorway, I saw Chloe and Kevin walking back hand in hand from a stroll. Unlike the panic on Chloe’s face, Kevin looked at me with confusion and asked if I had come to the wrong house. I didn’t say a word, only stared fixedly at Chloe’s pregnant belly. After being away from home for eleven months, my wife was pregnant. No matter what, I couldn’t lie to myself and say this child could be mine. Only when Chloe hurriedly stepped in front of Kevin to introduce him to me did I hear her say, “This is my husband, Ethan.” I had thought that after hearing that, Kevin would at least restrain himself, but instead, he invited me in like he was the master of the house and told me to sit for a while. As we brushed past each other, he lowered his voice so only the two of us could hear. “I heard you’re a lot older than me? Then I’ll call you bro, I guess, since the baby in your wife’s belly is mine.” My blood surged hot in my chest, and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I smashed my fist hard into his face. I completely lost my reason, and the longing from those eleven months apart from Chloe turned into rage. If I had had a knife in my hand, I might really have killed that cheating man and woman on the spot. It wasn’t until a neighbor heard the noise and called the police. We were both taken in, but because it involved family matters, the police couldn’t really get involved and could only let us go home first. The moment we got home, my Mr. Hale and Mrs. Halerushed over after hearing the news, and without asking anything, they launched straight into yelling at me. They said I had just come back and already caused such a huge scene that the neighbors had a field day laughing at us. They also said all those years of school had been wasted on me if I could still hit someone, and if anything really happened, they would never let me off. It turned out they had known all along that Chloe and Kevin were together, and they had even strongly supported it. In just one short year, Kevin had become the perfect son-in-law in their eyes. I was the only one kept in the dark. My mouth tasted bitter, and I felt horrible. Chloe then shakily walked up to me, trying to take my hand and persuade me. “I never meant to betray you. Kevin isn’t in good health. The doctor said he only has six months left at most. I couldn’t bear to watch him die without even leaving behind an heir.” “I also thought about discussing it with you before, but you were overseas, and I was afraid you’d worry too much and it would affect your studies, so I thought I’d wait until you came back to talk about it.” “If you’re willing, can’t we raise this child together?” Something as big as raising a child came out of her mouth like it was nothing at all. I put the last piece of clothing into the suitcase, and just then my Mrs. Halepushed open the door and walked in. When she saw the suitcase by my feet, she looked as if to say I was finally being sensible, and said, “You never came back before, so I let Kevin sleep in your room. The study’s been turned into the nursery too. You can make do on the couch tonight, or do you want to go stay in a hotel?” I was truly exhausted, and I didn’t have the energy to go find a hotel anymore. So I nodded and planned to make do on the sofa for one night. But in the middle of the night, the baby kept crying from the bedroom. I turned over, and just as I was about to put on my earplugs, I heard Chloe’s complaint too. “Can you deal with the baby already? He keeps crying like this.” “Aren’t you my baby? Just take care of you. Let the kid cry a little longer and train his lungs.” Chloe laughed softly and said he was annoying. Right after that came the sound of the bed shaking. I pulled the blanket over my head and did my best to ignore those filthy sounds. But every time I closed my eyes, Chloe’s face from the first time she confessed to me seemed to appear in front of me. Back then, she was pure and beautiful, and her whole heart and eyes were full of me. But that version of her no longer belonged to me.

I slept through the night in a daze, and at dawn the next day I dragged my suitcase out the door. I went to handle the necessary overseas paperwork. Because I had government-approved documents, everything was processed very quickly, and the staff didn’t ask me much. Only when I was about to leave did the staff suddenly call me back, and she handed me a piece of fruit candy. “May all you wish for come true in the end.” I smiled gratefully at her, then found a hotel nearby after I came out. After putting down my luggage, I was about to go out and find something to eat, but I ran into Chloe and Kevin, along with their family of four. Kevin was wearing an expensive custom-tailored Armani suit, and he looked full of energy and health. There was not the slightest sign of someone dying soon. “Ethan, I thought it looked like you from far away just now, but Chloe kept saying there was no way you’d be out here.” His gaze fell on the recruitment flyer in my hand, and he gave a knowing smile. “Ethan, so you’re out looking for work. But with such a skinny build, going to a construction site to move bricks would just be making things hard on yourself, wouldn’t it?” I said nothing. This job flyer had been handed to me by a young girl on the street just now. I saw her handing out leaflets outside in the winter, so I took one without thinking. Seeing that I still hadn’t spoken and was only gripping the flyer tighter, Kevin laughed with wild arrogance. “You should’ve said earlier that you were looking for work. Maybe I could help with something. We’re all family, after all. If you’re doing well, Chloe will have someone to depend on for the rest of her life, and I can rest easy too.” And my silence at that moment was basically an admission. Chloe, who had originally only looked puzzled, suddenly changed expression completely. She frowned hard, and her eyes were full of disgust as she looked at me. “What’s there to recommend? He chose on his own to quit such a good doctor’s job. Even if he starves to death now, he doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.” “Ethan, you really have no sense of responsibility at all. Do you think doing this will force me to give up the baby?” I looked at her familiar face, but now she felt completely strange to me. I still remembered that when we had just gotten married, my position had wavered because of vicious internal competition at the hospital, and I had once wanted to quit and change careers. After hearing that, Chloe only held me in her arms. She patted my back gently and said in my ear softly, “No matter what decision you make, I’ll support you.” “Quitting your job is no big deal. I believe outstanding people will always shine. Honey, I’ll always be with you.” But the person who said she would always be with me was now letting another man humiliate me. She had forgotten what she once said to me, and maybe she had also forgotten the love she once had for me so deeply. Even my Mr. Hale and Mrs. Halebehind her kept shaking their heads at me. “I was blind before, to think I’d ever trust my daughter’s future happiness to you!” “Luckily we two old folks are still alive. If we had already been gone, who knows how you would’ve tortured our daughter.” The two of them got more and more exaggerated, and before long, the passersby around us were also turning to look our way. My hands hanging at my sides slowly clenched into fists. Just as I was about to speak, Kevin suddenly stepped forward. “We’re about to go take some photos. Ethan, why don’t you come too? I’ll be counting on you to help take care of Chloe and the baby for the rest of our lives.” Chloe immediately cut him off, giving a cold snort of contempt. “Look at the cheap, shabby way he’s dressed. If he gets in the picture, he’ll only drag down our family’s image.” After that, she turned and headed toward the studio, not forgetting to urge Kevin to hurry and follow. “Since that’s the case, we’re leaving first. We won’t keep you from finding a job.” Kevin patted my shoulder meaningfully. Watching his retreating back, I no longer felt the slightest ripple in my heart. In other people’s eyes, what a harmonious family this was. If that was what Chloe wanted, then what was wrong with letting go and giving it to her?

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Three years ago, I brought Vivian into the company. From intern to HR director, I spoke up for her every time she got promoted. The layoff list had 23 people on it. I was first. She put me there. “Wendy, I really had no choice.” Her eyes were red. “It came from upstairs.” I said nothing. Her phone buzzed. An Ins message. Pinned contact, marked with a red heart. The avatar was a man’s profile. A dark blue plaid shirt. The one I had ironed for Henry myself last night. Henry was my husband. I put the list back in my bag and stood up. “Vivian, the shirt on your pinned contact—” “I ironed it last night.” Her face went white. “Wendy! Wendy, wait!” Vivian’s voice chased after me into the hallway, thick with tears. I didn’t look back. My heels clicked against the tile, one step at a time. The elevator doors opened, and she caught up, grabbing my arm. “You misunderstood. That person isn’t Henry…” “Dark blue plaid shirt, with a tiny burn hole under the left chest pocket.” I looked at her hand. “I accidentally scorched it while ironing last night.” Her fingers loosened. “Wendy…” “Vivian.” I pressed the elevator button. “When you cry, your left eye goes red first, then the right one follows. You’ve used that trick on me for three years. It doesn’t work very well anymore.” The elevator doors closed. I leaned against the wall and watched the numbers drop. Basement one. Parking garage. I got into the car and shut the door. My phone lit up. It was a message. Vivian sent me a voice note, but I didn’t open it. Then another text came in: “Wendy, if you don’t believe me, you can ask Henry directly. He’ll explain.” I stared at that line for ten seconds. Then I opened Henry’s Ins. Last Wednesday, he posted a photo of coffee with the caption: “Working late into the night. A cup of coffee someone brought me felt extra warm.” That night, he told me he was at the office rushing a proposal. I hadn’t brought him any coffee. The first comment was from Vivian: “You worked hard [heart].” Henry replied with a smiling emoji. I kept scrolling. A month ago, he said he was taking clients out to golf. He didn’t post any photos on Ins. But Vivian did. A beach, a sunset, a red bikini, with the caption: “Be nicer to me on vacation.” In the bottom right corner of the second photo, there was a man’s hand, with a wedding ring I knew very well on the ring finger. The scratch was on the left side—Henry always used his left hand on the steering wheel when he drove, and that was where it had worn. I exited Ins and started the car. By the time I got home, it was 7:30. Henry leaned out of the kitchen and smiled. “You’re back? Why so early today?” “Nothing to do, so I came home.” “Wash your hands and eat. The steak just came off the pan.” At the dinner table, he served me food and talked about work today. “Remember that finance guy, Mark? He printed one extra zero on the report today. The boss thought our department’s revenue had multiplied by ten. He was happy for a whole hour…” He laughed naturally. I laughed too. “By the way,” he said, “did you iron that blue plaid shirt for me? I’ve got an important meeting tomorrow.” “It’s hanging in the third section of the closet.” “Thanks, babe.” He reached over and squeezed my fingers. His fingertips were warm. After dinner, he went to wash the dishes. I went into the bedroom and opened the closet. The blue plaid shirt was hanging there. I took it down and brought it close to my nose. Under the scent of laundry detergent, there was a very faint fragrance. Bleu de Chanel. I had given it to Vivian on her birthday three years ago. “I love it so much!” She had hugged me and said, “Wendy, you are the best person in the world to me.” I hung the shirt back up. Inside the pocket, my fingers found a crumpled receipt. Blue Mountain coffee, two cups. One Americano, one less-sweet latte. I drink Americano. Henry drinks Americano too. Who was the less-sweet latte for? The sound of water in the bathroom stopped, and he came out wrapped in a bath towel. “Babe, I may come back a little late tomorrow. I’ve got a project to finish up.” “Okay.” “Don’t stay up too late.” He kissed my forehead. “Henry.” “Hmm?” “How long has it been since you spent our wedding anniversary with me?” His movement paused. “Didn’t we last month…” “Last month you said you had a sudden business trip.” “Right, that client couldn’t be pushed off…” “Did that client wear a red bikini?” His expression flickered, then returned to normal. “What are you talking about? The client was a bald guy in his fifties.” “Oh.” “Why are you suddenly bringing this up?” “Nothing. There’s a little hole under your shirt pocket. I accidentally made it while ironing. Don’t mind it.” “I don’t mind.” He smiled. “You ironed it for me. Even the hole looks good.” The lights went out. In the dark, his breathing gradually evened out. My eyes stayed open. At two in the morning, his phone lit up once. A pop-up Ins message appeared on the screen, marked “Project Team – Kevin”: “Hubby, I already handled what happened last time. She won’t get a chance to turn it around. Don’t worry.” Followed by a kiss emoji. Hubby. She. Turn it around. The screen went dark. Henry rolled over and draped an arm over my waist. “Mmm… babe…” he mumbled indistinctly. I didn’t move. “Good night,” I said. No one answered.

“Here, I bought you coffee, an unsweetened Americano.” Vivian stood in front of my desk, smiling gently, holding a Starbucks cup. With her other hand, she lightly rested against my shoulder. “I thought about what happened yesterday all night. It really was the call from upstairs. I fought for you.” I took the coffee. “Thanks.” “What you said yesterday… about the shirt.” She lowered her voice and leaned in. “My boyfriend happens to have the same one. We just ended up in matching clothes, so don’t overthink it.” “Your boyfriend?” “Yeah, we’ve only been dating two months. We haven’t made it public yet.” She winked. “I’ll introduce you someday.” “Okay.” She walked away smiling. I took a sip of the coffee. Americano, but with sugar added. I never put sugar in my Americano. She remembered that Henry drank less-sweet lattes, but she couldn’t remember my taste. At ten in the morning, my coworker Zoe passed by my desk, put down a stack of files, and said quietly, “Director Wendy, there’s something I don’t know if I should tell you.” “Say it.” She looked around and pulled me into the break room. “That layoff list… I saw three versions on the printer.” “Three versions?” “The first version had 15 people, and you weren’t on it. The second had 20 people, and you were eighth. The third one is the current one, with 23 people, and you’re first.” “Who changed it?” “Vivian. All three versions’ edit logs are under her account. Every time someone got added—” Zoe bit her lip, “it was always someone you brought up.” I said nothing. “And there’s one more thing.” Zoe lowered her voice. “Did you see last week’s annual department evaluation report?” “I submitted it.” “Not your version.” She pulled out her phone and showed me a screenshot. On the screen, under the department evaluation section: “Wendy: average coordination ability, domineering management style, poor team cohesion. Recommend salary reduction, transfer, or optimization.” A red X was marked after my name. “Here’s another section for job recommendations.” Zoe turned to the next page. “Vivian wrote that her assistant, Emma, should take your place. Someone who’s been here less than half a year.” “When was this report submitted?” “Two weeks ago. Three days before the layoff list.” “Is the original report still in the system?” “Yes. But the permissions were changed. Only Vivian and the admin can see it. I found it when IT restored a batch of files during system maintenance last week.” Zoe looked at me. “Director Wendy, she did this on purpose.” I knew that. At noon, Vivian came to find me again. She sat across from me and put a chicken wing into my bowl. “Wendy, eat more. You’ve lost weight lately.” “Mm.” “How about hot pot tonight? Let’s call Henry too. We haven’t gotten together in a long time.” “He’s working late tonight.” “Then it’ll just be the two of us.” She took my hand in hers. “Wendy, no matter what happens, you’re my best friend.” Her palm was warm. The same temperature as when Henry had squeezed my fingers last night. “Vivian.” “Hm?” “That new boyfriend of yours. What does he do?” Her eyes flickered. “Finance.” “Which company?” “A small company. You wouldn’t know it.” “What’s his name?” “Wendy, why are you so interested in my boyfriend?” She smiled. “Jealous?” “Just asking.” In the afternoon, I went into HR’s shared folder. I didn’t have admin privileges, but the backend entry for the old system hadn’t been closed yet. Three minutes later, I found every file Vivian had submitted. Besides the altered evaluation report, there was one more thing. The title was: “Core Employee Seating Adjustment Plan.” The content was simple: move Wendy’s desk from the eighth-floor department area to the third-floor administrative area. The reason given was “optimizing office space.” Third-floor admin. Next to the bathroom drainpipe, with no windows. She had even planned where I would sit. At the bottom of the file was a note. It wasn’t Vivian’s handwriting. “Confirmed with HR. Execute next Monday. — Henry” Henry. My husband’s name appeared on a file that moved me next to the bathroom. I opened the company directory and searched for “Henry.” One result. Finance Department. Senior Finance Manager. Start date—two years ago. Two years ago, he told me he was switching to an investment company. “The company’s not big. You wouldn’t know it even if I told you.” It was exactly what Vivian had just said. He had been working at my company for two years. In the same building. I was on the eighth floor, and he was on the tenth. Between us was the ninth floor—HR, Vivian’s floor. My phone rang. Henry. “Babe, what do you want for dinner tonight?” “…Anything’s fine.” “What’s wrong with your voice?” “Just a little tired.” “Then get off work early. I’ll be waiting for you at home.” I hung up. Then I pulled up the screenshot of that message from midnight. “Project Team – Kevin.” Hubby. She won’t get a chance to turn it around. Don’t worry. Kevin. “Vivian, you really are something.”

“Director Wendy, you should attend the management meeting this afternoon.” My assistant, Lily, came in carrying a file, her expression strange. “What’s the topic?” “Director Vivian is hosting it. Budget review for each department and the personnel optimization plan.” At two in the afternoon, more than a dozen people were seated in the conference room. Vivian stood in front of the projector in a white turtleneck sweater, elegant and gentle. “Everyone, the company is under some pressure this year, so we need to improve efficiency.” She clicked to the next slide. “Let’s start with each department’s midyear performance.” A table appeared on the screen. Marketing: 120% completion. Tech: 115%. Sales: 98%. Operations—my department—47%. 47%. I had led my team to 18 million in revenue in the first half of the year, with a target of 20 million. The completion rate was 90%. Not 47%. “The Operations Department’s performance is indeed not ideal.” Vivian sounded regretful as she looked at me. “Director Wendy has worked hard too, but data doesn’t lie.” “How is this data calculated?” I asked. “By finance.” She looked at me. “Do you have an objection?” “The data I submitted was 18 million, with a 90% completion rate.” “Finance recalculated it. The revenue attribution for a few projects was adjusted.” “What was the basis for the adjustment?” “That’s a professional financial judgment. I’m not too familiar with it.” She flipped through the file in her hand. “If you have questions, you can confirm them with finance after the meeting.” “And,” she continued, “after a comprehensive evaluation, the Operations Department ranked last in productivity across all departments. So the layoff list has a high proportion of people from Operations.” Out of the 23 people, 14 came from my department. More than half of them were going to be laid off. “Wendy,” she called me by my nickname in front of everyone, “don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It’s not a personal problem. It’s the bigger environment.” Gentle. Considerate. Like she was feeling sorry for me. In reality, she had just used fake data to sentence my department to death. After the meeting, I went straight to the finance department on the tenth floor. I found Roger, the finance supervisor. “Supervisor Roger, what standard was used to adjust Operations’ revenue accounting?” Roger pushed up his glasses. “Last month, Director Vivian brought over an adjustment request saying the revenue attribution of three projects needed to be reassigned, from Operations to Marketing.” “Who signed it?” “The process requires the department liaison’s signature for confirmation.” Roger handed me the file. On the signature line was a very familiar handwriting. Henry. “This Henry,” I pointed at the signature, “which department is he from?” “Finance. He handles cross-department accounting coordination.” Roger looked at me. “Director Wendy doesn’t know him? He’s been here two years.” “I know him.” When I walked out of the tenth floor, the window at the end of the hallway was open. The November wind blew in, cold enough to bite. Henry had worked at the company for two years. He had helped Vivian adjust my department’s data. He had signed it. Then he went home and cooked me steak, kissed my forehead, and said, “Babe, you’ve worked hard.” I took the elevator down to basement one and found Henry’s car—the one from my dowry. The car wasn’t locked. There was a beige silk scarf on the passenger seat. Hermès. The one Vivian usually wore. I opened the glove compartment and found a hotel receipt inside. Four Seasons Hotel, presidential suite, spent 8,600 dollars. Date: October 15. That was our third wedding anniversary. Henry said he had flown to Miami for a business trip. He even sent me a photo of the beach. I replied at the time, “The beach looks so beautiful. Take me there next time.” He said, “Definitely.” Hanging from the rearview mirror were a pair of keychains. Two teddy bears, one red and one blue, with two letters engraved on the base—W and H. Wendy and Henry. Not T and H. I took a photo of the receipt and put the keychain in my pocket. When I got back to my desk, Zoe came over again. “Director Wendy, Vivian was just in the break room telling a few department heads—” She hesitated. “The exact words.” “She said, ‘Wendy has been very unstable emotionally since she found out about the layoffs, and she was saying some pretty out-there things in my office yesterday. Please be understanding with her, she’s really pitiful.’” Unstable. Out-there. Pitiful. Once those three labels were stuck on me, anything I said later would be treated like the ramblings of someone having an emotional breakdown. My phone rang. Vivian. “Wendy, where do you want to go for dinner tonight?” “You decide.” “How about a steakhouse? You said last time you wanted pizza.” “Vivian.” “Hm?” “Where were you on October 15?” The line went quiet for three seconds. “Wendy, why are you suddenly asking that?” “That was my wedding anniversary. Henry was away on a business trip, and I was at home alone eating instant noodles. I wanted to know whether everyone else had a better day than I did.” Three more seconds of silence. “…I was working overtime that day. I was at the company until very late by myself.” “Oh, that must have been hard too.” “Yeah. So, seven o’clock at the steakhouse?” “Okay.” I hung up. The hotel receipt showed a check-in time of three in the afternoon. “Working late into the night.” “Vivian, your overtime spot is really upscale.”

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After another three-day cold war with my architect girlfriend over the wedding budget, I found a familiar facade drawing in her pile of discarded drafts. The date in the lower right corner of the drawing was long before we started fighting over the future home project. My fingers tingled as I held the drawing. I knew that drawing too well. Every ratio, every line, I had gone over them again and again over the past six months. And now, the client line clearly showed the logo of a rival company. I pulled out my phone and searched that company’s recent work, and the second the page loaded, it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. “Cloud Isle Resort Villas — the perfect fusion of modern architecture and natural scenery” On the promo image, that signature building matched the house Mia and I had designed by ninety percent. Only the materials were more high-end, the landscaping more luxurious, and the completion date showed it had been finished four months ago. The comments section was full of praise: [Designer Mia Reed’s masterpiece!] [This is what a building with real warmth looks like.] [I heard this project won her the Rising Star Award.] I exited the page and stared at the award wall in the studio. The Rising Star Award certificate hung right in the center, and the award date was three months ago. Back then, she had been rubbing her temples and telling me, “Ethan, the bidding pressure has been crazy lately. I probably won’t have much energy to keep an eye on the renovation. Should we put the house project on hold for now?” I believed her. I even felt sorry for her and told her the renovation could wait, that her health came first. How ridiculous. I heard the sound of a key turning at the door. I quickly shoved the drawing back under the pile of discarded drafts, and when I turned around, I already had my usual tired look from the past week on my face. Mia Reed pushed the door open and came in with two takeout bags in her hands. “Still mad?” She set the bags on the table and softened her voice. “I brought you that Japanese food you like.” I said nothing. She walked over and hugged me from behind, resting her cheek against my back. “I’m sorry. I was too stubborn about the wedding budget. But I just wanted a perfect wedding. Is that so wrong?” If this had been three days ago, that hug would have softened me. Now all I felt was a chill crawling up my spine. “Mia,” I heard myself say, calm in a way that scared even me, “the Cloud Isle project you won last year, where did the original design inspiration come from?” Her body froze. It was only half a second, but I felt it. “Why are you asking that all of a sudden?” She let go and moved around to face me, a flicker of unnaturalness flashing in her eyes. “It was just… inspiration. You know how creative work is…” “Weren’t we talking one night about what kind of house we’d build if we ever had money?” I cut her off. “I said I wanted a glass house where you could see the whole starry sky, and you said we should plant a tree inside it so the building and nature could grow together.” Her expression slowly changed. “We had a few drinks that night and talked until three in the morning,” I went on. “I even drew a rough sketch, and you laughed and said it looked like a kid’s doodle, then took the pen and changed it.” “The next day, you told me the paper got spilled on by coffee by accident and was thrown away.” Mia’s lips parted slightly, then closed again. She stepped back half a pace, and that tiny movement was like a knife finally stabbing through the last bit of fantasy I had left. “It was just a coincidence,” she finally said, her voice dry. “Design concepts overlap all the time…” “Even down to the hidden door in the bathroom?” I asked. “Even down to the exact curve of the second-floor master bedroom balcony?” The studio was so quiet you could hear the air coming out of the central AC. Mia stared at me. In those beautiful eyes I had kissed countless times, shock and panic were now churning. “You went through my stuff?”

Seven years ago, in the brightly lit hallway of the architecture building, Mia ran into me while carrying a model. KT board scattered all over the floor. She crouched down to pick them up, and when she looked up, her eyes were red. “It’s due tomorrow…” I stayed up with her until four in the morning, helping her recut the materials and adjust the structure. At dawn, she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, a glue gun still clutched in her hand. Later she said, “Ethan, you make me feel more secure than any drawing ever could.” We graduated together, got into the city design institute together, and then quit together to start our own studio. In the first two years, we squeezed into a 320-square-foot rental apartment, ate instant noodles while sketching drafts, and could be happy for days just from landing a small project. Three years ago, the studio finally got on the right track. She held my face and said, “We can plan our future now.” I bought the apartment we live in now, and both our names were on the deed. She said she wanted to design our home herself, from layout to materials, without anyone else’s help. I believed her. I was even moved by how hands-on she was. “You didn’t throw away that sketch, did you?” I heard my own voice echo through the room. “You refined it, took it to the bidding, won the project, built it, and even got an award for it.” Mia didn’t say anything. She walked over to the workbench, pulled out a tissue, and slowly wiped her hands. She only did that when she was nervous. “So what?” she finally said, not looking at me. “What exactly are you trying to say? It was just an initial idea. I turned it into a complete design. Legally, that’s a work made for hire. The copyright belongs to the company…” “That was our home!” I shouted, the first time in seven years I had ever shouted at her. “It was the future we talked about night after night, the future we imagined over and over! You sold it, Mia. You sold our future!” “Then what was I supposed to do?!” She spun around suddenly, tears welling in her eyes too. “Ethan, you’re always so idealistic! Doesn’t opening a studio cost money? Doesn’t expanding need a name? Do you know how many follow-up projects we got because of Cloud Isle?!” “So that gives you the right to steal?” “I didn’t steal!” Her voice turned sharp. “That was my design too! I put in work too! Yes, the original inspiration came from one of our conversations, but I was the one who turned it into a workable plan! I was the one who drew hundreds of drafts! I was the one who spent three months at the construction site!” “Then why didn’t you tell me?” That sentence threw the room back into silence. Mia opened her mouth, and tears finally fell. But she wiped them away quickly, like she was wiping away something shameful. “Tell you, and then what?” She gave a bitter smile. “Listen to you lecture me about ‘design principles’ and ‘architectural passion’? Or hear you tell me that ‘we can’t trade our dreams for money’?” “Ethan, I’m tired. I don’t want to live in rental apartments anymore. I don’t want to count every penny anymore. I don’t want to see furniture I like and have to wait for a sale. I’m thirty this year. I want real things. Is that wrong?” I looked at her and suddenly felt incredibly unfamiliar. Was this woman in a silk blouse, wearing a watch, with perfect makeup really the same girl who used to bounce in place with excitement after finishing a model? Or had that girl died long ago, dying in one after another midnight struggle for survival, and I was only showing up to her funeral today? “About the wedding budget,” I said slowly, “the extra two hundred thousand you wanted, that was to cover the studio’s cash shortfall, wasn’t it?” Mia’s pupils shrank. Her phone rang at that moment. She glanced at the screen, her face turning even paler, and hung up immediately. “Who was that?” I asked. “A client.” Her answer came too fast. “Which client calls at ten p.m. on a weekend?” “Ethan, enough!” She grabbed her bag. “I don’t have to report every single thing to you! If you think I’m that awful, then we have nothing to say to each other!” She slammed the door on her way out. Just like three days ago. But this time, I didn’t stand there waiting for her to come back. I walked over to the pile of drafts, pulled out that drawing, and spread it flat on the workbench. Then I opened my phone and took a photo of the drawing next to the Cloud Isle promo image on my computer screen. The second the flash went off, I saw my own face reflected in the glass window. Expressionless, eyes cold. Like I was looking at someone else’s story.

Mia didn’t come home all night. At seven the next morning, I got a text from her: [I need a few days to calm down. Don’t come to the studio this week.] I stared at the screen and thought of another day six months ago. That day, she also didn’t come home all night, and the next morning she sent me a similar message: [Last night I stayed too late with a client looking at the site. I slept at the hotel. I’m going straight to the construction site today.] I believed her then. I even replied: [Get some rest. Remember to eat breakfast.] Such a considerate boyfriend. I put down my phone and started systematically checking the studio’s accounts from the past year. We were partners, and Mia had always handled the finances, while I handled design and construction. On the surface, everything looked normal. But what if the design fee from Cloud Isle had never been recorded properly? I opened my computer and logged into the company email—the password was the date we got together. Mia probably never thought I would check that. There wasn’t anything unusual in the inbox. But in sent mail, there was an email from three months ago sent to a private address, with an attachment in a zip file titled “Cloud Isle Final Version.” And the prefix of that private email address was Liam_Private. I opened the contacts and searched for the client contact on the Cloud Isle project. Found it—a general manager with the last name Grant. Before dialing, I hesitated for three seconds. Then I pressed the call button. It rang five times before he answered. “Hello, who is this?” “Hello, Mr. Grant. This is Ethan Blake from Mia Reed Design Studio.” I tried to keep my voice professional. “I wanted to confirm some design details about the Cloud Isle project.” “Designer Blake,” Mr. Grant said warmly, “why are you calling all of a sudden? That project was finished a long time ago, wasn’t it?” “It’s like this. We’re organizing project materials and preparing for the next annual selection. I wanted to confirm the original design communication date. Could you tell me when you first saw the proposal?” “Let me think… it should’ve been last August? Right, the last week of August. Designer Reed came to us with the proposal. The moment we saw it, we were hooked. Especially that ‘starry glass house’ concept. It was incredibly eye-catching.” Last August. The day Mia and I talked about that concept was August 15. “At that time, the plan was already pretty polished, right?” I asked. “Very polished! Full set of drawings, even material samples. Mr. Grant made the decision on the spot.” After hanging up, I sat in front of the computer and didn’t move for a long time. August 15 to the end of August. Two weeks. Two weeks were enough for her to turn a midnight fantasy into a mature business proposal that could win over a client. And enough for her to decide not to tell me about it. I heard keys at the door. I quickly closed the email page and switched to the design software interface. Mia Reed pushed the door open and came in looking like she hadn’t slept all night, but she had changed clothes and put on makeup. “We need to talk,” she said, her tone eerily calm. “About what?” She walked over and put a document in front of me. I looked down. It was a prenuptial agreement. “Sign this, and the wedding goes ahead as planned,” she said. “You get sixty percent of the studio shares, I get forty percent. The house is yours, but you’ll need to compensate me in cash for half the market value. The wedding budget will follow your plan.” I flipped through the terms and stopped on the addendum on the last page: “Both parties agree not to pursue any responsibility from the other regarding the copyright issue of the Cloud Isle project.” “So you’re admitting it?” I looked up at her. “I’m trying to solve the problem.” Mia pulled out a chair and sat down. “Ethan, we’ve been together seven years. Do we really need to tear each other apart over one project? Yes, I should have told you. That was my fault. But that project saved the studio, or we might already be bankrupt.” “Bankrupt?” “Yeah.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Around this time last year, the company had less than a hundred grand left. We couldn’t collect the final payments on three projects, and we wouldn’t even have been able to make payroll the next month. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry.” “So you sold the future home we built together?” “That was the only way!” She raised her voice. “The Grants had been looking for a designer for their resort villas. I took the proposal to them, and it won immediately! The design fee was eight hundred thousand, and the four-hundred-thousand deposit came in the next day! Ethan, that was four hundred grand!” I looked at her flushed face, and all of a sudden I just felt tired. “Mia,” I said, “in these seven years, have I ever left you when you were at your lowest?” She froze. “When something happened in your family in your junior year, I worked three jobs to help pay your tuition. When we first started the studio and couldn’t get projects, I put in the money my parents gave me for a house. You said you wanted to study abroad, and I supported you going, while I kept the studio going by myself for a whole year.” My voice was calm, like I was talking about someone else. “I never once thought about giving up on you, or giving up on our shared dream, because of money, pain, or not seeing a future.” “But you did give up,” I said. “The moment you decided to steal our shared future and turn it into money, you had already given up.” Mia’s face turned paler and paler. “If you sign this agreement, we can still keep going.” Her voice started to shake. “Ethan, I was wrong. I really was wrong. But I did all this for our future too…” “There is no us anymore.” I stood up and pushed the agreement back to her. “Mia, we’re done.” She sat there, looking up at me, and tears finally poured down in big drops. For a moment, she looked like that helpless girl from back then again. But I knew that wasn’t real. Just like that starry glass house design looked like a dream from above, while the price tag had long been written underneath it. “I’ll have a third-party audit the studio’s accounts,” I said. “As for the Cloud Isle design fee, I’ll take every cent that’s mine. And as for the copyright issue…” I paused and looked at her suddenly terrified eyes. “What do you think the Grants will do if they find out the original design they paid so much for was really a stolen dream?”

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I ended my business trip early, not telling anyone, just to surprise Arthur Thompson. Now, the surprise had turned into a shock. The photo album on the computer had no pictures of us. The first photo showed Arthur, shirtless, embracing a strange blonde woman. The background was the gray bed in our bedroom. The date on the photo was the first day I left for my business trip to Miami. I scrolled down. The second woman, innocent with long, straight black hair, kissing him on my favorite sofa. The date was the day I went back to my parents’ house for the weekend. The third, the fourth, the fifth… Faces flashed before my eyes. Suddenly, I felt incredibly ridiculous. The timeline of the photos started three years ago, running through every moment he pursued me, fell in love with me, and even proposed to me. He was arranging 999 roses into a heart shape below my office building, making headlines in the city. Meanwhile, in our home, he was sleeping with different women. Just three days ago, he had knelt before everyone and proposed to me. He said, “Olivia, marry me. Let me take care of you for the rest of your life.” My heart softened, and I said yes. He immediately pulled me into his arms, took out his phone, and snapped a picture of our ring-clad, clasped hands. The caption: “A wish, finally come true.” Under that Ins post, hundreds of mutual friends liked and congratulated us. What a perfect “devoted lover” act. I turned around, saved all the photos, and packaged them to send to our shared company email.

I smiled, but tears fell first. No, I couldn’t cry. Tears were the most useless things in this world. I took a deep breath and wiped away the tears with the back of my hand. Then I clicked on another folder. And there, I found a compressed file named “SQ.” Skylar. I remembered, she was a female colleague from his marketing department, a freshly graduated intern. The compressed file had no password. I opened it. Inside were even more explicit chat logs. “Arthur, you have to help me with this quarter’s KPI~” Followed by a selfie of Skylar in revealing black lingerie. Arthur replied, “Be a good girl, baby. Do whatever I tell you to do, and forget about KPIs. Next quarter’s ‘Employee of the Month’ will be yours.” Immediately after, there was a screenshot of a $50,000 transfer. I expressionlessly backed up all the chat logs, transfer proofs, along with all the photos from that encrypted album, one by one, to my external hard drive. By the time I finished, dawn was already breaking. I walked into the walk-in closet. The luxury cabinet that covered an entire wall was a testament to Arthur’s three years of pursuing me. An Hermès Birkin bag, he said, matched my aura. A Van Cleef & Arpels clover necklace, he said, would bring me luck. And those Roger Vivier square-buckle heels, he said, he hoped I’d wear them, stepping closer to him with each stride. Now, it seemed, these were nothing more than feed to keep his caged bird. I found a few of the largest suitcases. I packed all those bags, jewelry, shoes, coats… everything he had given me, leaving nothing behind. Finally, I printed dozens of copies of the photos and chat logs, casually stuffing them on top. I called the most expensive same-day courier service in the city, with the address filled as Nebula Solutions. Recipient: Arthur Thompson. I specifically noted: “Please ensure Director Thompson personally opens and signs for the package in front of his entire department.” After doing all this, I opened the largest anonymous forum in our industry. Edited the title: “Exposing Arthur Thompson, Marketing Director of Nebula Solutions, and his five ‘Outstanding Female Employees’.” I uploaded all the backed-up evidence, redacting the women’s information, leaving only Arthur’s face and his sordid dealings, all clearly organized. Send. Finally, I opened my company email. Recipient: All Employees. CC: HR Department, Group Headquarters Disciplinary Committee. “I, Olivia Hayes, hereby officially resign, effective immediately, due to personal reasons.”

The moment I hit send on the resignation email, my phone vibrated like crazy. Arthur Thompson’s name flashed, over and over again. I watched silently, not answering. I ordered takeout, the spiciest chili bowl I could find. The chili oil burned my throat, bringing tears to my eyes, and my stomach felt like it was on fire. Good. Using one pain to cover another. Until the phone stopped ringing, replaced by a flurry of messages. “Olivia, where are you? Let’s talk.” “Listen to me, things aren’t what you think.” “I know I messed up. Please come back? I can’t live without you.” I looked at his hypocritical messages and laughed. Arthur Thompson, aren’t you tired of acting after three years? I blocked all his contact information. Finally, complete peace. But the peace lasted less than half a day. The next morning, public opinion began to turn. Under the post that had exposed Arthur Thompson, the tone shifted dramatically. “Is the OP Olivia Hayes? I heard she’s always been a bit unstable.” “Yeah, she broke down crying in the office once because of project pressure, everyone in the company knows.” “Director Thompson is such a good person. For her to push him to this point, she must be having a delusion and fabricating evidence for revenge, right?” It seemed Arthur Thompson had begun his counterattack. He was using the most malicious methods, slandering me, trying to portray me as a lunatic. Just then, Arthur Thompson’s mother, Mrs. Thompson, also came looking for me. I opened the door. When she saw me, a hint of disdain flickered in her eyes, quickly replaced by a pained expression. “Olivia, my dear, why are you so naughty?” I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Mrs. Thompson, can I help you?” She was choked by my coldness, then raised her voice. “Look at what you’ve done! Arthur’s future is ruined by you! You’ve shamed our family!” I scoffed softly. “His future was ruined by his own hands, in bed. Your family’s reputation was tarnished by him.” “You!” She trembled with anger, pointing a finger at my nose. “You unruly woman! How has Arthur ever wronged you? He bought you a house, a car, what more do you want?!” “I paid the down payment for the house myself, and I chose the car myself,” I said, looking at her indifferently. “Mrs. Thompson, this is a legal society, not your private playground.” Her face paled, as if a raw nerve had been touched, then she sneered. “Fine, fine, a legal society indeed!” She pulled a lawyer’s letter from her Hermès handbag. “Olivia Hayes, you publicly spread rumors online, maliciously defaming Arthur. That constitutes libel! I advise you to delete everything immediately and issue a public apology, otherwise, we’ll see you in court!” So, this was her real purpose. I took the flimsy paper, didn’t even look at it, and tore it in half. Then dropped it on the floor. Mrs. Thompson’s eyes widened instantly. “You… you’re crazy!” “I am crazy,” I looked at her. “Driven crazy by your hypocritical family.” I turned and walked back inside, grabbing my phone. Right in front of her, I pressed play. Arthur Thompson’s voice came through clearly, with a hint of impatient condescension. “…Olivia, you must sign this prenuptial agreement.” “Why are my pre-marital assets considered joint property, while yours remain solely yours?” That was my own voice, tinged with a tremor and confusion. “Because I’m a man, and my career needs protection. What little you have, what’s that even worth?” “The house can be in your name, but you must waive ownership in the agreement, only having residency rights. Any children must take my surname. And, if we divorce, you cannot claim any shares of my company…” The recording echoed in the living room, every word a slap in Mrs. Thompson’s face. Her complexion turned from flushed to ashen. “You… you recorded it!” “Yes,” I turned off my phone, meeting her shocked gaze. “I had to keep a backup plan, didn’t I?” “After all, Director Thompson’s even his proposal was meticulously calculated.” Mrs. Thompson staggered back a step, unable to utter another word, and fled in disarray.

I knew it wasn’t over. Arthur Thompson wouldn’t give up so easily. Sure enough, that afternoon, Arthur Thompson’s assistant, Vivian, contacted me. “Olivia, are you okay? I saw what happened on the forum. I really feel bad for you.” Her voice sounded full of sympathy. “Director Thompson… he’s gone too far, treating you like this.” I didn’t speak, quietly listening to her performance. “Olivia, I… I have some chat logs here between him and other female colleagues from different departments. They might be useful to you. Should I send them?” She pretended to be on my side. I smiled. “Sure, thanks, Vivian.” Soon, I received a few screenshots. The content was ambiguous, but not fatal. Immediately after, she sent another message. “Olivia, do you have any other evidence? You need to release it all at once to completely expose him!” The mask finally slipped. So that’s what she was waiting for. She wanted to know my trump card. I replied, “Everything I had, I’ve already sent out.” “Really?” She seemed skeptical. “But… Director Thompson doesn’t seem to care much. He even said in today’s meeting that he would pursue legal action against the rumor-mongers.” She was testing me. I didn’t reply again. Instead, I opened the external hard drive where I had backed up all the evidence. From there, I found a folder I had overlooked. The folder’s name was “LW.” Vivian. I clicked it open. Inside were her chat logs with Arthur Thompson, and several hotel hallway surveillance videos. “Baby, you’re the best to me. Not like Olivia, that wooden beauty, she has no spark at all.” “Don’t worry, once I marry her and get access to her family’s resources, I’ll kick her out. Then, my wife will be you.” The date was the day after Arthur Thompson proposed to me. I packaged these screenshots and videos directly. Then, using an anonymous email, I sent them to the Nebula Solutions HR Department and the Disciplinary Committee. The email title was: [Official Report: Marketing Director Arthur Thompson Abusing His Position for Long-Term Improper Relationship with Assistant Vivian.] Send. A minute later, Vivian’s message popped up again. “Olivia? Why aren’t you saying anything?” I picked up my phone and replied with just two words. “Check email.”

Vivian’s calls never came again. Instead, the server for Nebula Solutions’ internal forum crashed. Reportedly, that day, the offices of the Disciplinary Committee and HR were packed with curious onlookers. Arthur Thompson and Vivian were immediately suspended. Nebula Solutions’ stock price plummeted in response. Three months later. I was sitting in the office of Summit Innovations, Nebula Solutions’ arch-rival. My position: Marketing Director. Mr. Davies, the CEO, personally interviewed me, asking only one question. “Ms. Hayes, how well do you understand Nebula Solutions’ business model?” I smiled. “I could draw Mr. Thompson’s business plan for the next six months with my eyes closed.” With my accurate foresight into Arthur Thompson’s strategies, my team at Summit Innovations achieved outstanding results, snatching three major clients from Nebula Solutions consecutively. Arthur Thompson couldn’t sit still. Mr. Peterson, a client we had worked with for years, suddenly made an outrageous demand the night before signing the contract. “Director Hayes, the contract isn’t the problem, but shouldn’t the kickback percentage be increased?” A greasy smile was plastered on his face as he suggestively rubbed his fingers. “Director Thompson’s side is much more generous than yours.” This was a trap set by Arthur Thompson for me. If I agreed, he could immediately use the recording to put me on the industry blacklist. I didn’t speak, I just pulled up a video on my phone and pushed it towards him. In the video, Mr. Peterson was at another dinner party, boasting about how he manipulated accounts and took kickbacks, playing both sides. Mr. Peterson’s face instantly went white. “You…” I took back my phone, a cold smile playing on my lips. “Mr. Peterson, what do you think would happen if this video were sent to the industry blacklist reporting email?” “No, no, no! Director Hayes! Let’s talk this out!” He was sweating profusely and immediately signed the contract I had already drafted, which offered no room for hidden perks. Arthur Thompson failed to get his way and instead lost a major client. He became even more frantic. At the industry summit at the end of the year, he publicly targeted me in front of hundreds of peers. During the Q&A session, he took the microphone. “I’d like to ask Director Hayes, Summit Innovations’ recent performance is indeed impressive, but there are rumors in the industry that Director Hayes’s emotions seem a bit unstable.” He paused, displaying a hypocritical smile. “How can someone who can’t even control their own emotions ensure professional and stable decision-making?” All eyes in the room instantly focused on me. He wanted to use his old trick, using the “crazy” label to ruin my career. I met his gaze, stood up calmly, and walked to the front of the stage. “Thank you, Director Thompson, for your concern.” “But before we discuss emotions, perhaps we should first discuss professional ethics.” I looked at the director for the big screen. “Could the director please display the content from my USB drive?” The next second, Arthur Thompson’s explicit chat logs with another woman were clearly projected onto the huge screen. “Baby, I’ve already sent you the bid details for Evergreen Group. This project is definitely ours.” “Don’t worry, that idiot Olivia is still gloating at Summit Innovations.” The entire hall erupted in an uproar. The representative from Evergreen Group instantly turned ashen. Arthur Thompson froze in place, blood draining from his face, inch by inch. I looked at him, enunciating each word. “How much professionalism can a director possess when he leaks core bidding data to his mistress as sweet talk?” That day, Arthur Thompson became the laughingstock of the entire industry. Nebula Solutions also completely lost Evergreen Group, its most important client. And the final straw that broke him came from his core team. A week later, his most capable deputy, along with his entire project team, collectively jumped ship to join me. Arthur Thompson was completely ruined. The day he was forced out by the board of directors, I received a message from Vivian. “Olivia, let’s meet.”

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I’m dying. My mother, Eleanor, is a world-renowned oncologist specializing in stomach cancer. Yet, I developed the disease right under her nose. Every time I told her I wasn’t feeling well, she just scoffed and told me to stop acting because my performance was pathetic. My oldest brother, Pierce, is a detective. He has protected countless citizens in this city, but he never protected me. He stood by and watched as kidnappers dragged me away. My second brother, Nikolai, is a medical examiner. I once texted him: “When I die, will you perform my autopsy to prove I wasn’t lying?” He replied with a single word: “Dirty.” So, after I died, my lawyer father, Richard, found the severance papers I left behind. There was only one blank line left—the one for his signature. He frowned and ripped the documents to shreds. Even in death, he refused to let me go. I walked out of the hospital, utterly hollowed out, staring down at the medical report in my hands. Late-stage stomach cancer. The cancer cells were already metastasizing. When it rains, it pours. I learned that the hard way. Lost in my thoughts, I accidentally bumped into a teenage boy. I quickly closed my report, apologized, and turned to leave. He caught a glimpse of the hospital paperwork in my hand and looked at me with pure sympathy. “It’s okay.” I walked home in a daze. As night fell, my family’s house glowed with warm, cozy lights in the distance. Too bad none of those lights were meant for me. I stood outside the door, listening to the laughter and cheer inside. The moment I pushed the door open, the house fell into a dead silence. Eleanor turned around, her eyes flashing with anger. “You knew today was Elysia’s birthday, yet you came home this late. Are you intentionally trying to ruin our family gathering?” The living room was filled with balloons and streamers. A massive, seven-tier cake sat on the dining table. Richard, Eleanor, Pierce, and Nikolai were all staring at me with deep annoyance. My sister, Elysia, sat in the middle of them like a princess surrounded by her court. She flashed me a sweet, gentle smile. “Eleanor, it’s fine. Maybe Chloe had something really important to do that held her up?” Her sweet, understanding act immediately won silent nods of approval from the rest of the family. Nikolai sneered, “What important thing could she possibly have?” My family has hated me since the day I was born. Eleanor was pregnant with twins. But my sister, Angel, was born weak. They believed I had stolen all the nutrients in the womb, which caused Angel to pass away less than twenty-four hours after birth. My parents dumped me with my grandparents. But before I even turned a month old, my grandparents died in a horrific car crash. From then on, everyone called me a curse. In my memory, Eleanor always looked at me with disgust, weeping over the baby clothes she had prepared for Angel. When I was five, Richard brought a girl home from the orphanage. She shared the exact same birthday as me. That was Elysia. They showered her with all the love they would have given Angel, ten times over. My mother is a top oncologist specializing in stomach cancer, yet I got terminal stomach cancer right under her nose. How ironic. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out at first. Finally, I forced out the same plea I had made a thousand times before: “Eleanor, my stomach really hurts.” Eleanor rolled her eyes, her face written with sheer disgust. “Here we go again. Stop acting. It’s pathetic.” The hospital report in my hand was so obvious, yet not a single one of them looked at it. Pierce threw me a cold glance. “Do you really have to fake an illness on Elysia’s birthday just to steal the spotlight?” Nikolai clicked his tongue in disgust. “If Elysia hadn’t insisted on waiting for you to cut the cake, we would have started hours ago!” Elysia played along, smiling warmly at me. “It’s okay, Chloe. I know you’re not feeling well. Take care of yourself.” Richard frowned and ordered, “How long are you going to keep up this tantrum? Get over here!” I walked over and saw the elegant writing on the cake: Happy Birthday, Elysia! But today was my birthday, too… Elysia picked up the knife, cut a slice with her name on it, and handed it to me with a smug smile. “Happy birthday, Chloe.” Her eyes were triumphant. My family was throwing her a massive party, completely forgetting it was my birthday as well. Or maybe they didn’t forget. They just didn’t care. Seeing me hesitate, Eleanor’s voice grew sharp. “Is your hand broken? How long are you going to make Elysia hold that plate?” The others glared at me as if I were actively torturing their precious darling.

I took the plate and mumbled, “Thanks.” Only then did they look away, returning to their laughter and leaving me in the cold. I stared at the cake with her name on it. I knew that if I didn’t eat it, I would have to endure another endless lecture. Like a robot, I took a bite. Instantly, my stomach violently churned. I covered my mouth and rushed to the bathroom, throwing up into the toilet. Eleanor exploded. “Chloe! Do you hate Elysia that much? You can’t even swallow a single bite of cake she offered you without throwing a tantrum?” Pierce leaned back, his eyes narrowing. “Are you going to complain about your stomach again? Stop trying to get attention.” Nikolai stabbed his fork into the cake, his voice dripping with malice. “If you’re in so much pain, why aren’t you dead yet? Keep playing your little games.” Richard picked up my slice of cake and threw it directly into the trash. “If you don’t want to eat, don’t. Ungrateful brat.” I knelt by the toilet, vomiting violently, unable to reply. The physical reaction forced tears down my face. Their shouting echoed through the bathroom door, deafening and relentless. The double torture of my mind and body was driving me to the brink of insanity. I dragged myself up to my bedroom on the second floor, locking the door to shut out the noise. The moment I left, the living room downstairs resumed its warm, happy atmosphere. The medical report lay open on my desk, staring back at me. A sudden wave of panic hit me. The doctor’s words from this morning echoed in my head. “The tumor is metastasizing. It might put pressure on your optic nerve and cause blindness. You need to prepare for the worst.” The next day, I went to school like normal. I had begged my parents countless times for sick leave in the past, only to be met with screaming matches. Nikolai had mocked me once, “Your grades are already garbage. Now you want to skip school too?” Richard had agreed. “Look at Elysia. She actually makes us proud. Not like you, an absolute embarrassment.” But they forgot that I used to have perfect grades. Back then, they had a completely different excuse to hate me. When the school posted the exam rankings, Elysia had looked down in tears. Eleanor had rushed to the school, slapped me across the face in front of teachers and students, and screamed: “You have to steal everything from Elysia, don’t you? Even the top rank! Why couldn’t you have been the one who died back then?” Eleanor was thinking of Angel. I had stood there under the judgmental stares of everyone, wishing the ground would swallow me whole. But Eleanor had grabbed my arm, launching into a screaming tirade, digging her sharp nails into my skin until I bled. In the end, my homeroom teacher had to physically pull her off me. After that, I stopped trying. I became the “disappointment” they always wanted me to be. SLAP! I was knocked to the ground. “Chloe, I’m talking to you! How dare you ignore me?” A popular girl, Kate, stood over me, flanked by a dozen classmates. Elysia stood right next to her, pretending to play the peacemaker. “Come on, Kate. Chloe didn’t mean to. She just… really likes Scott…” Elysia turned to me, looking incredibly forgiving. “Chloe, if you liked him, you should have just told me. I wouldn’t have started dating him.” Kate scoffed, looking at Elysia with pity. “Elysia, you are way too sweet! Why do you tolerate this homewrecker?” Here we go again. My cheek burned from the force of the slap. I stood up and calmly brushed the dust off my clothes. “I don’t like him.” Scott stepped forward, pulling out a crumpled love letter. He ripped it to shreds and threw the pieces in my face. “You make me sick. I guess my last warning wasn’t enough.” Scott looked at the crowd. “This time, don’t hold back.”

They dragged me into the PE equipment room. And Elysia, just like every other time, stood outside with tears in her eyes, looking like the victim everyone needed to comfort. My old bruises hadn’t even healed, and now new purple marks were blooming all over my body. This was the girl my family raised like a princess. She had been orchestrating my bullying for over a decade. I closed my eyes, biting my lip, refusing to make a sound even when the taste of copper filled my mouth. BANG. The heavy metal door slammed shut, plunging me into absolute darkness. I fixed my torn clothes, dragged myself up through the agonizing pain, and left a trail of blood on the floor. I pulled open the dusty curtains. The schoolyard was completely empty. I spat out the blood in my mouth, walked calmly to the corner of the room, and picked up a heavy metal wrench. I smashed the rusted lock on the window, shattering the glass. A jagged piece sliced open my wrist, and blood began to drip onto the sill. Ignoring the pain, I hauled myself out of the window. “Stop right there!” I turned. It was the newly hired Vice Principal. She pushed up her glasses in disbelief, letting out a sharp gasp. She dragged me straight to her office. After flipping through my file, she immediately called my father. She glared at me, her face tense. “Why aren’t you home? Getting into trouble at your age is one thing, but destroying school property? This is unacceptable!” I looked down at my filthy clothes. Scott and his friends were smart—they never hit my face. They only targeted places hidden by my clothes. To the Vice Principal, I was just a delinquent. Yet, despite her harsh words, she poured me a cup of warm water and set it in front of me. “I am going to have a serious talk with your parents when they get here!” A few minutes later, sirens wailed outside. Pierce walked in with a couple of officers. The moment his eyes landed on me, his face twisted into deep annoyance. “We received a call from the school about vandalism. I should have known it was you.” I kept my head down, silent. The Vice Principal didn’t know he was my brother. Afraid a criminal record would ruin my future, she quickly tried to smooth things over. “Officer, she only broke the window to get out. Let’s not file an official report. We can resolve this privately once her parents arrive.” Pierce said coldly, “I am her guardian.” He turned to me, looking down his nose. “Do you have any idea how much police resources you are wasting? I have every right to put you in a holding cell.” I looked up at him, my voice flat. “I know.” I picked up the cup of water and drank it all. Did I want to fight back against the bullies? Of course I did. But every single attempt had failed. Pierce was a detective. He saved so many people, but never me. The very first time I was beaten up, I ran to him. I pulled up my sleeves to show him the bruises. He didn’t even look up from his desk. “Don’t bother me with your petty high school drama,” he had said. I thought he was just busy, so I went to the police station to file a report. But as I was taking off my jacket to take photos of my injuries for evidence, he walked in. “Who are you trying to seduce?” he had sneered. My cries for help were treated as disgusting attention-seeking. In the end, to teach me a lesson about “wasting police resources,” my righteous brother personally locked me in a holding cell for fifteen days. “Oh my god! Chloe, your hand is bleeding!” The Vice Principal gasped, staring at the cup in my hand. She quickly grabbed a first-aid kit and started wrapping my wrist in gauze. I looked up at Pierce, a tiny, subconscious glimmer of hope rising in my chest. For the first time, my wounds were laid bare right in front of him. Would he believe me this time? Pierce smirked, his eyes full of disdain. “Don’t waste your gauze on her. This self-harm act is getting old.” “If you want to die that badly, don’t bother getting treated.” He violently ripped the gauze off my wrist and dragged me out of the school.

The pain in my wrist grew sharper, eclipsing the dull ache in the rest of my body. My blood dripped onto the pavement all the way to the car. My chest felt incredibly tight. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision began to blur. When we got home, Elysia was sitting on the couch with my orange prescription bottle in her hand. She was eating the pills like candy and laughing, offering them to Eleanor and Nikolai. When she saw us walk in, she smiled sweetly and offered a pill to Pierce and me. “Why are you taking my medication?” I asked, my voice trembling. Elysia gasped in mock surprise. “This is your medication? But they’re just Skittles!” She poured a few more into her hand. “They’re so good. No wonder you love them, Chloe. Honestly, as long as you don’t get cavities, Eleanor and Richard won’t care how much candy you eat.” My heart froze. I didn’t dare look at anyone else’s expression. I slowly put one of the “candies” into my mouth. It was the exact same tablet I had been taking for the past two months. But I had lost my sense of taste weeks ago. Why were my cancer meds replaced with candy? Richard, Eleanor, Pierce, and Nikolai looked at me with smug satisfaction. Elysia just stood there, smiling triumphantly. Nikolai tossed a pill to Pierce. “See? I told you she was faking.” He popped one into his mouth and crunched it loudly. Eleanor sneered, “You eat this much candy every day, yet you haven’t developed diabetes? Honestly, that would be far more believable than your stomach cancer lie.” Richard’s face was dark, his voice dangerously low. “I don’t care if you want to play-act a terminal illness.” “But if you ever interfere with Pierce’s work again, I will personally have you committed to a psychiatric ward so you can experience what real patients go through.” I looked at Pierce. He didn’t say a word, but his cold expression showed he fully agreed with Richard. The cruel, ugly faces of my family began to warp and blur. I pushed past them, stumbling up the stairs in the dark, desperate to lock myself in my room. Elysia followed me up, holding the pill bottle out to me. “Chloe, what’s wrong? Are you dizzy? Can you not see the stairs?” Nikolai pulled her back from behind. “Why do you even bother with her, Elysia? Her little stomach cancer lie got exposed, so now she’s playing the dizzy card. It’s exhausting.” My hands shook violently as I finally slammed the door shut and locked it. As the days passed, my vision decayed further. People became nothing but blurry shadows. Headaches, vomiting, and chest pain became my daily reality. I had fought so hard to survive for eighteen years, hoping to legally cut ties with them once I became an adult. I was only a few months away. And then, I got cancer. I returned to the hospital for a check-up, only to run into Eleanor. “Unbelievable. Are you so desperate that you’re bringing your little drama to my hospital now?” I had forgotten that she was rotated to this branch this month. “I’m not doing anything.” She stepped closer, her face contorted with rage. “There is a limit to your lies. No doctor in this hospital would write you a fake report.” Before I could answer, her sharp eyes scanned me up and down, making me feel naked and dirty. “Why are you standing in front of the OB/GYN clinic? Don’t tell me you caught some nasty STD from sleeping around at your age?” Eleanor’s screeching voice echoed down the corridor, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. Only then did I realize I was standing near the women’s clinic. Under the judgmental stares of the crowd, Eleanor continued her tirade. “I don’t have a slut for a daughter. You are absolutely nothing compared to Elysia.” “You act like you’re half-dead every day. Why don’t you actually go die?” Her venomous words sliced into me. I held out my medical report to her and said softly, “But Eleanor… I really am dying.”

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When I was brutally killed, Mom was praying with my little sister for her final exam. She also cruelly hung up on my call for help. “This is a huge deal that decides Sarah’s life. If you want to die, then go die. You’re such bad luck!” Later, the city sent someone to inspect the school. The inspection team found hundreds of scattered body parts buried in the concrete poured under the track on the school field. To avoid causing panic at the school, they could only put it aside for the time being and dig the body parts out after the exams were over. Mom stitched the remains together on the operating table herself and pieced together a face she knew all too well. Jennifer from Class 3 at SKY High School. Her own daughter, missing for two months, the daughter she hated to the core—me. My limbs were removed from the concrete under the plastic track in the middle of the night on the day Sarah’s final exam ended, by a SWAT team that secretly came to the school. The SWAT officers wore gas masks and dug for three hours, pulling out a total of four hundred and thirty-two scattered pieces of my body. They transported the remains to the police station overnight, and several officers stayed up all night before finally piecing the body together into a rough human shape. You could barely tell it was a young girl. But the surface of the body had already turned into adipocere, and the stench was overwhelming. One rookie officer with a weak stomach only glanced at “me” before he bent over the trash can and vomited until his face turned white. Mom, who was the station’s guest forensic expert, stood nearby. She looked once, then turned away, her face full of pity. She put on her gloves, switched on the bright lights over the autopsy table, and scanned every inch of me from top to bottom, her eyes filling with a trace of doubt. My soul floated beside her, screaming and waving as hard as I could, even though I knew it was useless. My body wasn’t complete. One piece was missing here, another piece was missing there. The face that could best identify me had been slashed into vicious red marks by the killer, leaving no trace of what it had once looked like. Even a monster looked less frightening than I did now. Mom looked at my broken body so calmly, as if I were just another ordinary victim in her career. The officer beside her could see her confusion and felt a little guilty. “The body was cut up too finely. We searched all night and only found this much.” Mom cut in steadily, “It’s fine. That’s enough to tell.” After all, I hadn’t been dead for very long, and because I was sealed in concrete, the decomposition had slowed down. Even though some adipocere had formed in places, that was actually a good thing. The adipocere preserved the abuse and wounds I had suffered when I was alive very well. It was obviously helpful for solving the case. Mom suddenly froze, probably because several pieces of my body had fragments of SKY High School’s uniform stuck to them. She picked up those pieces, a flicker of hesitation crossing her eyes, and her scalpel stopped too. The owner of these body parts was a student at this school, a young girl. Didn’t she look a lot like your daughter who had been missing for two months? I stood nearby, my heart filled with emotions I couldn’t even name. Mom, did you recognize that it was me? She suddenly pulled back the white sheet, revealing my lower half. Her hand reached toward my thighs, where there were large brown marks, as if something burning hot had been pressed against me. They left behind ugly scars. She ran her fingers over the scars several times, but found nothing. Of course there would be nothing. To destroy these identifying marks on my body, they dragged me into an alley and rolled a curling iron over me again and again. I still remembered that scorching heat, a temperature so hot it felt like it could burn away a person’s soul too. Mom covered me back up with the white sheet. She took off her gloves, and the autopsy was over. She still hadn’t recognized that the inhuman monster on the table was her own daughter, who had been missing for two months, the daughter she hated with all her heart—me. I gave a bitter smile. Forget it. I was already used to this.

Mom submitted the autopsy report and went to the school, which was now sealed off by layers of police tape, and also the scene of the crime. This was a huge incident. The higher-ups took it very seriously and formed a special task force to investigate. They flipped through the files, completely overwhelmed. SKY High School was a top school, and the inspection team had used the most advanced equipment. The problem was that the equipment detected something on the plastic track. Mixed in with the concrete used to pour the track, there seemed to be human body parts. To avoid alarming the students, they didn’t confirm it right away. They only quietly gathered the list of people who had recently gone missing and started the first round of screening. But none of the missing persons matched the autopsy report. The officers were so angry they slapped their thighs. “It’s been hidden in there for two months, and the family never even reported it? Was she an orphan or something?” “Otherwise, how do you explain that none of the missing people from this period match her?” After a lot of trouble, they finally dug up a suspect. It was Jennifer, the daughter of the station’s forensic expert, Samantha. When Mom faced the officers who came to ask questions, she frowned. “My own daughter, how could I not know her? She’s the older sister. She got jealous of Sarah and just threw a tantrum and ran off. What do you mean missing?” “That’s a threat! She was dying for me and Sarah to die. How could she possibly be dead!” As she spoke, her eyes moved toward the group of people under the track. They were working in full gear, desperately digging through the concrete, and the excavated concrete had already piled up into a small mountain. She pulled the autopsy report out of her pocket. “The deceased is estimated to be between seventeen and twenty-one years old, and suffered a lot of inhuman abuse before death.” “There are multiple burn injuries, a broken leg, and three knife wounds all over the body, one of which was fatal.” “The face was deliberately destroyed, making identification impossible.” “All the fingers were chopped into tiny pieces, making fingerprint analysis difficult.” “But the remains are incomplete. There may be some fingerprints stuck to them, and we’re still sending people to look.” “DNA testing has also been submitted. We should have results within two days.” What they were digging up below was the other possible body parts. Mom held the autopsy report and looked at the officer, hatred flashing in her eyes. “Jennifer was nothing but trouble. The only person she ever bullied was others. When has anyone ever bullied her? If you say the killer was her, that would actually make some sense.” Seeing that the officers didn’t believe her, she even took out the chat history on her phone. “I’m the one who gave birth to her and raised her, but look at how she treats me?” “She sends one message on the phone saying she won’t come home and thinks that’s enough to brush me off?” “What a little bitch who can’t be tamed. Just thinking about her makes me sick for three days.” I was shocked beyond belief. I was already dead. How could I still send Mom messages? But when I leaned in to look, those messages really were sent from my account. Then I remembered the phone I had clutched tightly in my hand right before I died being snatched away brutally. I had tried with all my strength to snatch it back, but then my leg was kicked hard and broken. The bone snapped, and I collapsed to the ground in pain. Crying, I begged Mom for help over the phone. “Mom, help me. Please help me. I’m going to die!” But Mom just yelled at me impatiently, “I’m praying with Sarah for her final exam. If you want to die, then go die. You’re such bad luck!” What came next was intense pain and a wash of blood. Mom put on her coat and answered a call with a smile. “Sarah’s waiting for me at home? I’ll be back right away. I’ll bring you your favorite spaghetti. Wait for me, okay?” She turned around, and her gaze met my weak form floating in the air. It was full of cold indifference. “Jennifer only knows how to cause me trouble. She even ran away from home. If it weren’t for Sarah, I would’ve been driven to death by her long ago!” “Don’t ask me about Jennifer anymore. I don’t have a daughter like that, cold-blooded and heartless!” “Just seeing her makes me feel blocked up inside. She’s so annoying. It’d be best if she died out there.” “Don’t come home and get in the way. I don’t want Sarah upset!” I clutched my chest and bent over in pain. I had already endured the pain of being dismembered, but now this pain was many times worse than before. Mom, I died as you wished. Are you satisfied now?

As soon as Mom walked out of the school, she ran straight into Sarah waiting at the entrance. “Sarah, what are you doing here?” Mom was about to ask, but before she could finish, Sarah had already thrown herself into her arms. Her eyes were red, and her body trembled slightly. “Mom, I heard something happened at school. I… I’m a little scared.” Mom patted her back reassuringly. “Don’t be afraid. I’m here. I’ll protect you, Sarah.” Looking at Sarah like that, I suddenly understood where I had lost. I had lost from the very beginning. Even the slightest bit of fear from Sarah would be treated like a huge deal by Mom. But no matter how I bled in front of Mom and showed her my wounds, she remained unmoved. We had never been the same. Mom hugged Sarah and took her to the only spaghetti shop near the school. “I’ll buy you your favorite spaghetti, so don’t be scared, Sarah.” Sarah was still trembling nonstop, her eyes red like a pitiful little rabbit. And yet this harmless-looking girl had personally slashed my face to pieces. She had pressed a curling iron against my skin and rolled it over me inch by inch, making me wish I were dead. Mom was a regular customer, so the owner had already packed everything up by the time she arrived. Mom paid as usual, but when she reached out to take the box, he kept holding it and didn’t hand it over right away. “Have you seen Jennifer lately? She hasn’t come by to help me in a long time.” He turned his head and looked at Sarah, who was shrinking behind Mom. “Sarah, have you seen Jennifer?” Sarah covered her mouth exaggeratedly. “I don’t know either. The last time I saw Jennifer, she seemed really close with some guy…” The moment Jennifer was mentioned, Mom’s expression turned cold. She forced out, stiffly, “We don’t know.” Then she grabbed Sarah’s hand and left. When they got home, Sarah blinked innocently, her face full of innocence. “Mom, why wouldn’t you let me talk? I feel like that guy was weird, and between him and Jennifer…” Mom stood up and knocked over the fruit tray on the table. “Enough. Don’t bring her up to me!” Seeing Sarah flinch in fear, her heart softened and she lowered her eyes, asking after her with concern. “Sarah, you’re just too kind. From now on, stay far away from Jennifer.” “You’re going to be a top student in the future. How could you let someone like her, a total scumbag, ruin you?” She shoved the box of still-warm spaghetti into Sarah’s hands. “You’ve already finished your exam, so you should be resting. Whether Jennifer lives or dies has nothing to do with you. It’d be best if she died out there!” Sarah took the spaghetti from Mom’s hands, a smile lifting her lips, mixed with smugness. And she should be smug. She had pulled this trick many times before and had never lost. Even when she made up lies about me out of nowhere, even when she framed me for causing her injuries, no matter how absurd it sounded. Mom believed it all. I had knelt outside the door in the freezing snow, watching Sarah make faces at me through the glass with that same smile. I had tried to fight back, but nothing worked. “You’re the older sister. What’s wrong with letting Sarah have her way?” “You only think about competing with Sarah. Can’t you have some ambition?” “So what if I celebrate your birthday and Sarah’s together?” “Birthday cakes are expensive to buy two of. Can’t you save me some money?” Mom was always angry because I was a disobedient bad child. But obedience came at a price.

On my eighth birthday, I got beaten because I wouldn’t listen. Sarah forced me to play hide-and-seek with her, or she would make Mom keep beating me. I agreed. She told me to hide in the back seat of the car and said Mom would come looking for me later. I went along with it. But then the car started, and I popped up from the back seat, meeting Dad’s shocked eyes. Dad was a detective and had offended a lot of people. The brake on that car had failed because someone who wanted to hurt Dad had tampered with it. The car crashed into a tree and burst into flames. Half of Dad’s body was swallowed by the fire, and he used the last of his strength to smash the window with something sharp and get me out. I was grabbed by the police who rushed over, and I watched helplessly as the car exploded, my father’s body turning to ash with it. When Mom arrived, she slapped me and called me a jinx. At the funeral, Mom grabbed my head and smashed it against Dad’s tombstone. “If it weren’t for you, your dad wouldn’t have died!” “Why wasn’t it you who died back then? If it weren’t for you, with his skills, he could’ve gotten out!” “Why don’t you go die? Go die!” Her shrill voice stabbed into my heart like countless blades, and in that instant, I really felt like I deserved to die. I should have died when I was eight, not in that rainy night. Sarah called me crying and told me to come save her. Through tears, she said she had found the person who had killed Dad back then. I didn’t believe her, but then the person on the other end really produced evidence that the brakes had been tampered with. I had no choice but to believe it. Sarah begged me desperately, pleading for me to think of a way to get her out. So I went to save her. Before leaving, I secretly took a knife with me. I naively thought that if things really came to the worst, I would kill Sarah and then kill myself. But I was wrong. All of this had been a trap set for me. From the moment I agreed, they never intended to let me leave alive. My memories came rushing back, and I saw Sarah take out a phone in the room. It looked unbelievably familiar. Sure enough, she had taken it. Back then, I didn’t understand why she could go that far just because of a little jealousy. Why she was willing to team up with those criminals to take revenge on Dad and revenge on me. Later, I understood that from the moment she was a child, her mind had already been twisted. Her hands were covered in blood. The day Dad died, Sarah overheard that they had switched the brakes, but she didn’t warn him. She even took me into the car too. Through the back-seat window, I saw the twisted pleasure on her young face. Because Dad favored me, because I was praised for being prettier than her. She wanted to send us both to our deaths. The detective’s daughter had put on a criminal’s blood from that night on. She only needed a little persuasion, and didn’t even have to do it herself, to make someone who stood in her way disappear from this world. What a temptation. I told her to turn back. What I got in return was this: before the exam, she had people block me in an alley. Because she knew I wanted to apply to the police academy, and she was afraid that once I got in, I would expose all her crimes to the world. She killed me herself. One stab after another, I trembled in pain, but from her crazed laughter, I understood the meaning of the smile on her face at Dad’s funeral. It meant I would never beat her in this lifetime. I would have to live forever carrying the label of the man who killed my father. They threw my body parts into the concrete pit at the school field construction site. They buried me, along with my secret, at the bottom, sealed into the plastic track. Mom walked into Sarah’s room carrying a bowl of borscht. “Sarah, don’t stay up too late. Go to sleep soon. I’ve got something to do tonight and can’t stay with you.” Sarah was still clutching my phone, and in her panic, she could only stuff it under her skirt. Mom glanced at her with some suspicion, but didn’t ask further. Sarah saw that the bedroom door was wide open and a group of police officers were sitting in the living room. Her face went a little pale, and she couldn’t hide her guilt. “Mom, who are they? Why are they here at our house?” She shifted a little, not realizing that the phone under her had already exposed a corner. “They’re coworkers from the station. The owner of the spaghetti shop came to report something.” “He said Jennifer hadn’t shown up for a long time. She messaged me saying she’d gone to her grandma’s house, but her grandma said she’d never been there.” Mom’s hand shook several times around the bowl of borscht, and her voice trembled. “Sarah, do you think…” Before she could finish, her gaze suddenly locked onto one spot. She rushed forward in a few steps and pulled out the phone. Only then did I see it. Three minutes ago, Mom had sent me a message. One minute ago, Sarah replied with my phone. Mom’s eyes widened, and she unconsciously raised her voice. “Sarah, tell me. Why is Jennifer’s phone in your hands?”

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