Author: Momo Chan

1 I went to the Holloway estate to pick up the wedding invitations for my boyfriend’s older brother. But when the heavy, cream-colored cardstock was pressed into my hand, the gold-embossed script didn’t read “Brooks Holloway and Seraphina Moore.” It read “Brooks Holloway and Sienna Hayes.” I stared at my own name, tracing the letters until they blurred. I pulled out my phone and messaged Bennett. The “typing…” bubble appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Minutes ticked by. Nothing. That was so typical of Bennett. In our three years together, his greatest talent was his selective mutism. Whenever a question became too uncomfortable, he simply retreated into a fortress of silence. Do you love me? Silence. Why were you with Seraphina on New Year’s Eve when you told me you were working late? Silence. He knew that if he waited long enough, my patience would fray, my resolve would crumble, and I would be the one to apologize for “overreacting.” An hour later, the vibration of a text rattled my palm. [Sienna, don’t be petty. It’s just a legal formality to get through the ceremony.] [Once you divorce my brother, we’ll go back to how things were. I’ll make it up to you, okay?] The pieces clicked together with a sickening metallic snap. Seraphina—his precious childhood “best friend”—had gotten cold feet at the last minute. Bennett couldn’t stand to see her distressed, yet he was too terrified to let the Holloway family lose face in front of the city’s elite. So, he had offered me up as the sacrificial lamb. I felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my chest. I typed back: [Have you thought for one second about the gossip? About what this does to my life?] Silence. [Did you ever actually love me?] Total silence. If silence was his answer, I was done asking the questions. On the day of the wedding, I walked into that courtroom, smiled, and signed the marriage license with a steady hand. Then, I vanished. Three months later, Bennett cornered me in a hospital hallway, his eyes bloodshot and frantic. “Why the hell did you actually stay married to my brother?” I protected my slightly rounded stomach with one hand and flashed him a sharp, knowing smile. Then, I did exactly what he had taught me. I pulled out my phone and showed him the message I’d prepared. [Don’t be petty.] [It’s just a marriage and a baby. It’s a process.] [Once this is over, we’ll go back to how things were. I’ll still date you then, okay?] When I first arrived at the Holloway mansion three months ago, I found Seraphina locked in her room. Bennett was pacing the hallway like a caged animal, his face a mask of anxiety. “Sera, honey, please,” he called through the wood. “I’m here. If you don’t want to go through with it, no one will force you. I won’t let them.” He heard my footsteps and turned. His eyes darted to my face, then down to the invitation in my hand, before flicking away as if I were a stranger he’d accidentally bumped into on the subway. “Sienna,” he said, his voice flat. “What are you doing here?” I held the invitation up between us like a shield. “I’m here to ask why my name is printed on this.” Bennett’s brow furrowed for a fraction of a second before he grabbed my wrist, pulling me toward the stairs. “Let’s talk downstairs. Sera hasn’t slept in days. Don’t start a scene and trigger her.” His voice was still that gentle, deceptive honey, but his grip was iron. I wrenched my arm away. “She’s triggered? So I’m the one who has to be humiliated?” “It’s different for you.” Bennett went silent for a few beats, then reached out to tuck a stray hair behind my ear. It was a practiced, hollow gesture of affection. “You know Sera’s parents died when we were kids. She’s been a ward of this family forever. We owe her that extra care, Sienna. It’s just three months. Once the dust settles, I’ll take you to the lawyer for the divorce myself. I promise.” There it was. The “sister” excuse. Seraphina was the fragile porcelain doll he’d grown up with, which meant I was the sturdy plastic one that could be dropped, kicked, and traded away. He would throw me a crumb of tenderness whenever I was on the verge of leaving, just enough to keep me starving for more. And if I pushed for a real answer? The silence would return. We walked into the living room, where a few of Bennett’s friends—the usual inner circle of trust-fund legacies—were lounging. They clearly knew the plan. One of them, Nate, let out a sharp whistle. “Hey, Sienna. Why the long face? Most girls would kill to even step foot in this house. You got lucky Bennett picked you up, and now you get to be Mrs. Holloway for ninety days. You should be thanking your stars.” “Think of it as a trial run,” another laughed. “You’ll have some experience when you eventually marry Bennett. Save him the trouble of training you.” The room erupted in smug chuckles. Bennett’s lips curled into a faint, self-satisfied smirk. “Shut up, guys.” Nate nudged him. “What? Scared your little girlfriend is gonna run off?” Bennett looked at me, his gaze brimming with an unbearable arrogance. “Not a chance. Sienna’s been with me for three years. She’s loyal to a fault. She isn’t going anywhere.” “Of course,” Nate added. “She loves you so much she’d probably jump off a bridge if you told her it would help Sera. Marrying Brooks for a few months? She’ll swallow that pill just like every other one.” In the middle of their laughter, Bennett didn’t defend me. Instead, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a stack of documents. He took my hand, stroking my knuckles as if soothing a temperamental pet. “Ignore them. I’ve got the paperwork ready. You just need to show up and sign tomorrow. What do you want as a ‘thank you’ when this is over? That new designer bag you were looking at?” I looked into his eyes—the eyes I used to think were my North Star. The insults were ringing in the air, and his only solution was a bribe. “Sienna?” Nate called out, his voice mocking. “Why so quiet? Don’t tell me you’re actually going to throw a tantrum after Bennett’s been so generous.” Bennett watched me, waiting for my inevitable submission. I remembered every time I’d folded. The anniversary he skipped to pick up a “drunk” Seraphina. The week he froze me out because I dared to complain. The time I was in the ER with a high fever, and he left because Seraphina had a nightmare and “needed a familiar face.” My best friend Cassie called me a doormat. I told her it was “unconditional love.” But looking at the contempt in that room, the “love” finally died. It wasn’t a slow fade; it was a sudden, violent extinction. I pulled my hand back and closed the invitation. “Fine,” I said, my voice cold and level. “I’ll do it. I’ll marry him. But Bennett? Don’t you dare regret this.” Before he could respond, a heavy thud echoed from the bedroom upstairs, followed by the sound of shattering glass. Bennett’s face went white. He didn’t even look at me as he sprinted for the stairs. “Sera!” He burst into the room. Seraphina was slumped by the bed, shards of a water glass scattered around her bare feet. Her eyes were red, her lip trembling. “I’m okay, Bennett,” she whispered. “I just… I heard you guys arguing about me. I’m such a burden, aren’t I?” Bennett didn’t listen. He dropped to his knees, clutching her ankles. “Don’t move. You’ll cut yourself. God, Sera, stay still.” Seraphina pulled back slightly, her eyes flickering toward the door. “Bennett, Sienna is right there. She’s going to be upset.” “Who cares about that right now?” Bennett snapped. He realized what he’d said and glanced back at me standing in the doorway. He swallowed, his jaw tightening. “Sienna’s fine. She understands.” He grabbed a towel and began wiping the dust from the soles of Seraphina’s feet before sliding her slippers on with the kind of reverence a priest shows an altar. He never once offered me an apology for the “who cares.” The guys were leaning against the doorframe, sighing. “Sera’s got the best luck. Bennett’s always looked after her like she’s the only girl in the world. No one’s ever gonna top that.” Seraphina let a single tear fall. “No, don’t say that. Brooks doesn’t care who he marries. He just wants our father to stop hounding him about an heir. As long as the wedding happens, he’s satisfied.” She looked up at Bennett, her gaze lingering. “The family has done so much for me. I should have been the one to help Brooks. But the thought of being married to someone else… of having to keep my distance from the person I truly love… it was too much.” The room went silent. The subtext was so loud it was deafening. Nate broke the silence with a grin. “The person you truly love? He wouldn’t happen to be in this room, would he, Sera?” Seraphina looked down, blushing. Bennett’s mouth quirked into a smile he couldn’t suppress. I stood there like a ghost in my own life. After a moment, Seraphina reached out and took my hand. “Sienna, don’t be mad. Bennett and I grew up together. It’s a different kind of bond. You love him, right? So don’t make this hard for him.” Bennett placed a hand on her shoulder. “I told you, she’s already agreed. Sienna’s all talk, but she has a good heart.” “See?” Nate chimed in. “One look from Bennett and she’s tamed. Sera, don’t feel guilty. She’s not suffering. She’s getting a front-row seat to the Holloway lifestyle. She should be grateful.” Seraphina finally smiled. No one looked at me. I was a tool, a piece of equipment used to fix a leak in their perfect, gilded pipes. Bennett stood up, his tone final. “It’s settled. Sera, get some rest. Sienna will take your place tomorrow.” He walked me to the door later. There was no guilt in his eyes, only a patronizing encouragement. “When this is over, I’ll seriously start thinking about our future. Show me you can handle being a Holloway wife, Sienna. Be the woman I know you can be.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I’ll pick you up at eight sharp tomorrow. I’ll be the one to walk you down the aisle and hand you over. To make sure everything goes perfectly.” “Fine,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I hope you keep that promise.” The next morning, Bennett was two hours late. When he finally strolled into the bridal suite, he was yawning. “Sera was a wreck last night. She cried until dawn. I had to stay with her until she finally drifted off.” He stopped when he saw me in the gown. For a second, a flicker of genuine shock—maybe even attraction—crossed his face. “You look… good.” He smiled, then quickly checked himself. “It was tailored for Sera, though. It would have looked better on her.” Old Sienna would have flinched. New Sienna just kept adjusting her veil. Bennett seemed annoyed by my lack of reaction. “You still sulking?” “No.” “Sienna!” He stepped behind me, gripping my shoulders. But before he could start his “soft” manipulation, Seraphina’s voice floated from the hall. “Bennett? Are you in there?” She walked in wearing a simple white sundress. Bennett immediately let go of me to meet her. “It’s freezing out, why are you dressed so lightly? Your hands are ice.” He draped his jacket over her shoulders and called for tea. Seraphina looked at me. “You look beautiful, Sienna. I guess it doesn’t matter who the groom is—a white dress makes anyone look like a bride.” Bennett didn’t catch the sting in her words. Or he didn’t care. I watched him fuss over her and remembered when he used to do that for me. He once drove across the city in a rainstorm just to bring me an umbrella. My texts used to be pinned to the top of his screen. He’d show up at midnight with my favorite takeout just because I mentioned I was hungry. Everything changed when Seraphina finished grad school and moved back. Suddenly, I was the one left waiting in movie theaters. I was the one signing my own surgery consent forms. The official papers were brought in. I didn’t hesitate. I signed “Sienna Hayes” with a flourish. During the family reception, the Holloway parents looked surprised to see me. They glanced at Brooks, who was standing beside me. He shifted slightly, shielding me from their direct gaze. “She’s the one,” was all he said. Bennett’s friends were whispering loudly in the back. “Sienna’s really moving up in the world today. Bennett, you better watch out. A woman who’s been a ‘Mrs.’ once might not want to go back to being just a girlfriend!” Bennett laughed, looking smug. He took my hand and placed it into Brooks’s palm. “Take care of her for three months, brother.” Brooks gripped my hand firmly. His voice was deep and steady. “Marriage isn’t a loan, Bennett.” Bennett missed the weight of the statement. He winked and slid a hotel key card into Brooks’s pocket. “Right. Play the part well. Don’t let Mom and Dad suspect a thing tonight.” He turned to me, whispering, “I’ll be the first person waiting for you in three months. And then, we’ll have a wedding that’s actually ours.” Seraphina’s eyes narrowed as she watched his hand on my arm. She suddenly gasped, clutching her chest. “Bennett, I feel faint.” He was at her side in an instant. “Did you skip breakfast?” “I just need some air.” She leaned into him, giving me a tiny, apologetic smirk over her shoulder. “Stay put,” Bennett called back to me. “I’ll call you when I’m done with her.” I watched them walk away. I reached up, unclasped the “promise necklace” Bennett had given me for our first anniversary, and dropped it into the trash can. Brooks was behind me. He opened the door to the waiting car. “The guests are waiting, Sienna.” I took his hand. Perfect, Bennett. This time, you’ll never find me. That night, Bennett sent two texts. [Sera’s still not feeling well. I’m staying at her place tonight.] [Don’t be mad. I’ll take you to lunch tomorrow.] I didn’t reply. He didn’t follow up, assuming I was just “throwing a fit.” The next afternoon, Bennett showed up at my apartment with a bouquet of lilies. But when he tried his key in the lock, it wouldn’t turn. My landlord stuck her head out of the unit next door. “You looking for Ms. Hayes? She moved out yesterday. Lease is terminated.” Bennett’s smile died. He pushed the door open to find a hollow, echoing shell of an apartment. He dialed my number. I had snapped the SIM card in half the moment I left the wedding. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” His friends showed up shortly after. Nate shrugged, patting Bennett on the back. “Classic move. She’s trying to scare you. You made her marry your brother—she’s gotta play hard to get to regain some leverage. Give her three days, she’ll be crawling back.” Bennett nodded, forcing himself to breathe. Every time we fought, I was always the one to bridge the gap. He left a message on my social media: [Three days, Sienna. Enough is enough. Come home.] A week passed. Nothing. A month passed. Bennett was starting to crack. He went to Brooks’s office. The assistant said the CEO was out of town on personal business, return date unknown. “Even my brother is playing along with her little game?” Bennett hissed. “Totally,” Nate agreed. “Sienna loves you too much to stay away. When the ninety days are up, show up with a ring. She’ll be crying with joy.” Bennett clung to that. He spent the next two months designing a custom engagement ring. He booked a five-star restaurant and bought two first-class tickets to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. On the day the “three months” were up, he waited at the courthouse starting at 8:00 AM. He waited until the building closed at 5:00 PM. No Sienna. No Brooks. Panic finally set in. He called everyone we knew. No one had heard from me. Then, Nate called him, sounding breathless. “Bennett, you sure Sienna hasn’t reached out?” “What is it, Nate?” “I’m at the hospital. St. Jude’s. I just saw her best friend, Cassie, coming out of the OB-GYN wing. She was holding a prenatal file… and the name on the tab was Sienna Holloway.” The world tilted on its axis. “You’re lying. We broke up three months ago. Even if she was pregnant…” He stopped. Three months ago. The wedding night. Nate let out a gasp over the phone. “Bennett, it’s real. Your brother’s car is in the lot. I just saw Cassie hand the lab results… to Brooks.”

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1 The night before freshman orientation at Pacific Coast University, my e-girlfriend of a year, Sienna, auctioned me off in a dorm icebreaker game. Before I could even process what was happening, my phone buzzed violently as I was dragged into a GroupMe chat with over a hundred incoming freshmen. The pinned announcement lit up my screen: [Congrats to Brooke on winning one 200-pound boyfriend in the Mystery Box auction! All sales final!] A second later, a photo from my junior year of high school hit the feed. In the picture, I was squeezed into a faded navy school hoodie that looked like it was about to burst at the seams. My cheeks were so swollen with baby fat that my eyes were pinched into two narrow slits. The chat instantly went wild. “LMAO Brooke hit the jackpot.” “A deal’s a deal! Brooke better finish the couple’s obstacle course with him tomorrow night!” “Isn’t the final task a princess carry? That’s brutal—no wait, that’s hilarious.” Within minutes, a digital betting pool was set up on the campus app. People were taking bets on whether I’d even have the guts to show up at the freshman mixer tomorrow evening. Sienna dropped a thousand dollars on NO. “I dated him online for a year,” she typed into the main thread. “He was too terrified to even turn on his camera. I made fun of his voice once and he almost cried. He’s not a real man.” Garrett, the resident golden-boy recruit whose chest took up half his profile picture, tagged my handle directly: “Do yourself a favor, bro. Stay home.” “Sienna putting you in the auction was her way of letting you down easy.” Sienna immediately responded with a blushing emoji. I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at their matching profile pictures—two halves of a heart—and felt a cold, quiet laugh bubble up in my chest. So that was it. Throwing me into a mystery auction was just her way of pulling off a painless, public soft-launch with another guy. What neither of them knew was that I was no longer two hundred pounds. Over the past twelve months, I had dropped down to a lean, muscular hundred and forty pounds. In fact, since getting down to eight percent body fat, talent scouts at my local gym had stopped me three separate times. I opened the betting app, typed in my name, and quietly dropped a thousand dollars on YES. Tomorrow night was going to be an education for everyone involved. *** After my thousand-dollar wager posted, the GroupMe went dead silent for a solid two seconds. Garrett was the first to break it, dropping a single question mark. “You’re actually coming?” A second later, Sienna’s name flashed across my screen in a private text. [Cancel the bet.] [Do not show up tomorrow.] I typed back a simple question: Why? Her voice memo popped up almost instantly, her tone sharp and exasperated. “Do I really have to spell it out for you, Nate? There are over a hundred people in this chat. They’re our future classmates. If you waddle in looking the way you do, how am I supposed to hold my head up on campus? You might not care about being a laughingstock, but I do.” I looked down at the digital scale resting on the hardwood floor between my feet. 140.6 lbs. To reach this number, I had ripped my old life apart at the seams. For three hundred and sixty-five days, I cut out every drop of sugar, killed late-night cravings with ice water, and dragged myself out of bed at five-thirty every morning to hit the pavement. At my lowest point, the inflammation in my knee cartilage was so bad I had to slide down the stairs on my rear just to make breakfast. Whenever I asked Sienna to FaceTime over the past year, she always claimed the Wi-Fi in her dorm was too spotty, keeping her camera off and keeping our calls strictly audio. My phone chimed again. Another photo had been posted to the main GroupMe. It was an old shot from my high school athletic physical. I was stripped to the waist, standing under the harsh fluorescent lights of a nurse’s office. A roll of soft belly spilled over the waistband of my shorts, and deep, reddish stretch marks spanned across my lower back. The message came from a guy named Zach Miller, Garrett’s roommate. “Exclusive HD drop,” Zach wrote. “Nate’s physique right here. Can’t say he looks like an athlete, but he definitely looks like an uncooked ball of bread dough.” The chat flooded with laughing-crying emojis. My fingers tightened around the edges of my phone until my knuckles turned white. I had sent that photo to Sienna—and only Sienna. It was late one night when she told me that true intimacy required absolute vulnerability. “So what if you’re big?” she’d whispered into her microphone back then. “I love you for who you are, Nate. Always.” And then she’d turned around and handed it straight to Garrett. Zach, apparently deciding the insult hadn’t landed hard enough, updated the GroupMe avatar to my shirtless physical photo. “Keep an eye out tomorrow, everyone,” Zach added. “When you see this shape walking into the venue, give our campus queen a round of applause for acquiring a human beanbag.” A girl in the chat finally spoke up. Her handle read Sadie. “Using someone’s private, shirtless photo as a group icon is crossing a line, don’t you think?” Garrett shot back instantly: “He’s a guy, Sadie. What’s he going to do, cry? Nate, you’re not actually offended by a little banter, are you?” Before I could type a response, Sienna jumped in. “He doesn’t mind. Nate’s got a really thick skin.” Reading those words, a bitter taste filled my mouth. My restraint, my refusal to throw tantrums, had simply become the permission structure she used to let other people humiliate me. I typed three words into the main thread: “I do mind.” The GroupMe went silent again. Sienna’s texts flooded my lock screen in a rapid frenzy. [What is wrong with you?!] [Are you seriously trying to embarrass me in front of everyone?] [Garrett and Zach are just messing around. You’re making things so awkward!] I replied: Did you give him that photo? The typing bubble bounced three dots at the bottom of the screen for nearly a minute before she finally sent a reply. [Does it even matter? That’s what you look like anyway. It’s not like it’s photoshopped.] I stared at the screen, feeling the last lingering tether of affection inside me snap clean in half. There was nothing left to say to her. Seeing my silence, her tone shifted, softening into a fake, patronizing sweetness. [Nate, look, I’m just trying to protect you. If you show up tomorrow, people are going to laugh right to your face. Just cut your losses. Consider that thousand dollars the price of a life lesson.] I backed out of her contact screen without replying. A second later, a notification popped up. It was a direct message from Sadie—the girl who had called out the avatar photo. [Hey. Don’t go tomorrow night,] she wrote. [It’s a trap. They didn’t just plan a princess carry.] [What else?] I asked. She sent over a short, secretly recorded video clip. In the video, Zach was adjusting a heavy-duty nylon dog leash and harness. Attached to the collar was a laminated sign in bold black ink: TRANSFERRED PROPERTY. NO REFUNDS. Garrett sat on a leather couch nearby, taking a sip from a red Solo cup and smirking at the camera. “When Nate walks through that door, we clip this on him. Brooke walks him around the lounge twice. That’s the real initiation task.” Sienna was sitting right beside Garrett in the frame. When she heard his plan, her only response was a faint laugh and a bored instruction: “Just don’t pull it too tight.” Sadie’s text followed the video clip instantly. [I can talk to the group admins and force them to refund your bet. Just stay home.] I saved the video to my local drive and replied: [Thanks, but keep the money in the pool. I’ll be there.] Then, I saved the physical photo Zach had posted, went back into the GroupMe thread, and posted one final message: “Don’t delete that avatar photo. You’re going to need it tomorrow.” Garrett replied within seconds. “Why? Want me to print it on a poster for you? Don’t worry, bro. I’ll make sure it’s full size.” *** The next morning, I woke up at five and unlocked my phone. The top trending post on the unofficial PCU Freshman Forum had already accumulated hundreds of upvotes: [BEWARE: 200lb Stalker Freshman Harassing Campus Beauty for a Year—Threatening Violence After Getting Dumped!] The post featured my old high school photo, accompanied by a series of carefully cropped, fake text exchanges. According to the anonymous poster, I had used emotional guilt to trap Sienna in an online relationship, threatening self-harm whenever she tried to break things off. Now that she had “moved on,” I was allegedly planning to crash the freshman party to assault her. The comment section was an absolute cesspool. “Fat, ugly, AND a psycho? Pick a struggle, dude.” “Poor Sienna. Imagine having a parasite attached to you for a whole year.” “He’s actually coming to the mixer tonight? Girls, keep your pepper spray ready.” When a commenter asked if there was any actual proof, Zach replied under his main account: [Roommate here. Can confirm 100%. He’s out of his mind.] Garrett had officially liked the comment from his verified handle. I dialed Sienna’s number. She picked up on the second ring. “Did you see the forum post?” I asked, keeping my voice flat. “Yes,” she said, sounding tired. “Was it you?” “No.” “Then why haven’t you cleared my name?” Sienna let out a sharp, irritated breath through her nose. “Clear your name how, Nate? By telling the whole campus that I actually spent a year dating a guy who looks like a parade balloon? Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be for my social life?” A hollow laugh escaped my throat. “So you’d rather let me be branded as a stalker and a creep?” “Your name isn’t even on the post!” she snapped. “There are four thousand guys in the freshman class. Why do you have to take everything so personally? If you just stay in your dorm tonight, people will move on to new drama in two days.” I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, letting the final illusion fade away. “Delete the post,” I said quietly. “Clear it up now, and I’ll pretend you had nothing to do with it.” Sienna let out a bitter laugh. “Are you threatening me? Who do you think you are, Nate? I dragged you around for a year out of pity. I was more than generous to you. If you dare show up tonight, I will play the voice memos you sent me in front of the entire room. Let’s see how tough you sound when everyone hears you sobbing like a baby.” I remembered that voice memo. It was recorded the night my grandfather passed away in hospice care. I was sitting in a cold hospital hallway, choking back tears, asking if she could just stay on the phone with me for five minutes. She had told me she was there for me, that I could trust her with my pain. Now, that moment of grief was just ammunition. “Fine,” I said. “See you tonight.” I hung up before she could respond. Sadie’s name popped up on my screen a second later. [You’re still going?] I turned toward the full-length mirror leaning against my bedroom wall. The black athletic tank top I wore clung tightly to a wide, tapered back and defined shoulders. My collarbones were sharp; my jawline was hard enough to cut glass. Over the past year, I had evolved from a kid who threw up after running a quarter-mile into an athlete capable of clearing twelve-mile trail runs without breaking a sweat. My body had changed. It was time my standards did, too. [They put a lot of effort into setting the stage,] I replied to Sadie. [It’d be rude not to show.] *** By four in the afternoon, the betting pool reached a fever pitch. Driven by the viral forum post, the total pot on whether I’d show up had ballooned to over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Garrett tossed another five thousand dollars into the NO column. “If this guy actually steps foot inside the venue tonight,” he posted on his story, “I’ll eat my laptop screen live on stream.” Zach chimed in: “Keep it simple, Garrett. If he shows, just make him wash our gym socks for the first semester.” Sienna dropped a single message into the main thread: “Don’t make the bets too high, guys.” Garrett replied: “Feeling sorry for him?” “Hardly,” Sienna wrote back. “I just don’t think he can afford to lose. His family isn’t exactly wealthy. A thousand dollars is a lot of money to someone like him.” Staring at those words, my mind drifted back to last fall. Sienna had casually mentioned wanting a three-thousand-dollar Sony camera setup for her birthday. I lived on instant ramen and tap water for two straight months, working double shifts at a local warehouse to buy it for her. When she opened the package, she cried over FaceTime, swearing she didn’t care about material things—that all she needed was me. A few weeks later, she claimed she’d dropped the camera on concrete and shattered the lens beyond repair. Yet, in a photo Garrett posted just last week, that exact same camera setup was slung proudly around his neck. The chat devolved further into crude fat jokes. Someone photoshopped my high school headshot onto a farm animal; Garrett screenshotted the high-stakes betting pool and posted it to the main freshman story with a caption: 6:00 PM TONIGHT: LIVE STREAMING THE SIMP REALITY CHECK. Sadie finally fired off a message directly into the chat: “Is this really what you guys think is funny? Leaking private medical photos, launching smear campaigns, setting up dog leashes? It’s pathetic.” Zach shot back immediately: “Sadie, don’t tell me you’re falling for the dough-boy? Then again, with your personality, maybe he’s the best you can do.” I typed a brief message: “Drop it, Sadie. It’s fine.” The thread exploded instantly with tags. “Look who’s alive!” “Hiding behind a girl to fight your battles now, Nate?” Garrett sent an audio file directly into the group: “Know your place, man. Sienna already made it clear—your little online fantasy never meant anything. If you try to crash this party, I’ll personally have security throw you out on the pavement.” “Why would I be crashing?” I replied. “It’s an open orientation mixer.” “Because nobody wants you there,” Garrett snapped back. A moment later, he launched an official GroupMe poll: [Should Nate Hayes be allowed into the mixer?] Yes: 3 No: 107 Sienna and Brooke had both voted No. Garrett posted a screenshot of the results. “See that? Over a hundred people agree. Save yourself what’s left of your dignity.” I didn’t bother responding. I walked over to my closet, pulled out a plain, fitted white crewneck t-shirt and a pair of dark denim jeans. No designer logos, no fancy styling. I didn’t need a three-piece suit or a fresh blowout to face these people. My phone buzzed again. Sadie had sent a video from inside the private lounge area at the hotel downtown. A massive printed banner was hung directly over the double doors of the VIP suite: [NATES AND DOGS PROHIBITED] Beside the door stood a heavy-duty industrial scale. Next to it was a hand-painted cardboard sign: [IF OVER 200 LBS, PLEASE USE THE FREIGHT ELEVATOR] Inside the room, Zach was holding a microphone, giving the camera a tour. “To accommodate Nate’s special proportions,” Zach announced, pointing to a corner of the room, “we’ve constructed a custom seating arrangement!” The camera panned to two heavy plastic chairs taped together with duct tape and covered in a plastic sheet. On a low table in front of them sat a two-foot-wide plastic dog bowl filled to the brim with cold fried chicken, greasy burgers, and cheap supermarket cake. Garrett leaned into the frame, grinning. “If he makes it inside, he sits right here and eats the whole bowl before he’s allowed to leave.” Someone off-camera asked, “What if he starts crying?” Sienna’s voice cut through the noise from the background. “He’s really annoying when he cries. Don’t comfort him, just ignore him and he’ll stop.” Sadie ended the recording there. [They’re out of their minds, Nate. Please, just don’t come.] I pulled my shirt over my head, grabbed my wallet, and headed downstairs. The Uber I’d called was waiting at the curb. Five-twenty. The party’s livestream officially began. I sat in the back seat of the rideshare, stuck in gridlocked downtown traffic, watching the stream buffer on my screen. Zach was standing by the VIP entrance, holding his phone high. “Forty minutes until the deadline! Still no sign of our mystery guest!” They had taken my old physical photo, blown it up to life-size, and mounted it on a cardboard standee near the bar. Partygoers were lining up with Sharpies, drawing pig snouts, sweat drops, and slurs across my face. Garrett stepped up to the board, grabbed a red marker, and wrote four words right across my chest: NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER. He turned around, pulled Sienna into his side by her waist, and gave a cocky wink to the camera. “Any objections, chat?” The stream chat erupted into a wall of fire emojis. Sienna didn’t pull away. She leaned into his chest, her cheeks flushed, playing along with the crowd as people started chanting, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Garrett leaned down to press his lips to hers. She patted his chest with a soft laugh, pushing him back just enough to look cute. “Stop it, you guys.” Zach immediately flipped the camera back to my cardboard standee. “Nate, you watching this? The girl you chased for a year is in Garrett’s arms. If you were a real man, you’d step up.” My phone chimed with tagged notifications from the main GroupMe. “Where are you at, big guy?” “Still crying in your room?” I looked out the front windshield. The hotel was visible roughly three miles down the avenue, but the tail lights ahead were a sea of solid red. The driver sighed, looking at his GPS. “Sorry, man. There’s a three-car pileup near the intersection. We’re not moving for at least twenty minutes.” I immediately dropped a twenty-dollar bill onto the center console, shoved the door open, and stepped out into the humid evening air. I jogged to the nearest corner, tapped my phone against a city bike dock, unlocked a grey commuter bicycle, and kicked off into the street. Five-forty. Inside the VIP suite, the celebration had already begun. Zach projected the betting pool onto a massive presentation screen on the wall. “Some people love to act tough until it’s time to show up,” Zach boomed into his microphone. “He put down a thousand bucks just to save face, and now he’s too scared to even walk through the front door.” Garrett held up a glass of whiskey, his expression dripping with disdain. “It’s classic. Guys who are poor and out of shape always build these massive egos online. But put them in the real world? They crumble.” Someone turned to Sienna. “How did you endure talking to him for a whole year?” Sienna took a slow sip of her drink. “I treated it like charity work. He was easy to manage. I’d send him a single ‘goodnight’ text, and he’d send me money for my morning coffee for a month.” A wave of laughter echoed through the suite. Five-fifty-five. I slammed the commuter bike into the rack outside the hotel entrance, pushed through the glass revolving doors, and strode into the marble lobby. Two security guards posted near the elevators glanced at me as I walked past. They didn’t move an inch to stop me. They were looking for a two-hundred-pound guy in a baggy hoodie. They didn’t even look twice at a six-foot-tall athlete in a fitted shirt. The elevator climbed slowly, stopping at nearly every floor. Watching the digital floor numbers tick up, I felt a strange, cold calm settle over me. In the GroupMe chat, the final three-minute countdown began. Sadie stood near the entrance of the VIP suite, her arms crossed, staring intently out into the hallway. Zach walked over and tossed the heavy nylon dog leash onto the floor right in front of her shoes. “Stop holding your breath, Sadie. Your two-hundred-pound hero isn’t coming. Why don’t you put the collar on instead and take a lap for him?” Garrett let out a dry laugh from the couch. “Imagine backing a guy who doesn’t even have the balls to show his face. What does he actually offer? He’s fat because he can’t control his appetite, he got dumped because he couldn’t keep his girl, and now he’s dodging the mixer because he’s a coward.” Sienna didn’t say a word to defend me. She checked her watch with a faint, bored expression. “I told you. He’s spineless.” Sadie’s eyes flushed red with anger. “He spent a year being good to you! How can you just sit there and let them tear him apart like this?” Sienna raised an eyebrow. “Am I lying? He was never someone I could present to the world. I stayed with him as long as I did because I was being nice. Now I’m done. What’s the problem?” Garrett wrapped his arm securely around her shoulder. “You heard her. Sienna never cared about him.” The countdown on the big screen reached its final ten seconds. Over a hundred thousand people were watching the stream online. Zach raised his voice to a roar. “Let’s bring in the big winner! Congrats to Garrett and Sienna! And a huge round of applause for Nate Hayes—Pacific Coast University’s undisputed biggest coward!” The crowd began to chant along with the screen. “TEN!” I walked up the carpeted hallway and stopped outside the VIP suite. Through the heavy wooden doors, I could hear their voices echoing. “NINE!” I reached out and ripped down the [NATES AND DOGS PROHIBITED] banner hanging across the frame, crumpling it in one hand. “EIGHT!” The security guard posted by the door stepped forward, eyeing me up and down. “Private event, man. You got an invite?” I pulled out my phone, unlocked the GroupMe screen, and showed it to him. “I’m the guest of honor.” The guard blinked, completely thrown off. “SEVEN!” Inside, Garrett pulled Sienna closer to his hip. “SIX!” Sadie turned her head away from the door, her shoulders slumped. Zach reached out to pull her away from the entrance. “Give it up, Sadie.” “FIVE!” I grabbed the silver handle of the double doors. “FOUR!” Garrett raised his glass high toward the camera. “THREE!” Sienna murmured softly, “I told you he wouldn’t show.” “TWO!” I shoved the heavy doors open, letting them slam back against the wall with a loud, resounding crack. The final count of “ONE!” died instantly in everyone’s throats. Every single head in the room turned toward the doorway.

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1 Ever since I was little, I held a single, unshakeable belief: you only get thrown away if your market value drops too low. A foster kid bought for fifty dollars in cash? She can be beaten whenever the mood strikes. A prize-winning livestock pig bought for five thousand? You hire a vet the second it starts coughing. The math was simple. As long as a person stayed expensive enough, nobody would ever dare discard them. So I spent my entire life frantically increasing my net worth. At eight, I learned how to pick mechanical locks. At ten, I earned my commercial culinary certification. At twelve, I trained under an estate appraiser, evaluating antique porcelain and rare art. By fifteen, I was working for a local loan shark, tracking down default debtors and collecting unpaid balances. With every new skill I mastered, I drew another zero on the paper price tag hanging from my collarbone. By the time my biological parents finally tracked me down, my tag was listed at eight point eight-eight million dollars. When my birth mother wrapped her arms around me and sobbed, calling me her “priceless treasure,” I panicked, stepping back three full paces. Priceless? To me, “priceless” didn’t mean invaluable. It meant unsellable. It meant zero liquid value. After moving into the Mercer family’s estate, I worked myself to the bone. I collected professional licenses, pulled all-nighters analyzing corporate ledgers, and saved three failing subsidiaries from bankruptcy—terrified that if I stopped generating profit, the Mercers would realize I was a bad investment. Then came the accident at the charity gala. A heavy crystal chandelier snapped from the ballroom ceiling, and my older brother, Harrison, lunged across the floor, shielding me with his own body. While sitting beside his hospital bed late that night, I pulled out a fresh tag and quietly modified my price. When Harrison opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the tag pinned to my jacket. “Why does this say one dollar?” his voice was raspy, strained. I kept my gaze fixed on my lap. “High-value items get buyers hurt,” I explained softly. “If I’m cheap, it won’t break your heart when you throw me away next time.” Harrison sat up abruptly, ripping the stitches across his torso. Fresh blood blossomed through his white hospital gown. I immediately reached out, pressing a clean towel firmly against his wound. “Don’t move. Surgical re-stitching is billed by the inch.” “Pearl Mercer!” Harrison roared, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling with rage. A nurse pushed the door open, eyeing the heart monitor in alarm. “Patient needs rest! Family members, stop stressing him out!” I nodded instantly. “Understood. I’m not family. I’m his temporary caregiver, hired at a rate of one dollar.” The nurse swallowed a sudden laugh. Harrison’s heart rate spiked straight to one hundred and thirty. I glanced at the monitor and gave him a calm, earnest warning. “Harrison, if you stay angry for another minute, she’s going to call a cardiology consult. Cross-departmental referrals are outside our coverage network.” My birth mother, Vivian Mercer, walked into the room just in time to see Harrison closing his eyes in sheer defeat. When her eyes landed on the one-dollar tag resting on my chest, tears spilled down her face. “Pearl… baby… we didn’t bring you home so you could work or make money for us.” I blinked, genuinely confused. If I don’t work, and I don’t make money… why keep me at all? My birth father, Arthur Mercer, stepped into the room right behind her. Without a word of explanation, he took my appraisal certificates, my corporate bank cards, and my heavy aluminum tool kit. “For the next three days,” Arthur declared in his low, unyielding voice, “you are banned from studying for certifications, banned from entering the corporate office, and banned from fixing problems for anyone. All you are allowed to do is be our daughter.” I absorbed his words, calculating the subtext. A three-day probation period. They wanted three days to determine whether I had any value as a person once my practical usefulness was stripped away. When Harrison was discharged, our family driver, Hank, stood by the sleek black sedan holding two insulated thermoses of bone broth. As he loaded our luggage, I leaned over the hood, listening intently to the engine’s rhythmic hum. “Serpentine belt’s loose,” I said casually. “And your front brake pads are down to two millimeters.” Hank stared at me in shock. “Miss Pearl… you know how to work on cars?” “A little,” I replied, holding up two fingers modestly. “My ninth foster father ran an illegal chop shop in Detroit. When he got too drunk to function, I fixed the cars. And when the mechanics got into fights, I fixed the men.” Harrison grabbed the back of my collar and unceremoniously stuffed me into the rear seat. “Be quiet.” I popped my head back out the window anyway. “Hank, get the brakes done today. Your daughter-in-law is due with your first grandbaby next month. You can’t be skidding on wet asphalt when you drive her to the delivery room.” Hank’s eyes welled with tears as he quickly looked away. When we arrived at the Mercer estate, Sienna, the adopted daughter the family had raised in my absence, walked into my room carrying a glass of warm milk. “Pearl,” she murmured, her voice dripping with delicate sympathy, “you just got back, and Harrison already took a bullet—well, a chandelier—for you. Dad must be terrified of what having you around is going to cost us.” “The chandelier fell because the ceiling bracket corroded,” I corrected her coldly. “He chose to jump.” Her eyes filled with instant tears. “How can you be so heartless? He got hurt saving you!” Ten minutes later, Harrison slammed my bedroom door open, his jaw tight. “Did you just bully Sienna?” I was sitting at my desk, busy filling out a custom liquidation tag. I didn’t bother looking up. “Her tear ducts are hyperactive. I suggest an evaluation with an ophthalmologist.” Harrison’s eyes locked onto the card beneath my pen. Item: Pearl Mercer. Price: $1.00 (Clearance). Condition: Previously used. Sold as-is. No returns, no warranties. Additional Features: Can cook commercial meals, collect delinquent debt, brings own tools. Bargain deal. Non-refundable. Harrison lunged forward, snatched the card, and tore it into confetti. “If I see you write another one of these, I’ll burn that damn tag off your chest myself.” I didn’t argue. When a product repeatedly angers its buyer, liquidation is usually right around the corner. At midnight, I tiptoed downstairs to find a roll of packing tape. Passing the private study, I caught the low rumble of Arthur’s voice on a speakerphone with the family attorney. “Yes, exactly three days from now,” Arthur was saying clearly. “Liquidate everything currently listed under her name. Wipe the slate clean. I don’t want a single liability left behind.” I froze outside the heavy mahogany door. The roll of tape slipped from my fingers, bouncing softly against the carpet. It wasn’t a probation period. In three days, they were staging a full inventory liquidation. The next morning, I woke up at five and drafted an itemized return inventory. 137 pieces of designer jewelry. 6 residential real estate deeds. 12% equity share in Mercer Logistics. I even scrubbed the plush memory-foam slippers Vivian had bought me, packed them neatly inside a box, and carried them down to the front hall. Walter, the family’s elderly butler, stared at the stack of boxes for a long moment. “Miss Pearl… surely you don’t need to return the slippers?” I shook my head firmly. “Worn seven times. Applying a forty percent depreciation rate for light wear, plus a twenty percent deduction because I stepped on a piece of discarded bubblegum on Tuesday.” I tapped a few calculations into my phone. “Remaining asset value: nine dollars and eighty-six cents.” Walter wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “You keep track of these numbers so precisely?” “You have to remember the cost of expensive things,” I said, re-tying the ribbon on the box. “Years ago, a man gave me a hot dog for free. The next night, he forced me to stick my hand into a woman’s purse to steal her wallet. Walter, free things are always the most expensive.” Walter turned his back on me, his shoulders shaking as he wiped his eyes. I assumed he was disappointed by my asset valuation, so I mentally added two dollars to the total. By ten in the morning, the corporate CFO rushed into the house without knocking, his face pale. “Arthur! The 11th-century Northern Song white-glazed porcelain statue we pledged to the syndicate as collateral for the eighty-million-dollar credit line—it’s a fake! The bank’s auditors are doing a vault re-inspection at three o’clock!” When that porcelain artifact entered the Mercer vault two months ago, I was the one who personally conducted the white-glove appraisal. If it was a fake now, it meant it had been swapped. I snatched the high-res appraisal photos from his hands, scanning them for three seconds. “The seal wax on the timber base is synthetic chemical paraffin. Check the security logs for lock changes in Vault 4.” The CFO’s eyes widened. “You can tell that just from a photo?” I pointed to the corner of the porcelain pedestal. “There’s a microscopic grease smudge and half a potato chip crumb wedged in the lower seam. Museum-grade artifacts are stored in a climate-controlled, dust-free vacuum. A certified curator wouldn’t eat lay’s chips while handling a priceless artifact. Either the piece is an amateur replica, or your security team is hiring rodents that know how to open snack bags.” The CFO spun around and sprinted out the door to call the vault team. Harrison stepped up beside me and calmly pulled my iPad out of my hands. “You’re supposed to be recovering.” “Harrison, that’s eighty million dollars.” “Eighty million, eight hundred million—none of it is worth more than your life.” My heart gave an unfamiliar, erratic flutter. Statements like that defied basic economic logic. Either his head injury had scrambled his cognitive reasoning, or eighty million dollars was pocket change to the Mercer family. Sienna suddenly reached over and swiped my handwritten inventory ledger off the side table. “Pearl, why are you secretly cataloging internal corporate assets? Who were you planning on selling this information to?” Before I could answer, her fingers loosened. The leather-bound ledger dropped straight into the roaring marble fireplace. I didn’t think. I lunged forward, thrusting my right hand directly into the embers to snatch it out. The smell of singed leather filled the air, and instant, fiery blisters bloomed across my palm. Harrison grabbed my wrist, pulling me back so hard I nearly stumbled. His eyes were wild, shot through with red veins. “What bloody evidence in that book was worth burning your skin off for?!” “Eighty million dollars,” I answered instantly, fighting the surge of pain. “Eighty million buys a lot of hands.” Harrison froze, his entire body going rigid. An emergency physician arrived twenty minutes later to dress the burn. The moment the sterile gauze brushed against the blistered skin, I instinctively flinched away. “Does it hurt?” the doctor asked gently. “No,” I whispered, pulling my arm back further. “I’m afraid of the bill.” The doctor went completely silent. He looked up at Harrison with deep concern. “Mr. Mercer, I strongly advise scheduling a psychological evaluation for your sister.” I instantly went on high alert. “Psychiatric consultations are billed by the hour. I intend to heal this trauma independently.” Harrison knelt beside my chair, gently taking my uninjured hand in his. His voice was raw, scraped hollow. “I’ll cover the bill, Pearl. Every cent.” My internal alarm bells chimed louder. Unconditional cost absorption indicates a product experiencing severe operational failure. Using my left hand, I flipped open the charred ledger. A singed carbon receipt slipped out from between the scorched pages. The payee line read: Frank Doyle. The moment I saw that name, a raspy, tobacco-stained voice from twenty years ago echoed in my ears: “The kid’s too scrawny. Fifty bucks, not a penny more.” Frank Doyle was the trafficker who had shoved fifty dollars into my foster father’s hand before throwing me into the back of a rusty van. But the official seal stamped at the bottom of the old receipt didn’t belong to a black-market broker. It belonged to Mercer Logistics & Warehousing Corp. Harrison stared at the paper, his brows pulled tight. “Do you know this man?” “No,” I lied. It was the first lie I had ever told him. That night, after the house went dark, I used a tension wrench to pick the heavy brass lock on the storage cabinet in the basement. My old, battered tool kit wasn’t inside. In its place sat a brand-new, matte-black titanium mechanic set. Every single tool—from the torque wrenches to the precision picks—was custom-engraved with my name: Pearl Mercer. Tucked underneath the top tray was a handwritten note from Harrison: Property of Pearl Mercer. Anyone who confiscates this will answer to me. I stared at the gleaming metal for a long time. Then, I lifted the heavy case and slipped out the side door. By one in the morning, I tracked Frank Doyle’s burner phone signal to an abandoned port warehouse on the outskirts of the city. The moment I sent a ping to his number, an automated text flashed back: If you want to know who paid to throw you away twenty years ago, come alone. I immediately dropped my real-time GPS location to Harrison’s phone. A red exclamation point flashed on my screen: Message Delivery Failed. Recipient has enabled Do Not Disturb. I didn’t wait. I took the keys to Hank’s old beat-up utility van from the garage peg and drove out toward the industrial district. The Mercers had bought me a luxury European SUV, but if I wrecked an eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle on a solo retrieval mission, the repair costs would ruin my asset balance. Halfway there, the dashboard GPS chirped: Speed camera ahead. I gently eased my foot off the gas, slowing the van down to thirty miles an hour. I wasn’t afraid of losing points on my driver’s license. I was afraid that if I didn’t make it back alive tonight, an unpaid traffic violation would ding the Mercer family’s corporate credit rating. The abandoned warehouse smelled of damp concrete and motor oil. Frank Doyle sat in a tarnished velvet armchair in the center of the floor, twirling a heavy brass lighter between his fingers. “The fifty-dollar kid,” he chuckled, his yellow teeth flashing in the dim light. “I hear you’re listed at eight point eight million now?” I shook my head. “Recently markdown. One dollar. Though you still can’t afford me.” His smile vanished. He tossed a yellowed paper ledger onto the wooden table between us. The man who had orchestrated the swap of the Song Dynasty porcelain statue wasn’t a bank insider. It was Harlan Hayes—the biological uncle of Sienna. I quietly tapped the record button on my phone inside my jacket pocket. “Does Sienna know?” Frank laughed again, a dry, rattling sound. “Sienna knows more than you think, kid. You weren’t lost twenty years ago. Somebody paid Mercer corporate funds to make sure you vanished off the face of the earth.” My fingers went ice cold. “Who?” THUD. The heavy iron warehouse doors slammed shut behind me, locking with a deafening metallic clatter. A dozen men stepped out from behind the stacked shipping crates. Frank held out his hand. “Hand over the ledger evidence, and maybe I’ll tell you who bought your ticket out of Boston.” I scanned the room with a practiced eye. Twelve men. Three folding knives. Two steel pipes. And one guy standing near the back holding a wooden mop handle. I couldn’t help asking, “Hey, man. Are you here to jump me or mop the floors?” The guy holding the mop blinked in confusion. Before anyone else could react, I grabbed a heavy ceramic dish off the table and smashed it straight across Frank Doyle’s face. “Twenty years later, and your strategy is still just throwing bodies at a problem?” I ducked under a swinging pipe. “Your industry has zero innovation.” I took down five of them in forty seconds, using basic leverage and pressure points I’d learned in Detroit. As I passed the broom guy, I shoved him into the utility closet and snapped the outer padlock shut. He pounded frantically from the inside. “Let me out!” “Relax,” I called back through the metal door. “I don’t hit support staff.” The words had barely left my mouth when a heavy wooden beam cracked against the back of my skull. My vision flared white, then folded into absolute pitch black. When I woke up, I was locked inside an underground steel vault. The electronic keypad was dead—power cut from the outside. The manual lock wheel on the heavy steel door had been spot-welded shut. My phone screen glowed faintly in the dark: Battery 19%. I dialed Harrison’s number. It rang once. Twice. On the third ring, it picked up—but the voice on the other end belonged to Sienna. “Pearl? Harrison just fell asleep. He was so exhausted after looking after you…” “I’m locked inside an industrial subterranean vault at the West Port complex,” I said, keeping my voice steady despite the blood trickling down my neck. “The ventilation is off. I have three hours of oxygen left.” There was a long silence on the line. When Sienna spoke again, her tone was thick with performative tears. “Pearl… you already got Harrison hurt once this week. Why do you keep inventing these dramatic missing-person games just to force him to prove he cares about you?” “Sienna. This isn’t a game.” “You know how to pick locks,” she whispered coldly. “If you really wanted to come out, you’d be out.” The call ended. I stared at the black screen. One dollar really was too expensive, I thought to myself. A product that constantly inflicts damage on its owner should come with a negative price tag. I tore a strip of fabric from my denim sleeve and bound the bleeding gash on the back of my head. Then, opening my phone’s memo app, I edited my listing one last time. Item: Pearl Mercer. Price: -$100.00. Includes cash rebate upon pickup. From the other side of the heavy vault door, Frank Doyle’s voice echoed muffled through the steel plating. “Don’t get comfortable, kid. Your new buyer is already en route.” The air inside the vault was growing heavy, hot, and thin. I opened my cloud drive and uploaded the audio recordings, the asset-tracking logs, and the exact coordinates of the authentic Song Dynasty porcelain statue. Then, I turned on the front-facing camera and hit record. “Dad,” I said quietly, leaning my head against the cold steel wall. “The evidence files are uploaded. Your eighty-million-dollar credit line is secure.” “Mom… the luxury slippers and all the jewelry are packed in the six boxes in my room. I only wore the slippers seven times. They’re still good.” “Harrison… my new tool kit got damaged during the warehouse fight. You can deduct the repair costs from my remaining asset value.” I reached up, unpinned the one-dollar paper tag from my collar, and held it up to the camera lens. “I hereby voluntarily surrender all legal claims to the Mercer estate and trust funds. You won’t have to absorb any liquidation losses on my account.” I paused, a sudden thought hitting me. “Oh… there’s a jar of pickled radishes I made in the back of the fridge. Remember to turn them over tomorrow morning. Otherwise, the top layer stays too salty and the bottom stays bland.” When a person runs out of oxygen, they should always leave instructions for the things that matter. The upload bar reached 99%… and stalled. Across town, in the Mercer estate, Harrison bolted upright in bed, a cold sweat drenching his shirt. He sprinted down the hallway and threw open Pearl’s bedroom door. The room was pristine, eerie, and silent. Line up against the far wall were six neatly taped cardboard boxes. Inside were all the designer clothes, the diamond necklaces, the black-card credit lines, and every single gift the Mercers had given her since her return. Taped to the top box was a printed inventory list. The very last line read: Item: Biological Daughter Status. Usage Period: 3 Months. Result: Caused severe physical trauma to buyer (Harrison Mercer). Recommendation: Unconditional return to origin. Harrison’s hands began to shake violently. He pulled out his phone, turned off the Do Not Disturb filter, and watched three delayed text messages pop onto his screen. [Harrison, I’m heading to the port to secure the stolen artifact.] [Arrived at warehouse.] [If I’m not back in three hours, pull the corporate records on Frank Doyle.] Beneath the texts was a Venmo notification. Pearl Mercer has sent you $52.00. Memo: Reimbursing the two bananas I ate in your hospital room. Market value: $6.00. Emotional distress compensation: $46.00. Harrison stared at the green text on his screen, his vision blurring with tears. He snatched the liquidation list and stormed into Arthur’s private study. “Dad! What the hell did you mean when you told the lawyers you were going to ‘liquidate everything under her name’ in three days?!” Arthur looked up from his desk, completely bewildered. “I was setting up her primary family trust! I’m transferring twenty percent of the holding equity directly into her name—I had to clear out the temporary holding shell to avoid a tax liability!” The entire room went dead silent. They had been trying to give her everything. And Pearl had spent three days preparing to be discarded. The police tactical unit located the port warehouse thirty minutes later. When Harrison slammed his shoulder through the subterranean door of the vault, the small steel room was entirely empty. The only things left on the concrete floor were a shattered cell phone and a blood-stained paper price tag reading $1.00. A forensics technician knelt down, examining the floor with a blacklight. His face dropped. “There’s a hidden hydraulic freight elevator built into the rear wall. She was moved before we even breached the perimeter.” Harrison dropped to his knees, picking up the bloody tag. Written on the back in shaky, faint red brushstrokes was a single line of text: If damaged upon arrival, buyer claims zero liability. Harrison squeezed the paper so tightly his knuckles turned white. At that exact moment, the shattered phone on the floor buzzed. The stalled video upload finally hit 100%, broadcasting the final frames of Pearl’s recording to Harrison’s screen. In the video, Pearl was slumped against the wall, her breathing shallow. Frank Doyle’s voice echoed from the background: “Pearl Mercer… the buyer just bumped the bid to ten million dollars. Looks like you’re expensive again.” The hidden freight door in the video slowly slid open. A hand encased in a black leather glove reached into the frame, violently grabbing Pearl by her hair. Flashed clearly under the industrial light was a thick gold signet ring on the assailant’s wrist—engraved with the official Mercer family crest.

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1 The moment I discovered I was the biological son of the Montgomerys—the actual heir to a real estate empire—I didn’t hesitate. I went straight to their doorstep to reclaim my life. There was no dramatic denial, no soap-opera DNA battle. After the test results came back, my parents immediately announced my return to the world. Even Sebastian, the “fake” son who had been living my life for sixteen years, didn’t try to sabotage me. Instead, he did everything he could to help me “adjust” to the high-society life he had perfected. But I wasn’t satisfied. I was a jagged piece of glass in their polished world, and I made sure everyone felt the edge. The breaking point came after I slapped one of the housekeepers. My mother—my biological mother—finally snapped. “What is it, Gabriel? What do you actually want?” I pointed a trembling finger at the housekeeper. “She compares me to him. Every single day. She says I’m clumsy, that I’m ‘rough around the edges,’ that I’m the stray dog they let into the mansion.” Then, I turned my gaze to Sebastian, who stood there looking like a Prince of the Upper East Side. “He is only who he is because he stole my life. Why do I have to live under the same roof as my own shadow? Why am I the ‘before’ photo to his ‘after’?” My voice cracked, turning into a scream. “Make him leave. Now. Or I’ll keep making this house a living hell.” My parents exchanged a look of weary desperation. “Gabriel, honey, let’s be reasonable,” my father started, his voice calm and patronizing. “The mix-up at the hospital… that wasn’t Sebastian’s fault.” I knew that. Deep down, I knew he hadn’t chosen to be swapped at birth. But was it my fault? “I’m not interested in being ‘good sons’ together,” I spat. “It’s him or me. Choose.” “Gabe, please…” My mother reached out, her hand trembling, trying to soothe me the way she did when she wanted to sweep things under the rug. I slapped her hand away with a violence that shocked even me. I glared at her, my eyes burning. “Don’t touch me!” I hissed. “Gabriel!” my father bellowed, his face reddening. “That is your mother. You will not be disrespectful.” I started clawing at my own hair, the hysteria rising in my throat like bile. “She’s not my mother! Neither of you are my parents! You’re Sebastian’s parents. What am I? An intruder? An inconvenience? Do you wish I’d just stayed in the trailer park and died?” My eyes landed on the catalyst of this particular tantrum: a bowl of strawberries on the marble island. They weren’t quite fresh; the edges were darkening, turning soft. I grabbed the bowl and hurled it across the room. The ceramic shattered, and I began stomping on the fruit, grinding the red pulp into the expensive rug until the juice looked like blood. “In this house, he’s the prince and I’m the beggar,” I screamed. “He wants berries, the staff gets him the organic ones hand-picked that morning. I want some, and I get the week-old scraps that are starting to rot! When are you going to treat me like I’m actually yours? Why does even the help look down on me?” I heard the whispers. I always heard them. I’d tried to ignore it, tried to play the part of the grateful son because I didn’t want them to hate me. But my silence had only bought me their mockery. “A pig in a silk suit is still a pig,” I’d heard the head maid mutter yesterday. “These berries cost twenty dollars a pint. Even if they’re a little soft, they’re better than anything he’s ever seen.” I realized then that the “luxury” I was enjoying was just Sebastian’s leftovers. He didn’t want them, so they were “good enough” for the biological son. I kept screaming, kept sobbing. My parents tried to pacify me. “We’ll fire her, Gabriel. Right now. If you want strawberries, we’ll fly them in from wherever you want. The best. The freshest.” Sebastian stood there, his jaw tight, his expression unreadable. “I didn’t know,” he said softly. “I… I’m sorry.” He took a step toward me, reaching out a hand. I didn’t think; I just shoved him with everything I had. “You’re a thief! Stop acting like you’re the saint here! You’ve been wearing my skin for sixteen years!” Sebastian fell back, his head catching the sharp corner of the mahogany dining table. He slumped to the floor, and blood—bright, terrifyingly red blood—began to pour down his forehead. I froze. My mother let out a strangled cry and collapsed to her knees beside him. My father’s face twisted with a look of pure, agonizing heartbreak for the boy on the floor. Seeing that look—seeing how much they loved him and how much they feared for him while I stood there like a monster—made the hatred in me boil over. Without a word, I ran for the balcony. I scrambled over the railing, my legs dangling over the edge of the third-story drop. 2 They caught me. My parents lunged forward, grabbing my arms, pulling me back from the ledge. I fought them. I didn’t care about the height; I only cared about the pain in my chest. “Let me go! Either I die, or he leaves! Make a choice!” I was possessed. I had to get rid of Sebastian. He was the parasite that had consumed my existence. He was the thief who had stolen the very air I was supposed to breathe. My mother was sobbing hysterically, but even then, she wouldn’t say the words. She wouldn’t tell him to pack his bags. It was Sebastian who ended it. He stood up, clutching a blood-soaked towel to his head, his face pale and streaked with red. He walked slowly to the balcony and looked at me. Then, he did something I didn’t expect. He knelt. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll go. I’m leaving tonight.” He looked pathetic. The golden boy, broken and bleeding on the floor. But I knew him. He wasn’t faking. He had wanted to leave since the day I arrived, but our parents had begged him to stay. This time, my father didn’t stop him. He just let out a long, heavy sigh of defeat. My mother, however, threw her arms around Sebastian, and they wept together. It was a scene of tragic parting, and I was the villain who had caused it. Sebastian disappeared that night. The relief I felt was a cold, sharp high. I didn’t care about the way the servants looked at me—the mixture of fear and disgust. I walked to the kitchen, opened the sub-zero fridge, took out every container of strawberries, and dumped them into the trash. “I hate strawberries,” I told the kitchen staff, my voice level and icy. “From now on, I don’t want to see a single berry in this house. In fact, I don’t want to see a single trace of Sebastian. If his name is mentioned, you’re fired. If his old gym socks are found in a drawer, you’re fired.” The staff didn’t argue. Within forty-eight hours, the mansion was purged. Every trophy, every photo, every book that belonged to Sebastian was gone. For a few weeks, I felt like I could finally breathe. But then I noticed my parents. They were like ghosts. They walked through the halls in silence, their eyes hollow. They weren’t happy. And that sparked a new, frantic anxiety in me. I tried to fix it. I tried to be Sebastian. I didn’t think it was wrong to copy him. If I had grown up in this house, his habits would have been mine anyway. I pushed myself to the brink. I stayed up until 3:00 AM learning the nuances of the tea ceremonies my father enjoyed. I took flower-arranging classes because my mother loved the floral displays in the foyer. I doubled my course load to catch up to the private school curriculum. I slept less than six hours a night, trying to bridge the sixteen-year gap in a matter of months. I thought I was succeeding. I thought I was finally becoming the son they wanted. The illusion shattered when I found a real estate contract in my father’s study. Since my return, I’d made plenty of enemies. The children of the Manhattan elite didn’t hide their disdain for me. They saw me as a gutter rat in a tuxedo. One of Sebastian’s old rivals, a boy named Miller, took particular pleasure in baiting me. “I hated Sebastian for being so perfect,” Miller told me one day at school, a cruel smirk on his face. “But compared to you? You’re just a low-class embarrassment. You lower the property value of the whole school.” I was livid. I bragged to him that I’d won, that I’d kicked Sebastian out. “The fake is gone,” I sneered. “A cuckoo bird can’t stay in the nest forever.” Miller laughed. It was a cold, mocking sound. “You idiot. You think you kicked him out? You did him a favor.” He leaned in, his voice a poisonous whisper. “Your parents bought him a penthouse in Chelsea. Five million dollars, cash. And all those nights they tell you they’re ‘staying late for business’? They’re there. With him. Having the cozy little family dinner you’re not invited to.” “You’re lying,” I breathed. “Check the books, Gabe. You’re not the heir. You’re just the mistake they have to keep in the attic. Sebastian is the one they chose. He got the house, he got the freedom, and he still has your parents. What do you have? A room in a museum and two people who can’t stand to look at you?” 3 I didn’t want to believe him, but my gut knew. When I found the deed in my father’s desk—Sebastian Montgomery, 142 West 22nd St—my mind fractured. I didn’t think. I didn’t plan. I just drove. I caught them red-handed. When Sebastian opened the door to the penthouse, I shoved past him. I burst into the dining room like a lightning strike. My parents were there. My mother, the elegant Mrs. Montgomery, was wearing an apron. She was holding a steaming casserole dish, her face flushed from the kitchen’s heat. My father was sitting at the table, a glass of wine in one hand, the evening news on the TV. It was the most domestic, warm scene I had ever witnessed. A scene that never happened at the mansion. Their faces went white when they saw me. “Am I interrupting the family reunion?” I asked, my teeth grinding so hard I thought they would shatter. “A five-million-dollar penthouse. How generous of you. I thought you said he was going back to where he belonged?” My father coughed, trying to regain his composure, his face hardening into that ‘stern CEO’ mask. “Gabriel, we didn’t have a choice. You grew up in that environment. You know what kind of people the Harts are. Sending Sebastian there… it would have been like throwing him into hell.” “Hell?” I let out a jagged laugh. “It’s where he belongs. It’s where his blood comes from. Why is that my problem?” I stepped closer, my voice trembling with a decade and a half of repressed trauma. “I know you hate me. I’m not ‘refined.’ I’m not ‘graceful.’ I’m selfish and loud and I have every flaw of a poor kid who suddenly found a golden ticket. But did I ever have a chance to be like him?” I thought of the Harts—Sebastian’s biological parents. The people who raised me. They were the laziest, most bitter couple in the county. They didn’t work; they just bled the government and their children dry. “I was four years old when I started scavenging scrap metal with my ‘big sister’ just so we could buy generic macaroni,” I shouted. “When I was older, I worked twelve-hour shifts in a packing plant until my fingers bled. I had to fight for every cent. I had to be mean just to survive.” I gestured to my body. “I’m sixteen years old, and I’m barely five feet tall. Do you know why? The school nurse told me it’s stunted growth from chronic malnutrition. I’m never going to grow another inch. My body is hollow because I spent my childhood starving while he was taking horse-riding lessons!” I looked at my mother, whose eyes were welling with tears. “You’re worried about him falling into ‘hell’? I lived in that hell for sixteen years! Why didn’t you save me? Why aren’t you heart-broken for the boy I used to be?” Even if Sebastian went back, he would be fine. My parents would have sent him money. He was an adult soon; he could have gone to college and never looked back. He was already “built.” I was the one who was broken. Sebastian stood in the corner, whispering “I’m sorry” over and over again. My mother finally broke. “What more do you want from us, Gabriel?” she cried, her voice sharp with exhaustion. “Yes, you suffered. It’s a tragedy. But whose fault is it? Did I want my baby to be swapped? Did I want to raise someone else’s child?” She covered her face with her hands. “I raised that boy for sixteen years. If you had a dog for sixteen years, could you just kick it out onto the street to starve? My feelings matter too! You act like your pain is the only thing in the world, but I lost my son, and I gained a stranger who hates me!” She took a ragged breath and looked at me with a terrifying coldness. “Maybe it was fate. Maybe you were supposed to be born into that life. Sebastian was meant for this. You… you were meant for…” She stopped herself, her lip trembling. “I was meant to be trash?” I finished for her. “I’m just born ‘low-class,’ is that it? No matter whose womb I came out of?”

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1 On the day we got married, Sloane and I each folded fifty origami wishing stars and tucked them into the same glass jar. We made a pact: we wouldn’t open it until our fifth anniversary. Today was that day. She called earlier to say there was an emergency meeting at the firm and that we’d celebrate late. I couldn’t wait. My chest was tight with a restless, hopeful energy as I twisted off the lid and began unfurling my own notes. “I hope we spend every anniversary together.” “I hope I’m always the first person she thinks of.” “I hope we grow old in each other’s arms.” I smiled, my heart aching with a sweetness that felt almost physical, and reached for hers. The first star: “Remember to buy him an almond latte every Wednesday afternoon.” The second: “Remember his stomach is sensitive; don’t let him eat anything spicy.” The third: “Remember he’s terrified of thunder; never leave him alone during a storm.” A cold numbness washed over me. I’m deathly allergic to almonds. I’ve never touched an almond latte in my life. I love spicy food—it’s my one vice—and in five years of marriage, Sloane has never once asked if my stomach hurt. And the storms? For five years, every time the sky turned black and the thunder rolled, Sloane would claim a crisis at the office and leave me alone in our empty house. I kept unfolding. I went through all fifty. Not once did my name, Gabriel, appear. Almond lattes. Chronic gastritis. A debilitating fear of storms. Every single detail pointed to my best friend—her “little brother” figure—Miles Fletcher. The sound of a key turning in the lock echoed through the foyer. Sloane walked in, a designer cake box dangling from her hand. “Happy five years, Gabe…” She stopped dead when she saw the sea of paper strips scattered across the dining table. I looked up, my vision blurring at the edges. “Your wishes,” I said, my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger. “I’ve decided to help you grant them.” I pushed a handful of the notes toward her. “Go to him, Sloane.” The practiced smile on Sloane’s face withered. She set the cake down and reached for the slips of paper, her movements frantic. “Gabriel, don’t. Give those to me.” I pinned one last, unfolded star under my thumb. “Why? Because I wasn’t supposed to see them? Or because I’ve finally learned how to read between the lines?” Her hand hovered in the air for a second before she snatched the paper away. “I wrote these before we were married. That was five years ago, Gabe. It’s ancient history.” “If it’s history, why are you still doing every single thing on this list?” Sloane began gathering the notes, her composure returning like a suit of armor. “You remember the summer in grad school? The hiking trip? The landslide? Nadia threw herself in front of me and broke half her ribs. You were in the hospital, Gabe. You saw her.” I remembered. I, Sloane, Miles, and his older sister Nadia had been inseparable. Nadia was a hero, currently working a high-stakes job overseas. Before she left, she had practically knighted Sloane as Miles’s protector. “Miles has had panic attacks during storms ever since,” Sloane continued, her voice gaining that clinical, corporate edge. “His stomach issues started during that hospital stay. He has physical therapy on Wednesdays, and I’m in the neighborhood, so I grab him a coffee. It’s a gesture of gratitude to his sister. That’s all.” “So for five years, every time it rained and you left me, it was just… an errand of mercy?” “Yes,” she said, without a flicker of hesitation. “You’ve known Miles as long as I have. You know what he’s been through. Nadia saved my life. She’s not here, so I look after him. Is that really a problem?” She paused, a sharp note of irritation creeping in. “Gabriel, you’re his friend too. Why are you making this so ugly?” I watched her gather all fifty stars into her palm. I felt a laugh bubble up in my throat—sharp and jagged. “Then why did you put notes for him in our wishing jar?” Sloane’s brow furrowed. “I just grabbed the first scraps of paper I found on my desk back then.” “The night before our wedding, you sat right here. You told me every star represented a piece of our future together.” “It was a romantic sentiment, Gabe. Are you really going to hold me to a throwaway comment from half a decade ago?” She must have realized how cold she sounded because she reached out to touch my shoulder. “Gabriel, I didn’t mean it like that.” I pulled away. Her hand fell into the empty air. On the corner of the table lay my latest lab results. I had planned to wait until she opened the last star to tell her. I had planned to tell her that if I had surgery now, I could still save my stomach. Now, the words felt like ash in my mouth. Sloane picked up the silver cake knife. “Let’s just eat. I had my assistant order your favorite.” She opened the box, and the heavy, cloying scent of marzipan hit me like a physical blow. Almonds. I gripped the edge of the table. “This is what you think my favorite flavor is?” Sloane glanced at the label, her face paling slightly. “My assistant must have messed up the order. Miles was at the office today; she probably got our boxes mixed up.” She closed the lid, her patience clearly evaporated. “It’s just a cake, Gabe. I’ll call and have another one sent over.” “Don’t bother.” I slid my medical report under the tablecloth, hiding it from view. “Sloane, I want a divorce.” Her hand froze. She dropped the knife back into the box with a dull thud. “Over a few five-year-old notes?” “Because in every moment of the last five years where I thought you were mine, you were actually his.” “Don’t be dramatic.” Sloane rubbed her temples. “I’m the one who married you. I’m the one who carries your name. Miles has never tried to take your place.” “So I should be grateful for the leftovers?” “I’m saying you shouldn’t use our anniversary to test me with threats of divorce.” Her phone erupted into a frantic ringtone. Sloane saw the name and answered instantly. Miles’s voice, thin and panicked, bled through the receiver. “Sloane… the storm’s starting. The power just went out at my place. I can’t—I can’t breathe.” “Stay on the line, Miles. I’m coming.” Sloane grabbed her coat, giving me a fleeting, dismissive look. “He’s having a panic attack. I have to go.” “And if I ask you not to?” She paused mid-button, her eyes turning cold. “Gabriel, don’t make me lose respect for you. This is immature.” She pulled the door open. As the first rumble of thunder shook the windows, Sloane was already in the elevator. She never even noticed the corner of the lab report sticking out from under the cloth. It was clearly marked: Severe Gastric Ulceration with Imminent Hemorrhage Risk. Immediate Admission Required. I picked up my phone and dialed my lawyer. As the line rang, I heard the frantic rhythm of footsteps in the hall. Sloane burst back in. “Where’s the spare key to Miles’s apartment?” I opened the junk drawer, pulled out the key, and dropped it into her palm. “Keep it,” I said. “He clearly needs you more than I do. It’ll be more convenient this way.” “I told you, Gabe, he’s just afraid of the thunder.” “I know.” My calmness seemed to unsettle her more than my anger. She grabbed my wrist, her thumb pressing into a small red scratch I’d gotten from the glass jar earlier. “Gabriel, if you have something to say, say it. Stop with the passive-aggressive act.” “When I said ‘divorce,’ was that not direct enough for you?” Her grip tightened. From the phone on the coffee table, my lawyer’s voice spoke up. “Gabriel? Are you there?” Sloane looked at the screen and ended the call herself. “Go to bed. You’re acting out. We have the presentation for the Sycamore Theater restoration tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.” “That’s my project, Sloane.” “Then don’t let your personal tantrums ruin it.” She dropped the key into her pocket. “Don’t eat the cake. I know about the allergy. I’ll bring you something else when I get back.” The door clicked shut again. She didn’t come back that night. The next morning, the presentation was already underway by the time I walked into the boardroom. The projector was displaying the restoration blueprints I had spent two years perfecting—but it was Miles Fletcher standing at the head of the table. He faltered for a second when he saw me. Sloane, sitting at the head of the board, didn’t even look up. “Keep going, Miles.” Miles offered a small, sheepish smile. “The core of the Sycamore project isn’t just a rebuild; it’s about honoring the original skeleton. That’s been my philosophy since I returned from my residency in London.” The room broke into applause. I stood by the door, my voice echoing in the sudden silence. “Your philosophy?” Miles hurried over to me. “Gabe, hey. Don’t be mad. Sloane told me you weren’t feeling well, so she asked me to step in and handle the briefing.” “And why is your name on the title block of my drawings?” He went pale, glancing back at Sloane. She capped her fountain pen with a sharp click. “The investors prefer someone with an international pedigree. Having Miles’s name on the lead ensures the project gets greenlit. It’s a strategic move.” “The drawings are mine.” “The project belongs to the firm, Gabriel.” “The data belongs to my father’s estate. It’s not company property.” Sloane checked her watch. “You’re my husband. If Miles wins the project, it’s a win for our family. What’s the difference?” Miles leaned in, his voice a low, soothing murmur. “Gabe, it’s just a temporary credit. Once the project is live, I’ll tell everyone the truth.” “When? After you collect the award? Or after you collect the bonus?” His eyes welled with tears instantly. Sloane slammed her pen onto the table. “That’s enough!” “Miles spent all night coordinating with the London consultants. He’s not just ‘taking’ your work; he’s elevating it.” “So I should thank him?” “At the very least, you shouldn’t embarrass him in front of our partners.” The room went silent. I suddenly remembered three years ago, when I first proposed the Sycamore project. Sloane had buried it, telling me the risk was too high. Now, three months after Miles joined the firm, it was suddenly a masterpiece. It wasn’t that the project wasn’t worth the risk. It was that I wasn’t worth the risk. A wave of nausea rolled through me. I bolted for the restroom, barely making it to the sink. Sloane followed me in a moment later, holding a glass of lukewarm water. “Did you skip breakfast again?” I didn’t take the glass. She reached into her blazer pocket and pulled out a dried plum—the kind people eat for motion sickness. She unwrapped it and held it out. “Eat this. It’ll settle your stomach.” For a fleeting, pathetic second, my heart softened. Maybe she did care. Then Miles appeared in the doorway, a soft chuckle escaping him. “Sloane, you still have those? I remember back in college, you always kept them in your pocket because I got car-sick. Does Gabe get nauseous too?” The tiny spark of warmth in my chest died. I took the plum and dropped it into the trash can. Sloane’s face hardened. “If you don’t want it, fine. But don’t be wasteful.” “You’re right,” I said, grabbing a paper towel to wipe my mouth. “From now on, if it doesn’t belong to me, I’m not touching it.” I walked back into the boardroom, went straight to the console, and ripped the HDMI cable out. “This presentation is over,” I announced to the stunned board members. “The underlying data is copyrighted to my father’s studio. Without my signed authorization, any use of these designs is a federal intellectual property violation.” Miles looked like he’d been slapped. “But Sloane said I could lead this…” I looked him in the eye. “Then let her draw you a new building.” Sloane stood up, her voice dropping an octave. “Gabriel. Restore that authorization by this afternoon.” “No.” “Your father’s old studio is in the redevelopment zone for the new mall,” she said, her voice terrifyingly flat. “For every day this project stalls, the demolition crew moves up their schedule by a week. If you want to save your father’s old archives, you’ll stop being impulsive.” She slid a document across the table. It was a demolition notice. At the bottom, in bold, black ink, was Sloane’s signature.

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After graduation, Will told us he’d only managed to snag two VIP pit tickets to the music festival. I was already typing a message to Daisy, ready to apologize for not being able to go with her, when his screenshot of the ticket confirmation popped up in our group chat. “Daisy and I are going in,” his text read. “Iris, you can watch the big screen from the general admission lawn, right?” Daisy immediately sent a crying emoji. “Iris, I’m so sorry! I’ve been dying to see this lineup forever. Do you mind letting me have this one?” I wanted to tell her that I had let her have things more times than I could count. But in the end, I deleted my draft—I really wanted to go too— and left the screen blank. Standing out on the dusty grass of the general admission lawn, squinting through the crowd, I watched Will pull Daisy close, shielding her from the rowdy push of the pit. During the headliner’s signature love ballad, the camera swept over the front row, broadcasting them onto the massive stadium screens. Daisy and Will looked at each other and laughed. The entire crowd erupted into cheers. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” echoed all around me. Will didn’t pull away. It was only after Daisy posted the photo on Instagram that Will finally sent me a text. “Don’t overthink it. We were just playing along with the crowd.” As the finale fireworks burst in brilliant colors overhead, painting the sky in fleeting shades of gold and violet, I silently tapped the screen and left our three-person group chat. 1 The gray notification You have left the conversation flashed on my screen, and then my phone fell dead silent. Around me, the massive crowd from the festival began to surge toward the exits, guided by the drone of security guards shouting through megaphones. I slipped my phone into my pocket, letting the human tide carry me toward the subway station. I had just reached the turnstiles when a hand tapped my shoulder. “Iris, why did you leave the group?” Will’s voice cut through the noise behind me. He was holding two unopened bottles of water, his dark curls damp with sweat, framing his face with that effortless charm he’d always had. Daisy hovered right behind him, wearing Will’s black windbreaker. I had practically begged Will to bring that jacket before we left the house, knowing the New England evening air would turn brisk. Now, it was wrapped tightly around Daisy’s shoulders. The oversized sleeves hung past her fingertips, making her look delicate, almost bird-like. Daisy peeked out from behind him, clutching a canvas tote bag hand-signed by the lead singer. It was the exclusive merchandise reserved only for the first fifty VIP ticket holders who made it to the barrier. I had explicitly asked Will weeks ago to help me get one. Seeing me look at it, Daisy avoided my eyes, her hand instinctively pulling the bag behind her back. “Iris, please don’t be mad,” she murmured, her voice carrying that soft, trembling vulnerability that always made her sound like the victim. “I got so excited down there that I spilled my drink all over my shirt. Will only lent me his jacket so I wouldn’t freeze.” She paused, then slowly brought the tote bag forward, draping it over her chest. “And this… I had so much loose stuff, and Will happened to grab it, so he told me to use it to hold my keys.” Will casually offered me one of the water bottles. “We texted you in the group but you didn’t reply,” he said, his tone carrying that easy, familiar reassurance he used whenever he wanted to smooth things over. “I figured you’d left early. They only gave out one tote bag. Daisy’s never been to a festival like this and didn’t bring a bag. If you really want one, I’ll find one on eBay tomorrow and buy it for you.” I didn’t reach for the water. Droplets of condensation rolled down the plastic, dripping onto the dry concrete, leaving dark, fleeting stains. “Don’t bother,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I don’t want a secondhand copy.” Will’s hand froze. His brow furrowed, and his expression hardened as he pulled the bottle back. “Iris, we all came out to have a good time. Can you not be such a buzzkill? It’s literally just a bag.” “Exactly,” I replied, my voice flat. “It’s just a bag signed by my favorite artist. Keep it. Give it to her.” I turned on my heel and walked toward the rideshare pickup zone. Will called out my name. “Iris!” I didn’t stop. Within a few yards, I heard Daisy’s soft sniffling. “Will, is Iris mad at me? Maybe I should give the bag back to her. Really, it’s fine…” Will’s footsteps slowed to a halt. “Don’t worry about her,” his voice drifted over the evening breeze, filled with that comfortable certainty he always had when it came to me. “You know how she is. She gets moody, but she cools down fast. She’ll be fine by tomorrow.” I pulled my headphones out of my pocket, jammed them into my ears, and cranked the volume to the maximum, letting the raw, gravelly voice of the indie band drown out the rest of the world. It was past midnight when I got home. The house was dark, and I slipped my shoes off by the pale glow of the streetlights shining through the window. My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a direct message from Will. “Did you get home safe?” “Daisy lives all the way across town and it’s too late for her to take the train alone. I’m driving her home first.” “I made a new group chat. Accept the invite.” “Don’t take tonight to heart. Let’s grab that sushi place downtown tomorrow, okay? We’ll put this behind us.” I stared at the green bubbles popping up on my screen. Without responding, I flipped the phone face down on the nightstand and went to the bathroom to wash my face. In the mirror, my eyes were rimmed with red. Will and I had been in each other’s lives for twelve years. From kindergarten playdates to high school lockers, we were a permanent fixture in each other’s worlds. He had grown comfortable with my understanding nature; he relied on my capacity to be the bigger person. But ever since Daisy moved into the house next door to his sophomore year, Will had slowly started asking me to yield. Move seats so Daisy could sit next to him. Let her borrow my AP Lit notes. Give up my spot on the debate team trip because she was anxious about traveling alone. And now, it was music festival tickets, his jacket, the signed merchandise. He assumed I would always be waiting in the exact same spot, ready to wipe the slate clean the moment he tossed a sweet gesture my way. But Will forgot one crucial thing: even the most patient person gets tired. I patted my face dry and walked back to my bedroom. From the bottom drawer, I pulled out a thick, heavy college planning binder. I had spent a month building it, filling the pages with color-coded tabs, essay outlines, and admission requirements. Every single tab pointed to universities in New York City. That was the city Will and I had promised we’d conquer together. I opened the first section, staring at the bold red circle around Columbia University’s Pre-Med program. Will’s grades were slightly better than mine; he wanted to major in Computer Science at Columbia, and he had made me promise to apply to the same school so we wouldn’t be separated. I picked up the eraser on my desk. Slowly, deliberately, I rubbed away the red pencil circle. The paper began to fray under the friction, leaving behind nothing but a faint, smudged gray shadow. My phone lit up again. Will: “Why aren’t you replying? Are you seriously still mad?” Will: “Meet me at the school library tomorrow morning. We need to submit our final enrollment decisions.” I stared at the text, left it unanswered, and clicked the power button. 2 The next morning, the school hallways were buzzing with restless energy. Now that final grades and AP scores were officially out, everyone was debating where they would spend the next four years. I sat in my usual seat by the window, flipping through a guide to university programs. The heavy classroom door swung open, and Will walked in, guiding Daisy by her elbow. Daisy’s eyes were bloodshot, her eyelids swollen from what looked like a long night of crying. Will walked straight over to my desk, reaching naturally for the meticulously annotated college binder sitting on the corner. “Iris, do you mind if Daisy borrows your binder for a second?” I kept my hand flat on the cover, not budging. “Isn’t she committed to the local arts institute?” I asked, looking up at Will. Will let out a heavy sigh and pulled out the chair in front of mine, turning it around to face me. “Her financial aid fell through, and her portfolio scores weren’t high enough for the New York school. She can’t go to Columbia’s partner program anymore.” Behind him, Daisy let out a soft, miserable sob. “Iris, I’m so sorry. I’m just so stupid. Now I’m ruining everything for Will, too.” Will turned to her, pulling a pack of tissues from his pocket and gently pressing them into her hand, rubbing her shoulder. “Don’t cry, Daisy. We’ll figure something out.” Then he turned back to me, his tone conversational, but carrying the weight of a decision already made. “Iris, Daisy is going to apply to Boston State. I don’t feel right letting her stay here all by herself.” He paused, looking at me. “I’m going to change my enrollment decision. I’m staying in Boston to be with her.” The old classroom ceiling fan hummed a steady, rhythmic creak overhead. I looked into Will’s eyes. They were filled with the noble, protective instinct of a savior—but there wasn’t a single shred of guilt toward me, the person he had built a twelve-year dream with. “You’ve already decided?” I asked. “Yeah,” Will nodded. “Actually, I was thinking you should change your choice too. We could all stay in Boston. Your mom always wanted you to stay close to home anyway.” He paused, offering a soft smile. “That way, the three of us can still be together.” It was almost funny. In Will’s mind, his own dreams weren’t the only things that could be casually discarded for someone else—mine were expected to bend to his new plans, too. Slowly, I lifted my hand off the binder. Will immediately picked it up, handing my weeks of meticulous research over to Daisy. “Look through these sections,” he told her. “Iris mapped out all the local programs in detail. Her notes are incredibly thorough.” Daisy’s tears vanished, replaced by a grateful smile as she clutched the binder to her chest. “Thank you so much, Iris. I promise I’ll study it carefully.” I stared at the empty space on my desk. “Will,” I said quietly. “Yeah?” He looked back. “You don’t have to give the binder back when you’re done,” I said, sliding my red pen into my pencil case and zipping it shut. “She can keep it.” Will blinked, clearly caught off guard by how easily I had surrendered it. A faint crease appeared between his brows. “Iris, are you mad at me?” “No,” I said, my voice steady. “Since you guys are staying local, that research doesn’t do me any good anyway.” Just then, our homeroom teacher walked in, tapping a marker against the whiteboard. “Alright, everyone, the official state enrollment portal closes tomorrow at midnight. Make sure your final choices are locked in.” Will was called to the counselor’s office to help organize some final transcripts. With Will gone, Daisy slid into his vacant chair right in front of me. She opened my binder, her fingers tracing the dense, neat lines of my handwriting, before she slowly turned around to look at me. “Iris, do you really not blame Will and me?” Her voice was barely a whisper, meant only for my ears. “He gave up Columbia for me. I know that must be incredibly hard for you to swallow.” I turned a page in my college catalog, keeping my eyes on the print. “He has his own feet. He can walk wherever he wants.” Daisy bit her lip, clearly frustrated by my lack of reaction. “To be honest, Will told me last night that he finds your pragmatism a bit… suffocating sometimes. Like you don’t really need him.” She smoothed her hand over the plastic cover of my binder. “He said I actually need him around. He feels like he has a purpose when he’s helping me.” My finger froze against the edge of the paper. The sharp corner cut into my skin, leaving a stinging, bloodless line. I looked up, locking eyes with Daisy’s carefully constructed expression of innocence. “You’re right,” I said, shutting the book with a quiet thud. “You two are perfect for each other.” I stood up, grabbing my water bottle. “Where are you going, Iris?” Daisy called after me. “To get water.” I walked down to the end of the quiet hallway and set my bottle under the dispenser. As the hot water trickled in, steam rose, fogging my view of the hallway. I watched the condensation form on the metal surface, taking a slow, deep breath. Will, you think I’m too pragmatic. But the truth is, I just refused to let you see me break. If you think she needs you more, then I’ll gladly step out of the way. 3 For our senior class send-off dinner, the class president had reserved a private room at a popular restaurant downtown. By the time I arrived, the room was buzzing with laughter and clinking glasses. Everyone in our class had long assumed Will and I were a packaged deal, so they had left two empty seats right next to each other at the main table. I stepped away to the restroom to wash my hands. But when I pushed the heavy wooden door of the private dining room back open, Daisy was already sitting in my seat. She was leaning close to Will, their heads bent over his phone screen. His arm was casually draped over the back of her chair. The room fell into an awkward, sudden silence when I walked back in. The class president stood up quickly, trying to diffuse the tension. “Hey, Iris! Come sit over here. We saved this spot for you.” He pointed to a chair next to his own, on the far end of the long table, as far away from Will as possible. Before I could even speak, Daisy scrambled to her feet, looking panicked. “Iris, I’m so sorry,” she said, pressing a hand to her collarbone, her face pinched in distress. “I was feeling so nauseous from the car ride here, and Will said this seat was closer to the window breeze.” She made a show of grabbing her purse. “Since you’re back, let me move over there.” Will caught her by the wrist, gently but firmly pulling her back down into the chair. “You’re sick, Daisy. Just sit still.” He looked up at me, his face open and completely untroubled. “Iris, sit over by Ben. It’s just dinner, it doesn’t matter where we sit.” I looked down at his hand resting on Daisy’s wrist. Then I looked at the seat that had belonged to me for as long as I could remember. “Sure,” I said. I walked over and took the empty seat at the far end of the table. Mid-way through dinner, the drinks started flowing, and the mood picked up. Someone suggested a game of Truth or Dare. An empty wine bottle was spun on the lazy Susan, whirring past faces until the neck pointed straight at Daisy. “Dare! Dare!” the table chanted. The class president drew a card from the deck, reading the prompt aloud: “Call the person in this room you care about the most, and tell them ‘I’m waiting for you.’” A collective, knowing murmur rippled through the room. Every eye bounced back and forth between Daisy and Will, though a few of my closer friends shot me quiet, worried glances. Daisy’s face flushed pink. Biting her lip, she pulled out her phone and dialed a number. Three seconds later, Will’s phone lit up on the dark wood table. The ringtone buzzed loudly against the silence of the room. The crowd went wild. “Answer it! Answer it, Will!” Will looked at the name flashing on his screen, but he didn’t pick up immediately. Instead, he looked across the long table, searching for me through the crowd. There was a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, a silent, testing question. I sat quietly in my corner, raising my water glass to my lips, taking a slow sip. I didn’t return his gaze. Not even a glance. Will looked away from me. He reached down, picked up the phone, and swiped to answer. “I’m waiting for you,” Daisy whispered into her phone, her voice soft and sweet. “Yeah,” Will replied quietly into the receiver. The room erupted into cheers. I set my glass down and quietly stood up. “Iris, where are you going?” Ben asked from next to me. “It’s getting a little stuffy in here. I’m going to get some air.” I slipped out of the private room, pulled out my phone, and Venmoed Ben my portion of the dinner bill. Stepping out of the heavy double doors of the restaurant, the warm summer air hit my face. I started walking down the sidewalk, the hum of the city surrounding me. I hadn’t gone far when the familiar scuff of sneakers echoed behind me. “Iris.” Will ran up, stepping into my path. “Are you mad?” He searched my face. “It was just a game. Everyone was chanting. If I hadn’t answered, it would have made things incredibly awkward for Daisy.” “I’m not mad,” I said, looking at the warm glow of the streetlamp above us. “Then why did you leave early?” “I’m full. I just want to go home.” Will stared at my quiet, unbothered expression, frustration creeping into his features. “Iris, can you please stop doing this? This act where you pretend you don’t care about anything?” His tone grew sharp, irritated. “I’d prefer it if you actually yelled at me or got angry. Anything is better than this cold shoulder.” I looked at him. “Will,” I said softly. “If I had thrown a scene in there… would you have stood up for Daisy, or would you have stood up for me?” Will froze. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words died in his throat. Right then, Daisy’s frail voice drifted from the restaurant entrance. “Will…” She was leaning against the doorframe, her face pale. “My stomach… I think I’m going to be sick.” Will’s body pivoted instinctively toward her. He took a few steps toward the door, then stopped, looking back at me with a pained, torn expression. “Iris, maybe you should take an Uber home first. Text me when you get back, okay? Daisy had a little bit of wine and she’s already nauseous. I need to make sure she gets home safe.” I nodded. “Sure. Take her home.” I turned around and kept walking. This time, Will didn’t follow me. Behind me, I could hear his low, comforting murmur as he helped her up the street. The streetlights cast my shadow long and thin against the pavement. I pulled out my phone and logged into the state enrollment portal. There were exactly four hours left before the system locked. 4 Back in my room, I opened my laptop and pulled up the university enrollment portal. The page was still open to my drafts from yesterday. My first choice was currently set to the top program at our local university in Boston. That was the choice Will had insisted I make this afternoon, right after he had updated his own profile. My phone began to buzz incessantly on the desk. A flurry of messages from Will flooded the screen. Will: “Just got Daisy home safe.” Will: “I’m sorry about tonight. I shouldn’t have picked up that call. I know it made things weird for you.” Will: “But you know I only look at her like a younger sister. Please don’t overthink it.” Will: “The portal closes tomorrow. Let’s go visit the campus together sometime this week.” Will: “I heard they have gorgeous cherry blossoms in the spring. I’ll take photos of you.” I stared at the stream of sweet, conciliatory words, feeling nothing but a profound exhaustion. He always did this. He would hand his devotion to someone else, then turn back to offer me cheap, leftover comfort, expecting it to heal the wounds he’d caused. Out of habit, I opened Instagram. The top post on my feed was a new photo from Daisy. Daisy: “To the next four years. Let’s do this.” The picture showed her acceptance letter to Boston State. Resting right beside it was a small, worn silver compass charm on a black cord. Will had bought that charm at a vintage market during our junior year. He had bought two of them, telling me they would keep us pointed toward the same future—toward Columbia. He wore his on his key ring every day. Now, that key ring was sitting on top of Daisy’s college acceptance letter. I pulled open my desk drawer and dug out my own compass charm. The silver was tarnished, the metal cold. Without a second thought, I tossed it into the wastebasket by my desk. My eyes returned to the laptop screen. I grabbed the mouse, clicked on the drop-down menu for my first-choice school, and let the cursor hover over the options. It scrolled past Massachusetts, past New York, past the entire northeast. Finally, it rested on Atlanta, Georgia. Emory University. Pre-Med. One thousand miles away. It was the furthest top-tier school I could find. I systematically changed all my backup options to universities down south as well. Once everything was filled out, I hit the Submit and Lock button at the bottom of the screen. A warning prompt popped up: Once locked, your enrollment decisions cannot be changed. Do you wish to proceed? I stared at the bold red text. My finger didn’t hesitate. I clicked Confirm. The page refreshed, displaying a confirmed, locked status. It was done. The decision was final. My phone vibrated again. Will: “Are you free tomorrow afternoon? Let’s go to our usual spot downtown.” Will: “We should celebrate officially finishing our applications.” Looking at the screen, I let out a quiet laugh. Will, you always think there’s time to make things up to me. But some things are lost the moment they’re neglected. I clicked on Will’s contact profile. I turned off the “Favorite” status, disabled his custom ringtone, and toggled the notifications to silent. Then, I held down the power button until the screen faded to black. The room fell into a deep, peaceful quiet. The cool moonlight filtered through the window, washing over my empty desk. I closed my eyes and whispered into the dark: “Goodbye, Will.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “547504”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

On my wedding day, I rode to the venue in the back of a dingy yellow cab. After the bridal party had finished packing into the fleet of sleek town cars, my fiancée, Lauren, stepped in front of the lead limousine, blocking my path. “Let Jared have this one, Sean. I’ll call you an Uber.” I froze, the morning sun glinting off my polished dress shoes, suddenly feeling entirely out of place. Lauren didn’t even blink as she continued. “Jared’s a committed bachelor. He’s never going to get married, but he really wanted to know what it feels like to experience a real wedding procession.” “I already promised him,” she added, her voice dropping into that breezy, matter-of-fact tone she used when she’d already made up her mind. “He’s going to stand in for you during the grand entrance.” I looked past her shoulder. Through the tinted window of the lead Mercedes, I could see Jared. He had already changed into his bespoke charcoal suit—the one we’d spent weeks tailoring—and was casually scrolling through his phone in the groom’s seat. Seeing my hands curl into tight fists, Lauren sighed, reaching out to pat my arm in a hollow gesture of comfort. “A wedding is just a performance anyway, Sean. We’re legally signing the papers tomorrow; that’s what actually matters.” “Besides,” she said, offering a small, dismissive smile, “once Jared has his moment, you can always walk down the aisle again for the reception.” With that, she turned on her heel, climbed into the passenger side, and the caravan of thirty luxury vehicles roared to life, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust. I closed my eyes, breathing in the cold air. It had been like this from the very beginning of our wedding prep. Because Jared was a self-proclaimed free spirit who would “never tie himself down to the institution of marriage,” Lauren insisted he shouldn’t miss out on life’s milestones. He had to try on the groom’s suits first. He had to have the final say on the venue. And now, he was taking my place at the altar for the opening ceremony. The traffic light at the intersection turned green. The wedding caravan accelerated, weaving seamlessly into the highway traffic, vanishing from sight. The cab driver cleared his throat, gripping the steering wheel and glancing at me through the rearview mirror. “Hey, buddy. Where to now?” I watched the empty road where my wedding party had just been. A strange, quiet calm settled over me. I looked at the driver and smiled gently. “Never mind. Let’s turn around.” Whether it was the wedding or the woman, I was done taking someone else’s leftovers. … My words fell into the quiet lull of the cab as the radio switched songs. The silence lingered for a few seconds. The driver blinked, leaning back slightly, his voice rising in disbelief. “Did I hear you right, son? You want to turn back?” I traced the silver cufflink on my sleeve. I pulled out my phone. The lock screen was a photo from our engagement shoot—Lauren and I laughing under a canopy of autumn leaves, looking like the happiest couple in the world. Outside the window, the muffled voices of pedestrians drifted through the glass. “Did you see that caravan? Absolute luxury. Maseratis, Porsches… must have been thirty of them!” “The grander the procession, the prouder the groom. They must be incredibly in love.” My thumb hovered over the screen. Another voice Chimed in. “Well, some people have all the luck. I just came from the Miramar Resort, and I saw a poor guy heading to his own wedding in a regular yellow cab.” “No way…” The screen went dark. With a quiet pull, I tore the cufflink from my sleeve and shoved it into my pocket. I swallowed the bitter lump rising in my throat and looked up. “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice steady. “Take me back to the hotel. I’m not getting married.” The pedestrian countdown ended, and the light shifted to green. The car behind us honked impatiently. The driver didn’t ask any more questions. He spun the wheel, executing a clean U-turn and heading back in the direction we came. As the cab smoothed out on the asphalt, my phone vibrated. It was a message from Lauren. “I told the lead driver to speed up so you wouldn’t try to tail us. Don’t push it.” “Tell your driver to take his time. When you get to the Miramar, make sure you don’t run into Jared at the main entrance. He hates it when people steal his spotlight.” “Also, use the service entrance by the kitchen to slip in. Jared is sensitive about public opinion. If people see the two of you walking into the grand ballroom together, the gossip will make things awkward for him to explain.” Lauren rarely sent me texts this long. She had thought of everything—preserving Jared’s pride, guarding his reputation, protecting his comfort. But just minutes ago, when she dragged me out of the town car in front of a dozen staring bridesmaids and groomsmen, she hadn’t given a single thought to my dignity. She hadn’t cared if I became the laughingstock of the day. I opened the text box and began typing, one deliberate word at a time. “I’m not coming. You two can have the wedding.” Before I could hit send, the top of my screen began flashing with rapid-fire notifications. It was Lauren’s inner-circle group chat. Ever since she had added me months ago, the chat had been virtually dead. Now, it was exploding. “Jared: Keeping it low-key today. Just a casual wedding.” A dozen photos flooded the thread. They were taken inside the lead town car. Jared and Lauren were leaning in close, pulling silly faces, their cheeks pressed together. In the final photo, Lauren had her head resting in the palm of Jared’s hand, looking up at him with a soft, adoring smile. It was a pose I had shown her from a wedding magazine months ago. She had rolled her eyes then, calling it “cheesy and childish.” The replies from her friends came in like a tidal wave. “My God, you two really belong together. The childhood sweethearts finally made it.” That was from her maid of honor, who had once told me how glad she was that I had “healed” Lauren after Jared left the country. “If I knew you guys were actually getting married today, I wouldn’t have skipped out! I couldn’t stand the thought of watching that social climber play husband while Jared was away. Can I still book a flight and make the reception?” This was Lauren’s cousin, the one who had cried tears of gratitude when I drove through a literal storm to deliver her missing passport for a crucial business trip. There were messages from her college roommates, her sorority sisters, her old friends. Every single one of them had smiled in my face, eaten the dinners I cooked, and thanked me for being so good to Lauren. Behind my back, I was just a placeholder. An opportunist. A desperate dog who had slid into the picture while the real man was away. Then came Lauren’s text, cool and dismissive: “Don’t talk about Sean. Let’s focus on how amazing Jared looks in that suit.” My hands shook as I typed into the chat: “Nice double standards.” “You people make me sick.” The group chat fell dead silent. Two seconds later, a final message popped up: “Oh crap, girls. Wrong group.” Before I could type another word, Lauren’s incoming call screen took over my phone. I pressed accept. There was no apology. No frantic explanation. Just her cold, sharp voice. “Apologize to them, Sean.” A wave of sheer absurdity washed over me. “Me? Apologize?” I almost laughed. “For what? For finding out what you really think of me? Or for realizing you guys have a whole separate group chat just to drag my name through the mud?” The line went quiet for a moment. I heard Lauren let out a long, weary sigh. “Sean, you’re not a prize. You can’t expect everyone to instantly adore you.” “The people in that chat are my childhood friends. You’re the new addition here; it’s natural for them to feel protective of me. Jared only added you to the group because he wanted to make you feel included. He was trying to be respectful.” I tilted my head back against the cab seat, fighting back the burning behind my eyes. “And?” “Just text the group and apologize. Say it was a misunderstanding and that you aren’t upset.” Lauren’s voice softened, but it wasn’t for me. “Jared is literally crying right now. He feels terrible. He thinks this is all his fault for putting you in the chat in the first place.” My chest felt hollow, like a cold winter wind was blowing straight through my ribs. Because Jared cried, I had to bow my head to the people who had spent months insulting me. She kept talking, but her voice became background noise. The world outside the window blurred into a smear of grey and green. “Lauren,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Let’s call it off.” “I’m not coming to the venue, and I’m not signing the papers tomorrow.” She didn’t reply immediately. I heard the rustle of fabric on the other end, followed by the faint sound of Jared’s sniffles. Then, Lauren’s muffled voice speaking to him in a tender, coaxing tone I hadn’t heard in years. “Hey, it’s okay. Sean said he’s not mad. He’s just being sensitive. Dry your eyes, sweetie. We’re about to go on, and you wanted to take those photos for Instagram, right?” A minute later, she came back to the receiver, her patience clearly exhausted. “Look, just go apologize in the chat. We’re about to start, and I don’t have the energy to baby you today. It’s our wedding day. Stop throwing a tantrum.” Remembering what I had just said, she let out a dry, mocking laugh. “And please, ‘calling it off’? You’ve been chasing me for ten years, Sean. Do you really expect me to believe you’d actually walk away?” She was entirely certain of my devotion. Ten years of loving her had convinced her that I had no breaking point. I hung up, rolled down the window, and let the rushing wind ruin the hair I’d spent an hour styling. The driver, who had heard the entire exchange, glanced at me with pity. “Kid, what kind of person treats their partner like that? Back in my day, when you loved someone, you put them on a pedestal. You didn’t treat them like an afterthought.” “On a pedestal.” A dull ache bloomed in my chest. There was a time when Lauren had treated me that way. During our sophomore year, a historic blizzard hit our college town. The campus shut down, and the heating in my off-campus apartment failed. I woke up with a 104-degree fever, shivering violently under three blankets. When Lauren found out, she ran three miles through knee-deep snow to the university clinic to get me fever reducers, then walked to a diner to get me hot soup. When she finally made it to my apartment, her cheeks were bright red and her hands were raw. But she had kept the soup container tucked inside her heavy down jacket, right against her skin, to keep it warm. She ended up with mild frostbite on her fingers that winter. Back then, her love was undeniable. Even the freezing storm couldn’t dim it. “So what happened to her?” the driver asked gently. I shook my head, staring out at the grey highway. “I don’t know.” Maybe she had always been like this, and I had simply chosen not to see it. Or maybe everything changed the moment Jared came back to town. I remembered the first time she broke our promise—shattering the ceramic mugs we had hand-painted together because Jared called them “tacky.” I remembered the night she left me stranded at my office during a thunderstorm, taking the car to pick Jared up from the airport because he “hated riding in cabs.” I remembered lying in the hospital recovery room after my surgery, watching the sunset alone while she took Jared to an amusement park because he was feeling depressed. Ever since Jared declared himself a non-marrying man, Lauren seemed to find a twisted justification for her behavior. Because he was “just a friend” who would never be a threat to our marriage, she felt entitled to give him every ounce of her attention. And I had tolerated it. One small compromise after another, until I had eroded myself down to nothing. When I officially left the group chat, Lauren sent me a single question mark. Nothing else followed. To her, this was just another one of my quiet protests. She assumed that if she ignored me for a few hours, I would eventually cool down, apologize, and come crawling back to her doorstep. But this time, the fire had simply gone out. Avoiding the curious looks of the front desk staff, I checked back into the hotel room I had vacated only hours before. I messed up my styled hair, stripped off the tight tuxedo, and collapsed onto the bed. Staring at the sterile white ceiling, I felt a strange sense of detachment. Only last night, in this very bed, I had been too excited to sleep. My phone chimed. It was an Instagram notification. Jared had just posted a video. “Just to avoid any misunderstandings, here’s a quick clip! I’m purely experiencing the ceremony today. Lauren and I have absolute boundaries, promise!” I clicked on the video, a form of emotional self-inflicted pain. The footage showed Lauren in her gorgeous white gown, walking down the aisle toward Jared under a shower of white rose petals. They stood before the officiant, exchanging vows of eternal devotion, promising to stand by each other until death. Then came the ring exchange. They locked fingers, smiling warmly at each other. I let out a dry, bitter laugh. They had done everything except kiss. Yet they wanted the world to believe they had “absolute boundaries.” Jared’s feed updated rapidly over the next few hours. The cocktail hour, the toasts, the family speeches, the reception… It had gone far beyond the “grand entrance” Lauren had promised me. Jared was playing the groom for the entire event. It wasn’t until the bouquet was thrown and the guests began to disperse that Lauren finally sent me a message. “Are you back at the hotel? Wait in the dressing room for a bit. Jared had such a great time that we decided to let him experience the rest of the reception.” “Don’t be petty. Consider this a compromise for making him cry earlier.” The dressing room was only two doors down from the grand ballroom. She hadn’t even bothered to walk over and check on me. I didn’t reply to her text. Instead, I took a screenshot of a video Jared had posted—a clip showing our wedding cake, half-smashed and ruined—and sent it to her. “Why did you let him touch my cake?” “It’s just a cake, Sean. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. I’ll have the catering staff get you another one.” I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. “Did you forget everything we talked about?” I typed. Why did my heart still hurt so much when I already knew she didn’t care? When Jared had tried on my wedding suit and torn the seam, Lauren had brushed it off: “It’s just a suit, we can get another one.” When Jared decided he preferred a modern ballroom over the garden chapel I had chosen, Lauren had agreed instantly: “His taste is better anyway.” The only thing I had insisted on doing myself was the wedding cake. As a professional pastry chef, it was the one detail that mattered to me. Before Jared returned to the country, Lauren had stood outside the space we were leasing for my new bakery, wrapping her arms around my waist. “My handsome chef is so easy to please,” she had whispered, leaning up to kiss my cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure every single guest finishes their slice and writes a glowing review of your work.” I had laughed, pulling her closer. “You’re ridiculous.” Now, I replayed the video clip on my phone. The three-tiered vanilla bean cake I had spent two days baking and decorating was hacked to pieces. Before anyone had even tasted it, Jared had grabbed a handful of frosting and smeared it across the face of one of Lauren’s bridesmaids. The crowd laughed, throwing cake at one another, turning my hard work into a messy joke. My creation was swept into the trash, trampled onto the ballroom floor. The text bubbles on my screen bounced for a long time before Lauren’s reply came through, sharp and defensive. “Sean, don’t be ungrateful.” “It’s a cake. Who cares? None of your family members even showed up today. My family paid for this entire wedding, and Jared even brought his own friends to act as your groomsmen so you wouldn’t look pathetic standing there alone.” The scab was ripped wide open. My fingers flew across the keyboard. “You know exactly why my parents didn’t come.” The line went dead. The memory of that day flashed in my mind, bringing back the phantom ache in my skull. Six months ago, I was walking down the street when a heavy wooden storefront sign fell from a second-story ledge, striking me directly on the head. I remember the warmth of the blood pooling on the pavement, the blinding pain, and the sheer terror. With trembling fingers, I had dialed the one number I knew by heart. When the call connected, a loud, obnoxious male voice shouted over the line. “Hey, busy man! Sean is off-limits today, we’re having a boys’ day out! No phones allowed!” Through the receiver, I heard the loud clatter of carnival music and rollercoasters before the line went dead. I blacked out on the concrete. When I woke up in the ICU, the face hovering over me wasn’t Lauren’s. It was a complete stranger—a passerby who had administered first aid, called the ambulance, and signed the emergency consent forms when my vitals began to drop. A stranger had taken a risk to save my life. Meanwhile, my fiancée had ignored my call to spend the day at an amusement park with her best friend. The doctor had looked at me with deep concern. “You’re lucky to be alive, son. A few minutes later, and the swelling would have been fatal.” A crushing weight of despair had settled over me. I called Lauren repeatedly, but she never answered. By the time the sun set, my parents—who had driven six hours straight from our small hometown—were sitting by my bedside. Lauren was still five miles away, watching the evening fireworks at the theme park with Jared. That was the night my parents gave up on her. They begged me to come home, to leave a woman who valued a friend’s amusement over my survival. I pulled up my chat with my cousin, Sam. Before the ceremony today, he had sent me a message. “Sean, has the wedding started?” Then, a few minutes later: “Don’t be too sad. Even though Uncle and Aunt refused to attend, they’re still worried about you. I think they just want you to be safe.” He had sent a video file. I hadn’t had the courage to open it earlier, but now, with my chest aching, I tapped play. In my parents’ modest living room, my mother was sitting on the sofa, her eyes red and swollen. “How can Sean be so stubborn?” she cried, wiping her tears with a tissue. “That girl doesn’t care about him. What kind of person leaves her fiancé bleeding in the hospital to go play at an amusement park?” “And then she kneels in the driveway for one night, gets a little cold, and he forgives her instantly.” My father sat silently in his armchair, staring at his hands. My mother turned to nudge him. “And you—why did you have to be so harsh? Telling him you’d disown him if he married her. Now look, our boy won’t even talk to us.” Watching my parents’ tired faces and the new silver in their hair, my tears finally broke, splashing hot against my skin. My father remained quiet for a long moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a check, handing it to Sam. “Give this to Sean when you see him.” “It’s fifty thousand dollars. Our savings. Tell him… tell him he shouldn’t let her family look down on him just because they have money.” The dam broke. I buried my face in my hands, sobbing until my throat was raw, my body shaking in the quiet hotel room. I wanted to go home. I didn’t care about the deposit on the apartment. I didn’t care about the tuxedo. I packed my clothes into my suitcase with trembling hands. I couldn’t even wait for the morning train. I pulled up my ride-sharing app and booked a long-distance driver for a three-hundred-mile trip back to my hometown, authorizing the two-thousand-dollar fare without hesitation. As I zipped my suitcase, Lauren called. “Why aren’t you answering my texts?” I stayed silent. She sighed, her voice breezy and casual. “Look, things got a little out of hand at the reception. The decorations in the main ballroom got pretty beat up.” “I had the venue coordinator set up the small banquet hall downstairs. We can do our vows there.” The main ballroom was ten thousand square feet of pure elegance. The basement banquet hall was a cramped, windowless room usually reserved for corporate seminars. She was offering me a storage closet for my own wedding, and she said it as easily as suggesting we park in a different lot. But I was too exhausted to fight. “Okay,” I said quietly. Hearing no anger in my voice, Lauren let out a breath of relief. “Good. That’s my reasonable guy.” “The staff is setting up now. I even had them order a replacement cake from a local bakery.” She paused, her voice softening into something resembling affection. “Sean… I’m really ready to be your wife. The ceremony starts at nine. Don’t be late.” The line went dead. I slid the platinum wedding band off my ring finger and set it gently on the dark wood of the nightstand. Then, I picked up my suitcase, walked out of the room, and stepped into the car that would take me home.

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It was our post-graduation trip, right after the college entrance exams, when Isla proposed a game. “Let’s all look at these cards,” she said, her voice bright with a forced kind of innocence. “If we see the same number, we share a room.” She slid a few color-deficiency testing plates across the table. She handed them out to the others, leaving just one, which she held out in front of Noah and me. “What numbers do you two see?” I jumped in before he could answer. “Sixty-six.” I said it quickly, desperately hoping Noah would say the same. He knew I had red-green color deficiency. He knew my eyes painted a completely different world than his. But Noah barely glanced at the card. He ignored the quiet plea in my eyes and said, completely calm: “Eighty-eight.” A cold shock went through me. I stared at him, wondering if my ears were playing tricks on me. Isla laughed, a light, musical sound. “What a coincidence. I see eighty-eight, too.” But as the room keys were being handed out, I heard someone lean over and whisper to Noah: “Congrats, man. Three years of pining, and you finally got what you wanted.” The plastic keycard in my hand felt suddenly heavy, like a lead weight pressing down on my chest, cutting off my air. … The second the keys were distributed, Noah rushed over to grab Isla’s suitcase. He was so eager, so attentive. My mind flashed back to our journey here. When my own suitcase had felt too heavy to pull and I’d asked him for help, he’d shrugged me off. “I told you not to pack so much,” he’d said. “Maybe next time you’ll learn to leave the useless stuff behind.” But half the things in my suitcase weren’t even mine. They were his. My palm was still raw, the skin chafed and burning from the heavy handle of the luggage. Before we left, we had packed together. He had thrown his things into my bag without a second thought. “We’re staying together anyway. It’s easier if we just share a suitcase.” At the time, I’d felt a secret, stupid thrill, thinking Noah was finally ready to make our relationship public to his friends. But reality had just slapped me in the face. Isla pouted, looking over at me. “I’m so jealous of Lynn. She gets a whole king-size bed to herself.” She sighed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh well. I made the rules, so I’ll play by them.” I clenched my fists in my pockets. Aside from Noah, nobody knew about my color deficiency. And nobody knew that Noah and I had been dating in secret for a whole year. During the school year, we’d been terrified of teachers or parents finding out, so we acted like practical strangers in the hallways. It was only on the walk home, after we cleared the school gates, that he would reach out and slide his hand into mine. But looking at Isla, it was obvious she knew my secret. I walked to my room alone. A text from Noah lit up my phone: “It was just a game. Don’t overthink it.” “Nothing is going to happen between us.” “I’ll come by your room to grab my things later.” I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth, holding onto the last shred of hope. “When are you going to tell them about us?” It took him a long time to reply. “If they knew we were dating, they’d either make a big deal out of it or act weird. The trip just started, Lynn. I don’t want to make everyone uncomfortable.” I stared at the screen. I wanted to ask him: “Does being with me make you that uncomfortable?” As the coordinator of the trip, Isla posted in the group chat: “I ordered BBQ. Meet downstairs in an hour.” Noah’s best friend, Toby, replied with a sly emoji: “Ah, so Noah needs a whole hour, huh?” Isla’s voice note came through, sounding playfully annoyed: “Keep talking like that, Toby, and I’ll feed you charcoal!” The words I wanted to type got stuck in my throat. Swallowing them felt like swallowing broken glass. Isla was always the popular one. She was loud, lively, and knew how to take a joke. She was the one running the grill, her face flushed red by the heat of the coals, a bead of sweat dripping from her temple. Noah reached out and naturally wiped it away with a tissue. Toby let out a loud whistle. “Man, we always knew Noah had a secret muse he kept locked away. We just never knew who it was. Did Isla ever inspire you to paint her, Noah?” Noah gave a quiet, calm smile. “How did you know I painted her?” I was skewering meat, and the metal rod slipped, puncturing my index finger. I didn’t even feel the pain. My mind only spun back to the beginning of our relationship, when I’d asked him to paint me. Noah had been incredibly talented from a young age, especially with oils. I’d been so curious to see how I looked through his eyes. But he had rejected me without a second thought. “Oil paints are too complicated,” he’d said. “You can’t even tell the colors apart anyway. It’d be a waste of a painting.” We hadn’t spoken for a week after that. Eventually, he’d compromised and drew a simple charcoal sketch of my face. I’d treated it like a priceless treasure, framing it and hanging it right above my bed, where it still hung today. Isla laughed, a little boastfully. “Honestly, he gives me a new painting practically every month. I’m running out of wall space at home.” Noah smiled, his voice soft and tender. “Well, what do you expect? You’re my muse.” They laughed, and as they did, the sun dipped below the horizon, dragging my heart down into the dark along with it. I had always known Noah loved someone else before me. I knew he’d painted her. I just didn’t know how many times. I knew he had fallen into a deep depression when she started dating someone else. I just hadn’t known her name. And back then, since Noah and I weren’t official, I didn’t have the right to ask. I could only stay by his side while he grieved, the same way he’d stayed by mine when we were kids. Our relationship only started after his unrequited love had run its course. He had come to me and confessed. I had asked him to be sure: “Don’t you still love her?” To me, if love wasn’t pure, I’d rather we just remain friends. But Noah had looked me in the eye and said, “I realized I love you more.” After we got together, he really was good to me. He’d make me hot ginger tea when I had cramps, and he’d hold my hands to warm them up in the winter. We only ever had that one fight—about the painting. And we’d made up after he gave in. We loved each other in secret, hidden away from the world. Or maybe, it was just me who loved him. Isla finished cooking and naturally took the seat right next to Noah. Sitting there, they looked like a couple who had been together for years. “Lynn,” Isla asked casually, turning to me. “Which college are you planning to go to?” The exam results weren’t out yet, but my mind had been made up long ago. Ever since Noah’s artistic talent had become obvious, he had only ever had one goal: the Boston Academy of Fine Arts. And my goal was to be wherever he was. He had studied art since we were kids, and I had joined the weekend classes just to be near him. That was when I was diagnosed with color deficiency. Picking out the right shades from a paint box was as natural as breathing for Noah. For me, it was like drinking boiling water. I had been devastated after the diagnosis. But a young Noah, carrying his heavy easel on his back, had patted my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t see the colors, Lynn. I’ll point them out to you, one by one.” Because of that single promise, I had stubborned my way through art classes, determined to keep up. Even if I couldn’t get in through an art portfolio, I was going to use my academic scores to apply for a non-art major at Boston Arts. I just wanted to be at the same school. Noah knew this better than anyone. But sitting here now, my stubbornness felt entirely pathetic. Noah looked uncomfortable. He shot me a warning glance, as if begging me not to answer Isla. So, I said, “I haven’t decided yet.” Noah seemed to let out a quiet sigh of relief. Then he frowned, looking slightly annoyed by my evasiveness. “Oh,” Isla said, then turned to Noah. “What about you?” Before Noah could answer, Toby cut in. “Is that even a question? Boston Arts, obviously. He has to go to the same school as you, Isla.” Isla was an art student, too. They were the ones who actually shared a passion. Noah nodded slowly. I sat next to them, feeling like a clown in a circus. After dinner, they started playing drinking games. Toby led the crowd, shouting and cheering, while Noah and Isla’s interactions grew increasingly intimate under the excuse of “just a game.” I made an excuse and slipped away, needing some air. A few minutes later, Noah found me. “They’re still playing,” he said, sounding perfectly normal. “I figured this is a good time to go to your room and grab my stuff.” I couldn’t understand how he could act so casual, so entitled. I looked at him. “What exactly is our relationship, Noah?” He blinked. “What?” “Why would your things be in my room?” Noah’s brow furrowed, his face darkening. “Lynn, what are you getting mad about now?” “I told you, it’s just a game. Why do you have to be so dramatic about everything?” So that was what my anger was to him. Drama. Pettiness. A hot surge of rage bubbled up in my chest. But before I could speak, he threw a question back at me. “And why did you tell them you haven’t decided on a college yet? Are you seriously telling me that because of a stupid game, you don’t want to go to the same school as me anymore?” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “What about you?” I raised my voice. “You’re going to Boston Arts—but who are you really going there for?!” Noah flinched, quickly gesturing for me to quiet down. He scanned our surroundings, terrified someone might hear us. “Toby said that, not me,” he whispered sharply. “Look, let’s not do this right now.” “The application portal opens tomorrow. I promise you, I’m not going to Boston Arts for Isla.” “Don’t you know me at all? I’ve wanted to go to Boston Arts since I was a kid.” He explained, his voice frantic. But my stomach turned over, a wave of nausea hitting me so hard I felt like I was going to throw up. Suddenly, a cold clarity washed over me. I was going to tell him. I was going to tell him I wasn’t going to Boston Arts, that I wasn’t going to follow him anymore. I was going to break up with him. But before the words could leave my mouth, Isla walked around the corner. “There you two are,” she said, her eyes shifting between Noah and me. “What are you whispering about?” She smiled, a playful, knowing look on her face. “Don’t tell me you two are secretly dating?” I saw Noah’s hands clench into tight fists. He was terrified. “We’re not,” he said, his voice stiff and unnatural. “Just ran into each other.” Anyone with half a brain could tell he was lying. But Isla acted as if she didn’t notice. “Oh, okay. Well, we’re planning a night hike. We want to catch the sunrise at the peak.” She smiled, her eyes growing misty with nostalgia. “Remember when we first met at the studio? We stayed up all night working on our portfolios and watched the sunrise together.” “You told me the sunrise at the Berkshires was beautiful, and that you wanted to see it with me. We’ll see this one tonight, and the next one will be at the Berkshires, right?” It was practically a confession. And in that moment, I realized when Noah had fallen for her. I wanted to laugh at myself. Noah had probably forgotten. Back when he used to pull those all-night painting sessions, even before we started dating, he would keep me on a voice call the entire night. “Even if I just hear you breathing,” he’d told me, “it helps me focus.” He had made it sound like he loved me. So, Noah, when you were watching the sunrise with Isla and making promises about the Berkshires, did you ever think about the girl on the other end of the phone? Noah’s ears flushed red at her words. He stole a quick, guilty glance at me, then tried to cover it up. “I heard you were applying to Boston Arts back then, so I just wanted to be friends. We were going to be classmates anyway.” I didn’t want to hear another word. Isla asked Noah to go back to his room to grab her water bottle. Noah looked at me before he left, a silent plea in his eyes, as if begging me not to say anything stupid to her. I turned to leave as soon as he was out of sight, but Isla’s voice stopped me. “I know you two are dating.” I froze. “He always kept you on the phone when he was working late at the studio,” she said, stepping closer. “I was always curious what kind of girl could keep him so wrapped up.” She looked me up and down, her gaze cold and full of undisguised contempt. “But now that I’ve met you, you’re really nothing special.” She let out a soft, mocking laugh. “Though it makes sense. You’re colorblind. How could you ever have anything in common with him?” All this time, I’d wondered if Noah’s secrecy had just caused a misunderstanding. But now I saw the truth clearly. Isla knew everything. She had engineered every single moment. A dry, bitter laugh escaped my lips. “In a way,” I said, looking her dead in the eye, “you two really are a perfect match. A bitch and a dog, made for each other.” “Lynn! What the hell are you saying?!” Noah’s voice cut through the air behind me. His face was bright red, breathing heavily. He had only heard my last sentence. Isla’s eyes instantly welled with tears, her expression turning into one of pure, innocent vulnerability. “Noah… I didn’t know Lynn liked you. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have suggested the game. I didn’t mean to make her mad.” Noah panicked, waving his hands. “No, you have it wrong. We… we’re just neighbors. We aren’t that close.” “Just neighbors. We aren’t that close.” The words felt like a poisoned blade, plunging straight into my heart. So that was all the official girlfriend was in front of his crush. A neighbor he barely knew. Isla sniffled, a tear escaping her eye. “Even if she likes you, she didn’t have to say such horrible things.” Her fragile act immediately triggered Noah’s protective instincts. He stepped in front of her, shielding her from me, and glared at me like I was his worst enemy. “Don’t mind her,” he said coldly. “I don’t know what kind of episode she’s having tonight.” With that, he took Isla by the arm and walked away. Before they disappeared around the corner, Isla looked back over her shoulder. Her chin was tilted up, her eyes flashing with the smug triumph of a victor. I didn’t go on the night hike. Later that night, Noah sent me a text: “Now everyone thinks you’re antisocial. How am I supposed to tell them you’re my girlfriend when you act like this?” Did it even matter anymore? Everyone on this trip already assumed he and Isla were together. I typed back: “Isn’t Isla your girlfriend?” The girl he had loved for three years. His muse. Noah replied, clearly thinking I was just throwing a tantrum: “Let’s talk when you’ve calmed down. What you said to Isla was completely uncalled for. She’s been miserable the whole hike.” I didn’t reply. I stayed in my hotel room, tossing and turning in the dark. By the time the sky turned a pale, washed-out gray, I realized the college application portal was open. But my mind was entirely blank. I didn’t know where to go. My entire life, my entire future, had been wrapped up in Noah for so long that I didn’t know who I was without him. Suddenly, Toby posted a photo in the group chat. It looked like a candid shot. In the photo, the golden rays of the rising sun washed over Noah and Isla. Isla was leaning up, pressing a kiss against Noah’s cheek. Noah’s body was completely rigid, frozen in the moment. And just like that, it was over. The sunrise was their beginning. And my end. I remembered how, back in middle school, I had been obsessed with cherry blossoms. Because of my color deficiency, my world was devoid of bright, saturated tones. Nature always looked like an old, faded photograph to me—hazy and muted. But that haziness made the soft pink of cherry blossoms look like something out of a dream. Back then, I’d read about a university in the South where the campus was covered in cherry blossoms every spring. But back then, Noah had been more important than the blossoms. Now, it took me exactly ten minutes to look up the majors at that university. And then, I submitted my application. I didn’t want to go to Boston anymore. There were no cherry blossoms there. Before Noah and the others returned from the hike, I packed my bags. I dragged Noah’s clothes out of my suitcase and dumped them on the hotel bed. The suitcase felt incredibly light without his things. I bought a train ticket home. I didn’t tell him we were over. There was no point. From now on, we would be worlds apart. Our love had been nothing more than a childish game.

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My girlfriend, Alyssa, promised that once I gave her a hundred gifts, she’d finally post me on her Instagram. Make us official. I pulled three consecutive all-nighters, pushing through bone-deep exhaustion to finish the last one right before my birthday. But that night, the person she went public with on her feed was my best friend, Tyler. “Promised Ty I’d post him once he finished his gift~” her caption read. The accompanying photo was a silly stick-figure doodle Tyler had drawn on a napkin. Meanwhile, the large oil painting of the two of us—the one I’d spent sleepless, tearful nights painting—lay forgotten, tossed carelessly into the damp corner of her mudroom. Our mutual friends commented almost immediately: “Bold move. Aren’t you worried Sam will see this and throw a fit?” “So sweet though! When do we get to eat wedding cake?” Alyssa replied within seconds: “Blocked him hours ago, nothing to worry about. If he makes a scene, I’ll just make a post custom-set to ‘Only Him’ to shut him up.” “And as for the wedding, the sooner the better, but we’ll have to see what the groom thinks.” She tagged Tyler again. I stared at the glowing screen. I realized then that when you are the one who is truly loved, even a napkin scribble gets showcased to the world. Swallowing the bitter lump of disappointment, I spent an hour typing out a long, raw text, pouring my heart into the blue bubbles. It took Alyssa until the next afternoon to reply. “Morning babe, just woke up. Read your texts.” “Love you too.” This time, I didn’t write back. Just woke up? Exactly an hour earlier, Tyler had posted a photo of the two of them together on his stories. “Shopping, dinner, and her.” A hollow laugh escaped my throat. A woman who couldn’t keep her boundaries straight wasn’t a woman worth keeping. … At 11:59 PM, the familiar sound of footsteps echoed in the hallway. Alyssa opened the door, carrying a shopping bag containing the exact clothes Tyler had been wearing in his photo today. She stopped when she saw me sitting on the sofa in the dark. “What are you doing home?” she asked, her voice tight with surprise. “I thought you said you had to work late tonight.” I rubbed the promise ring on my finger. The text where I’d mentioned working late was five days old. I had only forced myself to take those extra shifts to free up time for the painting. My throat felt dry. “Today is the fifteenth, Alyssa.” She hesitated, casually glancing down at her watch. “Oh. Really? I must have gotten the days mixed up.” The second hand on the wall clock ticked in the heavy silence. She walked over, leaning down to kiss me. “It’s late, babe. Let’s go to sleep.” I flinched, pulling my face away. Alyssa froze, a flash of disbelief crossing her face. My eyelids trembled. I had always loved her with a physical intensity; usually, her proximity drew me in like gravity. But tonight, the pull was gone. “I know you’re mad,” she said, straightening up, her expression souring. “So I forgot your birthday. We celebrate it every year anyway, it’s not that big of a deal.” “Besides, you’re twenty-seven. A birthday just means you’re a year older. There’s no point.” When I remained silent, she sighed, a patronizing concession. “If you’re going to pout about it, I’ll make it up to you with a gift next time. Okay?” “No point?” I repeated her words, looking up to meet her eyes. But last month was Tyler’s birthday. She had cancelled her meetings, cleared her schedule, and thrown him a massive party. She Venmo’d him three separate times, spending thousands of dollars. When I had gently tried to express my discomfort back then, she told me, “Birthdays only come once a year, Sam. They’re precious.” Why did the rules change when it came to me? I let out a cold laugh. “That’s not what you told Tyler last month.” Alyssa stiffened, stepping closer, casting a shadow over me. Her voice took on an impatient edge. “I told you, I forgot. Do you really have to overanalyze everything and hold a grudge? Besides, Tyler is your best friend. He’s family, not some stranger.” Family. But she had forgotten so much more than just a birthday. From our anniversary dinner to the weekend we were supposed to travel to visit my dad’s grave—she forgot every single thing. I leaned back against the cushions. “Right. He’s family. You’ve gone public with him on social media, so how could he be a stranger?” My gaze drifted to the shopping bag in her hand. “Actually, I think I’m the stranger here.” She pulled the bag behind her back. “His clothes are delicate and need to be hand-washed. A guy doesn’t know how to do that, so I was just helping out… And about the Instagram post, my finger slipped and I tagged the wrong account. Do I really have to explain every little thing to you? Sam, aren’t you tired of being so paranoid? It was just a silly post anyway.” I stayed quiet. She had never once washed my clothes. “No girl wants to play the maid,” she had told me once. A slipped finger? Who would believe that? Alyssa turned toward the guest room, then paused, looking back at me with deep disappointment. “You’ve really changed. You’re starting to feel like a stranger to me.” When the door clicked shut, I sat in the quiet. I felt the exact same way about her. The next morning, she was already gone when I woke up. I went to the kitchen. The fridge was covered in sticky notes I had left her. I used to wake up early to make her breakfast before my overtime shifts, leaving it warm for her. She had never touched them. The food in the fridge had gone moldy. Without hesitation, I swept it all into the trash. After breakfast, I opened the guest room door. The hundred gifts I had lovingly gathered over the years were crammed into a damp cardboard box in the darkest corner. But Tyler’s stick-figure drawing was framed beautifully on her nightstand. My hands shook as I carried the damp box to the backyard fireplace. I tossed the gifts in, one by one. Alyssa suddenly burst back into the house, apparently having forgotten something. Seeing the smoke rising from the backyard, her eyes widened in panic. She rushed out. “What are you burning?! Is that the drawing Tyler made for—” She stopped, her shoulders sagging in relief when she realized what was actually in the flames. I didn’t say a word. I just watched her. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, avoiding my gaze. “Oh, it’s just that old junk. You realized how useless they were, right? Honestly, they were just taking up space anyway. I’m glad you’re finally thinking straight.” She reached out to ruffle my hair, the way she used to. “I just came back to grab a file. Make sure you clean up the ashes.” I tossed the final oil painting into the fire. The smoke smelled of old cardboard, burnt acrylics, and the cheap lavender sachets I’d bought for her closet years ago. It felt like watching a slow autopsy of my twenties. “What did you think I was burning?” I asked quietly. She didn’t answer. She grabbed her file from the guest room, slid Tyler’s framed drawing into her briefcase, and walked out. I leaned against the doorframe, a bitter smile tugging at my lips. “No one cares about that garbage but you.” “Shut up,” she snapped, her face darkening. As she turned to leave, her briefcase caught on the edge of the nightstand drawer, pulling it completely open. A thick, beautifully bound scrapbook fell out, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Panic flashed across her face. She scrambled to grab it, but I beat her to it. When I opened it, the blood in my veins ran cold. It was a meticulously printed collection of her chat logs with Tyler. Every single screenshot was laminated and bound. My hands trembled violently. My eyes stung. “You said this was childish,” I whispered. “You said you hated stuff like this.” The book felt like lead. Just months ago, I had suggested making a scrapbook of our messages to keep for our future. Alyssa had scoffed, calling it immature and pointless. So I let it go. And yet, here it was. She had custom-made one for Tyler, keeping it right under our roof. Alyssa snatched it from my hands, her chest heaving. “Who gave you permission to touch my things? Do you have any concept of boundaries?” She frantically brushed the dust off the cover, slipping it back into her folder. “What about my boundaries, Alyssa?” my voice cracked. “My gifts are thrown in a damp box while you keep your secret love letters right here. You’ve checked out of this relationship, and I’m not even allowed to look?” “Stop talking nonsense!” she yelled, her brow furrowed. “Tyler and I are completely platonic. Don’t ruin his reputation just because you have a dirty mind. Go take a cold shower and clear your head.” She walked toward the door. Anger surged, hot and sharp. I grabbed her wrist. “Platonic? He literally texted me a picture of the two of you in bed! He calls you ‘sweetheart.’ How can you stand there and lie?” With a violent shrug, she threw my hand off. I lost my footing, slipping on the hardwood floor. My head slammed hard against the sharp wooden edge of the bedframe. A blinding, white-hot pain shot through my skull, blurring my vision. “You…” Alyssa paused. She half-reached out a hand to help me up, but quickly pulled it back, her expression twisting into disgust. “Don’t go into my room again,” she said coldly, turning her back on me. I blacked out from the pain. When I finally came to, the room was dark. Alyssa was sitting in the armchair nearby, tapping lazily on her phone. “Finally awake? It’s your own fault for being so clumsy.” I tried to speak, but my throat was too dry. She locked her phone and glanced at me, clearly bored. “I have to get back to work.” The front door slammed, sending a tremor through my chest. After a long while, I dressed and went out to the living room. Alyssa was standing on the balcony, on the phone with Tyler. Her voice had a soft, gentle patience I hadn’t heard in years. “Have you eaten yet?” she was saying. “Do you want me to bring you some cake? Sweet treats always cheer you up.” Tyler’s giggling voice drifted through the receiver. “No, it’s fine. I don’t want your boyfriend getting mad again.” Alyssa laughed. “It’s not a big deal. We just won’t tell him. He’s too oblivious to notice anyway.” My heart felt like it was being scraped by a rusted nail. In the beginning, she had loved me like that. If I mentioned wanting cake, she would buy five different flavors. If I tagged her in a post about flowers, she would drive across town to find the exact bouquet. But people change. I took a deep breath. “Alyssa.” She didn’t even turn around. I stepped onto the balcony, forcing her to look at me. “Alyssa, we’re over. Let’s break up.” She briefly pulled the phone away, giving me a dismissive look. “Sure, babe. Whatever you say. I’m busy right now, go watch TV or something, okay?” A profound, heavy exhaustion settled into my bones. I had envisioned our breakup as a massive, screaming match. I never expected it to end with such hollow indifference. I closed my eyes as hot tears slid down my cheeks. I went back to the bedroom, staring at my unpacked clothes, not knowing where to start. My phone buzzed. A friend had sent me a screenshot. Tyler had posted an unflattering photo of me on his Instagram. It was a picture taken in our bedroom—a photo only Alyssa could have taken. Tyler captioned it: “Does anyone actually find this look attractive?” The comments were filled with laughing emojis and insults. And there, right at the top, was Alyssa’s comment: “Not as good-looking as you.” Tyler replied: “Good boy. Next time send me an even uglier one so I can make a meme out of it.” “Deal,” Alyssa wrote. My ears rang. My friend texted: Who does this guy think he is? This is sick. Let me know if you want me to go handle this. My phone slipped from my hand, clattering onto the floor. I marched out of the room. Alyssa was still smiling at her screen on the couch. I snatched the phone from her hand and unlocked it, opening her photo library. There was an album labeled “Ugly.” It was filled with bad photos of me, some maliciously edited. But the very top album, pinned and favorited, was “Tyler.” Dozens of professionally edited, perfect portraits of him. My hands went numb with rage. I checked her texts. She had been sending those ugly photos of me to Tyler to use as reaction stickers. “Tyler is just better looking than you,” Alyssa said, scowling as she tried to grab her phone back. I swallowed the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. “So that gives you the right to humiliate me?” I had spent hours carefully editing her photos before saving them, wanting to preserve only her most beautiful angles. Because when you love someone, don’t you want the world to see them at their best? Tyler’s mocking voice suddenly blared from the speakerphone. “Oh, come on, Sam. Don’t be a baby. Even your own girlfriend knows I’m the prettier one.” A dark, bitter laugh escaped me. “Sure, Tyler. You look just like your father did when he was sleeping with other men’s wives. Gorgeous.” Tyler gasped. “How could you say that to me? Alyssa, he’s…” Alyssa’s face went white. “How dare you say something so malicious? He’s your best friend!” “He stopped being my friend a long time ago,” I said softly. “Since when?” she demanded. “Since the winter my dad was dying, and Tyler said he looked like a bloated pig.” The memory hit me like a physical blow. Last winter, my father was in the final stages of renal failure, his body severely swollen. I had to run to the office to hand off some contracts and asked Tyler to sit with him for a few hours. But when I returned, I heard Tyler laughing on the phone through the door. “Tell him to eat less. He looks like a bloated pig. It’s honestly repulsive.” My father had treated Tyler like his own son. When Tyler’s father was run out of town for destroying families, it was my dad who took pity on him, encouraging me to help him. And that was how he repaid us. Alyssa flinched slightly, remembering the incident. But she still defended him. “He didn’t mean it like that. It was a slip of the tongue. Are you seriously going to hold a grudge over that forever? And bringing up his father’s past is just cruel. Tyler is innocent.” I smiled, but my heart was bleeding. “Innocent?” Before Alyssa could speak, the front door swung open. Tyler walked in, carrying a basket of wellness supplements. His eyes were already red and watery. “Sam, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say those things about your dad. I was young and stupid. I don’t want to lose you. Please forgive me.” He pushed the basket toward me. “I brought some of the things your dad used to like. Let’s go visit his grave together? I want to apologize to him properly.” The sheer hypocrisy made my stomach turn. I shoved him away. “Get the hell out. Don’t act like you care. You mocked my dying father, and now you’re trying to take my woman. Have you no shame?” Tyler whimpered, grabbing the hem of Alyssa’s jacket. “I… I didn’t mean it. Alyssa, tell him. I just wanted to apologize. And no matter how much I love you, I would never try to steal you from Sam…” Alyssa wrapped an arm around him, then turned to me, her hand clamping down hard on my wrist. “Enough! He came here to apologize. When are you going to let this go?” My eyes burned. “Never! My dad is gone, Alyssa! How am I supposed to let that go?” “That wasn’t Tyler’s fault! Your dad was going to die from that disease anyway!” The words hung in the air, freezing the breath in my lungs. Seeing the look on my face, her voice softened slightly. “Look, your dad is dead. It was just bad luck. Why ruin a lifelong friendship over a dead man?” I looked past her. Tyler was hiding behind her shoulder, a smug smirk plastered on his face. And there, catching the light around his neck, was a silver chain. My father’s urn necklace. His last remaining keepsake. My chest seized. I lunged forward, grabbing Alyssa’s arm. “That chain… You told me it was lost. Why is he wearing it?” Alyssa avoided my eyes, shifting to block him. “Tyler said he liked it, so I gave it to him. Your dad is gone, Sam. Tyler is just wearing it to keep the bad energy away for you. You should be thanking him.” I grit my teeth, reaching past her to rip it off Tyler’s neck. “Ah! Stay away from me!” Tyler screamed, shrinking back. Alyssa reacted instantly, shoving me away with all her strength. I lost my balance, falling backward. My shoulder slammed into the sharp metal coat rack in the hallway, the iron hook tearing deep into my collarbone. I clutched my chest as blood began to soak through my shirt. As my vision faded, the last thing I saw was Alyssa finally lunging toward me in panic.

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Three days before we were supposed to walk down the aisle, the Harveys threw me a bride evaluation dinner. Out of a perfect score of one hundred, I was awarded an eighty-nine. My fiancé, Will, sighed in front of the room of high-society guests. “Gigi, the family rules are the rules. Anything under a ninety, and the wedding has to be postponed for a year.” Right beside him, Isla, my supposed best friend, blinked back tears and pleaded on my behalf. “Gigi has tried so hard. Can’t we give her just one more chance?” In my past life, I had actually believed they were both on my side. I had spent a humiliating year waiting—waiting for the Harvey Manor redevelopment to bring in its first wave of cash, waiting for Will to rewrite our prenuptial agreement, and waiting for Isla to slip into the custom wedding dress I never got to wear. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night of the evaluation dinner. I stared up at the glowing screen showing that eighty-nine percent, and I reached for the microphone. “I accept the delay,” I said. “But before we put everything on hold, I’d like to see who gave me a single point.” … The moment the score flashed onto the massive LED screen, a heavy silence fell over the Harvey manor’s dining room. Eighty-nine. Just one point shy. Right beneath the bold numbers, a line of elegant, small print glowed: “Any score below ninety triggers an automatic one-year postponement of the nuptials.” Along with the delay, my accession to the spousal trust, my cut of the Harvey Manor redevelopment yields, and my residency rights to the family’s primary estate were all suspended. This rule had been drafted by the Harveys themselves just last year, coded directly into the trust’s entrance requirements. I gripped my champagne flute, watching condensation slowly trail down the glass and drip onto my fingers. In my previous life, this was the exact moment I had shattered my glass against the mahogany table, screaming at the Harveys, asking them what right they had to put me on display and grade me like a piece of prize cattle. After that outburst, I had spent a miserable year making amends. I waited for their massive estate project to recoup its capital. I waited for Will to gently coax me into signing a drastically modified prenup. And eventually, I watched Isla walk down the aisle in my custom wedding gown. “Gigi.” Will’s smooth, practiced voice anchored me back to the cold reality of the present. His mother, Victoria Harvey, set her teacup down on its saucer with a delicate, ringing click. “Giselle, the Harvey traditions have stood for three generations. We do not make exceptions.” Isla sat at the table reserved for the bride’s guests. Officially, she shouldn’t have been on the evaluation panel. But Victoria had insisted, claiming that as my closest friend, Isla understood my character better than anyone. Isla stood up, her eyes already swimming with tears. “Mrs. Harvey, Gigi is truly wonderful.” She looked at me, her voice trembling with synthetic sympathy. “She’s just… headstrong. Sometimes she doesn’t quite know how to accommodate her elders’ feelings.” I tapped my fingernail against the rim of my glass, refusing to offer her a lifeline. A single sentence of “pleading,” and she had seamlessly branded me as both hot-tempered and disrespectful. Will reached over, placing a heavy, restraining hand on my shoulder. “It’s only a year, Gigi.” His palm pressed down, a silent warning to keep quiet. I set my glass down. The crystal bottom tapped against the porcelain plate with a quiet, sharp ring. Will’s eyes immediately snapped to me. He was likely preparing to pull me out of the room, to soothe me with sweet, empty promises behind closed doors. But instead of crying or screaming, I simply reached for the wireless microphone sitting on the table. I turned to him, offering a calm, placid smile. “Family rules are rules.” “Below a ninety, we delay for a year. I accept.” Isla lowered her head, dabbing at her eyes with a silk handkerchief. But I didn’t miss the faint, triumphant curve of her lips. Will finally let out a visible sigh of relief. I nodded slowly. “However, since this is a Harvey tradition, it ought to be transparent and fair.” Victoria’s gaze sharpened. “What are you implying, Giselle?” I pointed toward the screen. “I accept the eighty-nine. But I want to see where every single point was deducted.” At the far end of the long dining table, the butler in charge of the digital voting system hesitated. Will frowned, his voice dropping. “Gigi, the evaluations are anonymous. There’s no need to dissect it like this.” “I didn’t ask to see the names,” I replied smoothly. “Just the itemized breakdown. I need to know where I fell short so I can improve for next year.” Victoria spoke up from the head of the table. “Show her.” The butler tapped his tablet. The screen shifted. The system first displayed the baseline average. Ninety-three. But there was a small footnote: “Anomalous low scores are excluded from the baseline average and instead trigger risk-control deductions.” Minus four points. Underneath the deduction breakdown, two glaringly anomalous low scores lit up in red. One point. Three points. My fingers tightened around the microphone. So, it wasn’t that the entire Harvey family thought I was unfit. It was that someone had deliberately cast two ridiculously low scores, triggering the automatic four-point risk-control deduction. Will’s face went pale. He spoke up even faster than I could. “Is there a glitch in the system?” Isla’s hand trembled, letting her handkerchief slip to her lap. As she bent to retrieve it, her knuckles knocked sharply against the edge of the table. I didn’t look at her. I kept the microphone pressed to my lips and addressed Victoria. “Mrs. Harvey, would it be possible to lock and archive the anonymous scorecard details tonight? At tomorrow’s formal explanation luncheon, I’d love to hear the constructive feedback from these two specific evaluators.” Victoria remained silent for a long moment, studying my calm demeanor. Finally, she nodded. “Very well.” I switched off the microphone and laid it down. Will reached out to take my hand, but I smoothly bypassed his grasp, bending to pick up my clutch. As I turned to leave, I caught Isla looking up at me. Her eyes were still red, but the fragile confidence in her gaze was beginning to fracture. When I reached the heavy oak doors of the manor, Will caught up to me. The night air was biting. He draped his tailored cashmere coat over my shoulders. “Gigi, don’t take tonight to heart.” I looked down at the gleaming platinum cufflink on his sleeve. Just last month, he had insisted I help him pick them out, whispering that the future Mrs. Harvey’s taste was his ultimate calling card. Now, that future was deferred by a single point. “I’m not taking it to heart,” I said, sliding the coat off and handing it back to him. Will didn’t take it. His brow furrowed. “Then why did you insist on seeing the itemized breakdown?” “To see where I can improve,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “For next year.” After a beat, his voice softened into that familiar, coaxing tone. “A year goes by quickly, Gigi. Once the Harvey Manor redevelopment funds are cleared, we can have an even grander wedding. I’ll give you that lakeside lawn ceremony we talked about.” In my past life, that lakeside lawn ceremony did happen. But I wasn’t the bride. “Will,” I interrupted. “Aren’t you curious about those two low scores?” “It was probably just some conservative uncle holding you to impossible standards.” “A score of one is an impossible standard?” He grabbed my wrist, his grip tightening just enough to pinch. “There were too many eyes on us tonight, Gigi. Don’t make a scene and make everyone look bad.” I stared at his hand. He wasn’t afraid of my heartbreak; he was terrified of my disobedience. My phone buzzed in my clutch. It was a text from Isla. “Gigi, are you okay? Will was in such a tough spot tonight, please don’t blame him.” A second message popped up immediately after. “I talked to Mrs. Harvey. Tomorrow’s luncheon will be small and private. Don’t feel too pressured.” I stared at the screen and let out a soft, humorless laugh. She was far more invested in this “explanation luncheon” than I was. Will caught sight of Isla’s name on my screen and slowly let go of my wrist. “Isla has such a good heart. She was doing everything she could to defend you back there.” I locked my phone. “Then I should make sure to thank her properly tomorrow.” Will’s face stiffened for a fraction of a second. I opened the car door and stepped inside. The driver asked for my destination. I gave him an address: the side gate of the Harvey Estate. Half an hour later, I was sitting in a blacked-out SUV parked just outside the perimeter. Across from me sat the technical project manager for the voting software, Mr. Bradley. Before leaving the dinner, I had taken a quick photo of the equipment cases. The technician-in-charge label listed his name and direct number. He had just finished packing up the voting terminals, his laptop bag resting at his feet. In my previous life, I had overheard him telling the butler: “De-anonymizing the scorecards requires either the host’s authorization or a formal dispute audit requested by the candidate.” This time, I slid my ID and the official invitation across the console. “I want to file a formal dispute audit.” Mr. Bradley reviewed the documents and looked up. “Ms. Albright, I can initiate the audit. But under privacy protocols, I can’t hand over the decrypted names to you privately.” “I don’t need them privately,” I replied. “I want you to initiate the live de-anonymization on-screen tomorrow during the luncheon, triggered by my formal request.” “What if someone tries to stop it?” He turned his tablet toward me, pointing to a clause in fine print at the bottom of the terms of service: “If the evaluation results are directly tied to wedding deferral, candidate substitution, or trust accession, the subject of the evaluation holds the legal right to a public audit.” My finger hovered over two words: “candidate substitution”. “Candidate substitution?” I asked. “It’s a module the Harveys specifically requested when we built the system,” Mr. Bradley explained. “If the score falls below ninety, the wedding is postponed, and during the deferral period, the groom can initiate vetting for alternative spouse candidates.” So they had mapped out the entire trajectory from the start. This wasn’t a sudden, unfortunate turn of events. They had built a revolving door into the system to replace me. I pulled out my phone and drafted an email to Victoria. “Mrs. Harvey, for tomorrow’s explanation luncheon, I would like to invite the technical directors of the evaluation software to ensure system integrity.” A few minutes later, her reply came back as a single word: “Approved.” She wanted me to publicly bow my head to my “inadequacies.” Perfect. “Mr. Bradley,” I said, looking at the dispute audit clause. “Is there anything you need me to prepare?” “Just ensure we have access to the main projector.” “I’ll handle the connection,” I said. “Tomorrow, we unlock everything.” The next morning, my phone woke me with a barrage of notifications. The group chat originally named “Giselle & Will Wedding Coordination” had been renamed: “Harvey Deferral Explanation Luncheon.” The group administrator had also changed. It was no longer me. It was Isla. She had posted a long, detailed announcement: “Thank you, everyone. Gigi is understandably overwhelmed right now, so I will be handling the guest relations, venue coordination, and gown storage for the time being.” Below her message, a neat row of “Received” and “Acknowledged” popped up from the staff. The wedding planner chimed in: “Miss Denis, should we proceed with the bridal gown showcase scheduled for this afternoon?” Isla replied instantly: “Yes, let’s keep it. Mrs. Harvey says we mustn’t disrupt the established schedule. We will discuss Gigi’s family’s side of things after the tea service.” I stared at the words “schedule must not be disrupted” and sat up in bed. In my past life, this was exactly how I had been erased—incrementally, quietly. The wedding was delayed, Isla stepped in to “soothe” the guests, and eventually, she was the one wearing my bespoke gown in the family portraits. Another text arrived, this one from Will: “Isla is just trying to be thorough and take the load off your shoulders. Don’t overthink it.” I typed back: “I won’t.” It took him a few minutes to reply: “You don’t need to attend the afternoon tea service. My mother thinks it might be too awkward for you.” “The Tea Service.” I let the words roll over my tongue. Once a bride fell below ninety, the Harvey system allowed them to vet alternative candidates. Naturally, the tea service was arranged immediately. I got dressed and drove straight to the luxury bridal boutique. When the store manager saw me, her expression froze. “Ms. Albright… what brings you in today?” I glanced over at the display area. One of the glass cases was empty. It was the case that had held my custom reception gown—a heavy silk mermaid dress with delicate, hand-embroidered gardenias trailing down the train. Will had insisted on the design because of the gardenias. “A dress made exclusively for my Gigi,” he had whispered. I pointed at the empty display. “Where is my gown?” The manager looked down at her digital log, her face flushing. “Miss Denis picked it up this morning. She mentioned there was a private Harvey tea service this afternoon and that Mrs. Harvey requested the gown for a lifestyle showcase.” I smiled faintly. “Did she try it on?” The manager avoided my gaze. “Just… for a fitting adjustment.” “Fitting adjustment.” How convenient. The evaluation seat went to her. The planning group went to her. And now, her signature was on the gown release form. I didn’t make a scene with the manager. I simply asked her to print the physical release receipt. It slid out of the printer, bearing Isla’s elegant cursive signature. Under “Reason for Release”, it read: “Harvey Afternoon Tea Gown Presentation.” I folded the slip neatly and tucked it into my bag. Outside the boutique, my hired car was waiting. I gave the driver the address of the private country club adjacent to the Harvey Estate. On the second floor of the clubhouse, the door to the VIP lounge was slightly ajar. Victoria’s commanding voice drifted through the gap. “Stand up straighter, dear. A Harvey woman must never carry herself with such a provincial posture.” I stopped in my tracks. Through the crack, I saw Isla standing in front of a trifold mirror, wearing my silk gardenia gown. The embroidered petals clung perfectly to her calves. Will stood beside her, holding a vintage diamond brooch. He didn’t object to any of this. Instead, he leaned in and pinned the brooch over her collarbone. That brooch had belonged to my late mother. Before the dinner last night, Isla had complained that her outfit was too plain and asked to borrow it to “add some weight.” After the dinner, she claimed she had left it in Will’s car and promised to return it today. Now, it pinned her collar, a gleaming mockery of my mother’s memory. Isla caught my reflection in the mirror, her face instantly draining of color. Will turned around, his hand still lingering near her chest. The air in the room turned to ice. I didn’t step inside. I merely pulled out my phone, snapped a photo of the gown release slip, and then focused the camera on the scene in the room. “Click.” Will’s brow furrowed instantly. “Giselle, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I lowered my phone. “Nothing. Just gathering materials for tomorrow’s explanation luncheon. I’m sure everyone will want to know why a candidate tea service features my wedding gown.” The explanation luncheon was held in the private chapel-style ballroom of the Harvey Estate. The extended family, board members, and the wedding planning team were all seated. Will stood at the podium, microphone in hand. There were dark circles under his eyes, but his voice remained measured and smooth. “Thank you all for coming today as we clarify the postponement of my wedding with Giselle. Giselle is a remarkable woman, but marriage is not a decision to be rushed by passion alone. She is still young, and there are areas where she needs to mature.” I sat in the front row, watching him. In my past life, he had delivered this exact speech. He framed the humiliation as “protection” and disguised the cruelty as “room for growth.” Victoria took the microphone from him. “The Harveys do not treat marriage lightly. This scorecard is a tool for reflection, not a punishment. If Giselle can show real progress over the next year, the wedding will proceed as planned.” Isla sat off to the side. She wasn’t wearing my gown today—just a cream-colored bouclé skirt suit—but my mother’s diamond brooch was pinned firmly to her lapel. She stood up and offered a soft, apologetic bow toward my Uncle Charles. “Uncle Charles, please don’t be upset with Gigi. She didn’t mean to be difficult; she was just incredibly invested in this wedding. I hope no one blames her.” “Don’t blame her.” With a few soft words, she managed to play the peacemaker while firmly pinning the blame on me. I reached into my bag and felt the crisp edges of the gown release receipt. Victoria looked down at me from the stage. “If you feel any grievance, Giselle, you are welcome to speak openly today.” She sounded magnanimous, but she spat the word “grievance” like a dirty secret. I stood up. Mr. Bradley sat in the very back row, his laptop bag resting on his knees. I walked up the steps to the stage and took the microphone from Will’s hand. “Keep this dignified,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. I ignored him, turning to face Victoria. “Mrs. Harvey, because my score was an eighty-nine, the wedding is postponed for a year, correct?” Victoria frowned. “Correct.” “And during this year, the family is permitted to evaluate alternative candidates?” Her expression hardened. “That is an internal family protocol.” I nodded, walking over to the projector stand and placing the gown receipt flat on the glass. The projector flickered, and the image of the receipt filled the massive screen behind us. The line detailing the reason for release was magnified for everyone to see: “Harvey Afternoon Tea Gown Presentation.” Isla’s face turned white. I turned my gaze directly to her lapel. “Isla.” “Why were you wearing my custom wedding gown at a candidate tea service yesterday?” “And why is my late mother’s brooch pinned to your chest?” Isla immediately clutched her hand over the brooch. “Gigi, you’re misunderstanding. Mrs. Harvey just asked me to help test the schedule flow. It didn’t mean anything.” Will stepped in. “My mother arranged that. It has nothing to do with Isla.” “Fine,” I said. “Let’s put the dress aside for a moment.” I turned to the back of the room. “Mr. Bradley, if you please.” Mr. Bradley walked down the center aisle, carrying his laptop. Victoria stood up, her voice rising. “Giselle, what is the meaning of this?” “A formal dispute audit,” I said, placing my ID and invitation onto the podium. “Since the evaluation score has been used to trigger a wedding postponement and activate the candidate search, I am legally entitled to a public audit of the scorecards.” Mr. Bradley plugged his laptop into the main feed. The anonymous score details flashed back onto the screen. Baseline average: Ninety-three. Risk-control deduction: Four points. The red lines showing the two anomalous scores glared back at us: One point. Three points. Will walked over to my side, his voice a low, threatening hiss. “Giselle, that’s enough.” I looked at the screen, refusing to budge. “It’s not enough.” Mr. Bradley entered the system override code. A prompt popped up on the screen: “Decrypt and reveal evaluator identities?” Will lunged forward to shut the laptop, but Mr. Bradley blocked his hand. “Mr. Harvey, once an audit is initiated, the system protocol cannot be overridden.” I tapped the screen, confirming the request. The display flickered. The first low-score record decrypted, revealing the name beside it: “Evaluator: Will Harvey. Score: 1.”

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