Chapter 1
I was curled up on the sofa, a sharp pain twisting in my stomach, when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
The screen lit up. A message from Du Wanning, brief and to the point.
"Jindingxuan, Room 302. Bring me the thing I left."
She hadn't even bothered to type my name.
We'd been broken up for a month, and this was the first time she'd reached out.
Rain was lashing against the window, and the ache in my stomach intensified. But the moment I saw her words, I couldn't stop myself. I grabbed my jacket, the item she wanted, and plunged into the downpour.
Maybe she was still angry. Maybe there was still a place for me in her heart.
That single thought was all I needed. It made me ignore the freezing rain and the strange looks from people on the street.
By the time I reached the door of Room 302 at Jindingxuan, I was soaked to the bone, looking like a drowned rat. I raised my hand to knock, but stopped when I heard the sound of Du Wanning's bright laughter, followed by her friend's teasing.
"Wanning, that mangy dog, Xiao Tong... he hasn't given up yet?"
"Don't even talk about him," Du Wanning's voice was laced with a disgust I'd never heard before. "He just won't go away. It's so annoying."
My hand froze in mid-air. Blood rushed to my head.
Mangy dog...
So that's how she and her friends saw me. My seven years of devotion were nothing more than a desperate attempt to cling on.
The door creaked open.
A man in a bespoke suit walked out, his arm around Du Wanning. The Patek Philippe on his wrist flashed, making my head spin. He pulled her closer with a natural ease, his eyes landing on me with a look of undisguised appraisal and superiority.
"And who is this?" he asked.
Du Wanning didn't even spare me a glance. She snuggled against the man and said dismissively, "Just a kid. He's here to drop something off."
Just a kid.
With those few words, she casually erased the seven years we'd spent together.
I stared at the unfamiliar smile on her face, a wave of bitterness and resentment threatening to drown me. I had already been replaced.
"Give me the box. You can go now." Du Wanning finally looked at me, her gaze as cold as if she were looking at a complete stranger. Her tone was a command, not a request.
Numbly, I handed her the elegantly wrapped box. I turned to leave, every step feeling like I was walking on shards of glass. Behind me, I could hear their muffled laughter, each sound a needle piercing my spine.
I stumbled into the restroom and turned on the tap, splashing cold water on my face again and again, trying to wash away the rain, and the humiliation that had seeped into my bones.
The man in the mirror was a pathetic sight—pale face, empty eyes, utterly defeated.
The knot in my stomach suddenly tightened into a searing pain. I gripped the cold edge of the sink, my body doubling over on its own.
And then I remembered. Today was our seventh anniversary.
She hadn't remembered. It felt like I was the only person in the world who had.
The churning in my gut and the emptiness in my heart twisted together, draining the strength from my body. The world began to blacken at the edges, and I felt myself tipping, about to fall into a bottomless abyss.
