He Forgot My Name, I Left

Chapter 5

Serena's eyes reddened as she clutched Caspian's sleeve, her voice deliberately choked with sobs.

"Caspian, I'm really scared... Evelyn keeps targeting me. I'm terrified every day. Whatever I did wrong, I can fix it. Can you please make Evelyn stop destroying everything I have now?"

With just a few feigned grievances, frost instantly covered Caspian's eyes. He believed her without question.

He turned to the bodyguard standing by, his tone cold and devoid of warmth, each word a non-negotiable command.

"Make arrangements immediately. Send Evelyn out of the country. Ban her from returning in the short term. Escort her the entire way. Don't let her delay or stop anywhere."

The security personnel in black immediately stepped forward, closing in on me with an oppressive presence.

Before I could steady myself, two of them seized my arms from either side, their grip brutally rough, clamping down on my wrists with no room for struggle.

My joints ached under their grasp, bruises blooming instantly. They half-dragged, half-carried me toward the security checkpoint, forcing me along without a shred of mercy.

The departure hall was crowded and noisy.

The dried lunar moss I had kept close in my pocket for years, a treasure I'd carried with me, slipped out at some point and fell onto the cold, polished floor.

It was the only keepsake he had given me in the desperate days of our youth, the sole anchor that had pulled me through countless grievances and hardships, the last clean and pure bond we shared from those early years.

My heart clenched, and I bent down in a panic, trying to retrieve it.

Just as my fingertips were about to touch the moss, Serena tugged lightly on his sleeve again, her expression fragile and pitiful.

"Caspian, forget it. Don't make things hard for Evelyn because of me..."

Her words feigned retreat, but every syllable was calculated provocation.

I froze in place, watching the man who stood above everyone else, who held the power of life and death over the entire art industry, slowly bend down.

In the next instant, without a trace of hesitation in his eyes, he lifted his foot and crushed the dried moss beneath it with decisive, bone-chilling force.

The delicate petals and stems were ground into powder and scattered in the wind.

In that moment, all the hopes, promises, and shared hardships of our youth were crushed clean away, leaving nothing behind.

I heard him speak coldly from above, addressing the crushed remains on the ground and me alike.

"Evelyn, it's long past time to sever pointless attachments from the past."

On the eve of boarding, the sky turned abruptly dark, and torrential rain descended upon the city without warning.

The security personnel shoved me roughly out of the departure lounge and into the open-air shuttle walkway.

I stood alone in the downpour, letting the icy rain soak through my entire body. For half an hour, I remained there in the bitter wind and cold rain, drenched to the bone, the chill cutting deep into my marrow.

The night I landed in Italy, my fever spiked to over 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

The old frostbite from the mountains, the freshly healed knife wound on my arm, the bruises still lingering on my ankle. All my old and new injuries flared up at once. My body burned with fever yet trembled with bone-deep cold.

I lay alone in a rented room in a foreign land, enduring the high fever, the searing pain, the weight of every wound across my body.

Thousands of miles away, Caspian never sent a single message, offering no words of concern or even the slightest inquiry. There was no worry in his heart, no sense of guilt, and no trace of reluctance.

The moment the plane lifted into the sky and crossed the border, I calmly deleted every photo from my album, blocked every contact, and severed every thread that had tied us together.

From that day forward, I had nothing more to do with Caspian.