He Forgot My Name, I Left

Chapter 4

Behind me came Serena's silvery, coquettish laugh.

"Caspian, I don't compete with others for these things. Whatever I want, you'll prepare the best for me anyway."

Her tone dripped with lofty condescension.

"Let some other poor soul who has no one to dote on her have this dress."

Even after being slighted, Caspian showed no anger. His tone remained gentle.

"As long as you're happy."

I returned to the apartment I shared with Caspian, intending to quietly pack up the rest of my personal belongings and put the past behind me for good.

But the moment I pushed open the door, an unwelcome visitor had been waiting for me.

At my dedicated desk, the worktable where I kept restoration drafts and antiquities research materials, Serena sat calmly.

Without a trace of guilt, her fingertips lightly traced over the international cross-disciplinary antiquities curation proposal I had spent years of my life on, painstaking effort day and night, as she photographed it.

This was the result of countless sleepless nights, endless revisions and rewrites, cross-checking historical sources, refining layouts.

I had staked my entire career in antiquities restoration on this original proposal to break into the Valorian International Art Exhibition. It was all the hope I had left after years of preparation, my all-or-nothing gamble.

My chest tightened, and I rushed forward to snatch the draft from the table.

"That's mine. Give it back."

As we struggled, the sound of the door opening came from the entryway. Caspian had returned.

He had just finished the International Antiquities Summit, still carrying that air of aloof refinement, his eyes holding their usual distant indifference.

But the first thing he registered upon entering the room wasn't the frantic struggle, not my reddened eyes taut with tension, and certainly not the life's work about to be stolen from me.

All he saw was Serena, pulled slightly backward in the tussle, seemingly startled.

Without waiting for a single word of explanation from me, without listening to the slightest bit of truth, he had already assumed I was making trouble without reason, deliberately bullying her.

"Evelyn, are you ever going to stop? First you tried to get my attention by threatening to break up, and now you want to compete for my affection by hurting Serena?"

Serena seized the moment to fan the flames.

"Caspian, it's not what you think! Evelyn didn't mean to..."

In an instant, Caspian joined her in trying to wrest away my life's work.

In the chaos of our struggle, he grabbed a sharp metal restoration paperweight from the desk and swung it toward me.

The cold, hard edge scraped viciously across my forearm, instantly tearing open a deep gash.

Warm blood snaked down my arm, soaking through my sleeve, dripping onto the white draft paper below and blooming into large, glaring patches of red.

Yet he wouldn't spare me even a sidelong glance as I bled.

His first instinct was to shield Serena, bending down to ask in a soft voice whether she had been accidentally hurt, whether she had been frightened in the slightest. His tone was tender, filled with a patience and favoritism I had never received.

Serena cried out in alarm.

"Evelyn, your arm is bleeding!"

But before the pain could fully register, Caspian's rebuke came first.

"Evelyn, get out. Serena can't stand the sight of blood. Don't let her see your arm."

I lowered my eyes to the blood continuously seeping from my wound. The ache in my chest cut deeper than the injury itself.

There was no point in saying more. My heart had turned to ice.

I silently gathered the only two things I had left: a necklace with a crescent-shaped pendant and an expired apartment access card.

From that moment, I moved out of the place that had held all my humble, foolish hopes.

Afterward, I severed every professional connection, exhibition opportunity, and network contact I had gained through Caspian's resources. I donated every cent of related income, without keeping a single dollar, to the Missing Children Recovery Foundation.

When the director met with me, she was nearly incoherent with gratitude, constantly showing me photographs of rescued children.

"Ms. Vance, this money will help save so many more children from the clutches of human traffickers!"

I stood quietly to the side, my gaze lingering on the photographs of those rescued children, lost in thought for a long time.

No one knew that Caspian and I had once been trapped in that same darkness.

As children, we were abducted together. We escaped that hellish den in desperation, only to become hopelessly lost in the endless mountains with no path forward and no one to turn to.

In that freezing, starving dead end, young Caspian gave me the last few wild berries he had painstakingly gathered, forcing himself to survive by chewing on dirt and wild grass.

But we were too small, too powerless. In the end, we couldn't escape. We were captured again.

In that dim, cramped cell, the trafficker swung a rusted iron rod down with brutal force. The sharp whistle of air carried violence straight toward us. I trembled uncontrollably, screaming in terror, and it was little Caspian who threw himself over me without hesitation, shielding me with his body.

The cold, coarse iron rod struck his thin back again and again. He bit down hard, refusing to make a sound, protecting me beneath him as searing pain engulfed his small frame. His muffled groans dissolved into the damp, oppressive air.

The thick stench of blood spread through the room. His body was covered in wounds, his life hanging by a thread, yet he still raised a trembling hand to gently pat my back in comfort.

When the traffickers finally passed out drunk in the dead of night, I summoned every ounce of strength I had left, crawling through a filthy, narrow gap, climbing over mountains and running on foot until I made it out of those deep hills to call for help.

The day the rescue team arrived, the Sterling family rushed in to take the gravely injured, unconscious Caspian away.

In the chaos and haste, I stood in a corner of the crowd, unable to say a single goodbye, a single word of farewell.

Before he lost consciousness, with his last breath, he had made me a promise: when he grew up, he would protect me, that we would be together for life. That vow became my sole obsession for the next decade and more, the only thing that kept me going through hardship, the only reason I fought so hard to reach him.

I studied relentlessly, devoted myself to antiquities restoration, climbed step by step toward the lofty Caspian, doing everything I could to stand beside him, to accompany him, to accommodate him, to love him.

It turned out that from beginning to end, it had all been a long, lonely performance with only me on stage.

That desperate salvation, that promise made in despair, and only I had carved it into my bones.

Caspian had long since forgotten.

"Good people will be rewarded, Ms. Vance."

The director's words echoed in my ears for a long time.

Would good people truly be rewarded?

Then why had fate punished me this way?

Why was it that Caspian, time and again, couldn't remember my face? Even after 3 years together, he still couldn't tell me apart from anyone else.

After Caspian returned to being single, speculation about him and Serena, a pair of siblings with no blood relation, sparked waves of romance rumors online. The app notifications never tired of pushing them my way.

In media photos, the two of them were constantly seen together at various venues, envied like a golden couple.

I had no desire to follow the lives of people who had long since left my world.

But malice never let me go.

In just a few short days, Serena took my proposal, copied almost word for word with only minor embellishments, and publicly claimed it as her own original concept. Riding the wave of acclaim, she harvested praise from the industry and firmly claimed the stage that should have been mine.

And Caspian? He never questioned the truth, never investigated the facts, never believed a single word of my defense.

He stormed into the cramped short-term rental I was living in, flanked by a team of black-clad security, and without a word of warning, shoved me hard against the cold wall.

The dull pain of my back slamming into the wall spread through my entire body. All that remained in his eyes was icy reproach and disgust.

"Evelyn, your pettiness knows no bounds. You're jealous of Serena's talent, so you target her at every turn, deliberately slandering her. Just how long are you going to keep this up?"

Every word struck like a blade, sealing off any chance I had to defend myself, letting the false accusations hang over me, leaving me unable to clear my name.