4:25 am D
Chapter 8
I was far too calm.I was so calm that it sent a chill down people’s spines.
Ken’s heart thumped and he was struggling to breathe.
For the first time,he had a terrifying sense of fear that he couldn’t control me.
Hazel,sensing her hint had failed and noticing his change in expression,suddenly looked gloomy.
She bit her lip and, in one breath,operated the cell phone she’d been clutching in her hand and sent the things she’d secretly prepared earlier.
In the airport terminal,under soft lighting and surrounded by a steady stream of people,l sat by the window at the boarding gate,completely weighed down by emotion.
I had just walked away from seven years of a romantic relationship,I could not ask as if I was completely unaffected by it.
At this moment,the phone lit up with a“ding“.
I instinctively opened the message.It was from Hazel.
She sent a blurry photo that was so low–resolution that it was nearly impossible to see clearly.However,I could still make out a girl in a blue–and–white school uniform,her back to the camera,hair tied in a high ponytail.
She had added a note. [This is me and Ken back in our youth.]
Then more photos followed,one after another.
It was like she had been waiting for this moment,meticulously organizing them in advance,just to shove them in my face..
Aside from that first high school photo,the rest were from a recent class reunion.
In one,they were in the corner of a KTV bar. They were playing“Truth or Dare“. Hazel sat on Ken’s lap,a bottle of alcohol tipped over on the floor and Ken’s hand was firmly placed around her
waist.
One photo even showed the two of them with their lips lightly touching in a dim light,hazy atmosphere. The kind of intimate tension that felt suffocating.
Hazel sent her last message. [You’d better really walk away from Ken for good.Clinging on will get you nowhere. Besides,our story began long before you ever showed up.]
The word “began “was used as if she wanted to declare that I was just an intruder who barged into their destiny.
The screen glowed faintly in my hand as I stared at it for a long time,expressionlessly.
Hazel’s smile in the photos was wild and unrestrained. Ken’s expression was harder to read. It was between drunkenness and willingness.
I scrolled through the photos again and again,from beginning to end,then back again.
A sharp,tearing pain sliced through my mind.I had loved Ken fiercely.
He made me chicken soup late at night when I was sick,even though he hated entering the kitchen,but he still spent an hour in there just for me.
He once accompanied me to midnight indie films just because I said I liked the director’s
cinematography
Chapter 8
4:25 am DDDD
cinematography.
Once, when I cried from ear pressure during a flight while on my period,he didn’t hesitate to pull me into his arms and told me to listen to his heartbeat to calm down.
When I made a huge mistake at work, he took full responsibility,then showed up at my place in the middle of the night to comfort me because he was afraid I’d be too anxious to sleep.
He was the one who carved a deep love into me with his actions,time and time again.
He did not just give me coffee or hold my hand while we were walking, but he had spent years accompanying me to grow and share my hardship.
However,all of those beautiful memories belonged to the past because he had changed.
The man he was now was the man who would dump soup on my head for someone else. He’d ignore my fear when I was being harassed. He’d slap me across the face in front of everyone without a second thought. He didn’t even remember that I was allergic to strawberries.
It was not because he did not know, or he never loved me, but it was because he did not love me
anymore.
Although my heart was empty,strangely, I felt calm.
All my anger,my pain and my grief were all completely extinguished by these photos now because I finally realized that the reason I hurt so badly wasn’t because he didn’t love me,but because I kept thinking he still did.
I inhaled deeply,held my phone in my palm and blocked Hazel without a flicker of hesitation.
Then,I stood up,dragged my suitcase behind me and walked toward the boarding gate.
Mieri Left.
