The rain had stopped by morning, leaving behind a damp stillness that clung to the city like a sigh. Su Ruoyan woke to the faint grey light filtering through the curtains. The remnants of last night were still on the table: the cold plates, wilted roses, an untouched cake, and a ring glinting faintly in the half-light.
She stared at it for a long moment. The silence in the apartment felt heavy, pressing down like a weight she refused to carry any longer. Sleep had eluded her, and every time she closed her eyes, Lu Shenyang's face flashed before her. The man who had once promised her forever had now faded into indifference.
Rising quietly, her bare feet brushed against the cool marble floor. The dress she had worn the night before hung loosely on her frame, wrinkled and faintly smelling of wine and disappointment. As she walked past the mirror, her reflection caught her eye.
With undone hair, swollen eyes, and pale lips, she looked like a stranger. Yet, she held her gaze, confronting the exhaustion, the fragility, and the woman who had waited far too long for someone who never looked back.
Reflecting on this apartment, she realised that every corner and piece of furniture had been arranged to match Lu Shenyang's minimalist and cold aesthetic. She once believed it was an elegant touch, but now this arrangement feels completely empty.
She looked at her phone lying on the counter in silence and reached for it, intending to turn it off. But as her fingertips brushed the screen, it lit up. There was a message from him. Her heart skipped a beat before reason could intervene, and she opened it with trembling fingers.
"Don't wait up tonight. I'll be staying out."
Just that one line with no explanation, no apology. The timestamp on the message revealed it had arrived the night before at 11:45 p.m., while she was still sitting at the table, waiting for him to walk through the door.
Her throat tightened as she exhaled slowly, trying to steady her hands. She attempted to comfort herself, reminding herself, "This isn't new, Ruoyan. He has always sent these short and detached messages before." However, she could feel that this time it felt different. Perhaps it was because she no longer had the strength to lie to herself.
She scrolled further, half-hoping, half-dreading, and her eyes caught something else. Another notification was buried beneath the unread messages. It wasn't a text, but a location pin with no name, no words, just coordinates automatically shared from his phone.
She frowned, feeling momentarily confused. While it wasn't unusual for him to accidentally share his location, this pin had arrived around the same time as his earlier message, which felt strange to her.
Once again, comforting herself, she considered the possibility that the message was not meant for her, but for a business partner. Yet, the fact that the location was shared in the middle of the night troubled her. Why would anyone choose to disclose such information during those late hours rather than in the more reasonable afternoon or evening?
Her chest tightened once again. Her mind urged her to ignore it, to walk away, delete it, and pretend she hadn't seen it. However, her curiosity, fuelled by months of loneliness and quiet suspicion, wouldn't let her dismiss it. So, she opened the map.
She noticed the blinking red dot on the screen and realised that the pin location wasn't near his office or any of the restaurants he often visited to meet clients late at night. Instead, it was in an upscale district she had never seen him visit before, an area known for its exclusive hotels.
Her fingers went still, and for a moment, the world around her blurred.
She closed the phone and set it down on the counter with trembling hands. Once again, her mind tried to rationalise this as a coincidence, but the ache in her chest reminded her of all the late nights spent waiting, the evasive phone calls, and the distant looks he gave her whenever she attempted to talk to him. She had foolishly ignored all the signs time and time again, choosing to trust him until now, when everything inside her began to fracture.
She sat down slowly, the edge of the chair digging into her palms. The air around her felt thin and suffocating, and her heart kept pounding in an uneven rhythm, caught between disbelief and denial.
No, she didn't want to confront what this meant, and she refused to accept that the man she had given everything to had already given his heart to someone else. She wanted to believe that this was all a misunderstanding. Yet the evidence was right there, in the cold, blinking dot that wouldn't go away.
Her eyes burned, but she couldn't shed any tears as they had dried long before this moment.
She gathered all her strength to stand up and walked toward the window, where the clouds were parting and sunlight was spilling faintly through the grey morning sky. Her fingers clenched the curtain fabric as she questioned how everything had come to this moment.
There was a time when Lu Shenyang held her hand, promising to build their future together. She was his confidante and his home. However, somewhere along the way, that promise had grown cold, and now her presence felt like a burden he needed to tolerate instead of cherish.
Last night was supposed to be a celebration of their love, but now it has turned into a quiet funeral.