Hua's POV
Three Months, Two Weeks, and Four Days Later.
Time goes by... Here's a little update.
Time, in a new place, is measured in different units. Not in board meetings or quarterly reports, but in the number of steps from the tiny, blue-painted door of my apartment to the bakery on the corner where the croissants are still warm at seven-fifteen.
In the specific slant of afternoon light that paints a perfect golden rectangle on the worn floorboards of the shop where I work. In the number of pages read during the quiet hour before anyone else arrives.
My new world is built on these small, solid metrics.
I live in a city where the ocean is a constant, salt-scrubbed presence, not a view from a hotel suite. My apartment is on the third floor, up a narrow staircase that smells of lemon polish and the downstairs neighbor's cat.
It has one room, really, with a bed that folds into a couch, a galley kitchen the size of a closet, and a large window that looks out over a jumble of terracotta rooftops to a slice of steel-blue sea.
It is sparse. A single bookshelf made of cinderblocks and planks holds my books—all bought here, none brought from before. A spider plant thrives on the windowsill. A second-hand armchair, upholstered in faded mustard yellow, sits in the patch of morning sun. It is peaceful. It is mine. No one else's name is on the lease.
My job is at a place called The Marbled Page, a bookstore that doubles as a cafe. It is owned by Elara, a woman in her sixties with ink-stained fingers and a laugh that sounds like stones tumbling in a creek. I work the morning shift.
I learned to make a proper cappuccino, the foam like wet sand. I learned the rhythm of the shop—the postman's arrival at nine, the flush of students after ten, the elderly Mr. Desmond who comes at eleven sharp for his pot of Earl Grey and the new history biography.
One Tuesday,
I was re-shelving travel memoirs.
When a lanky man with kind eyes and paint under his fingernails—Feng, from the studio gallery down the street—asked me for a recommendation on books about Japanese woodblock prints.
I found him two. He came back the next week to tell me he'd loved them. He brought me a single sunflower. It was not a grand gesture. It was a simple, sun-yellow thing. I put it in a jam jar on the counter.
I am also taking a class!
Not at a prestigious university, but at the community center. "Foundations of Small Business Management."
My textbook is dog-eared, filled with notes in the margins in my own handwriting. Ideas. On Thursday evenings, I sit in a fluorescent-lit room with a retired accountant, a woman who wants to open a dog-grooming salon, and a somber young man with a brilliant idea for sustainable sneakers. We are all becoming something.
This morning,
before my shift, I caught my reflection in the spotted mirror above my tiny sink. I was tying my hair back, a simple ponytail. A strand escaped. I looked at my own eyes. There were faint shadows still, the ghosts of a different life. But my jaw was set not in defiance, but in quiet focus.
And when Feng had made a joke about the terrible coffee at the gallery yesterday, I had laughed—a real, unguarded sound that had startled me with its ease.
I see it now.
Not a transformation, but a slow, deliberate emergence.
Like a sculpture being revealed from a block of stone, chip by careful chip.
I am not who I was in the gleaming, oppressive city. I am not the shattered woman in the taxi.
I am becoming. The hard seed of resolve I planted in my own chest has put down roots, and something green and resilient is pushing toward the sun.
I smile at my reflection. It is a small, private smile. A little weary, but genuine.
It belongs to me.
Yichen's POV
Meanwhile.
In a tower of glass and steel, in an office so silent it hums, I sit at a desk the size of a boat.
I have won.
The boardroom table is now my table.
The chair, higher-backed and colder than the others, is my chair. The view—a ruthless panorama of the city's financial district—is my view. I moved with a surgical precision that left my father observing from the sidelines with an expression of cool, analytical approval.
Yiran has been "promoted" to head the logistical operations branch in Hong Kong. It is a glittering exile, the farest palace for a disgraced prince. The message is clear, and the company buzzes with it: Yichen Liang is no longer one of the heirs. He is the sovereign.
I am sharper. Colder. My decisions are rendered with an efficiency that borders on cruelty. Sentiment is a line item I have zeroed out. I work eighteen-hour days. I speak in data points and projections. I am winning.
But I am a cathedral of emptiness.
My penthouse is a minimalist exhibit, devoid of personal effects.
No photos.
No art that speaks of anything but investment value.
At night, I stand before the wall of windows, a glass of amber liquor untouched in my hand, and stare at the city's electric constellations. I don't see buildings or fortunes.
I see the exact spot on the horizon where a taxi melted into the traffic months ago. I see the door of a hotel suite closing. I see her face, not as it was in memory, but in that last moment of crystalline clarity—beautiful, devastated, and utterly gone from me.
The victory is ash in my mouth. The empire is a beautifully appointed tomb.
BUZZ BUZZ
My private phone chimes once, a soft, discrete tone reserved for a single stream of information.
I am in the middle of reviewing a brutal acquisition proposal. I set my pen down with precise care.
I pick up the phone.
I open the message.
The image loads.
And the world stops.
The high-stakes report, the cityscape, the weight of the empire—it all dissolves into a silent, roaring white noise.
There she is.
Not as a memory, haunted and sad. But as a present-tense fact. Alive. In sunlight.
Laughing.
My breath leaves my lungs in a slow, silent exhale.
I don't smile.
My face remains a sculpture of control.
But my eyes—my eyes devour the image.
They trace the familiar line of her jaw, the curve of her neck, the way her nose crinkles just so when she laughs. I see the coffee stain on her apron, the simple cloth, the messy, beautiful reality of a life without me.
It is a physical ache, sharper than any boardroom betrayal. It is the sight of water to a man dying of thirst in a desert of his own making.
My thumb moves, seemingly of its own volition, stroking the edge of the phone's screen, tracing the pixelated outline of her face. A gesture of unbearable tenderness, performed in a room designed for anything but.
I do not delete it.
I do not close the message.
I save the image.
I set the phone down next to the acquisition papers, the two realities side-by-side: the cold mechanics of my power, and the radiant, stolen proof of her peace.
I am keeping my promise. I am letting her be free.
But as I turn my gaze back to the financial projections, the numbers blurring before my eyes, the truth is a stone in my heart.
I am letting her go the way the ocean lets go of the shore—with a constant, pulling tide that promises, eventually, to return.
Hua's POV
The community center classroom smells of old radiators and whiteboard markers. It is my final presentation for the business course.
My project is not for a tech startup or a consulting firm. It is for a place called The Quiet Latte.
I stand before the small class, my notes trembling slightly in my hands. Feng came to support me, giving me an encouraging nod from the back.
"It would be a combination library and cafe," I explain, my voice gaining strength as I speak from the heart.
"But not like a chain.
A place with armchairs that sink.
A dedicated, soundproof nook for students.
A shelf for local authors. A community board.
Coffee sourced from a women's collective in Sumatra[1].
The pastries from the bakery down the street."
I show simple sketches I did myself—the layout, the light-filled reading room, the little courtyard garden.
"It wouldn't just sell books and coffee. It would sell time. Quiet. A sense of place."
The retired accountant asks about my financial projections. The dog-groomer cheers me on. The somber sneaker designer gives a rare smile. My teacher, Mrs. Chen, nods thoughtfully.
"It's a beautiful plan, Hua," Mrs. Chen says.
"The soul is there. Now it needs a foundation. Have you heard of the 'New Roots' grant? It's for exactly this kind of local, community-focused entrepreneurial venture. The application is rigorous, but the winning proposal receives full seed funding and a business mentor."
My heart leaps,
then sinks at the word 'rigorous'. But that night, in my yellow armchair with the spider plant watching over me, I fill out the application.
I pour every lesson from the class, every quiet observation from The Marbled Page, every dream of a peaceful corner of my own making, into the forms.
I attach my simple sketches. I write my business plan not in the cold language of conglomerates, but in the warm, clear language of someone who believes in the sanctuary of a good book and a perfect cup of coffee.
I submit it online. The confirmation email feels like sending a message in a bottle out to a vast, uncaring sea.
Weeks pass.
The rhythm of my life continues—croissants, sunlight, shelving books, Feng's sunflowers, evening walks by the water. I am building a life, brick by simple brick.
Then, this afternoon, as I am wiping down the tables at The Marbled Page, my phone buzzes with a new email. The sender is 'New Roots Foundation.'
The subject line: 'Application Decision.'
My hands go cold. I fumble the phone, nearly dropping it into a half-finished latte.
Elara looks over. "Everything alright, dear?"
"I… I don't know."
With a deep breath that does nothing to calm the storm in my chest, I open the email.
The first word is "Congratulations."
The world narrows to the glowing screen. I read it twice, three times.
I have been selected. One of five grantees nationwide. Full seed funding. A dedicated business mentor.
A paragraph of praise for the "clarity, heart, and viable community focus" of The Quiet Harbor proposal.
Tears, hot and sudden, prick my eyes. Not sad tears.
Tears of a profound, staggering validation. I built this idea myself, from the ground up. And someone, somewhere, saw its worth.
Then, at the bottom of the email, is the listed funding partner. The entity providing the capital. The name is not a bank I recognize.
It is a venture capital firm.
Keystone Ventures.
The name is solid, opaque, giving nothing away.
It sounds like the kind of outfit that moves in silent, powerful circles far from community centers and sun-drenched bookshops.
It sounds like a name he would know.
A coincidence. It has to be a coincidence.
But as I stand here in the quiet shop,
the smell of old paper and coffee grounds surrounding me, the hard-won peace inside me trembles at the edges.
I threw my bottle into the sea. And the message that has come back, the hand that is now reaching out to pull my dream to shore, bears a name that feels like an echo from a past life.
It feels like a key turning in a lock I thought I had thrown away.
The sun through the window is as bright as ever.
But the light, for a second, seems to hold a new, more complicated shadow. I am becoming. But the past, it seems, is not done with me yet.
To be continued...
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Author's Note ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ꒳ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾
If you've reached this chapter, then you've stayed with Hua through her breaking point, her silence, her running, and her rebuilding. And for that, I want to thank you — sincerely. (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟ
This chapter marks the end of the first tome, but not the end of the story. And I want to take a moment to talk to you, reader to reader, heart to heart.
This story was never meant to be only about romance.
Yes, it is about longing. About power. About attraction that feels like gravity and choices that feel like fate. But beneath that, it has always been a story about agency — about what it means to belong to yourself after being treated like something owned, leveraged, or decided for.
Hua's quiet life by the sea is not an escape fantasy. It's a reclamation.Every croissant, every shelf of books, every class taken under fluorescent lights is intentional. Healing, in this world, does not arrive as fireworks. It arrives as routine. As choosing yourself again and again when no one is watching.
And Yichen — standing at the top of the tower he fought so hard to reach — is not a villain here. He is proof of another truth: that winning the game does not mean winning peace. That power without connection is hollow. That love, once awakened, does not disappear just because it is denied.
Their distance is not a punishment. It's a consequence.
I wanted this ending to feel unsettling but earned. Hopeful, but not safe. Hua is closer to the sun — but the past still casts shadows. Yichen is keeping his promise — but desire does not obey promises.
And that final name, that final coincidence… it is not closure. It is a hinge.
Tome I is about becoming.
Thank you, always. °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
[1] *Island in Indonesia