Chapter 2: The Wedding InvitationWhen Waiting Ended

Back at the apartment we used to rent, Silas helped me make the bed.

As he worked, I caught sight of the tattoo on the inside of his arm—a string of numbers I had never seen before.

His phone was lying on the table. I woke the screen, swiped past the wallpaper of him kissing Seraphina on the beach, and entered those numbers.

The phone unlocked.

Silas walked out of the room, his brow immediately furrowing with suspicion. "Were you looking through my phone?"

I lowered my eyes and quietly said, "We're breaking up."

The power suddenly went out, plunging the apartment into darkness.

"Breaking up?" Silas asked in disbelief. "Because of Seraphina? I already told you, she's just a business partner. Everything between us is strictly business. I'm doing this for my career—for our future. You've always been so understanding. Don't do this."

I stared into the darkness, my voice barely above a whisper. "Silas, I'm not going to be the other woman."

He froze.

"The other woman?" he shot back angrily. "How is that even the same thing?"

A custom ringtone cut him off.

He answered the call and walked toward the door as he listened. All he had time to say was, "Wait for me to come back," before hurrying out.

He forgot I had night blindness. In the dark, I was practically blind.

I sat there for a long time before fumbling around until I found my phone.

The first thing I saw was Seraphina's latest social media post. "What do you all think? Would Silas make a good husband?"

The photo showed Silas setting dishes and desserts on a dining table. It looked so warm. So bright.

My stomach lurched, and I could not stop retching.

After I got my plane ticket, I had been so excited to see him that I had forgotten to eat.

Clutching my aching stomach, I crouched down and reached for the lamp socket in the corner.

It was empty.

Back then, Silas had installed little night-lights in every corner of our apartment. Later, I took them with me, and they had kept me company through countless nights while we were living apart.

Now I had finally come to his city. Yet there was still a distance between us that I could not cross.

…

The next day, Seraphina invited me to a coffee shop.

With a grin, she said, "Silas always tells me how much you helped him back in college. I wanted to thank you in person."

Distracted, I nodded while scrolling through the project details in my inbox.

In the middle of incessant chatting, Seraphina answered a phone call. "Next month's blind boxes? Just pick whichever collections are the hottest right now."

I paused. "You like blind boxes?"

"I'm helping Silas with them," she said. "He said he owes someone a small favor."

So that was it.

About a year ago, the blind boxes Silas sent me had changed from the characters I loved to whatever franchise was trending.

It turned out he had not been picking them himself.

I had believed those monthly packages were proof that he was doing everything he could to stay by my side.

But to him, he had only been repaying a favor.

I let out a bitter laugh.

Tilting her head, Seraphina pulled a wedding invitation from her purse and slid it across the table. "Silas asked me to give this to you myself. You have to come tomorrow."

On the invitation, the bride and groom's names were printed side by side. It looked exactly like the wedding invitation I had imagined countless times.

Only one thing was different. My name appeared below them, listed among the ordinary guests.

I accepted the invitation.

At the same moment, a notification popped up in my inbox. "It's confirmed that you'll be in charge of this project."

After parting ways with Seraphina, I stopped by the hamburger shop downstairs and ordered a hamburger.

The fried chicken cutlet in the bowl was much bigger than I remembered. But I couldn't taste anything.

The owner was counting the register when she looked up and gasped. "It's you!"

"You remember me?"

She clapped her hands and laughed.

"Of course I do! Back then, your boyfriend had to scan three different payment apps just to scrape together enough for a hamburger. Then he begged me to use what little he had left to buy half a chicken cutlet because you'd worked all day and needed something nourishing. That silly boy. Why didn't you two come together?"

That day, Silas had only smiled as he watched me eat. He kept saying he wasn't hungry.

Then, as he watched me, his eyes gradually turned red. In a trembling voice, he murmured, "I'm going to marry you someday."

Thinking of the wedding invitation in my bag, I shook my head. "He's getting married. And I'm leaving too."