- 11.
That night, it rained heavily.
Blake stayed kneeling at the door; I ignored him.
The next day, he found a rag and a bucket from somewhere and began to wipe the words off the wall, bit by bit.
One villager, seeing how handsome he was, mistakenly thought he was one of the “clients” and kindly told him about my situation.
526 PM & d
<
One villager, seeing how handsome he was, mistakenly thought he was one of the “clients” and kindly told him about my situation
Blake immediately knelt, slapping himself while explaining the entire backstory, begging the person not to misunderstand me
That villager got their fill of the gossip. In less than half a day, the entire village came.
Blake’s face was swollen, but he kept trying to explain, “It’s all my fault, Fruined Harper. I’m not human..”
The elderly neighbor who had thrown rotten vegetables and smelly eggs at me yesterday spat at him with hatred. “Bah! I knew that child wasn’t like that. You really deserve to diel”
The villagers surrounded Blake, cursing nonstop, but he silently picked up the ray and continued wiping the words.
By afternoon, many people had heard about it and come. Some influencers even staked out the place and started live streaming
Whenever the camera focused on him, Blake would mechanically and emptily repeat, “I’m sorry, Harper. I deserve this.”
The Blake family also arrived.
This was my first time seeing Blake’s real parents. Both looked like people accustomed to privilege and high positions.
Blake’s father, his face cold, threw a check at me. “Just name your price, and we’ll pay it, if you let my son go”
I picked up the check from the ground, my face twisted, and asked him, “How much money will it take to bring my grandma back to life?”
He instantly choked.
Irelentlessly pressed him, “Is your money omnipotent? If it is, then please bring my grandma back to life! Speak up!”
Blake’s mother wore a guilty smile and tried to console me, but I cursed her out and shut her down.
No matter how much the Blake family tried to persuade him, Blake refused to leave, stubbornly clinging to the wall, scrubbing at the paint.
The neighbor lady couldn’t stand it anymore and came to help me with Grandma Rose’s funeral arrangements.
When Grandma Rose’s coffin was carried out, Blake stood silently at the very back, slowly kneeling and kowtowing heavily.
But I didn’t want him to taint Grandma Rose’s path to the afterlife, so I asked others to move him further away.
Blake was on the verge of collapse, his voice rough and hoarse. “Harper, do you hate me that much?”
Hearing this, I sharply turned my head, raising my voice to a piercing pitch, “I told you! I will never forgive you! Not until my dying breatht
- 12.
That night, after the funeral, I had a dream.
In the dream, Grandma Rose was still a wrinkled old lady, grinning with her missing teeth, pretending to be serious as she told me, “If you throw your whole life away for someone like that, Grandma will be angry, you know!”
“And when you come down, Grandma won’t see you!”
I cried and called her name, but I embraced empty air and woke up with a start.
I was afraid Grandma Rose would make good on her word, so I put away the cleaver I had already sharpened.
But Blake still wouldn’t let me go.
Every day, he stood at my door like a persistent dog, obsessively scrubbing at the paint.
But the troublemakers had intended to humiliate me, using paint that was hard to remove. How could it possibly be scrubbed off7
Without my permission, Blake didn’t dare do anything to that wall.
8:26 PM d d
<
Every day, he’d struggle with himself, chipping away at the wall little by little.
Another week passed, and I had an episode without warning.
When the ambulance arrived, Blake pressed against the ambulance door, shouting, “Let me in! I’m her fiancé!!”
Severe physical symptoms made me unable to speak. I could only weakly shake my head.
The nurse immediately closed the door.
Hospital reports showed that my condition had worsened, and I was pregnant.
Hearing this terrible news, my pupils constricted, and I screamed in terror, forcing out a few words from my throat:
“No… No…”
“Get… get rid of it…”
I stayed in the hospital, waiting for surgery to be scheduled.
Blake somehow got news of my pregnancy.
He went crazy, demanding a paternity test for the baby in my belly.
He knelt before me, slamming his head against the floor. “Please, Harper, give our child a chance, okay?”
“No matter how much you hate me, the baby is innocent!”
I gave a bitter smile. “Blake, how are you so sure this child is yours?”
“How many ‘brothers‘ in your group chat got on that ‘bus‘? Have you forgotten?”
His Adam’s apple moved with difficulty. The grinding of these past few days had left him almost unrecognizable, looking like a walking skeleton. He stared into my eyes, his lips trembling. “I don’t care, really. No matter whose child it is, I’ll raise them as my own. I’ll raise them
well…”
“But I care,” I pressed closer, my voice filled with ten thousand degrees of hatred, each word a dagger to his heart. “The thought that the child in my belly might be yours… I want to tear open my own stomach with my bare hands and feed it to the dogs!”
“If I weren’t afraid Grandma Rose would be angry with me in the afterlife, I would have sliced you into a thousand pieces with my own hands
long ago!”
“Do you still naively think that Scarlett Zhao is the one I hate most? How many more times do I have to tell you, the person I hate most is YOU!”
“Scarlett Zhao claiming credit is detestable, but you are the most detestable person!”
“You personally fed me drugs, giving those men the chance to humiliate me!”
“You personally took those photos and videos, which Scarlett Zhao then posted online, ultimately causing my grandma’s heart attack!”
“When I was in agonizing pain from my episode, you personally told Scarlett Zhao that I had been used by so many people and wasn’t worthy of being the Blake family’s young mistress. Have you forgotten all that?”
It was over. Everything was completely over.
Only then did Blake realize that I knew everything.
He had always deluded himself, thinking I was just angry about the photos and videos. He was blindly optimistic, believing that if he sincerely apologized, I would eventually soften and forgive him.
But he never expected that I had seen those disgusting chat logs.
Every one of his feigned heartless remarks, I had read clearly, word for word. I had even heard him and Scarlett Zhao’s wild night.
<
Every one of his feigned heartless remarks, I had read clearly, word for word. I had even heard him and Scarlett Zhao’s wild night.
For the first time, he put himself in my shoes and thought from my perspective. If he had gone through all this, he couldn’t even imagine how desperate hell would be.
Blake silently left the hospital, and I got the surgery I wanted.
As I was wheeled out of the operating room, I felt as if that messy, dirty past, like that blurred mass of blood and flesh, had left my body.
The books say the human body goes through a full cycle approximately every 23 days.
After these 23 days, would I be a brand new me?
After I was discharged, I received news that Blake had turned himself in. He requested the judge impose a harsh sentence and was ultimately sentenced to ten years.
No matter how much the Blake family tried to persuade him, he was determined to serve out his full ten–year sentence.
Sawyer Hayes repeatedly asked to see me, but I always refused.
It wasn’t until six months later, when I heard my stepfather had been killed in a drunken brawl, that I gleefully delivered the good news to Sawyer.
Sawyer Hayes had almost become a different person. He used to be gentle and charming, but now he had a dark, hardened edge to him. It seemed life in prison wasn’t easy.
He stared at me for a long time, then slowly, a tear fell:
“When you were little, you always said that even if the whole world abandoned you, I would be your last refuge.”
“I know I’m disgusting, and filthy, to have had those kinds of thoughts about my step–sister, who I grew up with.”
“So I wanted to make you ‘dirty‘… I knew Blake was a jerk, and I thought if you suffered enough, endured enough torment outside, you’d realize I was the one who loved you most, and you’d eventually come back to me…”
My stomach churned without warning. My gaze was cold, devoid of any warmth, as I looked at him:
“You know what? You look just like your dad now.”
Sawyer swayed, as if he had heard the most vicious words in the world.
He knew how much I despised that man, and now, he knew how much I despised him.
Sawyer’s last shred of hope crumbled. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably:
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I loved you the most, yet I hurt you the deepest…”
Ignoring his breakdown and despair, I turned and left, ending that visit.
There wouldn’t be another one.
Blake and Sawyer were like tumors that had grown on me. Although the process of cutting out the flesh to remove the tumors was agonizing, I believed that everything would grow anew.
I returned to Grandma Rose’s old house, tore down that old, crumbling wall, and rebuilt a sturdy boundary with steel and cement.
Inside the new wall, I replanted a patch of bougainvillea,
I believed that when spring came next year, this place would once again become a pink flower wall.
Flowers would bloom again, and people could be reborn.
