Chapter 22
Harold’s POV
On Emily and Keith’s wedding day, I was there, giving $100,000 as a gift under a fake name.
It might’ve been self–deception, but I’d promised Emily I wouldn’t reappear and disrupt her life.
Truth be told, Emily and Keith’s wedding was far grander and more lavish than mine with Emily had been. Flowers, banquet, emcee…
Every detail showed how much Keith and his family valued Emily.
I can’t help but recall the day Emily and I got married five years ago.
The chaotic ceremony, the flower stands and gauze curtains tossed about by the sea breeze, my impatient relatives…
Only later did I come to realize that Emily had been enduring things since our wedding day.
She endured everything that could go wrong, endured my indifference and coldness, endured my parents‘ nitpicking.
Yes, even my own parents disapproved of Emily from the start. They always believed I should marry someone from a similar background- preferably well–educated with a promising future.
Sophia’s family background was too humble; though Emily came from a decent family, she was just a high school teacher, unworthy of me–once the hospital’s chief physician.
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I wasn’t thinking about any of that back then.
My thought was: since it wasn’t Sophia, marrying anyone would do, as long as it seemed suitable.
Besides, Emily loved me more intensely than anyone who’d ever claimed to love me. She made it painfully obvious.
It made someone like me–who considered himself exceptional–want to test how far she’d bend.
Can humans truly sustain lasting love for another? Even without reciprocation, even when neglected, overlooked, hurt.
I admit I’m flawed, full of shadows. But in this pragmatic world, my degrees, looks, and talents polished my veneer.
I expected this marriage to last three months at best. Yet Emily stubbornly stretched it into five whole years.
If I had realized my feelings sooner, stopped testing her limits of ‘loving me‘ again and again, perhaps we’d still be together now–maybe even ‘happily‘ together.
Emily was right: men are born with a white knight complex and a fixation on first loves.
When I learned Sophia–who’d dumped me after graduation to follow her professor abroad–was struggling in England, I felt satisfied.
I thought contemptuously: Serves her right. This is heaven’s punishment for leaving me.
So I couldn’t wait to fly to England to ‘give her a hand,‘ to prove her choice had been completely wrong.
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I thought Emily would put up with it like before.
I thought I could hide my affair with Sophia until I lost patience and called it off.
But I never expected Emily to come to England on our fifth wedding anniversary.
Seeing her soaked in the heavy rain, my heart ached for her.
Yet, I had no idea Emily had learned Spanish for me long ago.
That became the last straw that broke our marriage.
Turns out, Emily always kept a scorebook in her heart.
My coming home on time earned me a point; not eating the Herbal Congee she’d slaved over cost me one.
**
After five years of gains and losses, it still couldn’t withstand the zero I deliberately flunked.
Since the divorce, I’ve been in constant agony.
I belatedly realized that I’d grown accustomed to Emily permeating every aspect and corner of my life.
Staring at the unsent gifts in my shopping cart, gazing at those trinkets collected from all over displayed in the walk–in closet of our Edinburgh home, I felt regret for the first time.
Too late.
Emily is a decisive and resolute woman who never looks back once she
sets her mind.
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Day after day of inner torment brought insomnia, auditory hallucinations, and loss of appetite…
Seeing Keith and Emily standing together in Riverside Town shattered my mental defenses completely.
I finally understood I could never win Emily back.
After returning home, I chose to commit suicide.
Unfortunately, I was still saved by my parents and doctors.
Mom said, “For the past five years, Emily has been helping me take care of my parents. Now if I die, forcing them to bury their own child, isn’t that like pushing them to their deaths?”
Looking at Mom’s tears and Dad’s white hair, I said nothing.
Only much later did I say, “Leave, leave this city full of Emily.”
For many years after, alone, I still dreamed of Emily, that Emily who had only me in her heart and eyes.
I died in the tenth year after parting with Emily, late–stage cancer, incurable.
On the day of the funeral, my soul watched my emaciated body being pushed into the crematorium, watching my parents cry uncontrollably.
At the formal burial, I saw Emily.
She walked to my tombstone and offered me a white chrysanthemum.
I heard her say: “Harold, rest in peace.”
Thus, my restless soul scattered throughout the world and moved on to
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the next life.
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