But it was far too late for excuses now.

After a long time, I reluctantly set down the blood-stained down jacket resting in my arms.

With a soft "thud," a savings passbook slipped out from one of the pockets and tumbled onto the floor.

After staring blankly at it for a moment, I recovered my senses and picked it up. Opening the booklet, my pupils violently contracted in absolute shock.

Beginning from four years ago, deposits of several thousand dollars had been systematically made into the account every single month.

The very last deposit entry was dated exactly three days ago—the literal morning of the day my mother met her end.

A small index card was taped onto the back of the previous page, carrying my mother's familiar handwriting—

"Welcome home. Mom will support you, let's live a good life together."

A sudden wave of intense heat surged into my parched eyes, and the tears burst through the floodgates once more.

My internal organs felt completely crushed by the weight of my own self-blame, making even the act of drawing breath an unendurable struggle. "Mom... Clara is home..."

If the heavens could truly hear a person's desperate cries of repentance, I possessed thousands of phrases of absolute regret, wishing with everything I had that all of this was merely a dream.

Wishing that when the dream shattered, my mother would still be by my side, I wouldn't be afflicted with ALS, and Ethan would remain nothing more than that unreachable high school boy...

This night was destined to be pure torture.

Clutching her clothes tightly to my chest, I sat entirely alone until the first light of dawn broke through the windows.

"Bong—"

The exact moment the clock struck eight in the morning, I finally stood up, washed my face, and stepped out the door, hailing a taxi to return to the villa I shared with Ethan.

Following three consecutive days of heavy blizzards, a thick, pristine blanket of snow had accumulated outside the residence, entirely untouched by human steps.

Trudging through the snow, I pushed the heavy front door open, and a wave of absolute desolation rushed out to greet me.

Stepping into the bedroom, it felt as though the faint, lingering scent of his mint-flavored cigarettes still hovered in the air.

The stomach medication I had neatly prepared for Ethan on the nightstand sat completely pristine and untouched, just as it always had. Inside the closet, our clothes were explicitly separated into two distinct sides.

A lump caught painfully in my throat.

Despite being husband and wife, and despite having known the closest physical intimacy, I had fundamentally never managed to step a single inch into Ethan's heart from the very beginning to the absolute end.

How incredibly pathetic.

I began packing my belongings. It wasn't until I had finished organizing everything that I realized that after spending four years living in this house, everything I owned could easily fit into a single suitcase.

Glancing around the space one last time, I felt an absolute lack of belonging.

Or perhaps, this place had never belonged to me to begin with...

Shutting the door behind me, I dragged my suitcase away.

Turning back to take one final look at the property, the single set of tracks I had carved into the pristine white snow felt exceptionally piercing to my heart. Forcing myself to recover from the ache, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number etched indelibly into my mind.

"Ring—Ring—"

To my surprise, the call was accepted after a single ring. "What is it?"

The man's tone remained as flat and clinical as ever, but I no longer cared. I bypassed any pleasantries, cutting straight to the chase: "Meet me at the entrance of the civil affairs bureau at ten o'clock this morning."

An absolute, deathly silence filled the line.

After a long pause, Ethan's voice finally echoed back, "We will talk about this after you are discharged from the hospital."

Hearing his response, a mocking smile touched my lips.

He actually believed I was still confined to a hospital bed?

Look at how explicitly obvious this man made his complete lack of love for me.

"Ethan, I don't want to wait anymore." Calling him by his full name for the very first time in my life, I found that my own voice sounded entirely foreign to my ears. "My mother has passed away. Her final wish was for us to get a divorce."

Chapter 11

The moment the words left my lips, I disconnected the call immediately.

Throughout ten long years, this was the very first time I had ever proactively hung up on Ethan.

A few minutes later, Ethan uncharacteristically fired off a text message demanding answers: [Where on earth are you right now?]

Throwing a flat glance at the screen, I locked the device, extinguishing the light.

A heart that had already been completely hollowed out could never again summon its former passion and hope.

Dragging my suitcase forward, I slowly allowed myself to dissolve into the bustling, noisy crowd of pedestrians.

The heavy blizzards that had raged for days had finally drawn to a halt.

Standing at the intersection, I tilted my head back to look up at the rare, warm winter sunshine.

When I crossed paths with Ethan four years ago, it had been a beautiful, clear winter day just like this one. Tragically, I had no concept back then that sometimes, obtaining the object of your desire is the very thing that will tear your soul apart...

The bitter ache twisting within my chest caused a stinging pressure to build behind my eyes, forcing me to take a deep, stabilizing breath to suppress it.

Right then, a horrific, desperate shriek erupted from the opposite side of the roadway: "Come back here, Leo—!"

I snapped my head up.

A woman stood across the street, her face completely masked in sheer terror, her panicked gaze locked onto a little boy who was standing right in the middle of the active lanes, attempting to retrieve a stray balloon.

Accompanied by the deafening blare of a horn, the boy lifted his head in innocent confusion, staring directly at a sedan speeding toward him.

"Danger!"

Before my brain could even process the threat, my body had already reacted instinctively, sprinting forward and violently shoving the little boy out of harm's way.

"Bang—!"

A massive, thunderous impact echoed down the street, tearing at the hearts of every screaming pedestrian as they witnessed the fragile, emaciated frame being launched through the air by the force of the collision!

As my body flipped through the sky, it felt as though every internal organ was being ground into dust. Following a single flash of blinding, agonizing pain, my consciousness slipped away entirely, and my remaining awareness began to play back the brief history of my short life.

The balloon drifted higher and higher into the sky before my eyes. Lost in a daze, I mistakenly envisioned my mother's silhouette emerging from the clouds.

Her warm, maternal gaze felt like a gentle sun, dispelling the freezing chill locked within my marrow. Marshalling every ounce of strength left in my fading body, I forced my blood-stained hand upward. "Mom... have you come to bring me home..."

"I really wanted to live a good life, but I failed to listen to you this time... Can you please... not be angry with me..."

"Thud!"

The fragile body slammed onto the hard asphalt, and a pool of crimson began to spread rapidly beneath the silhouette.

...

At eleven o'clock that morning, outside the entrance of the civil affairs bureau.

Sitting inside his parked vehicle, Ethan checked his wristwatch for the seventh time.

Clara still hadn't arrived, and she wasn't accepting his calls. A thread of ice sliced through the irritation that had plagued his mind ever since her phone call.

Just as he ignited the engine, preparing to drive away, his phone vibrated.

Caller ID: Clara.

Ethan accepted the call immediately, his thin lips pressing into a tight line, though his tone carried a raw trace of emotion he failed to comprehend himself: "Clara, if you don't want to go through with the divorce, just state it plainly. Stop playing pathetic games with me."

To his shock, the voice that echoed back through the line was Julian's raspy, ragged baritone.

"Clara was involved in a severe vehicular collision. She is currently in critical condition. Get yourself to the emergency trauma bay of the First Hospital immediately."

In a fraction of a second, a sensation of terrifying freefall, accompanied by a sharp, piercing ache, completely wrapped around Ethan's heart.

A car crash? Critical condition?

He had never associated such horrific terms with the concept of Clara.

By the time his conscious mind recovered from the shock, Ethan had already arrived at the hospital, standing directly outside the doors of the emergency trauma bay.

Catching sight of Julian standing guard near the entrance, his expression darkened instantly. "Since you are already standing watch here, what on earth was the point of calling me?"