"That's right. Come visit if you have time. It's on me."

The air suddenly grew thin.

Rowan didn't want to stay any longer: "I have things to do, I'll be going."

Rowan stood up, and Claire’s voice, filled with disappointment, rang out.

"Rowan, if you're going to degrade yourself like this, how can you face Ezra in heaven? He died because of you, you know."

Her heart felt as if it had been pierced by a muffled blow.

Rowan clenched her fists until they bled; her calm eyes surged with pain.

Claire asked again: "I've wanted to ask you all these years—why did you only care about saving yourself and didn't help Ezra after the car accident?"

"Do you know that when Ezra was pulled out, he was still holding the position to protect you? How could you be so cold-blooded?"

Painful memories intertwined before Rowan’s eyes; her breathing became labored.

That day, after Ezra discovered she liked Caleb, he had urged her to be brave and face her true love.

Full of trepidation, she had gotten into Ezra’s car, and half an hour later, they were broadsided by a truck.

When she woke up in the emergency room, she was already on her way to the airport, forcibly sent away by her mother.

On that very day, her father had fallen from grace, and the auditors were already at her mother's company.

Her mother had cried and begged her to run far away and never come back.

By the time she landed and got her phone, the news arrived: Ezra had passed away, and her parents had committed suicide...

Chapter 3

Two gazes landed on Rowan like blades, the dense, suffocating pain feeling as if she were being carved piece by piece, one cut at a time.

How was she supposed to explain? Where would she even begin?

She looked at Caleb, who had Claire pulled into his embrace, and felt even more that there was no need to speak.

"The past is gone. If you hadn't brought it up, I would have forgotten it all."

Caleb looked up at her, his voice colder than the frost of December.

"Rowan, why wasn't it you who died back then?"

Rowan bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood.

Her throat felt as if she had swallowed a fishbone, raw and aching. "I've wondered that myself. Why don't you ask your brother—why did he save me in the first place?"

With those words, Rowan didn't look at them again and turned to walk out of the police station.

Beside her car in the parking lot, Rowan lit a cigarette.

She had only taken one drag when the downpour began, instantly soaking her through...

Rowan stood shivering in the torrential rain for half an hour before she managed to hail a cab back to The Summit.

Her apartment was a massive, three-hundred-square-meter flat.

The living room was terrifyingly empty, even the walls were painted black, and the lighting was dim.

Beyond a single sofa and a coffee table, there was hardly a sign of life.

It was eleven o'clock at night by the time Rowan finished her shower, and her phone was covered in countless red notification dots.

Opening it, she saw that the clarification statement she had posted had already set the internet ablaze.

Her statement read: [Caleb, Ezra, and I were just ordinary classmates. The diary was a work of fiction based on an archetypal male lead. Please stop speculating.]

It took a day to deactivate the account, so she could still receive messages.

Initially, the comments section had been filled with people regretting the loss of their favorite "ship," but soon, the comments were drowned out by scathing attacks.

[Rowan, how do you have the face to return to this country? You were the reason Ezra missed the critical window for treatment! You are a murderer.]

[Shameless to the core! I was her college classmate. She was a mistress for someone abroad, and now she’s back running a brothel!]

[Haven't you heard? Rowan was obsessed with Ezra. When he rejected her confession in the car, she grabbed the steering wheel, causing the accident!]

The rumors grew more and more outrageous.

Rowan didn't want to read any further, but then a familiar avatar popped up on her screen.

It was Caleb, with the fireworks as his display picture.

He wrote: [Do not let me see you spreading rumors again, or I will arrest you myself!]

Rowan’s heart skipped a beat as she expanded the comment Caleb had replied to.

[What are you talking about? Back then, Rowan was clearly in love with Caleb!]

So, that was what he was denying.

Rowan curled her pale lips in self-mockery.

She put down her phone, letting herself be engulfed by the endless darkness.

The neighbor’s renovation had been thundering for two months and had only just quieted down.

Rowan tossed and turned, unable to sleep, until she impulsively swallowed ten sleeping pills to induce drowsiness.

The doctor used to prescribe her a quarter of a pill a day.

But now, her dosage had increased to this level.

In the middle of the night, just as Rowan finally drifted off, the sharp, urgent sound of the doorbell rang out.

Frowning, she opened the door, and the delivery driver handed her a transparent plastic bag containing a box of condoms: "Hello, your delivery!"

Rowan said irritably, "You've got the wrong place."

The driver scratched his head, looking down to verify the order: "I'm so sorry, it's for the neighbor. I got them mixed up."

Just as she was about to close the door.

The neighbor’s door opened: "Give it to me."

Rowan froze.

She saw Caleb standing at the door, dressed in pajamas.

Caleb was actually the new neighbor who had moved in across the hall!

Their gazes locked instantly in the cold air.

Rowan’s mind went blank for a split second. Through the crack in the door, she saw the lush green plants on the balcony.

She saw the Crayon Shin-chan welcome mat at the door, and the meticulously prepared candlelight dinner on the table.

It was the image of a home she had once fantasized about.

A home for her and Caleb.

The delivery driver shoved the condoms into Caleb’s hand and sprinted off to catch his next order.

Rowan blurted out to break the silence: "Caleb, isn't the police station far from here? How did you end up living here?"

As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how inappropriate the question was.

Caleb wore an icy expression, ignoring her as he moved to close the door.

But the moment he turned, he paused and said coldly: "Rowan, I don't think we are on speaking terms."

"From now on, let's pretend we don't know each other."

A cold wind poured into Rowan’s chest, leaving it heavy and stagnant.

The next moment, Claire’s complaining voice drifted from the room opposite: "Caleb, I told you when we bought this place that living here wouldn't be convenient."

"Now look, it took half an hour just to get a delivery..."

The door was slammed shut by Caleb with a loud bang.

Rowan didn't need to think twice to know what would happen next.

Out of the four of them, two were able to be happy.

That was fine.

Chapter 4

She also turned around and closed her own door, picking up her phone to message her assistant about looking for a new apartment.

The assistant replied in shock.

[Ms. Rowan, didn't you say The Summit had the most beautiful snow views? Winter is almost here, why are you moving so suddenly?]

Why, indeed?

Rowan felt a tightness in her throat.

Perhaps it was because she didn't want to live here, didn't want to watch him marry another woman, have children, and complete every major milestone of life right here.

Rowan stood by the massive floor-to-ceiling window, watching the cold wind wailing outside.

The bare branches were being whipped back and forth.

She lowered her gaze and replied to her assistant.

[I suddenly realized, I don't look forward to the snow anymore.]

In the past, because Caleb liked snow, she had used the snowflake from Flowers in Fog as her avatar.

Back then, Caleb would tease her with a smile: "Rowan, I like snow, and your avatar is a snowflake. Do you think that after ten years, when no one wants us, we might reunite on a snowy night and finally be together?"

And so, she began to look forward to the snow every year.

But it didn't snow when she was working under the table abroad, and Riverside City hadn't seen snow for two years since she returned.

Perhaps it wouldn't snow this year either.

Because of the nature of her work, Rowan often stayed out late, so she almost never ran into Caleb.

A week later.

Rowan finished her work and was driving home when she suddenly received a call from the courier.