I followed behind, maintaining a distance of seven or eight steps—further away than when I had arrived.

When we reached the cemetery gate, his car had broken down.

He called for a tow truck and sat leaning against the seat. He pulled a cigarette from his raincoat pocket; it took three tries with the lighter to get it lit.

He didn't smoke. At least, in the three years we were together, he never touched one. The only time was the day we broke up, when he smoked an entire night away on the balcony.

Now, standing at the bus stop, I watched him ash the cigarette with practiced ease and suddenly felt that this Caleb was no longer the one in my memories.

Before long, the bus arrived. I closed my umbrella and got on, sitting in the back by the window without looking back at him again.

In the days that followed, I didn't go look for him.

But on this day, Caleb pushed open the door to my flower shop.

He stood at the entrance, glanced at me, his gaze lingering on my face for a second before shifting to the refrigerator.

"I want to buy some flowers for a woman. Just wrap me a bouquet, anything is fine."

For a woman.

These words felt like a needle pricking my stomach, and my fingers curled slightly in pain.

But I remained composed, putting down my scissors and wiping my hands on my apron. "What is her personality like? Does she prefer light or bold colors?"

He thought for a moment: "Light colors."

I nodded, choosing champagne roses paired with eustoma, and tied it with a beige ribbon.

He scanned the code to pay. As he held his phone up, the screen lit up for a moment.

I saw the chat dialog at the very top of his WeChat. The avatar was still mine, and the remark was still "Mina."

He hadn't changed it.

Then, he swiped left and deleted the dialog box. The action was very casual, like deleting a piece of spam.

"The flowers are ready." I pushed the bouquet over. He took it, said nothing, turned around, and left.

The wind chime rang once.

Through the glass, I watched him cross the street and stop under the plane tree at the corner.

The girl standing there was exactly the one from the tea restaurant last time.

I saw him hand over the flowers. The girl took them, lowered her head to sniff them, and smiled very sweetly. He tilted his head to listen to her speak, a very shallow smile on his lips.

I lowered the curtain and turned back to the counter.

It seemed his blind date was a success. That was good.

I turned to water the pot of jasmine I had planted in the corner.

But my stomach was in so much pain that tears mixed with the water from the watering can, falling into the pot. My hands were shaking uncontrollably.

At 8:00 PM, I closed the shop and went home.

After Grandmother left, the house felt empty. I sat quietly in the living room for a long time before getting up to go to the kitchen.

With stomach cancer, you don't want to eat anything when the pain hits, but if you don't eat, it hurts even more.

I cooked half a pot of white porridge for myself. When I was chopping green onions, the knife slipped, and a deep cut opened up on my index finger. Beads of blood welled up, dripping onto the cutting board.

I stared at my finger for two seconds in a daze, then turned to rummage through the drawer.

The bandages were kept in the innermost compartment, right next to Grandmother's sewing kit. The edges of the box were already worn and fuzzy.

I pulled one out, and as I tore off the adhesive backing, I glanced at the back of the box.

Shelf life: three years.

I tugged at the corner of my lips.

Longer than my life.

I wrapped the bandage around my finger and returned to the kitchen.

The porridge was ready, but it was too hot to eat.

I sat at the dining table, with only an empty chair across from me, the faded floral apron Grandmother used to wear draped over the back of the chair.

My phone vibrated, and a string of numbers popped up on the screen.

I froze.

I had memorized these 11 digits by heart. During every deep night in the city over the past two years, I had typed this number out and deleted it, deleted it and typed it out, but never once dared to press "call."

It was Caleb's number.

Why was he calling now?

My heart slammed against my chest, and then slammed again. I wiped the water from my fingers with my sleeve, took a deep breath, and answered.

"Hello."

The other side was very noisy; the music made the earpiece hum, mixed with the crisp clinking of wine glasses.

A strange man's voice cut through the noise, loud and clear.

"Is this Mina?"

"...Yes, it is."

"This is Soho Bar. Mr. Caleb is here, and he's had too much to drink. You are the emergency contact on his phone. Can you come and pick him up?"

Chapter 5

The neon sign of the bar bled into a blurred cluster of red in the rainy night.

I pushed open the glass door and found Caleb in a corner booth.

He was slumped over the table, with seven or eight empty beer bottles scattered in front of him, and a large wet stain soaked into the sleeve of his black hoodie.

"Caleb." I bent over and placed my hand on his shoulder.

He raised his head to look at me, his eyes rimmed with red and his pupils unfocused, staring at me for a long while.

Then his expression changed.

It wasn't surprise, nor shock; it was indifference. "Why is it you?"

I clenched my palm. "You have me listed as your emergency contact on your phone."

He paused, then looked down at his phone.

"Forgot to change it," he said. He looked up at me, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Did you think I couldn't bear to delete it?"

I stood beside the booth, my hand sliding off his shoulder to hang at my side.

I didn't reply.

Caleb leaned against the back of the booth, his tone as flat as if he were stating a work report.

"I changed phones. My contacts were imported with one click; I didn't delete anyone. Old Chen who sells vegetables, Master Liu who repairs electric scooters—they're all in there." He paused and looked at me. "You're the same."

It wasn't that he couldn't let go, nor was he holding onto a memory. It was just carried over in a bulk import.

Like a box of old newspapers packed during a move—too lazy to unpack them, too lazy to throw them away, but that didn't mean he still wanted to read them.

"Oh," I heard my own voice, light and airy. "Then remember to change it."

"Changing it right now."

Caleb said this while bowing his head to work on his phone, then held it up, facing the screen toward me.

The emergency contact field had been changed to Old Zhou's name.

He was fast. It had taken less than thirty seconds to finish.

"That's good then," I said.

His body stiffened, and he looked up at me.

The bar lights shone from behind him, casting uneven shadows across his face.

He suddenly laughed. "Is that all the reaction you have?"

I gripped my fingers tightly, suppressing the surging pain in my stomach, and looked at him. "What kind of reaction do you want?"

"'What kind of reaction do you want?'" He repeated the words, as if chewing on a joke. "Mina, do you know what I find most annoying about you?"

He didn't wait for me to answer.

"The most annoying thing is this look you have, where you just take everything! I said I forgot to change my contact, and you take it! When my mother went to find you back then, saying you weren't good enough for me, you took that too and hid it from me for two years!"

I froze. "How do you know..."

Caleb rubbed his temples, his eyes turning red.

"Because my mother called me today. She told me you only asked to break up because she had sought you out. She said you were an orphan with debts, and that you would only be a burden to me."

He leaned forward, his eyes clouded with alcohol and something that had been suppressed for a long time. "If you had fought with me back then, told me you were wronged, told me you hated my mother, told me I was a jerk! Maybe I would have moved on. But you didn't."