[You are certainly thoughtful on my behalf. That's fine; if I saw your flowers at my engagement, I would consider it bad luck anyway.]

The cold white light of the screen shone on my face. Tears crashed down, hitting the ribbon on the box of wedding sweets on the coffee table.

The three characters of his name became blurred as they were soaked.

I didn't reply again and called the hospital: "Mina, scheduling admission for tomorrow."

Days in the hospital passed very slowly.

The IV drip ran from morning until night. The nurse, Xiao Lin, would come to measure my blood pressure and take my temperature, always ending with a question about whether my family had been contacted yet.

Every time, I said I didn't have any family left, but she never believed me.

It wasn't until the anniversary of my grandmother's passing that I asked for a half-day leave to be discharged.

The doctor was unhappy, saying, "You cannot leave the hospital for long in your current condition."

I said, "Just two hours."

In the end, the doctor let me go.

In the cemetery, a bouquet of white chrysanthemums lay in front of my grandmother's tombstone. They were too fresh to be from the day before.

I knew it was Caleb who had placed them there.

I set my own bouquet beside those white chrysanthemums and crouched down.

"Grandma, did you see my parents down there? Wait for me; I'm coming to reunite with you all very soon."

I only sat in the cemetery for an hour before the doctor urged me to return.

On the way back to the hospital, looking through the street lined with plane trees, I took one last look at the flower shop from afar.

The rolling door was down, and the note on the door was flipped over by the wind.

When I leased this shop in March, I thought if I raised a pot of jasmine, it should bloom by summer.

Now that summer was almost here, the jasmine had never bloomed. I hadn't even been able to water it, and I didn't know how many more days it could last.

After returning to the hospital, my condition took a sharp turn for the worse.

I couldn't eat, couldn't get a full night's sleep, and my weight dropped even faster than it had before chemotherapy.

The last time Xiao Lin helped me turn over, I suddenly asked her, "What date is it today?"

"The fifteenth."

I didn't sleep that night.

At three in the morning, I told Xiao Lin: "If I don't wake up tomorrow morning, just call... the funeral home. Don't call my emergency contact, Caleb."

Xiao Lin's eyes reddened. "Why?"

"He's getting engaged tomorrow."

By the time the day began to break, I finally fell asleep.

This sleep was very deep—so deep that there were no dreams, no pain, and no feeling at all.

...

The sun of the sixteenth rose.

The plane trees on Ruoshui Street swayed their leaves in the wind, and the flower shop’s rolling door remained down.

The note on the door was blown by the wind until only half remained. The words "Temporarily Closed" hung crookedly on the door handle.

Caleb slowed down his electric scooter as he passed by.

It had been over half a month, and this door hadn't been opened once.

He glanced inside. Many of the flowers within had withered completely, and petals covered the floor.

In the corner, that pot of jasmine—the topmost bud hadn't even had a chance to open before it withered into a brown, hollow shell.

Caleb frowned, unable to stop himself from wondering,

Where did Mina go?

His phone vibrated. It was a message from Shen Shuyi.

[Don't be late for the engagement banquet tonight.]

Caleb stared at this message for a long time, feeling momentarily dazed.

He remembered that on the day of their blind date, the first thing he actually said to Shen Shuyi was: "I'm sorry, there is already someone in my heart."

But Shen Shuyi had replied that you couldn't really talk about love in a blind date anyway, and marriage was just two people scraping by together—as long as it was suitable, it was enough.

Later, Old Zhou tried to match them, and Shen Shuyi took the initiative to ask him out a few times, but he never agreed.

It wasn't until that night at the bar, when he confirmed that it was truly impossible for Mina to turn back, that he finally gave up and agreed to date Shen Shuyi.

The day he took Shen Shuyi to find Mina to deliver the wedding sweets—

On the way back, Shen Shuyi asked with a smile, "Is that the ex-girlfriend you can't let go of? But looking at her, she has long since let go of you."

He hadn't spoken, but his heart felt bitter.

If even a bystander could see that Mina didn't love him anymore, why did he insist?

Caleb replied: [Okay.]

Then he locked his phone, put it in his pocket, and glanced once more at the tightly shut door of the flower shop.

Mina must have gone back to the city,

he thought.

He should have expected it; she was someone determined to fly far away, and this small town couldn't hold her.

He twisted the throttle, and the scooter rode down Ruoshui Street, the shadows of the plane trees sliding over his shoulders one after another.

He didn't look back again.

When he arrived at the funeral home, Old Zhou was waiting at the entrance, holding a cigarette between his fingers, unlit.

Old Zhou looked at him. The expression was strange, as if he had been watching him for many years, yet also as if he were seeing him for the first time.

"There's an order. The deceased designated you to be the mortician before she passed."

Caleb paused. "Who?"

Old Zhou was silent for several seconds. "You'll know when you go in."

Caleb froze, a weight settling in his heart for no reason.

It was as if an invisible hand had gripped his heart—it hadn't exerted force yet, but it had already made him unable to breathe.

He changed into his work uniform and walked into the mortuary.

White cloth, white lights; the air was thick with the scent of disinfectant and preservatives.

Caleb bowed deeply three times toward the body before picking up the mortuary order and walking to the table to begin the routine check.

He lowered his head and lifted the white cloth. Then, he saw Mina.

Chapter 8

The incandescent lights of the mortuary hummed overhead.

Caleb’s hand, which had lifted the white cloth, stopped in mid-air.

He stood just like that, motionless, his gaze fixed on the mortuary order on the side of the table.

[Mina, female, 26 years old. Cause of death: terminal gastric cancer. Time of death: June 17, 2026.]

Terminal gastric cancer.

He stared at those four words as if someone had grabbed his throat.

Thinking back on every time he had seen Mina since then, she always seemed to be clutching her stomach, her complexion as pale as paper.

One time she was squatting on the ground organizing flower buckets, and when she stood up, she swayed. He happened to be passing by, and she had smiled and said, "I got a little dizzy from squatting too long."

Another time, she was eating medicine on the street and was spotted by him. She hid the pill bottle behind her back and said it was vitamins.

When she said "It's nothing," her expression was so natural that he believed her.

It wasn't a stomachache.

It was stomach cancer.

But he knew nothing.

He had even hated her.

He hated her for leaving so decisively back then, hated her for not even giving a reason.

She had placed him in the position of her "final journey," yet left him not a single word.

Caleb’s hands gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white.

Old Zhou was waiting outside and, worried, pushed the door open to take a look.

"Xiao Chen..." Old Zhou's voice was heavy. "If it's too much for you, take a break. I'll let someone else handle this order."

Caleb shook his head, his voice squeezed out from his throat: "No need, I can do it myself. You all go out."

Old Zhou paused, looking as if he wanted to say more.

In the end, he only managed to choke out: "Give her a good send-off."

The door closed.

Caleb stood in front of the table for another five minutes.

Then he took a deep breath, put on his gloves, and opened his tool kit.

His movements were steady, no different from when he was preparing any other deceased person.

After everything was finished, Caleb didn't leave.

He took off his gloves, dragged a chair to the side of the table, sat down, and bowed his head to look at her face.

"When you broke up with me back then, you didn't say anything; you just dragged your suitcase and left."