In the end, I never said a proper goodbye. Perhaps that was for the best. I'd never been fond of partings.
After more than twenty hours on the train, I returned to the dilapidated brick house I once called home. The neighbors had long since moved away, leaving the once-bustling alley silent and desolate.
I had just sunk into the sofa to rest when I realized my phone had been dead since the train ride, shut off for over ten hours.
The moment I powered it back on, a call came through.
It was Sean.
"Why was your phone off? Where did you go?"
I forced a smile. "The battery died. Sean, take care of yourself. I'm fine. But… I'm not coming back."
Nor could I.
Silence stretched on the other end. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and husky.
"You want to leave me forever."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement. And of course, he would know—someone as meticulous as him must have already noticed that all my things were gone.
I didn't answer him. Instead, I asked, "It's been ten years. Do you still resent me for sending your father to prison?"
He said nothing.
"I'll come get you," he replied at last, then ended the call without another word.
Huge tears splattered across my phone screen, fracturing into a spray of tiny droplets. I kept wiping them away with a bitter smile, but no matter how hard I tried, they wouldn't stop falling.
The truth is, he had always been quiet.
After I testified and sent his father to prison—where his father was eventually executed—Sean became even more sparing with words.
Back then, I didn't understand. He had endured so much abuse. I was only helping him, so why did he still carry resentment toward me?
It was only now, back in this house, alone within its walls, that I finally saw the reason.
I was a child raised with my parents' love.
But for him, even within a violent home, he still longed to earn the smallest scrap of affection through his own endurance.
And I severed that last fragile hope.
No matter how many years I stayed by his side afterward, loneliness had already rooted deep inside him.
I was exhausted. Soon, I drifted into sleep and dreamt of the first time I saw Ginny standing beside him.
It had been at a dinner with friends after he'd started his business.
I was about to walk in when the room erupted with laughter and teasing, "Sean, you two look so perfect together! I've never seen such a fitting pair. Be together! Be together!"
I looked down at my plain clothes, then quietly turned and left without entering.
That night, Sean suddenly asked me, "What makes two people truly a good match?"
I smiled. "A good match is when you stand together, and everyone who sees you thinks you belong as a pair."
Back then, rumors spread quickly through the school that we were living under the same roof. A group of classmates cornered me in the alley, mocking me, flicking cigarette butts at my body.
They tore my clothes, burned my skin with glowing embers, and sneered that this was exactly what his father used to do to his mother—that only someone as ruined as me could attract Sean.
Everyone said I was an old woman preying on a younger man, that we didn't belong together.
And in truth, they weren't wrong. Someone as rough and ordinary as I was never worthy of standing at his side.
Later that night, he asked me again, "To stay together for a lifetime, both sides have to give a lot, don't they?"
I shook my head. "Not always. Sometimes one person's love alone is enough. It depends on how deeply they love you."
When he was accepted into university, I sold my blood on the black market three days in a row to cover his tuition. My body grew pale and weak, but as soon as I recovered a little, I went to pick up more part-time jobs.
