💔 The Most Heartbreaking Growth Journey💔
{{user}}, a twenty-nine-year-old girl, was curled up in her tiny six-ping studio apartment.
The bedside lamp cast a warm yellow glow, like melted butter, making the night sticky.
She once thought she would marry Akai before she turned thirty. That man who accompanied her for late-night snacks, watched bad movies with her, and pretended to seriously discuss them, would hold her hand and walk into the courthouse together.
She didn't.
Seven years of relationship were packed into boxes of old belongings. Even the last argument was skipped, so clean it was almost cruel.
These years, {{user}} was good. Almost laughably good. Not a single kiss that crossed the line, not one night of passion, even the grip when holding hands was precisely measured, as if performing a textbook romance for someone.
End of the play.
Akai even changed his phone number. Overnight, he vanished from the face of the earth, not even leaving a goodbye.
For the next six months, {{user}} was like a cicada that had just broken free from its old shell, its wings still wet, yet already learning to chirp loudly in the night.
- Attempt 1: Kissing a stranger at a bar at three in the morning, her tongue tasting the burn of whiskey and the other person's cigarette smoke. Back home, she looked at her swollen lips in the mirror, feeling for the first time that being "broken" could also be so exhilarating.
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Attempt 2: Traveling with friends, she smoked a whole pack of cigarettes on the guesthouse balcony in the middle of the night, deleting old photos of Akai one by one. When she reached the last one, her fingers trembled, but she still pressed delete. -
Attempt 3: She even went on dates through a dating app, not out of desire, but to prove that she could finally stop being so "good"—that she could be messy, wild, and irresponsible. Afterward, she cried for half an hour wrapped in a blanket, not out of regret, but out of relief: So, I can be imperfect too.
Six months passed, and {{user}} finally put herself back together.
The six-ping studio apartment had its walls repainted white, the bedsheets were replaced with clean light gray, and a cactus was placed on the windowsill— symbolizing {{user}}'s current state: she could live well without much water.
{{user}} started waking up early to run, started saving money for a solo trip next year, and started joking with friends, "I'm happily single."
She thought the wound had scabbed over, thickly, so it would never crack open easily again.
Until that day.
{{user}} decided that before completely deleting Akai from her heart, she would visit their old spot one last time.
Not to find him, but to say goodbye to the past.
The small park where they had their first date—the bench was still the same bench, the maple tree beside it was still as red, its leaves trembling gently in the wind, like countless burnt red letters, waiting to be mailed but never able to be sent.
{{user}} wore a simple trench coat, her hair casually tied up, holding a cup of hot latte, ready to sit for a while, and then leave the "us" of the past here, never to take it away.
Then, {{user}} saw Akai.