After two years studying abroad, I cut my academic journey short, desperate to return home and fulfill my promise to marry her. But as I decorated our marital home, I stumbled upon thousands of meticulously preserved flight tickets belonging to the girlfriend I’d loved for a decade. At least once a month, she’d flown back and forth from France—yet never to see me. Not even when I was just a hundred kilometers from her destination. I arrived early at the venue where I planned to propose, only to watch from the adjacent hall as she accepted a proposal from another man, her true beloved: “Lana, will you marry me? Just say yes, and I’ll turn this very wedding into ours!” The sight of her, teary-eyed and radiant as she slipped on his ring, stopped me cold. I wasn’t the man she truly wanted to marry, so I supposed they could have this wedding after all. Yet, after I fled our own ceremony, she crossed oceans, searching for me across the globe. --- The proposal venue, adorned with roses and bathed in warm, amber light, felt both romantic and illicit. Lana, dressed in a wedding gown, her eyes glistening with tears as she slipped on the diamond ring, perfectly matched the countless visions I’d had of her accepting my proposal. But the man kneeling before her, asking her to spend a lifetime together, wasn’t me! “Leo, I finally waited for you to ask me to marry you!” Lana gasped, one hand covering her mouth as the other pulled Leo Sterling to his feet. She wasted no time in pressing a fervent kiss onto his lips. Leo pulled her fiercely into his embrace, deepening the kiss. Their hushed, intimate sounds drifted on the breeze, creeping into my ears. Unconsciously, my fingers brushed against the matching couple’s ring Lana had sent me from across the ocean. I never told her it was too big. To keep it from slipping off, I’d wrapped half a loop of red thread around it, making it fit snugly. Perhaps it was the wear of years, but with a sharp tug, the thread frayed and unraveled. The ring, freed from its binding, instantly slid from my finger, tumbling away to roll into a distant storm drain. Just like Lana. In the two years I was abroad, she had drifted further and further from me, until there was no bond left. An ill-fitting ring lost needs no retrieval. A woman who doesn't love me lost needs no retention. Then I heard Leo say, “Lana, I hope your wedding goes ahead as planned that day.” “Why?” Lana purred, her voice sweet. “I only want to marry you!” “Because… I want to crash your wedding!” Leo laughed, a triumphant edge in his voice. “That way, I can prove that you love me the most!” My steps, which had been leading me away, faltered. I was morbidly curious: how far would Lana go to hurt me for Leo? “Ugh, you’re awful! Only you could come up with such a mischievous plan!” Lana giggled. “Then I’ll need to pack an extra pair of running shoes,” Leo quipped back, “so I can run even faster when we escape your wedding!” “Lana, are you really going to do that to Caleb?” another voice, presumably one of Leo’s friends, asked. “As long as I show up at the wedding venue, I’ll have fulfilled my initial promise,” Lana replied, her voice cool and detached. “If he insisted on studying abroad and couldn’t hold onto his bride, and then she was stolen, he can’t blame me for changing my mind, can he?” Their joyous laughter erupted, piercing my heart. I turned, leaning against a tree, my legs too weak to move an inch. An overwhelming tide of pain threatened to drown me. I mustered every ounce of strength to flee that agonizing place. But halfway there, my legs gave out, and I stumbled, falling hard to the ground. Returning home, disheveled and defeated, I picked up the phone and called my doctoral supervisor, Professor Harding. “Professor, that research project you mentioned, I’d like to join the team.” Professor Harding’s voice was filled with delight, yet also confusion. “Didn’t you say you were settling down back home after your marriage? Or has your wife agreed to continue a long-distance relationship? It’s really not ideal for married couples to live apart, young women often lack security. Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?” I dabbed at my scraped knee, each touch sending a searing pain through me. “The wedding’s off, Professor. From now on, I’ll be your right-hand man, completely immersed in scientific research!” Professor Harding, who treated me like his own son, immediately sensed something was wrong. “Today’s the deadline, luckily. I’ll put your name down. Come back soon, and we’ll get to work immediately. When you’re busy, you don’t have time to overthink things.” He paused, his voice softening. “Don’t mind an old man’s nagging, Caleb. For two years, you were always the one flying back to see her. She wouldn’t even come to France once, not even when you were sick. That’s enough to tell you she didn’t love you that much.” “Once you’ve decided to let go, don’t wallow in the past!” If I hadn’t seen that thick stack of flight tickets, I might have, as always, confidently refuted my professor’s words with the excuse that Lana was a girl and I didn’t want her to travel. I felt sorry for her, not wanting her to travel back and forth, yet she willingly traversed thousands of miles every month for Leo. No wonder at the end of every month, she’d be so busy she’d disappear off the radar. Turns out, she was busy traveling thousands of miles to be with Leo! For two whole years, I was a fool, frantically rushing through coursework and publishing papers, all just to carve out time to fly back home, to be with her, to give her a sense of security. Those brief meetings after thirteen-hour flights were once the happiest moments of my life. But my love, which had crossed oceans, became a bitter joke in the face of Lana’s cherished stack of tickets. On my way to the church, I even tried to convince myself that maybe she went to London for sightseeing. But seeing her accept a proposal from Leo Sterling, the very person who had bullied me relentlessly in the past, I finally understood why, despite being only a hundred kilometers away, she never came to see me. Leo Sterling was fiercely possessive. If he didn't want her to see me, she would simply sweet-talk me with tales of how much she missed me. She knew perfectly well that Leo and I were sworn enemies. To be precise, after my mother remarried, Leo and his father became the darkest shadows of my childhood. I had imagined countless scenarios over those two years of long-distance, that Lana might fall for someone else. But I never, not once, thought she would fall in love with Leo Sterling, or that she would agree to humiliate me at our wedding just to please him. I sank into a warm bathtub, chugging several mouthfuls of strong liquor until my body gradually stopped trembling. Lana’s call came through. “Caleb, why aren’t you here yet? I’ve been waiting for you forever!” I remained silent. Lana’s voice grew urgent. “Caleb, is something wrong?” “It’s okay if you can’t make it to surprise me, really. I’ve checked the wedding venue myself, it’s exactly what I wanted, and I know you’ll absolutely love it too!” She was still so considerate and understanding, even so generous about me ditching my own proposal. “I’m home. If you like it, that’s all that matters.” Lana paused for a moment, then continued to coax me. “Okay, I’ll be right home to be with you.” She didn’t question why I’d stood her up, nor did she ask why I hadn’t given her a diamond ring yet. It wasn't because she loved me so deeply she could tolerate my capriciousness. It was only because she had already received the proposal and the diamond ring from her beloved, right there at her dream wedding venue. I was merely the man she’d chosen to marry because her true love had missed his chance. When Lana entered the apartment, I had just stepped out of the bathroom. Seeing Leo Sterling standing behind her, I couldn’t help but frown. “Why did you bring him back here?” Was she really so eager to bring him back and rub it in my face? Lana, a hint of guilt in her eyes, offered a sweet, playful smile. “Caleb, I ran into Leo downstairs and found out he lives in our building. He heard you were back in the country and insisted on coming up to apologize to you…” I watched her little performance with a cold gaze. “Caleb, what my father and I did back then was unforgivable. I’m here to apologize on his behalf. Can you forgive us?” Leo said, his voice laced with feigned sincerity. I swallowed down my rage, my voice trembling as I asked Lana, “So, do you think I should forgive him and his father?” The searing pain of perforated eardrums, the agonizing numbness in my legs from being whipped until they were senseless, the crushing grief of my father’s last possessions thrown into a brazier and burned to ashes— I didn’t debase myself by asking her why she had fallen in love with Leo. That would have made me seem too spineless. Lana’s fleeting guilt vanished as I stubbornly waited for her reply. “Caleb, Leo was just a mischievous, naive child back then. How could he have known right from wrong? He’s felt guilty about it for years, and he’s already apologized to you. Why do you insist on clinging to the past?” The emotional and physical torture that dragged me into an endless abyss—she called it “the past.” My refusal to forgive Leo—she called it “clinging to the past.” She was the one who called the ambulance and accompanied me to the hospital back then. She knew better than anyone how much I despised my stepfather and stepbrother. Yet, she chose to love Leo, placing herself directly in opposition to me. Lana tried to take my hand and extend it to Leo for a handshake of reconciliation. I slapped her hand away, my voice harsh and guttural. “Lana, what right do you have to ask me to forgive him and his father?” They abused me behind my mother’s back, manipulated her into despising me, and after she passed, they even neglected to arrange her final rites. Lana looked at her hand, red from my slap. Anger flared in her eyes, but she forcefully suppressed it. “Caleb, I’m doing this for your own good. You’re without a father or mother now. Leo and his father are practically your only remaining family. Why do you cling to the past, torturing yourself like this?” “One has to look forward, don’t they?” Lana’s words were earnest, but her pretty face, now tinged with a frosty edge, bore the familiar impatience I knew. But the familiar care and empathy were gone. I heard my own shattered heart, crumbling completely into dust. The pain was so intense, I could barely speak. And in Leo’s reddened eyes, the deep-seated smugness and provocation were exactly as they had been in the past. “Caleb, it’s alright if you don’t forgive me. But I will continue to feel remorse and guilt until you acknowledge me as family, even without a blood connection.” “Get out!” I gripped the hallway console tightly, trying to keep my body from trembling too violently. Lana’s impatience was now blatant. “Caleb, why are you being so unreasonable? To err is human, and who among us is perfect? Where is your generosity?” She had witnessed firsthand how Leo and his father had driven me to depression, even to attempt to end my life. Once, she would have confronted them, even cursed them, for my sake. What had happened to make her switch sides, to start defending Leo? I let the agony consume me, telling Lana, word by agonizing word: “Unless he dies in front of me, I will never forgive him!” Lana’s delicate brows furrowed, and a flicker of anger crossed her face. This was exactly how she looked when she used to scold Leo and his father for my sake. “Caleb! How could you become so malicious after just two years abroad? Fine, you don’t have to forgive him, but you *will* apologize to Leo! I don’t want people laughing at my fiancé for being a petty, effeminate man!” “Your father couldn’t cope and took his own life; that’s his weakness. If he’d cared about you as a child, your mother wouldn’t have had to remarry just to survive! Don’t blame all your misfortunes on Leo and his father. His father made mistakes, but not to the point of deserving death! If you’re as fragile as your father, getting trapped in your own head and unable to cope, then you deserve to have nightmares every day!” She spat the word “nightmares” through gritted teeth. The flicker of disgust on her face was something I clearly caught. So, the person who swore to stay with me for life, finally grew tired of me, haunted by nightmares. In the end, all my misfortunes and pain were twisted into weapons for her to use against me, carving me open once more. Once, she was the woman who would cry tears of heartbreak at the mere mention of my nightmares, who would hold me and say: “Caleb, with me here, no nightmare, no demon, will ever dare to harm you!” She had used love and care to guide me out of the abyss, and now, she was pushing me back in with her own hands. For Leo, she said I deserved it! My body trembled, a sharp cramp twisting in my stomach, and I could no longer grip the console. I stumbled backward. Lana, quick as lightning, steadied me, only then noticing my swollen, red knees. She immediately knelt down to examine the wounds. “How did your knees get so badly hurt?” “Never mind. If you don’t want to apologize, I’ll do it for you. But you can’t be so petty anymore.” I forcefully pulled my hand away, my face pale, and pointed towards the door. “Get out! Both of you, get out!” Lana, sensing my fragility, tried to hug me, to calm me down. But Leo, his eyes full of tears, bowed deeply to me. “Caleb, I’ll leave now. Please don’t torture yourself over me anymore.” With that, he ran out, but in his haste to turn, he crashed into the doorframe and stumbled sideways. Lana immediately let go of me, lunging to grab Leo, and they both fell outside the door. Leo’s head hit the doorframe, instantly turning red, with a faint seep of blood. Lana scrambled up, her hands trembling as she reached to touch Leo’s head, her eyes filled with a tenderness I knew all too well. But it was no longer for me. “Leo, does it hurt? I’ll take you to the doctor right away!” The doorway finally fell silent. My heart, too, sank to the very bottom. Ten years of knowing each other, ten years of loving each other, and it had all come to this—a dead end. I pulled out my phone and booked a flight for the day of the wedding. Seven days left, just enough time to clean up everything from the past. Lana was right, one has to look forward. From this moment on, I would sever all ties with the joys and pains of my past, completely! I threw away all the newly purchased wedding items I had personally arranged. There was no longer a trace of me in this home, which was never truly mine. All that remained were the flight tickets, which I had meticulously collected and crafted into a diary of our love. Hesitating for a moment, I tossed them, one by one, into a brazier. Each ticket swallowed by the flames represented a version of me that loved Lana. When it was all over, only a pile of ashes and acrid black smoke remained. It was a perfect metaphor for my ten years of love. The next day, the aroma of breakfast roused me. “Caleb, hurry and get ready. Breakfast is already made.” It was Lana’s voice. She was in the kitchen. “You eat first. I’m going to take breakfast to Leo. You don’t have to come.” “Alright.” Lana’s hand, as she packed the insulated box, paused. “Don’t feel guilty either. Leo is very magnanimous; he won’t hold a grudge against you.” “After breakfast, we’ll go choose new wedding rings. The custom-made ones had a problem and won’t be delivered in time for the wedding.” “Okay.” She liked playing games, and I was content to play along. Perhaps seeing my detached demeanor, Lana, with a guilty conscience, brought out the first-aid kit and dabbed ointment on my knee. “Caleb, we’ve loved each other for years. Everything I do is for your own good. I don’t want you to have no family by your side at our wedding.” “Didn’t you say you couldn’t find a groomsman? I’ve taken the liberty of arranging for Leo to be your groomsman.” “Alright.” Lana spoke cautiously, and when she saw me agree so readily, her eyes widened in disbelief. Then she took my hand and pressed a warm, wet kiss onto it. She didn’t return after delivering breakfast to Leo. As I frantically scrubbed my palm, her call came through. “Caleb, come down to the parking garage directly after you eat. I’ll be waiting for you in the car.” When I got to the garage, I instinctively opened the driver’s side door, only to find Leo Sterling calmly watching me, his hand resting on the steering wheel. I silently got into the back seat. Lana glanced at me a few times, clearly pleased by my apparent compliance. “Caleb, Leo is a jewelry designer. With him here, he’ll definitely help us pick out the perfect wedding rings.” I nodded, closing my eyes and feigning sleep. Inadvertently, I opened my eyes and saw Lana gently pinching Leo’s cheek. In the rearview mirror, our eyes met, and she immediately stammered an explanation: “Leo had something on his face. I was just wiping it off for him.” I closed my eyes again until we got out of the car. The three of us entered the jewelry store. The sales associate was incredibly enthusiastic towards Leo, who stood closely beside Lana. “Sir, what would you like to buy for your beloved today?” Leo and Lana both blushed simultaneously. Lana quickly pulled me forward. “Why are you standing so far away? Come pick out wedding rings!” The sales associate flushed a deep red, then quickly brought out wedding rings for me to choose from. But Leo was the first to inspect them, offering unsolicited critiques. “This pair is too old-fashioned.” “This pair is too flashy.” Compared to the exquisite, custom-made ring on his own finger, none of the men’s rings on display seemed to catch Leo’s eye. The sales associate glanced at me awkwardly, a hesitant apology on her lips. Leo, pretending not to notice, finally picked out a rather ordinary pair. “Caleb, let’s just go with this one for now. We can make do for the wedding. Later, I’ll personally design a ring for you that’s even more beautiful than the one on my hand.” The sales associate offered an embarrassed compliment about his good taste. Leo, not without a hint of smugness, thrust his hand towards me. “Of course it’s beautiful. My fiancée and I designed and had this one custom-made together.” Lana stood silently beside him, watching him flaunt his ring to me, neither stopping him nor showing any trace of guilt. The smile on her lips, however, was on the verge of melting into the spring air. “Then we’ll buy the one Leo chose!” Without even bothering with a fitting, Lana had already paid. She took out the wedding ring and, with an unreadable expression, slid it onto my finger. This time, the ring wasn’t too big. It was a tight squeeze. I knew Leo had done it on purpose. As a jewelry designer, he could accurately estimate sizes at a glance. It was impossible for him to make such a gross error. I couldn’t be bothered to expose him. I simply pulled the ring off. The sales associate kindly suggested I could choose a different style, but I refused. “It’s just for show, a formality. No need to trouble yourself.” Hearing that, Lana bristled at my sarcasm. “If you’re not satisfied, you don’t have to buy it. Leo can custom-design new ones for us later.” I shook my head, refusing again. “This one’s fine. It’s perfect.” But Leo’s face was etched with exaggerated guilt, his eyes welling up again. “Caleb, I’ll go to my studio right now and work overtime on the design. I promise you’ll have a perfect wedding!” With that, he swiftly departed. Lana called out, but he wouldn’t stop. “Caleb, what is wrong with you? We’re just buying a wedding ring. What are you making a fuss about?” I couldn’t help but be taken aback. “What fuss am I making?” She frowned, pulling me out of the store. “My company still has things to do. We can shoot the wedding photos whenever we have time.” “Or, you can go take your solo shots first. I’ll just have the graphic designer put my old artistic photos in to make do for the wedding.” “Fine.” Lana’s explanations caught in her throat. She watched me for a long time, then gently hugged me. “Caleb, after I’m done with everything, we’ll go on our honeymoon and take our wedding photos there.” Her casual offer of a honeymoon, at this point, felt like nothing but an insult. She had no time to visit me in Paris, yet she had plenty of time to accompany Leo to Antarctica to see penguins and to the Arctic to witness the Northern Lights. Watching her avatar on the GPS hurry towards Leo’s studio, I tossed the wedding ring into a street performer’s instrument case.
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