A necklace from some luxury brand's 2026 spring collection.

Expensive, respectable, and no effort at all.

The Harry James of today could get one with a flick of his finger.

I faked delight.

"You actually remembered this!"

"Remembered what?" Harry blinked, caught off guard.

"Three years ago, the birthday gift you were going to give me was a necklace from this same brand. It was a spring release too, what a coincidence!"

"Later you said your project fell through, so you couldn't buy that necklace anymore. I was sad about it for the longest time."

The flawless smile slid back onto his face.

"That's right. I just knew you'd love it. From now on I'll get you the new release every year."

Liar.

I closed the lid and set the gift aside.

He didn't remember at all.

Three years ago, what he'd actually told me was that the project bonus had gone toward gifts for his business partners.

Just bear with the disappointment for now, he'd said. I'll make it up to you later.

Today, I'd seen that necklace around a girl's throat.

She'd told the host,

"This was the birthday gift he mailed me after we broke up."

"Honestly, every year I told him I threw away everything he sent, that he should stop mailing them. But he never listened."

I remembered the price of that necklace perfectly.

Eighty-seven thousand three hundred sixty-two dollars.

I'd caught a glimpse of it on Harry's phone by accident, a number I'd chewed over in private for a long time.

Back then we were crammed into a basement apartment.

It ached, knowing he'd spent enough money to change our lives on a single necklace.

And it made me happy, believing that if he had a hundred dollars, ninety-nine of it would go to me.

In the end, the money and the love, I got neither.

Harry still didn't know about that girl.

I curled up on the couch, watching his back as he moved around the kitchen.

It has to be said sooner or later.

Five years between us.

I'd built everything with him from nothing, all the way to now.

At our lowest, one plate of pickled vegetables and one roll, split between us for two days.

I didn't want to wait until the recording actually arrived at our door and then watch him hold another woman in his heart for the rest of his life.

Before I could open my mouth, Harry's phone rang.

He answered, said a couple of words, and his face changed. He rushed straight into the study.

"Is Phoebe—"

He was too frantic to notice the study door hadn't shut all the way.

Out in the living room, I heard every word.

Phoebe. Phoebe Fox. That was the girl's name.

I opened my phone.

A news story was sweeping across every social platform.

【The Real-Life Novel Heroine, a Life Buried for Love.】

That lukewarm little show had gone viral because of Phoebe Fox's story.

And it had reached Harry too.

"Libby, something came up at the company. I have to go deal with it."

Harry left in a hurry, forgetting even the parting kiss he always gave me before walking out.

Night fell, and the apartment was swallowed in darkness.

I didn't get up to turn on the lights. Only my phone flickered, its glow rising and dying against my face.

Numbly, I watched people online debate the story with feverish excitement.

Praising and mourning their love, hoping the two of them would get back together.

Refresh again.

A new post shot straight to the top of my feed, unstoppable.

【Folks, I think I just witnessed a live grovel-to-win-her-back scene.】

The video was shot from a hidden angle, yet it let me see the man's face perfectly clearly.

Harry had always been elegant, put-together.

Even the ten-dollar street-stall clothes from back then, he'd worn with restraint and dignity.

But now, he was on his knees in front of Phoebe Fox, pressing his face to her hand, weeping like his heart was breaking.

"Why didn't you tell me!"

"If you'd said something sooner, I wouldn't have just grabbed the first person I could find and married her!"

Just grabbed the first person he could find?

My hands trembled as I opened the timer app I used for keeping track.

Today was the two-thousandth day since I'd met Harry James.

Today was the one thousand eight hundred and sixty-first day since we'd been together.

Meeting Harry had been an accident in my plain, ordinary life.

For him, I—a girl who'd spent her whole life following her parents' plans, step by careful step—worked up the courage for the first time to leave everything behind and come to Capital City with Harry to build a life from nothing.

Back then, everything we owned added up to just enough to rent a leaky basement.

He chose to start his own business. I took a steady job as a clerk.

My salary was six thousand a month. His, some months, was a negative number.

We stretched every dollar into two, and somehow, through all the stumbling, I propped him up until his business finally started to turn.

Later, his company was short on people.

I didn't understand any of that world.

So when he talked business, I was the one drinking at the table.

A woman who'd never touched a drop learned to drink until my stomach was bleeding, and never once let it show on my face.

And now, out of his own mouth, I was just someone he'd grabbed to marry.

The comment section had lost its collective mind over the two of them.

The handful of comments defending me, the wife, got reported and buried at the very bottom.

Before long, someone dug up Phoebe Fox's social media too.

Her latest post had gone up five minutes ago.

【Thank you all for helping me reach him. Getting to spend this last stretch of time with him before I go, I have no regrets left.】

The photo attached showed a man in an apron, his back to the camera, busy in the kitchen.

The man who not so long ago had carried a plate of braised ribs over and called me to dinner was now washing up and cooking soup for her.

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I screenshotted it and sent it to Harry.

【Come home soon. We need to talk about the divorce.】

Harry didn't answer.

I sat there through the whole night, empty.

He didn't see my message until the next morning.

【Wait for me to get home. I'll explain everything properly.】

Harry came home carrying breakfast, a luxury shopping bag hanging from his arm too.

I was scrolling through my parents' feed, head down.

Since I'd followed Harry to Capital City, they and I had never spoken again.

Harry set a steamer basket of dumplings in front of me and leaned in close.

"Your favorite dumplings, that place you love. Eat them while they're hot?"

I'd told him just last week that this place had switched chefs and the food wasn't good anymore.

Then he held out the luxury bag.

"Didn't you say yesterday that you liked this brand? This one's new too. See if you like it?"

I'd seen it on Phoebe's social media.

A whole row of the latest luxury pieces. This one was her leftover, the one she'd passed over.

Only then had it made its way to me.

I closed the box, tossed it aside, and turned the laptop on the table toward Harry.

"This is the divorce agreement I drew up. Look it over and see if anything's off."

"If there's nothing, let's go down to the civil affairs office in a bit."

Snap——

The usual smile on Harry's face dimmed a shade, and he clapped the laptop shut.

"What is this supposed to mean?"

Over the course of one night, I'd made up my mind.

While Phoebe was still alive, more than half of Harry's heart was tied up in her—never mind what it would be like after.

I didn't want to live the rest of my life in someone else's shadow.

"I don't think there's any point in the two of us going on."

"I can't accept a husband who has an ex-girlfriend he loves this deeply."

Harry let out a long, heavy sigh, rubbing the space between his brows as if utterly at a loss.

"Libby, Phoebe doesn't have many days left. I only want her to leave this world without regrets."

Lies.

You've just finally found an excuse to be good to her out in the open.

"Can you not pick this of all times to get jealous and pull something so petty."

The emotions I'd been holding down began to break apart.

Tears slid to the corner of my mouth before I noticed, bitter, so bitter.

Every word of protest I might have thrown back was crushed under the weight of a human life.

I wanted to say I wasn't jealous.

It was because you still had Phoebe Fox in your heart.

It was because you didn't love me.

But in this situation, no matter how I explained it, I would come off as a madwoman who trampled on a dying person's life out of pure spite.

So I only said it again.

"I mean it. Divorce."

"Enough!"

Harry's face went dark, and he slammed the bun in his hand down on the table.

"Libby Curry, how can you be this cold-blooded!"

The greasy smell of the bun rose into my nose and made me want to gag.

"I already told you Phoebe doesn't have much time left! Can't you show a little mercy, let her go with some peace of mind?"

"I'll come back to you sooner or later anyway. For now, I'm begging you, just turn a blind eye, all right?"

They say the dead deserve the highest respect.

The world is always forgiving toward those about to die.

If I were the woman I'd been before yesterday, I could even have accepted Harry seeing Phoebe off on her final journey.

Because I'd been so sure Harry loved me.

But after yesterday, I finally learned what Harry looked like when he truly loved someone.

He would give up the things he hated for her.

Even when money was tight, he would give her the best.

So I couldn't accept it. And I didn't dare gamble on how high Phoebe might climb in Harry's heart down the line.

It hurt, but I had to cut my losses in time.

Harry didn't give me another chance to speak.

His phone rang.

On the screen, the word "Phoebe" flashed over and over.

He threw out one line, "Think it over carefully," slammed the door, and hurried out.

I opened Twitter. Phoebe's account had just posted an update.

【Another flare-up, it hurts so much. At least this time I have you here with me.】

Fans swarmed under Phoebe's account in an instant.

【Oh my god, my heart aches for you. You have to get better soon.】

【You two really have it so hard. I hope you can be happy in the time you have left.】

【Do you have any last wishes? Have your husband make them come true! Like wearing a wedding dress or something...】

Phoebe replied to that one.

【If I could, I really would love to wear a wedding dress for him once.】

That comment shot straight to the top.

I knew Harry had seen it too.

Because that same afternoon, more than a dozen wedding-dress photos went up on Phoebe's account.

Married three years, and our own wedding had never even taken shape.

At first, I'd pushed him about it, desperate.

I wanted to invite my parents, to let them see that their daughter hadn't misjudged the man all those years ago.

But Harry always said work was too busy, that there was no time to plan it.

He said he needed to earn more money before he could face my parents, before they would accept him.

I waited and waited.

It took until today to learn that throwing a wedding wasn't so hard for Harry after all.

The next day, they'd even booked the reception.

Phoebe posted the hotel address and a welcome photo on Twitter.

【Your brother-in-law booked out the entire hotel. He says he welcomes you all to our wedding. Any of my babies who have time, please come cheer us on!】

I looked at their photos.

I kept scrolling through my phone's album, and finally I reached the record of the day Harry proposed to me.