In the eighth year of helping Keith Hunter pay off his debts, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

I tested the waters and asked him, half joking, "If I got cancer, would you save me?"

He laughed, saying I was overthinking it. Then he added firmly, "If it ever came to that, I would sell my blood to pay for your treatment."

I lay awake all night, tossing and turning, still feeling like I couldn't drag him down with me.

Before taking a sleeping pill, a notification popped up on my phone about a social media post.

[How do I dump an older woman who paid off my debts for eight years without too much drama?]

The profile picture looked eerily like Keith's silhouette from behind.

He wrote, [Eight years ago, my family went bankrupt. She stuck with me, living off dry toast and squeezing into a rented apartment. She helped me pay back over 600 thousand dollars in debt.

[Back then, I thought she was innocent and cute. Now, I feel like she's just a materialistic woman putting on an act.

[Last month, she even asked whether I would save her if she got cancer. How does someone even ask that?

[Obviously, she was trying to get money out of me. Good thing I didn't tell her that my family recovered three years ago.

[Now, my family has arranged a fiancée for me. She's the daughter of a publicly listed company.

[I want to cut things off with my girlfriend, but I'm afraid she'll cling to me. After all, she wasted a lot of her youth on me.]

By the time I finished reading, I had crushed the stomach cancer diagnosis in my hand into a wrinkled mess.

I clicked into the poster's profile. It was completely blank, no information at all.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Clinging to that thin hope, I scrolled down to the comments.

Almost everyone was condemning the poster for being ungrateful.

He replied to one of them.

[She didn't lose out. She's five years older than me and used to be my boss when I worked at a convenience store. I was only 22 when we got together. If you think about it, I'm the one who got taken advantage of by an older woman for 8 years.]

The age gap, the way we met… Too many details lined up.

I pressed my lips together, staring at the screen without blinking.

A netizen refused to let it go and commented, [She spent all that money on you. Doesn't your conscience hurt?]

The reply came fast. [I admit she treated me well. She paid for my education and helped me clear my debts. She even mortgaged her convenience store for me.

[But so what she did those things? She has no parents. She only did it because she was betting on my paying her back someday.

[Honestly, I planned to marry her at first. But then she tried to bait me with cancer to get money. That's when I felt like all my sincerity was wasted.

[She even asked on her birthday. Wasn't that just trying to force me to soften up?]

If there had been even the slightest doubt before about who the poster was, it was gone now.

Keith Hunter posted it.

Tears splashed onto my phone, blurring the words.

My stomach churned violently. I covered my mouth and ran to the bathroom.

I threw up until the world spun, the sink stained a glaring red.

My vision went dark in waves. I had to brace myself against the wall just to stay upright.

Lately, my stomach had been aching nonstop, and I barely had an appetite.

I had thought I was pregnant. I never imagined it was stomach cancer.

The doctor said it was only mid-stage. With aggressive treatment, there was still hope for a full recovery.

But when I thought about the massive debts Keith and I had spent years paying off, I couldn't even bring myself to talk about treatment.

I went home in a daze.

Keith walked out of the kitchen carrying a muffin, singing Happy Birthday as he came toward me.

"Amanda, happy birthday! Every year from now on, I'll celebrate with you!"

He rambled on about plans for the coming year, plans to fix up our little home and propose to me.

I looked at him, and before I could stop myself, I asked, "If I got cancer, would you save me?"

He frowned. "Hey, don't say stuff like that. It's bad luck."

"I mean hypothetically. Just tell me. Would you?"

I pressed on, my voice trembling.

He set the muffin down, took my hands, and looked at me with utter seriousness.

"Even if it costs everything I have, even if I have to sell my blood, I'll do it. I swear."

Afraid he would notice something was wrong, I quickly lowered my head and stared at the muffin.

I didn't see the cold flicker that passed through his eyes.

My tears dripped onto the muffin.

It was sweet, although I couldn't quite taste it.

I despised my own selfishness, even as I was moved by how kind he seemed to be.

Keith only had about 100 thousand dollars left to pay off. Freedom was right in front of him.

I didn't want to drag him down. I didn't want to become his burden.

I stared at the bottle of sleeping pills on the table. I was barely a minute away from swallowing them.

And now, I found out it had all been fake.

He had already wanted to get rid of me, the older woman who was a weight around his neck.

He never loved me the way I believed he did.

A metallic taste rose in my throat, and I spat up another mouthful of blood.

-

My phone buzzed with a video call. It was Keith.

I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and answered.

"Amanda, I picked up a shift at a private lounge tonight. I might be back late. Go to bed early."

His voice was gentle, just like always.

I forced a smile. "Okay."

"Why do you look so pale? Are you feeling sick? It's cold at home. Put on something warm."

He frowned, sounding genuinely concerned.

It almost felt like if I said I wasn't feeling well, he would drop everything and rush back.

We lived in the cheapest basement unit near downtown. It was dark and damp, with no heating. In winter, the cold sank straight into your bones.

He had sworn more than once that once he made money, he would buy us a bright place with real heating. It would look just like the space behind him on the screen now, warm, clean, and well-lit.

I answered vaguely, brushing it off.

Laughter broke through the call, a few men joking in the background.

"Keith, still glued to the phone with your old lady? Haven't had enough yet?"

A flicker of embarrassment crossed his face before he smoothed it away.

"I'll call you later," he said quickly, and hung up.

Old lady.

Back then, if anyone dared call me old, he would snap on the spot.

When did he start accepting it? Or worse, believing it himself?

When we first got together, I was insecure about the age gap, too.

He had looked at me with those bright eyes and said, "Amanda, I love you. You're not old at all. You're beautiful. Why else would I pursue you for over a year? I really don't care. Don't ever say you're old again."

I didn't believe him and teased him. "But I'm five years older than you."

He panicked, face turning red. "I swear, if I ever look down on you, I'll get hit by a bus."

The seriousness in that boyish gaze made my own face heat up.

My phone vibrated again. That post had been updated.

The poster uploaded a photo taken inside a luxury private room. The caption dripped with mockery.

[Didn't want to go home, so I said I was working. Actually just hanging out here.

[When I called to check in with the older woman, she even had blood at the corner of her mouth, trying to play the sympathy card. What an actress.

[My fiancée really gets me. The watch she gave me looks amazing.]

In the photo, a well-shaped hand rested casually on a table, an expensive watch gleaming on the wrist.

In the corner of the frame, barely visible, was a cheap watch tossed beside a trash can.

It was the birthday gift I bought for him last year.

I worked six months of night shifts, sweeping streets before dawn, saving every dollar for it.

The background of that lavish room matched exactly what I had seen on the video call.

The last bit of hope inside me was crushed into dust. An overwhelming sense of absurdity and grief surged up.

I looked up at the mirror.

My face was deathly pale, and a faint smear of blood still lingered at the corner of my mouth.

So he saw it.

He just didn't care.

He even thought I was putting on a tragic act.

Pain twisted through my stomach, sharp and relentless, like needles stabbing from the inside.

All of a sudden, I wanted to confront him face-to-face.

I washed the blood away, changed into something presentable, and took a cab to the private club.

Without a membership card, I was stopped at the entrance.

The wind cut across my face like blades. Snow piled up on my shoulders in no time.

Weather like this reminded me of the first time I met Keith.

It had been snowing just as hard. He wore a thin, worn jacket when he pushed open the door of my small corner store.

With a nervous look, he asked, "Ma'am, are you still hiring?"

That uneasy, careful expression reminded me of myself when I first came to this city, cautiously searching for work everywhere.

A flicker of pity was what made me hire Keith. It was also why I always made an extra meal at the shop.

He used to say that he would repay me one day.

But when he finally had the power to repay me, he was afraid I would actually ask for it.

My lips curled up into a bitter smile.

The snow kept falling harder. Just as I was about to freeze numb, the club doors swung open.

-

Keith walked out surrounded by a group of well-dressed rich kids. He wore a perfectly tailored designer suit, confident and radiant.

He looked nothing like the poor boy in a cramped rental, dressed in cheap clothes from a street stall.

"Keith, when are you finally dumping that old woman?"

"Yeah, don't you get nightmares staring at her face every night? How long are you planning to keep this act up?"

A flash of irritation crossed Keith's face. He waved them off impatiently.

"Drop it. Just thinking about her makes me smell that poor, old person stink all over again. If I wasn't worried she'd make a scene, I would've dumped her ages ago."

I stood not far away, my nails digging deep into my palm until it almost bled.

I wanted to rush over and demand an explanation.

I took two steps forward when a red Porsche pulled up in front of them. A young, beautiful girl stepped out and slipped her arm around Keith's.

The way he looked at her was filled with the same familiar tenderness and affection.

That look used to belong only to me.

She pouted, complaining that her hands were cold.

Keith immediately wrapped her hands in his and tucked them into his coat pocket, muttering, "Why are you dressed so little?"

She was wrapped in designer labels, smiling brightly. Standing next to each other, they looked perfect together.

Unlike me. I looked worn down and exhausted, with fine lines already etched at the corners of my eyes.

I felt like my heart had cracked open in the freezing wind.

He used to warm my hands like that, too, mumbling that I wasn't taking care of myself.

I remembered someone asking him in that post if he had ever loved his girlfriend.

He replied, [I did. Anyone would love someone they've spent eight years with.]

So when did he stop loving me?

The cold seeped all the way into my bones, and suddenly, I didn't want to confront him anymore.

But then, he saw me.

The tenderness on his face turned into shock, then irritation.

"Amanda? Why are you here? Were you following me? Why are you always so paranoid?"

I stared at him, stunned.

Paranoid.

That word was like a key, unlocking a flood of memories.

Three years ago, when I said I wanted to pick him up after work, he had snapped, "Can you stop hovering over me like a paranoid lunatic?"

When I noticed the expensive designer shoes on his feet and asked where they came from, when he stayed up late gaming with friends and jokingly called me an old hag and I confronted him, he said I was being unreasonable and paranoid.

So had he stopped loving me that early on?

He kept going, criticizing me nonstop, until he suddenly froze at the sight of tears on my cheeks.

I looked at him and asked slowly, "You paid off all your debts a long time ago, didn't you? You want to break up with me, don't you?"

He hesitated, eyes darting away, like the words were hard to say.

I let out a soft laugh and said it for him.

"I know you do. I saw your post."

As if a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, he let out a long breath.

"Yes. I want to break up."

He looked at me with a mix of relief and cruelty.

"Amanda, every day I spend with you is torture."

Torture.

Twenty-two-year-old Keith had once looked at me with love filling his eyes and said, "Amanda, every day with you is wonderful."

At thirty, he called it torture.

He pulled a black card from his wallet and handed it to me as if he were doing charity.

"There's a million dollars on this. Consider it compensation for all these years."