By the time dawn fully broke, Edric had already left the mansion.

The black car glided along a tree-lined road, sunlight flickering through the glass window, tracing pale streaks across his cold, weary face.

Inside, he leaned back in his seat, eyes closed, trying to smother the fragments of memory still burning from last night.

Anne's trembling breath, soft cries.

The way her tear-stained eyes clung to him, as though the slightest blink might dissolve everything between them.

As though her heartbeat had sought to chase him, until the two became one.

Such a beautiful woman, yet Edric had almost forgotten that she had been his wife for two long years.

He turned on his phone.

A message sat unsent on the screen. He stared at it for a long while, then finally added a few more words before pressing send.

"Take the morning-after pill. I don't want another mistake."

He gazed at the text for several seconds.

His eyelids fluttered; his lips quivered faintly.

Then the message was gone.

A soft ding broke the silence inside the car, slicing through the heavy air.

Edric exhaled slowly, eyes still closed.

He knew he had just done something cruel.

But he didn't know any other way to face the mistake of the night before.

Their marriage contract had only a few weeks left. If she kept anything that could bind them together like a child, a memory, or anything else, he feared he might falter.

The marriage had been a mistake from the beginning, and he refused to make another, whether toward her or himself.

He had given Anne comfort, money, a home, and he would ensure she had everything she needed even after the divorce. A stable future, untouched by him.

Edric wanted to settle his past before it destroyed him completely.

"It was just one night..."

He sighed.

The mansion was silent, so quiet the ticking clock could be heard marking each passing second.

Anne sat alone in the kitchen, a cup of coffee long gone cold between her hands, eyes fixed on the glowing phone screen.

The message stared back at her, stark and cruel, a clean incision across the heart.

"Take the morning-after pill. I don't want another mistake."

She read it again. And again.

Each repetition carves the words deeper into her chest.

Her shoulders trembled.

That was when she realized how violently her heart was pounding, rage, shame, grief all tangled together.

Last night's warmth returned like a cruel joke.

His breath. His touch. His arms around her.

Had it all been an illusion?

She pressed her lips together, swallowed the bitterness on her tongue, and blinked hard to keep the tears from falling.

Two years of marriage, and she had never expected love. But last night, just one night, she had dared to believe she could be loved.

She rose, opened the cabinet, and took out a blister pack of pills.

Her fingers trembled as she stared at the small white tablet resting on her palm, a perfect, round verdict.

She sat down again, looking at it for a long time.

The morning light filtered through the blinds, glancing off her pale skin and tired eyes.

Her lips moved in a whisper only she could hear.

"All right, Edric. I won't leave you with any mistakes."

And she swallowed the pill with no hesitation, no pause.

But as the bitterness spread down her throat, she felt her stomach twist. A wave of dizziness washed over her, sharper, heavier.

Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe emotion.

But minutes later, the pain surged violently. It tore through her abdomen like claws.

Her breath hitched. Sweat gathered cold on her skin.

She stumbled toward the sink, clutching the counter for balance.

The world tilted, walls, floor, light and everything spinning into a blur.

Her reflection in the mirror stared back at her, ghostly white, lips drained of color, eyes glassy and unfocused.

She looked like a stranger. A ghost of herself.

The nausea hit.

She doubled over, trembling, tears and sweat mingling as they fell to the cold tile below. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest, each pulse a desperate echo.

With shaking fingers, she reached for the fridge, searching for her phone.

She dialed emergency, her voice barely a breath.

"H-help... me... I can't... breathe..."

The phone slipped from her hand, clattering against the floor. She reached it out, but the strength was gone.

Her vision dimmed, only light and sound, fading.

Maybe this... was another mistake too...

A faint, broken laugh escaped her lips. Tears burned her cheeks, mixing with that fragile, crooked smile.

Just before she collapsed, she caught a glimpse of sunlight falling through the window, golden and soft, like the end of a dream.

Then everything went still.

A sound echoed from the front door...

...

The emergency room doors burst open.

Doctors shouted, machines beeped, metal instruments clanged in the chaos.

Anne lay on the gurney, pale as paper, an oxygen tube pressed to her nose, an IV dripping into her arm. Faint bruises colored her veins.

"Anaphylactic shock from contraceptives! Start gastric lavage immediately!"

The doctor's command cut through the air, sharp and urgent.

Everything moved fast, cold, mechanical.

In her delirium, Anne felt the sting of disinfectant, the rush of water, the nausea clawing up her throat.

She tried to open her eyes, but the world was blurred beyond recognition.

She didn't know where she was, only that tears burned against her temples, hot and salty, like the taste of her life itself.

Anne wanted to smile, but her lips wouldn't move.

Not too much... just a little mistake...

And then she sank back into darkness.

When consciousness returned, it was faint, only the sterile scent of medicine, and the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor.

Anne opened her eyes slowly.

Everything was white.

White walls, white sheets, white curtains. Even her hands looked pale, bloodless, foreign.

A nurse's voice drifted by.

"She's stable now, but her stomach's severely damaged. She'll need to be monitored closely."

Anne heard it, but didn't answer.

She turned her head and saw a glass of water on the nightstand, her phone beside it, dark, silent.

No messages and no missed calls.

A faint smile curved Anne's lips.

"So... no one came."

Her whisper echoed softly, dissolving into the still air.

The pain in her abdomen pulsed again, a dull reminder of what she'd done.

If there really had been a child... maybe it was the only thing that had ever truly belonged to both of them.

Her chest ached when she thought about this.

She wouldn't take those pills again ever, not after this.

She didn't cry because she couldn't. Crying only exhaustion remained, heavy and endless.

If that fragile life had survived, she thought, she would keep it. She would love it, even if it meant raising it alone.

Outside, the rain had stopped.

The afternoon light streamed through the window, soft and pale, falling across her face.

She stared up at the ceiling, a voice whispering inside her mind...

'Edric... I did as you asked. I made sure there were no mistakes left for you. But this time... I'll leave only one thing for myself.'

She closed her eyes.

The monitor kept its steady rhythm beep... beep... that the fragile heartbeat of a woman refusing to disappear.

A single tear slid down her cheek, soaking into the pillow, leaving behind only a faint, fading stain.

The morning sunlight filtered weakly through the hospital window, pale and cold against Anne's skin.

She lay motionless on the bed, the light tracing the fragile lines of her thin face, glinting in the hollow of her tired eyes. A week had passed, and everything around her remained oppressively white, the walls, the sheets, the sterile smell of disinfectant heavy in the air.

Anne had regained consciousness three days ago, yet she neither asked for anyone nor expected anyone to come. The doctor told her she was out of danger, that she simply needed rest.

Rest?

She almost laughed. What was there left to rest from?

Since that loveless marriage two years ago, time for Anne as an unseen wife had simply... stopped.

Outside this room, the world went on, people still loved, still lived, while she remained trapped inside a still frame, a fragment of a forgotten life where pain had taken the place of motion.

...

That afternoon, the door to her hospital room stood slightly ajar.

A man in a dark suit approached and paused at the threshold. He did not step inside. He stood there in silence, his shadow long across the white floor.

Through the frosted glass, Edric could see her, a small figure lying still on the bed, her fragile hand pale against the blanket, her body almost blending into the whiteness around her.

A doctor walked by and glanced at him.

"Family of the patient? She's still weak and needs a few more days of observation."

Edric nodded once, his voice low and rough.

"I understand, thank you doctor. Take good care of her. I'll cover all the expenses."

The doctor nodded again, but when he turned back, Edric was already gone.

He couldn't bring himself to enter that room.

The image of her collapsing in the kitchen haunted him, her lips colorless, her trembling fingers clutching the phone, the cruel words he had sent flashing on the screen like a blade.

Yet even after calling for help, he left before she could see him.

He couldn't face her.

Because one looked into her eyes, and he knew he wouldn't be able to stay cold enough to finish what he'd started, to wait for the day their marriage would end.

Anne never knew that Edric had come.

All she knew was that for seven days, there were no messages, no calls, no one waiting for her to return.

When the doctor finally told her she could go home, the room fell back into silence, filled only with the fading scent of medicine and the wilted flowers in a glass vase.

On the bedside table, her phone blinked. She turned it on.

No messages.

No missed calls.

An odd emptiness spread in her chest. Not because she had expected anything, she had long stopped expecting, but because even silence, when too familiar, could still hurt.

A whole week gone, and not one soul in the world seemed to notice she had disappeared.

When Anne left the hospital, a light drizzle had begun to fall.

She pulled her thin coat tighter, called a taxi, and returned to the mansion. The enormous house loomed in the misty dusk, dark and hollow as ever.

Inside, everything was spotless, unchanged and as though no one had been gone, as though no one had almost died.

The faint scent of Edric's cologne lingered in the air. It stung. She used to smell it on his shirts when she did his laundry.

Anne sat on the sofa and texted him.

'I'm home.'

A moment later, her phone buzzed.

A short, detached reply.

'I have a dinner party tonight. Don't wait up.'

She stared at the screen for a long time, then quietly set the phone aside.

On the refrigerator were the medicines the doctor had prescribed. She arranged them neatly, brewed herself a cup of ginger tea, and sipped it slowly, as if the warmth might fill the emptiness inside her chest.

The phone lit up again.

It was a news post: "Welcome Party for Bella Hadris After Two Years in Europe."

The attached photo showed Edric standing beside Bella. He wore a black suit, his familiar polite smile in place. Bella, in a scarlet dress, her golden curls shining under the light, leaned toward him with effortless charm.

Anne stared at the image, numb.

It wasn't the first time she'd seen them together. Even before their marriage, she'd heard stories about their relationship, seen their pictures on social media. But this time, something inside her shifted.

Her mind echoed with his words that morning:

'Take the pill. I don't want any more mistakes.'

Mistake.

So that's what she had always been.

Anne set the phone down. Her chest tightened, but no tears came. She had cried too much already so there was nothing left to spill.

She walked to the bedroom, to the drawer she rarely opened.

Second drawer from the bottom... she whispered.

Inside was a white folder, its corner slightly bent. She pulled it out, opened it, and read the bold heading:

Marriage Contract Duration: 24 months.

Two years.

A bitter smile curved her lips. Less than a month remained. This arrangement, this mockery of a marriage, was about to expire which just as he had planned from the beginning.

The last page bore both their signatures so neat, distant and soulless.

"Upon the end of the contract, both parties shall dissolve the marriage, with no emotional, legal, or financial obligations."

She read it slowly, each word cutting deeper, as if she were reading her own sentence.

He had prepared for her departure long before she had ever thought of staying.

Anne's fingertips brushed the paper. It was smooth, cold, and sharp.

Just like Edric.

She took out a pen. The nib touched a blank sheet.

Divorce Agreement.

Outside, the wind whispered through the trees, carrying with it the sound of dry leaves scraping the pavement, fragile, lifeless, like the love she had spent two years tending to.

She paused, staring at the page.

There was no hatred left in her, no resentment. Only an aching hollowness, a quiet space where his presence used to be.

If their marriage had been a contract, then perhaps her love for him had always been an unsigned clause, one that never truly existed.

Anne folded the paper neatly, slipped it into an envelope, and laid it on the desk.

The clock struck eleven.

Outside, headlights flickered past, slicing through the darkness for a brief moment before fading again, like fate blinking one last time.

She stood by the window, watching the garden. The rain had stopped, leaving droplets shimmering on the leaves under the dim yellow lights.

Her voice trembled, barely a whisper:

"Edric... You taught me how to love someone who would never love me back. Now, I only want to learn how to forget."

It was time to find a life of her own, one where his shadow no longer followed.

A soft breeze stirred the curtains. The envelope on the desk fluttered, catching a faint shimmer of light, fragile as her final resolve.

Anne turned away, lay down, and pulled the blanket over her chest.

She closed her eyes.

Silence filled the mansion, the quiet of a woman who had finally chosen to let go. Not because love had vanished, but because she had finally learned that love, perhaps, had never begun at all.

In the vast, empty house, only the sound of the clock remained, ticking steadily toward the end of their marriage contract.

Two weeks had passed, yet Edric had not once set foot inside the mansion.

Rumors about him and Bella began to spread throughout high society. Newspapers, gossip columns, and social media were flooded with photos, Edric in a black tuxedo, standing beside Bella, the woman who had once been his first love. Their smiles were so familiar, so intimate, that no one could possibly doubt their closeness.

Bella had returned and was starting her own career as an independent businesswoman. Edric, of course, had used his vast network of connections to help her build her new empire.

Their circle of friends, friends of both Edric and Bella, were more than eager to show their support for the pair. After all, they had never truly accepted Anne.

All Anne needed to do was sit at home with her phone, and she could easily follow Edric and Bella's every move. Those same friends never missed a chance to send her new photos of the two, always with comments sharp enough to cut.

Anne had once tried to ignore those messages. She had always known Edric's friends despised her.

But this time, she refused to look away.

"Bella's back. Maybe it's time you left."

"She's the one he really loves."

"Stop clinging to something that was never yours."

That evening, Anne read through each message, line by line. Then she typed a single sentence in reply, and sent it to them all.

"I'll make the right decision soon."

No anger. No defense.

She was simply done living like a woman begging for scraps of affection.

After that, the group chat went silent. But soon, her inbox began to fill again, this time with new photos, more intimate than before.

They came from Bella's own account.

Anne opened every one of them.

Edric's hand on Bella's shoulder. Their glasses touch mid-toast. The way he smiled down at her, softer than he ever had with Anne.

Anne didn't delete them.

Instead, she took screenshots, then sent them all to Edric, with a brief message attached:

"She sent these to me. Do you have anything to say?"

"If not, at least tell her to stop. It's getting tiresome."

No reply.

No message.

No call.

But from that day onward, Bella stopped.

Anne supposed Edric had dealt with it in his usual way, cold, efficient, without drama, yet just merciful enough to spare Bella's pride.

In the quiet that followed, Anne realized how long it had been since she'd felt peace. No whispers. No pity. No chaos.

Just silence, the kind that lets a person finally hear their own heartbeat again.

She began to rebuild her world from small things.

Each morning, she opened the window wide, letting the scent of jasmine drift in.

She sorted her clothes, her own in one pile, Edric's shirts neatly folded and placed aside.

No resentment. Just detachment.

The things that no longer belonged to her deserved a quiet corner of their own, far from the new life she was beginning to imagine.

By afternoon, she organized the shelves, the drawers, and the books.

A photo frame, once turned facedown, was lifted upright. In it, Edric was smiling faintly, looking at the camera, not at her.

Anne stared at it for a long moment, then took the picture out and placed it into a drawer.

No tears came this time. Only a strange lightness, as if a stone had finally been lifted off her chest.

She pulled her suitcase from under the bed, brushed off the dust. The wheels clicked softly against the floor, a delicate, decisive sound.

From the closet, she packed a few dresses, some books, and a nearly empty bottle of perfume. No room for nostalgia.

On the table lay the house keys, beside an envelope filled with their marriage papers, bank documents, and legal files Edric had once asked her to manage.

Anne slipped everything into a new envelope and wrote two words across the front:

"To Return."

She placed it beside a cold cup of coffee, and the gold ring she had just removed from her finger.

The room felt still. Perfectly still. No trembling, no pain. Only the steady rhythm of quiet breath.

Anne zipped her suitcase.

The sound sliced through the silence, sharp and clean, a line drawn between past and present.

She looked around the room one last time, at the fragments of a loveless marriage.

Everything was quiet now. Beautifully quiet.

She whispered softly to herself,

"Finally... it's time to leave this cage."

The lights went out.

Only the small bedside lamp remained, its golden glow falling on the suitcase by the door.

Outside, rain began to fall, the first of the season.

But inside her heart, the storm had already passed.

Still, Edric's silence, his endless avoidance, sparked a deep, simmering anger in her chest.

What a coward he was.

He should have faced her by now, should have looked her in the eye and spoken of divorce like a man. Yet he hadn't even bothered to send a single message.

Anne's hand tightened around the envelope holding the signed divorce papers.

"Fine," she murmured. "If you're too much of a coward to end it, then I will."

A cold smile curved her lips, one sharp enough to draw blood.