Unit 2, 401.

The key slid into the lock but refused to turn, the mechanism seized with rust.

"Let me."

Gregory took it from my hand. He was stronger. After a few moments of jiggling, a sharp *click* finally sounded, and the door—sealed for seven years—swung inward.

A thick wave of dust and stale air, the scent of forgotten time, washed over us.

Frowning, Gregory flicked on the living room light. In the dim yellow glow, everything lay blanketed under a heavy layer of grey.

The furniture stood exactly as I’d left it. My throw blanket, never folded, still draped over the sofa. The book I’d been halfway through rested on the coffee table.

Here, time had simply stopped.

Gregory set the suitcase down in the entryway and turned to me, hesitating, words caught in his throat.

"Thank you. You can go now."

I gave him his dismissal.

I couldn’t stand sharing this space with him. Every object here was a hook, pulling at memories that still twisted in my chest.

"Dorothy." He used my childhood name, his voice rough. "You... how have you been, all these years?"

*How have I been?*

I almost laughed out loud.

My father, wrongfully accused, jumped to his death. My mother lost her mind. And I’m dying of cancer, alone, shuttling between hospital wards and rented rooms just to survive.

*How have I been?*

Lifting my eyes, I met his gaze calmly. "Thanks to you, I’m not dead yet."

The color drained from his face. His lips moved, soundlessly.

After a long moment, he forced the words out, thick and heavy. "I’m sorry."

Three words. Seven years too late.

If he’d said them seven years ago, I might have screamed, demanding to know why.

Now, they just felt hollow. A bitter joke.

"Save your apologies for Laura."

I pulled the door wider, a clear gesture for him to leave. "Gregory. I’m tired. I need to rest."

He stood rooted to the spot, his tall frame rigid. Finally, without another word, he gave me one last, deep look, turned, and walked out.

The moment the door clicked shut, all the strength left my body. I slid down its length until I was sitting on the floor.

I didn’t cry.

My tears had run dry seven years ago.

My eyes traveled around this home—both achingly familiar and utterly foreign—finally landing on the yellowed family portrait on the wall.

In the photo, my father was young and vigorous, my mother gentle and beautiful. I wore my hair in pigtails, grinning without a care in the world.

Back then, our family was the envy of the whole Redbrick Compound.

My father served as deputy factory director, a man of integrity with an impeccable reputation. My mother worked as a clerk in the factory office, gentle and capable. And I was their cherished only child.

Back then, Gregory was just the poor boy next door.

His parents died young; he lived with his frail grandmother.

Our families were close. My parents practically raised him as a second son.

Always top of his class, sensible, with delicate, handsome features—he was the "model child" all the compound’s aunties talked about.

As for him and me? We were the golden couple in everyone’s eyes. Childhood sweethearts.

From elementary school through high school, we were inseparable.

He tutored me in math; I brought him water during basketball games.

I thought we’d just... naturally walk that path together for the rest of our lives.

After the college entrance exams, he won a place at a prestigious law school in the Capital. I only made it into a local teachers’ college here in Rivermouth.

The night before he left, he held my hand by the riverbank, his eyes shining like the stars above.

"Dorothy, wait for me," he said. "I’ll come back and marry you as soon as I graduate. In this life, the next, and the one after that, I’ll only ever be good to you."

I believed him.

Like every foolish girl drowning in first love, I believed every word.

The house was freezing—an icebox.

That’s when I remembered. The water, electricity, and gas had been shut off seven years ago.

With a sigh, I pulled my phone from my bag, ready to call someone to get them reconnected. But after scrolling through my contacts, I realized I had no idea who to even call.

No choice but to head to the factory office and ask.

After locking the door, I made my way slowly downstairs.

Just as I stepped into the courtyard, I spotted a familiar old-fashioned three-wheeler parked below.

The owner was a man in his fifties, surnamed Joe—everyone called him Uncle Joe. Back when my father was still around, Uncle Joe had been a driver in the factory’s transport team.

“Uncle Joe?”

I called out tentatively.

Hunched over and smoking, he glanced up at the sound of my voice. He squinted at me for a long moment before his face brightened with recognition. “Well, I’ll be! If it isn’t Benjamin’s girl, little Dorothy! You’ve finally come back!”

Meeting someone familiar in this unfamiliar place thawed a sliver of the ice in my heart.

“Yes, Uncle Joe. I’m back for a visit.”

“Good that you’re back, good that you’re back!” He stamped out his cigarette and waved me over warmly. “Where you headed? Let me give you a ride!”

“I was going to the factory office to ask about the water and electricity.”

“Perfect! That’s on my way! Hop on!”

I climbed into Uncle Joe’s three-wheeler. With a sputter, the vehicle came to life, carrying me away from the housing complex that held half a lifetime of my memories.

“Just saw that Gregory kid earlier, driving a fancy car,” Uncle Joe said as he pedaled, making small talk. “You two… made up?”

“No.”

My reply was flat.

“Ah.” Uncle Joe sighed. “What a perfect pair you were back then. How did it ever come to this? We all watched Gregory grow up. How could he… do something like that?”

The wind whipped against my face, sharp as a blade.

I stayed silent for a moment. Then, as if possessed, I poured out everything I’d bottled up for seven years to this not-so-familiar Uncle Joe.

Maybe it was because I was dying. Some things, if left unsaid, would never have another chance.

Or maybe I was just too lonely.

“Uncle Joe, do you know Laura?”

“Laura? Sure, I know her. That girl who used to follow you around like a shadow—like your own sister.”

“Yeah. Like my own sister.”

I tugged at the corner of my mouth, producing a smile uglier than tears.

Laura and I really were as close as sisters.

Her family was poor. Her parents were always away in other cities, caught up in some “multi-level marketing” scheme—a pyramid scam, to put it bluntly.

She practically grew up eating at our house.

My mother felt sorry for her, sharing every good thing we had.

I considered her my best friend, my closest confidante. I’d even given us a nickname—the “Dorothy-Laura Duo.” We were a match made in heaven, I used to say, the perfect pair of sisters.

Looking back now, it’s all so bitterly ironic.

After university, I became a teacher in Rivermouth, while Gregory stayed in the Capital City and joined a top law firm. We became a long-distance couple.

To end the separation—to be by his side and take care of him—I ignored my parents’ objections, quit my stable job, and moved to the Capital City.

I was so full of joy, thinking I was rushing toward our future.

I never imagined it was the beginning of my nightmare.

I wanted to surprise Gregory, so I never told him I was coming.

Using the address he’d given me, I found the apartment he was renting.

The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside—only to freeze at the sight forever seared into my memory.

There was my husband, entangled with my best friend, both of them naked on the bed.

In that instant, my entire world crumbled.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry out. I just stood there, my blood turning to ice.

Laura noticed me first.

When her eyes met mine, she didn’t even flinch. Instead, she sat up from Gregory’s arms and gave me a triumphant smile.

Then she pulled an ornate tin box from the nightstand and opened it right before me.

It was brimming with letters—letters Gregory had written to her.

The earliest was dated the summer after their college entrance exams.

In it, Gregory called her *my lily, my perfect one, the light of my life*. He wrote that meeting me had been an accident in his life, while she was the one fate had destined for him. He promised to be good to me only because my father had funded his education—a debt of gratitude, nothing more.

Every page, every line, was a fresh stab to the heart, each word dipped in venom.

So the childhood sweethearts I thought we were, the mutual affection I’d believed in—all of it had been a one-woman show from the very beginning.

I was the one who was laughably, painfully superfluous.

“What happened then?”

Joe’s voice pulled me back from the memory.

“Then,” I said, my voice eerily calm, “they came for my father.”

Just three days after I discovered the affair, an anonymous tip was made to the city’s disciplinary committee. My father was accused of embezzling a hundred thousand yuan by abusing his position.

A hundred thousand—an astronomical sum in those days, enough to ruin a man and his family’s reputation forever.

My father was suspended pending investigation.

He had lived his whole life with integrity. How could he bear such slander?

Before the investigation team could get to the truth, he leaped from the roof of the factory offices, using his own life to prove his innocence.

Later, the truth finally came out.

That hundred thousand yuan *had* been moved by my father from the factory funds, but it wasn’t embezzlement.

It was the summer of Gregory’s sophomore year. His grandmother had suddenly fallen gravely ill and urgently needed surgery.

Our family’s savings had just been drained by my uncle’s medical treatment. With nowhere else to turn, my father temporarily used the public funds, intending to repay everything as soon as the year-end bonus was issued.

But he never made it to that day.