Oliver stayed in the bridal shop for a long time, his gaze repeatedly drifting toward the old-fashioned car parked across the street.

Even when the shop manager reminded him several times to check the fit of the wedding dress he had ordered three years ago, he was lost in thought.

The rain intensified, showing no sign of letting up.

The car outside appeared especially forlorn amidst the storm.

He recalled the hand Jack had rested on Emma’s waist earlier and an inexplicable frustration stirred within him.

He grabbed his suit jacket and prepared to leave.

“This style is absolutely stunning. Oliver, thank you for arranging so many for me.”

Luna admired the wedding dress Oliver had custom-ordered, her fingers eagerly tracing the glimmering rhinestones.

Yet, the subtle hints of a wedding in her words made him frown in irritation.

“You’re misunderstanding. This isn’t for you.”

Oliver impatiently snatched the umbrella from the shop assistant, oblivious to the fleeting flash of malice that crossed Luna’s eyes.

He walked slowly toward the parking lot, deliberately passing by the old-fashioned car and instinctively glanced toward the passenger window.

What he saw was a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Jack was frantically holding his hand to Emma’s mouth as she lay with her eyes shut tight, blood pouring out of her mouth uncontrollably.

Oliver's heart felt like it was being gripped by an invisible hand and pain surged through his entire being.

He immediately dropped the umbrella and dashed through the rain toward them.

“Why are you just standing there? Drive to the hospital now!”

Jack froze at his shout, but his hands shook uncontrollably on the wheel.

The relentless downpour outside felt like a wall of suffocating pressure closing in on him.

“I... I can’t. I really... I can’t do it…”

Oliver rushed to the driver’s side, flung open the door and yanked Jack out of the car.

“Get away!”

Jack was left in the pouring rain, watching helplessly as Oliver drove away with her.

When he opened his eyes again, he was met with blinding white.

I woke up in the hospital and a familiar figure sat beside me. I instinctively called out.

“Jack, water…”

A pair of clean hands quickly brought the glass to my lips and a calm voice said,

“Take it slow.”

I jolted awake, my mind clearing suddenly.

“Why are you here?”

Oliver’s smile was tinged with bitterness.

“Not your little boyfriend. Are you let down?”

I didn’t respond and he kept talking, his voice rough.

“What’s going on with you? Why were you bleeding from the mouth out of nowhere?”

It dawned on me then that he must have been the one who brought me to the hospital.

“It’s a stomach ulcer. Sorry for wasting your time.”

His voice grew cold as he clenched his fists.

“Emma, do you think I’m that easy to fool?”

“Does a stomach ulcer really cause this much bleeding?”

I turned away, closing my eyes to avoid him, while he picked up his phone and began dialing.

“I’ll call your grandmother and have her come take care of you.”

I struggled to sit up, trying to push his hand away.

“No!”

He pressed my flailing hands down with a look of frustration and muttered,

“Be good.”

Then, as if suddenly realizing how soft he sounded, he hardened his expression.

“You have no ties to the Mortimer Family anymore. I’m only calling your relative out of basic humanity, so don’t be ungrateful!”

It felt like a knife had plunged into my heart, leaving me frozen in shock.

“My grandmother, she…”

“She’s no longer here.”

I let my head fall in defeat and he hesitated with the phone in his hand, his voice dry and his expression stiff.

“When did it happen?”

My eyes burned with unshed tears, the pain too much to hold back.

"Three years ago, the day after my miscarriage."

He stood there, mouth slightly open, unable to speak for a long while.

I gave a self-deprecating laugh.

“Doesn’t Mr. Mortimer remember? You rushed to divorce me and had me sent away, just like today when you called my grandmother to pick me up.”

“But she was over seventy, in poor health. Can you imagine how panicked she must have been when she heard about my miscarriage and divorce?”

I closed my eyes, trying to suppress the rising tide of anger.

“She rushed to see me, but unfortunately, she missed a step and fell, never getting up again.”

Oliver took a long time to force out the words, his phone slipping from his hand.

“How could this…”

“I didn’t mean to…”

Sometimes I wonder—if I hadn’t left with Amelia back then, if I hadn’t selfishly fallen for him, would all of this have been avoided?

He would have had a loving mother, a partner and lived a life of happiness and ease.

And I would have stayed by my grandmother's side, watched the sunsets on our little island and savored the old lady’s home-cooked meals.

Two burning tears finally broke free, streaming down my cheeks.

I fought to stifle my sobs, my eyes locking with his in a desperate plea.

“So, Oliver, please, just go. Let’s not see each other again.”

“Would that be alright?”

Jack explained to the doctor that my stomach ulcer was a long-standing issue and then he took me back home.

Since then, I haven’t seen Oliver again.

The reason? I was slipping into longer and longer periods of unconsciousness.

But when I woke, the sharp, piercing pain made life almost unbearable.

Today, however, the weather was perfect and I felt surprisingly energetic.

I begged Jack to take me outside for a walk.

Since I could no longer walk on my own, I had to depend on him to push me in a wheelchair.

It had been forever since I felt this relaxed.

The crisp early autumn breeze caressed my dry cheeks, calming the turbulence within and wrapping me in a serene sense of peace.

“Jack, I’ve made up my mind. Just cremate me and scatter my ashes in the sea.”

His eyes were red and his voice was choked with emotion.

“Why are you talking about wanting to return to the sea again? Didn’t you used to hate the ocean?”

The truth was, when I was younger, I saw the sea as the most breathtaking sight on earth.

Sunlight would sparkle on the waves, turning them into a glittering trail of jewels.

The salty breeze carried the familiar scent of the ocean straight to my nose—a fragrance I used to cherish.

But after my parents died, my feelings changed and I began to loathe it.

The ocean itself wasn’t at fault, nor were the fishermen who set out to make a living.

It was an accident, a pure, unforeseen accident.

Yet, I had to find some rational excuse to make sense of it.

So, I ended up hating the sea.

I let my resentment spill over onto everything connected to it, simply because I couldn’t change or accept what had happened.

I gave a faint, bitter smile.

“There isn’t a cemetery I like anyway. Reuniting with family in the sea wouldn’t be too bad.”

Jack emerged from behind me, knelt down in front of me and rested his head in my lap. He wrapped his arms around me, his voice soft and tender as he said,

“Alright, I promise.”

I couldn’t help but smile, my hand instinctively reaching out to gently stroke his head.

“Aren’t you being all sweet and cuddly?”

Jack gave a dismissive sound and buried his head, ignoring me.

I slowly felt a warm, moistness spreading on my lap.

After a long moment, he finally spoke.

“Thank you, Emmy.”

Just then, fine droplets of rain began to fall from the sky, pattering softly.

Jack quickly pulled out the umbrella he had prepared and shielded it over my head.

I stretched my hand out of the umbrella and used my hand to catch the cool droplets on my palm. It'd be the last cool sensation that I'd feel in this world.

I then said to him with a smile.

“Jack, believe me, the rain won't keep falling.”

Oliver’s Epilogue:

I didn't meet Emma for the first time when I was fifteen years old. It was much earlier.

I met her on the day my family went to Pearl Shore Isle for a trip.

Emma was the daughter of a fisherman on the island. She had gorgeous tan-colored skin. Her hair tied into little pony tail and her eyes were exquisite like two black grapes. She looked different from most children in the city.

I immediately noticed her the moment I arrived at the island.

Emma was sitting alone on the edge of the beach and played with the sand.

There were none of the beach toys that city children would bring along into the beach. Meanwhile, the island had a lot of awesome pile of stones, bamboo baskets and broken fishing nets.

I was very curious about the things Emma was stacking up, so I boldly joined her to play at the beach.

That was the first initiative I ever made in my life.

Emma was not surprised by my arrival, nor did she reject my presence. Instead, she touched my face with her little sand-covered hands and praised me sincerely.

“Wow, you're so handsome! Pretty like the aquamarine!”

Her eyes were shining and she stared straight into me.

Her exaggerated expression seemed to show that Emma had discovered a new world and that made me blush.

I asked her stumbling.

“What is... aquamarine?”

She clapped her hands and sand dropped as she stood up. Her little finger pointed to the sea in the distance.

“There, look, don't you see that's the aquamarine?”

The sun was pouring on the vast blue sea and the sea breeze was gently blowing, setting off layers of fine waves.

Countless golden spots of light seemed to be jumping around on the sea. From a distance, the dots of lights truly looked like brilliant gems, shining on the sea.

Yet, Emma's brows suddenly frowned when she looked into the distance.

“Hey, I think someone is drowning over there!”

Emma quickly left me and ran elsewhere.

“Mom! Mom! Someone has been swept away by the waves again! Go and have a look over there!”

I locked myself up.

I forced myself to forget Emma's painful tears that day. Her expression was so broken.

Just like when she woke up after losing her child to a miscarriage three years ago.

It was early autumn when that happened. Thought coldness might be normal during that time, I felt the chill crawled up and spread to all over my body. It caused me to dream every night, dreaming of Emma.

A few days later, I received a call from Jack.

“If you want to know the truth about three years ago, come to Sunset Funeral Home.”

The phone call had been abrupt and disjointed, but I couldn’t shake off the growing unease.

The truth? What truth could there have been?

Emma had loved Hudson. Even if I had forced her to marry me, her heart would still have belonged to Hudson.

She would have gone so far as to endanger the lives of our child and my mother, all for the sake of revenge against me.

That chill of dread had spread through my entire body again, making me tremble uncontrollably.

I couldn’t restrain myself. I had stumbled and run to my car, speeding all the way, but it had still been too late.

The incinerator at the crematorium had already been activated and the flames had danced across Jack’s sorrowful face.

“Emmy is gone.”

His words struck like a needle, piercing my heart and causing my legs to buckle. I had to lean against the wall to keep from collapsing.

I must have looked a sight at that moment—neither crying nor smiling.

Doubts in my heart grew larger with the mounting anxiety and I could only open my mouth, trembling.

“Gone? Gone where? Where else could she go?”

His gaze silently shifted to the burning incinerator. The crackling and hissing noises inside constantly jangled my nerves.

Could he be implying that Emmy was in there?

That was impossible!

Absolutely impossible!

I went frantic, lunging at him and grabbing his collar tightly.

“Jack, I don’t have time for your games. Get Emma out here! Now!”

His face remained eerily calm, unnervingly so.

“She’s already dead. Late-stage cancer. There's no saving her.”

I let out a cold laugh.

“Late-stage cancer? What late-stage cancer? The day you picked her up from the hospital, you kept telling the doctor it was just her stomach ulcer problem! You must be lying to me!”

She had been perfectly fine just five days ago—how could she have suddenly died?

I felt all my strength drain away in an instant, my entire body wracked with a crushing pain that felt like countless needles were being pulled out and driven in.

Tears finally fell uncontrollably after he handed me a pile of Emmy's medical reports.

“Oliver, I don’t want to lie to you. Just look for yourself.”

Shaking, I took the stack of medical records, as thick as a pile of overdue paperwork and began to read each page carefully.

“Late-stage liver cancer, late-stage liver cancer, late-stage liver cancer…”

These words repeated relentlessly, burning into my eyes.

“This can’t be… How could this happen?”

I didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it. I lost all my strength and collapsed to the floor.

Jack carefully pulled out a yellowed notebook from his bag and handed it to me.

“Oliver, I found this diary among Emmy's belongings. It might hold the truth about what happened three years ago.”

“But the choice to know the truth is up to you.”

He extended the diary towards me, but I hesitated to take it.

The truth? What truth?

What if the truth was entirely my fault, if she spent her last moments resenting me for destroying the life she might have been happy with?

What then?

I could no longer distinguish what it was that I really wanted to know.

My hands hung at my sides for a long moment, but I finally gathered the courage to take the old, worn diary.

I flipped through a few pages in haste and the handwriting was unmistakably Emmy's.

Tears had already filled my eyes and as I looked at the familiar words, they kept dripping onto the pages.