Rachel and I went through a cycle of breaking up and making up, ultimately reconciling before the start of the semester.

I carried both our luggage, and we finally entered the campus of MIT together as we had hoped.

However, once we got to school, she continued to test me.

She would create a fake social media account to contact me to see if I would be seduced. When I blocked the unknown account, she would scold me for not recognizing that it was her talking to me behind the fake account.

She would ask me to take a walk on a rainy day, then deliberately not show up. She would stand upstairs watching me wait foolishly in the rain for three hours. Then, she would send me a text saying, "It's so cold, you should go back. I was just testing you."

The next day, I had a high fever which quickly spiraled into pneumonia.

She would take me to club dinners, testing whether I, who was allergic to alcohol, would take drinks for her.

Her friends would watch in amusement as they pushed drink after drink on me, then exclaim, "Rachel, your boyfriend is so good to you. He's willing to risk his life for you."

Rachel sipped on fruit juice, pretending to be modest. "If a person loves you, they'll go through thick and thin for you and endure any hardship. These are just the basics."

Halfway through dinner, I fainted and had to be rushed to the hospital for a stomach pump.

Love had become the hardest math problem to solve. I could no longer distinguish what was a test and what was a trap.

After returning home for the holiday in October, Rachel and I went hiking.

As we were preparing to descend the mountain, I suddenly received a call from my mother.

"Zoran, you need to come back. Your grandmother had a sudden brain hemorrhage and has been rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment."

I grabbed Rachel and started rushing down the mountain.

We took a narrow, unpaved path. There were many pebbles of varying sizes along the way.

Suddenly, Rachel slipped on some stones and stumbled forward.

Because I was walking so fast, I lost my balance as well due to the sudden pull. My back hit a sturdy tree trunk hard. In a panic, I quickly protected Rachel's head with my hand but ended up cutting my forehead on a rock on the ground.

I helped Rachel up, but she suddenly grabbed her leg and cried out in pain.

"Zoran, my leg hurts so much. I can't stand up."

I looked down at Rachel's pitiful, teary face.

A chill rose in my heart.

There were no large rocks where she fell, and her pants were not even torn. I had a hard time believing that she suffered a severe injury.

Even at a time like this, she was still testing me? Maybe the fall was deliberate too.

I narrowed my eyes and asked coldly, "Rachel, you really can't stand up?

Perhaps because my gaze was too sharp, Rachel's eyes darted to the side. She pouted, "What do you take me for? Your grandmother is in the ICU; would I really test you under such circumstances?"

After saying that, Rachel suddenly grabbed a rock the size of a fist and smashed it hard on her kneecap. "Do I have to break my leg for you to believe me?"

I stopped Rachel from continuing to smash her knees.

At this moment, all I felt was disgust.

I threw the rock out of Rachel's hand, helped Rachel up, and carried her on my back.

The descent down the mountain that should have taken an hour took me three hours because I was carrying her.

Just as I got a taxi, my mother called again. "Zoran, you don't have to come to the hospital anymore. Your grandmother has passed away. Just go straight to the crematorium."

After handling my grandmother's funeral, I returned to college with Rachel.

Rachel's computer broke down, and while it was being repaired, she went to the library to work on her thesis using my laptop.

Later that night, after I dropped her back at her dorm, I planned to watch a movie on my laptop. A notification popped up in the bottom corner, and I realized that Rachel had forgotten to log out of her Whatsapp on my computer.

I opened the chat window and froze when I saw the message:

"If Zoran Faraday knew you were just faking the leg injury on the mountain, would he break up with you?"

A few seconds later, Rachel replied:

"He wouldn’t! He can't lose me."

"Why don’t you tell him that it was all an act to test him? Let’s see what he says. If he truly loves you, he’ll forgive you. If he gets mad, that means he doesn’t love you. You should break up with him immediately."

Moments later, my phone buzzed with Rachel’s message:

"Zoran, I need to confess something to you."

I replied:

"?"

"If I told you that when we came down the mountain, I was just pretending that I couldn’t walk to test you, what would you do?"

I responded:

"Then I would definitely break up with you."

Rachel appeared to be typing for a long time, but no message was sent. She was probably hesitating.

After a while, she sent a cute emoji.

"No, I was testing you! My leg really did get hurt. Because of me, you missed your grandmother's last moments. I feel so guilty."

I opened the chat interface between Rachel and her friend and saw that she was boasting to her friend.

"I just tested him. He immediately forgave me. He even said that the dead can't be brought back to life, so of course the living are more important."

I coldly smiled, took a screenshot of the chat and sent it to Rachel.

"Rachel, I’m so tired. Let’s break up."

I blocked all her contacts.

The next morning, as I was walking back to the dorm after class, Rachel cornered me. It was the time when people were moving between classes, so the school paths were crowded.

She wore a white dress so her legs were bare. She knelt on the concrete path, hugging my leg.

There were still unhealed wounds on her legs from the rock she had smashed on them during the hike, and the friction made the wounds bleed again.

"Zoran, I didn’t agree to break up! You can’t break up with me one-sidedly! I’m begging you, please don’t break up with me!"

Countless eyes were on us, their gazes choking me like a tight net. Rachel displayed a crazy ruthlessness towards both me and herself. She placed both of us on a moral trial, handing us over to society for judgment.

"I know that, because I was careless, you weren't able to see your grandmother's last moments. But Zoran, even if you had reached the hospital in time, your grandmother wouldn’t have survived. You can’t blame me for her death. Just because I'm still alive, I'll never be as important as a dead person in your heart?"

Passersby pointed and whispered.

"Poor girl. She’s on her knees, but her boyfriend won’t even help her up."

"Is he doing this on purpose? Making her kneel in public to humiliate her?"

"What kind of feud is so serious that it has to be resolved this way? That guy doesn't seem like a good person."

"Look at his face. There's not an ounce of sympathy. How heartless can he be?"

People instinctively felt compassion for the seemingly weaker party. It seems the one who presents the suffering best owns moral superiority.

How many times had my heart softened due to Rachel's tears?

When I showed so much as a hint of discontent, Rachel would harm herself worse, like the time she jumped off a building after tricking me into missing the exam, or the time she ate a pound of mangoes, which she was allergic to, to proudly prove that she could also die for me.

Even now, Rachel continued to test me, testing whether her kneeling would soften my heart enough for reconciliation.