All along, I've been following a social media account that's dedicated to a couple sharing about their romance. It doesn't have a lot of followers, but the posts are all very heartwarming.
The owner of the account records all the little details about his relationship with his girlfriend.
They get into arguments over a plate of pasta before breaking into laughter and calling each other an overgrown child.
They climb up the hill to hold each other under the sky full of stars, wishing they could make time pause at that very moment.
Even though the owner of the account never reveals his face, I am always moved by the words he writes.
The day before my wedding, the owner uploads a new post.
"This marks the end of our ten-year relationship. From now on, she'll be his wife, and I'll only be his friend. There won't be any more updates to this account. I wish nothing but the best for my best friend and the woman he loves the most."
The picture uploaded with this caption is one of my fiancee and me, taken from behind.
That photo of my fiancee, Izzy Williams, and I had been taken at a photography studio a week ago.
On that day, Conrad Newman, my best friend, kept fussing over the collar of my suit jacket while talking my ear off. As I stared into the mirror, I noticed how his smile looked even brighter than mine. It was as if he were the groom who was about to get married instead.
"You look so handsome like this, Jamie. But of course, that's only to be expected from my best buddy," he declared before his voice started sounding a little choked up. "That rotten Izzy is the luckiest woman alive."
Izzy was sitting nearby, adjusting her veil. When she heard her name, she looked up and flashed us a pleasant smile. But for some reason, her smile looked a little strained to me.
"You're exaggerating," I said as I pulled Conrad's hand away. "I would've been fine with any random suit, but you insisted on taking me suit shopping."
"There's no way I could let you do that!" Conrad's eyes widened comically. "My best friend in the entire world is only ever going to get married once. He can't just do it in a random suit!"
Turning to Izzy, he asked, "Don't you agree with me?"
Izzy put down her veil and came over, taking my hand with familiar ease. "It wouldn't matter. Jamie looks good no matter what he wears. But I have to admit that this suit complements you rather well."
She looked me up and down, her tone bashful and her eyes full of admiration.
Before we left to take some outdoor shots, Conrad had secretly snapped a photo of us from behind. I heard the shutter sound and turned around to look at him. He said he wanted to capture this moment to remember it.
A couple of days before the wedding, I got completely hammered during my bachelor party. Conrad took care of me without a second thought. When Izzy came to pick me up, he was carefully wiping my face with a damp face towel.
"Leave Jamie to me," he said to Izzy. "It's his bachelor party tonight. As the future bride, you're not allowed to disturb him."
Izzy stood in the doorway without coming in. Her eyes lingered on Conrad, her expression unreadable. As I slumped against the couch, I saw them through my hazy, half-lidded eyes.
"Izzy…" I called out, my speech slurred.
She finally looked at me and came over to hug me. "Why did you drink so much?"
"Because he's happy that he's getting married, of course!" Conrad chimed in with a laugh. "Back in college, he already said that if he ever got married, he would get plastered during his bachelor party. Well, his wish finally came true."
I had indeed said that once while watching a romance movie with Conrad. At the time, we also promised to be each other's best man. Eventually, I got into a relationship, and the promise remained the same.
Izzy helped me to my feet before saying to Conrad, "Thanks for taking care of him."
"It's nothing," Conrad said before abruptly lowering his voice. "After all, it's the last time."
I was too drunk to catch the connotation in his words.
I remained blissfully unaware until the early hours of dawn the next morning, when I woke up at the hotel and saw the notification about the latest post on my social media feed.
My head was still groggy when I clicked into it, but immediately after, my hangover seemed to vanish, leaving me with perfect clarity.
I had stumbled upon this social media account purely by accident.
At the time, I was just scrolling on my phone when the app recommended the account to me. The profile picture was of a cartoon character that I really liked. Curiosity got the better of me, and I tapped on it.
The account had just over three thousand followers, and the last post had been from three days ago.
It was a photo of a desk late at night, with a caption that read, "Hard to work late till midnight. She said she'd starve with me, but she ended up ordering takeout for both of us. What a silly woman."
I instinctively started scrolling down.
"She said that I've been eating too little lately and insisted on giving me some of her beef. I said I don't like beef, and she laughed, calling me a picky child who never grew up.
"We went up the hill to see the stars together. She told me she sorely wished time could freeze at that moment. To be honest, I felt the same.
"I caught a cold, so she skipped out of work to take care of me. She doesn't even know how to cook, yet she stayed up all night just to make chicken soup for me. It got a little burnt, but it was the best chicken soup I ever had."
As I read post after post, I started feeling rather moved.
These simple yet touching details of an ordinary life painted the picture of the ideal relationship I'd once dreamed of having.
I wanted to wish them the best, but I soon learned the comments section had been turned off. The only thing I could do was follow the account.
Well, I now realized that, in the record of this loving couple's memories, I was the unwitting third party.
According to the posts, they'd been together for ten years. Izzy and I had also been in a relationship for ten years.
Conrad and I had known each other for two decades. He moved into the house next to mine when I was ten.
The first time we met, he was a young boy with a crew cut, handing me a lollipop. "Hi. My name is Conrad Newman. Let's be friends from now on!"
From elementary school through college, we were inseparable. He knew all of my secrets and accompanied me through all the most important phases of my life.
During our sophomore year at college, I got to know Izzy. She was the most beautiful student in the literature department.
There was a mile-long queue of guys who wanted to go out with her. I was just an insignificant, forgettable guy in the crowd. I never thought she'd notice me.
"What's there to be scared of? You're the genius of the architecture department!" Conrad encouraged me. "Shall I get her number for you?"
Later, Izzy and I got together. The first thing I did was tell Conrad about it, and he grabbed me in excitement, looking even more thrilled than I was. "This is incredible! You're finally a taken man, Jamie!"
I was certain that he'd been genuinely happy for me at the time.
That didn't quite apply to Conrad at first.
Although he had been happy when he learned I was dating, after meeting Izzy, everything about her seemed to annoy him.
The first time they met, I took the time to dress up before meeting Izzy for lunch at the campus cafeteria.
Conrad had just finished a major group project the day before. Dressed in his pajamas and slippers, he had dark circles under his eyes from sleepless nights and greasy hair from going a few days without a shower. He pushed Izzy out of the way and plopped down next to me.
Startled, Izzy had no choice but to take the seat across from us.
Conrad gave her a once-over before scrunching his face up scornfully. "Is that all? I think I celebrated too early, Jamie. Why don't you reconsider?"
He'd been very blunt about it, and Izzy's expression turned pretty dark as well.
Later on, when I asked her what she thought of him, she said somewhat contemptuously, "He's… fine, I guess."
At the time, I chuckled and pecked her on the cheek before saying, "He's my best friend, and you're my beloved girlfriend. You two will have to get along."
When we started working, Izzy and I rented an apartment together. Conrad would often come over for meals. Sometimes, when it got too late, he would crash on our living room couch.
"You know, it kind of feels like I'm your son," he had once joked.
Izzy would play along and look at him with a strict yet motherly expression. "In that case, my dear son, don't even think about freeloading off us. Go do the dishes."
The apartment was always filled with our laughter. It never once occurred to me that this blissful happiness was simply a mirage built on a lie.
I stumbled into the bathroom and repeatedly splashed cold water on my face, but I couldn't calm myself down.
It was my wedding day tomorrow. The invitations had been sent, the hotel had been booked, and my wedding suit was hanging in the closet. Everything was ready.
My hands trembled as I tried to call Izzy. I called three times. All three went unanswered.
I froze up for some time. Something made me decide to call Conrad.
Again, the line was busy.
My heart sank.
I couldn't wrap my head around this. Did they ever feel the slightest hint of guilt toward me when they were busy fooling around behind my back? Or were they completely swept up in the thrill and the excitement of an affair?
I knew Conrad was a social media influencer who did travel content. He was always filming wherever he went and could be found on every social media platform. I also knew that content creators often had countless alternate accounts.
Using the hotel's location as my search tag, I looked through all the posts tagged in the same place.
At last, I found a photo uploaded by an account with the username "TheUnlovedOneIsTheOtherMan".
It featured the slender hands of a woman grasping a bottle of champagne, preparing to pop it. The bracelet around the woman's wrist was my birthday gift to Izzy last year.
Those hands were hers.
The caption was pretty simple. "Living on stolen time. Every second is a countdown."
There were already dozens of comments on the post. Some said true love would always prevail, while others questioned the account owner for knowingly being the third party in a relationship.
Hands trembling, I tapped on the profile, only to find that this account was completely different from the other account I'd previously discovered.
This account had over 100 thousand followers, and it had been created far earlier.
It seemed that Conrad had been using this account to record the story of the three of us.
The very first post he made was a sarcastic dig at me for being so scheming.
"If I'd known that the prettiest student in the literature department could be won over so easily, I would've pursued her myself. I can't believe my buddy actually managed to get her. He didn't even bother telling me that he was going on a date. He just had to let me show up looking all unkempt in my pajamas just so that he would look better in comparison, huh? I can't believe him."
Someone in the comments joked about our friendship being just for show, and he replied with a smirking emoji.
Later on, when I caught a cold and ran a high fever, Izzy came to look after me. What he ended up writing was, "A certain someone is so pampered. He expects others to wait on him just because he has a fever. Still, I guess it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me. I got to spend some alone time with her. He sure knows how to create opportunities for me to get to know her."
It turned out that the two of them had been secretly having a thing behind my back the whole time.
Another one of Conrad's posts read, "We both added each other with alternate accounts without even discussing it first. Doesn't this mean we're totally in sync?"
That was the caption to a series of censored chat logs. The two of them discussed music, philosophy, and everything Izzy thought I wouldn't understand.
Conrad always knew exactly what to say to keep the conversation going. Izzy commented that talking to him was always so easy and effortless.
On Valentine's Day, Conrad sent a box of handmade chocolates to her office. He refused to accept her gift in return, saying he didn't want her to spend money on him. She was so moved that she said he was unlike any of the other guys.
They maintained the affair cautiously, each update carefully emphasizing it was just done out of consideration for me. His gifts to her were his way of thanking her for taking care of me. Their dinners together were just his way of trying out restaurants for me.
All his descriptions of me made me sound like an immature guy with a bad temper.
Thus, with the help of their self-deceiving lies, they relished in the thrill of their illicit relationship.
