Arthur stood in the doorway, takeout bags in hand. "I brought you soup dumplings and noodles. Come eat?"

I didn't move. I just glanced calmly at the time.

He followed my gaze, paused, then offered an explanation. "They were elders, after all. Hard to brush them off, so we ended up chatting a while."

"Mm." I nodded, as if I understood.

"You haven't eaten, have you?" He reached for my hand as he spoke, meaning to lead me to the dining room.

I turned aside, slipping out of reach, and looked at him.

"Arthur."

"Let's break up."

His hand froze mid-air. He stared at me for a few seconds, then laughed under his breath.

"You're a grown woman. Why are you this jealous?"

It was always like this.

Somewhere along the way, every problem between us got recast into a teasing little "petty," a teasing little "jealous."

The problem got grafted onto me, and then he'd play the gentle one, the one big enough to forgive.

He dangled the takeout in front of me, his tone the put-upon patience you'd use to coax a sulking child.

"All right. I won't lift a finger for another woman again, I won't go out to eat on a whim, and I promise I'll beat you to the airport next time. Happy now? Come on, come eat."

He finished, turned, and headed for the living room.

My phone rang again.

It was my mom, probably asking whether I'd landed yet.

I picked up and only told her the flight was delayed, that I might not get home until late tonight.

Her voice carried a smile down the line as she asked about our marriage plans.

I thought for a moment, then told her plainly, "Mom, we're registering next week. I'll book your tickets ahead of time and bring you over."

I hung up and turned around. Arthur was standing in the doorway.

His frame sank into the shadows, and as he caught my words, that careless, just-humoring-her look finally drained away for good.

"Eveline, stop messing around."

He pressed his fingers to his brow. "Registering isn't some small thing. You don't just wave an ID around and say you're getting married."

"I've never met your parents. Mine don't know about any of this. We should take our time."

I picked up where he left off. "You can meet them tonight."

When I said it, he went quiet for two seconds.

The reluctance I'd expected.

I sidestepped the words already hanging there and told him the truth. "Besides the registration date, the wedding date's set too. November twelfth."

He stared at me, as if trying to sort out how much of it was real.

"It's less than a month until this wedding you keep talking about. The wedding photos, the venue, the plan, nothing's locked down, so what's the point of you picking a date? You—"

"Arthur," I cut him off. "My parents are coming for the registration next week. So are the relatives."

He let out a cold laugh. "Eveline, you decide all this on your own. Did it ever cross your mind that it would throw off the whole layout of my life, my plans? Did you ever once think about me?"

"Don't you think it's ridiculous, pinning your entire family on me to force a marriage? Are you that desperate to be married?"

"Could you not be this selfish."

His words came at me like knives.

But somehow they didn't hurt anymore.

In that moment, I only felt a bleak grief for eight years of my own feelings.

His life plans had always been crystal clear.

Clear enough to rank the "special" partnership project above all else, to put Ms. Winfield, the partner on that project, first.

Anniversaries, dates, trips, meeting the parents—all of it had to give way to this "special" thing.

With so much planned out, naturally he had no energy left to plan anything for a stale old relationship.

I met his gaze and tugged the corner of my mouth.

"Mm. You're right about everything."

After I said it, I turned and went back to the bedroom.

My phone happened to light up with a message from my friend. "I'm at the airport."

I checked the time, lifted the suitcase from beside the closet, and texted back that I'd be there in half an hour.

Before I left, I opened the closet and took a few photos of the wedding gown I'd once dreamed about for so long.

Then I listed it for sale on a resale app without a second thought.

Arthur heard the suitcase wheels as I rolled it toward the door, and he glanced back.

Our eyes met, and he looked away like a sulking child.

Over the next few days, I quietly went about preparing for the wedding.

Neither of us reached out to the other.

But after I announced the wedding news, Arthur, who never posted anything, did something rare. He put up a single ski photo.

It was a shot of him teaching Tessa how to ski.

I supposed my high-handed push toward marriage had made him feel smothered, and the photo was his way of warning me, or hinting at something.

The usually quiet group chat came alive.

One of his buddies tagged him, his tone teasing. "Tsk, Arthur, what's the story here? You drop a photo with no caption and leave the rest of us guessing."

Another chimed in. "Don't tell me you've been hiding something big from us?"

The guesses turned suggestive. Arthur stayed silent.

Tessa stepped in with a laughing clarification,

"It hardly ever snows up here, and I happened to have a free afternoon, so I got Mr. Delgado to come skiing with me. I'm one of his clients—it's strictly work. Don't go stirring things up."

"Come on, Tessa, that's basically admitting things aren't ordinary between you and our Arthur. When has he ever gone out to entertain a client personally?"

A wave of suggestive agreement followed underneath.

Tessa's voice note carried a soft, mock-scolding "Now I'm getting upset," but there wasn't a trace of real annoyance in it.

Arthur finally replied. "Enough, leave her alone." Then, offhand, he explained the photo. "Hadn't been skiing in a while. Was in a good mood and felt like sharing."

In a good mood and felt like sharing…

It hit me only then. Every single thing he'd posted these past two years had something to do with Tessa.

And me—I had never once shown up in his feed.

My fingertips went cold.

Maybe it wasn't that he disliked sharing these moments. Maybe he just minded who he'd be showing off… and that person was me.

After Arthur spoke, the chat changed subjects.

One buddy asked, puzzled, "Hey, Arthur, didn't you never go back to meet Eveline's parents? So how come she's already announced the wedding and says you two are registering next week?"

After a brief silence,

Arthur replied with one word. "Forcing it."

"Forcing the marriage again? That's gotta be the seventh or eighth time in two years. So what's your plan? She's making a pretty big deal of it this time."

"Let her. I've always given in to her on everything. This time, it's about time she learned a lesson. If it's something I don't want to do, throwing a fit won't change it."

His buddy pressed. "So you've made up your mind to leave her hanging?"

Arthur sent back a single "Yeah."

"Pfft." Someone started egging him on. "Then Eveline's really losing some face this time."

A dozen messages flooded in after that, all of them mocking, all of them waiting to watch me make a fool of myself.

Arthur didn't stop them.

Then another of his buddies asked, hesitant, testing the waters,

"Arthur, you and Eveline have been together all these years. By rights you should be married by now. What exactly are you holding out for…"

After that line, he paused, oddly, and floated a teasing guess.

"You've been dragging it out this long… don't tell me you actually have other plans? I mean… a woman like Tessa, gentle and able to stand on her own, it's hard not to be moved by that…"

"Don't talk nonsense." Tessa sent a voice note. "Arthur and I… it's nothing. As for the marriage, he knows what he's doing."

When she said it's nothing, her tone was all innocence and hidden meaning at once.

Arthur didn't explain.

The flirting in the chat only got worse.

Someone chimed in. "Honestly, it's true. Eveline does nothing but pressure him into marriage and never lifts a finger for anything useful. If you ask me, someone as smart and capable and sweet as Tessa is the one who really suits—"

The sentence cut off mid-word. Someone noticed something and scrambled to warn them.

"Crap, wrong group. Eveline's in this one too!"

A long time ago, Arthur had set up a group chat with me and his buddies.

Aside from holidays, hardly anyone ever talked in it.

Turned out they weren't quiet at all. They just had a private group of their own.

The messages were deleted one after another.

I didn't say a word. I set my phone down gently and went to the living room to go over the wedding guest list with my parents.

By the time I came back, the chat had fallen silent again.

I quietly left the group.

Two days later I traveled back, and when I got home, Arthur wasn't there.

A few pieces were missing from the closet, and the suitcase he used for business trips was gone.

He'd probably made up his mind to leave me hanging, taking the trip as an excuse to lie low.

Fine. It spared us a pointless fight.

I quietly put everything in order.

The day I moved out of the place we'd been living in, I left the property-division agreement on the living room table.

Once outside, I got into the car that had been waiting.

I went straight to the marriage registry office.