“Do I have to be admitted? I've got a project I need to finish.”

The doctor looked up at me. I will never forget that look as long as I live.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Twenty-seven years old. Heart failure, pneumonia, severe anemia. Do you understand what that means? It means if you keep pushing yourself like this, you might not make it to thirty.”

I lowered my head.

“I owe money.”

“What kind of money is worth more than your life?”

I didn't answer.

I got the prescriptions, paid for the medicine, and walked out. No admission.

At the register, my card had just over two thousand left. Eight hundred for the drugs. I gritted my teeth and paid.

The rest, I transferred to Eustace.

“This month's pay. Use it for the interest first.”

He took it.

Didn't even ask “is that enough for you to get by on”.

Sometimes, not asking is the answer all by itself.

But I refused to believe it.

The night I came home from the hospital, I took my temperature. 38.7°C.

Burning all over, yet shaking with cold. I curled up under the blanket, teeth chattering.

Eustace wasn't home. He'd been out every night that week for “business dinners”, never getting back before the small hours, reeking of alcohol and perfume.

I called him.

It rang a long time before he picked up. The background was loud on his end. Music, laughter, a woman's voice.

“Hello? Gayle?”

“I have a fever.”

“Did you take your medicine?”

“Yeah.”

“Then get some rest. I'm not done here yet. I'll be back later.”

He hung up.

Right before the line went dead, I heard a woman next to him say：“Who was that? God, it's the middle of the night—total buzzkill.”

I didn't call back to ask who she was.

Because I already knew.

I just didn't know how much strength I had left to face it.

A little after two in the morning, Eustace came home.

I heard the door open, heard him change his shoes, heard him walk into the bedroom and stop beside the bed.

He looked at me for a while.

Then he reached out and touched my forehead.

“You really do have a fever.”

He said it the way you'd note the weather—something that had nothing to do with him.

“Eustace.”

“Hm?”

“Are you hiding something from me?”

His hand pulled back from my forehead.

“No. Don't overthink it.”

“Then why do you smell like perfume?”

Silence.

Four or five seconds of it.

“Business dinner tonight. A client brought a date. Must've rubbed off.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him in the dark.

His outline was blurred, but I knew he was looking back at me.

We held each other's gaze for a few seconds.

Eustace looked away first.

“I'll go with you to the hospital tomorrow.”

“Don't bother. I'll go by myself.”

“Gayle, don't you trust me?”

You want me to trust you? Then do one thing—one—that's actually worth trusting.

I didn't say it out loud.

I turned over, putting my back to him.

Eustace didn't say anything else.

A long time later, I heard him go to the living room. Then the click of a lighter.

He never used to smoke.

When did that start?

I didn't know.

It felt like I didn't know anything anymore.

The answer came faster than I expected.

I didn't go looking for it. It came to me.

It was a Saturday. Eustace said he had to work overtime and left early in the morning.

I slept until noon, woke up so dizzy I had to brace myself against the wall just to make it to the bathroom.

The person in the mirror made me flinch. I'd lost at least ten pounds—cheekbones sharp under the skin, eyes hollow, lips cracked and peeling, dried blood crusted at the corners of my mouth.

I stared at the person in the mirror for a long time.

Who was that?

Not me.

I had never been this person.

I splashed water on my face, changed into clean clothes, and headed out to buy fever medicine from the pharmacy.

Passing the mall, I saw Eustace through the floor-to-ceiling glass.

He wasn't working overtime.

He was sitting in the ground-floor café, a woman across from him.

White dress, long hair, a sweet smile.

She placed her hand on his, and he didn't pull away.

He was smiling at her. A kind of smile I hadn't seen from him in a long time.

Easy. Happy. Unburdened.

A smile that had nothing to do with me.

I stood outside the glass, separated from them by a world I wasn't part of, watching.

The woman rose, walked over to him, bent down, and kissed his cheek.

Eustace put his arm around her waist.

They looked like a couple.

A real couple. One not crushed under five million in loan shark debt. One that didn't need a wife selling her apartment and grinding herself to death to pay it off.

I didn't charge in.

Didn't cry.

Didn't call to confront him.

I turned around and walked away.

Into an alley beside the mall. I crouched down.

My stomach turned itself inside out. I retched and retched, brought up nothing—then blood.

Blood again.

Apparently my blood wasn't worth much. So much of it spilled, and nobody cared.

I wiped the corner of my mouth with a tissue and stood up.

A street sweeper at the mouth of the alley was watching me. He held out a bottle of water.

“Miss, are you feeling all right? Want me to call an ambulance?”

“No, thank you.”

I took the bottle and drank.

Cold. Cold all the way from my throat down to my stomach, like a sign——nothing warm could reach you anymore.

Eustace came home a little after eight that night.

I was sitting in the living room. The lights were off.

He flipped the switch and flinched.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me for what?”

“Where did you go today?”

His hands stalled for a beat as he changed his shoes. Then, casual as anything, he set them in the rack.

“Working late, like I told you.”

“In a café?”

His hand stopped on the shoe rack.

“You followed me?”

“No. I walked past and saw you.”

Eustace was silent for a few seconds. He walked over, sat down beside me, and sighed.

“Gayle, she's my client's assistant. Project stuff. You're reading too much into it.”

“She kissed you.”

“Foreign etiquette. She just got back from abroad.”

He didn't even bother making his lies sound plausible.

“Right. So what's her name?”

“……Margaret.”

I couldn't help but laugh.

Not because it was funny. Because it was absurd. He couldn't even be bothered to make up a convincing fake name.

“Eustace. I'm going to ask you one question. Answer me honestly.”

He looked at me.

“The five million you owe. Is it real?”

His expression shifted.

Just for an instant. But in that instant, I saw it.

Guilt.

Panic.

Everything he'd been hiding behind that innocent face.

“Of course it's real. You don't believe me?”

“Then tell me. Who's the creditor? Which company? Where's the loan agreement?”

“I……lost it.”

“You lost a promissory note for five million?”

“It wasn't a promissory note, it was a contract. It probably got mixed in with some old books when we moved and thrown out.”

The longer he talked, the smoother it got. Every loose thread in the lie tucked itself neatly away, like he'd done this a hundred times.

“Gayle, did someone say something to you? Don't let people get in your head. There are so many people out there who can't stand to see us doing well.”

So many people who can't stand to see us doing well.

Who couldn't stand it?

I'd nearly killed myself paying off his debt, and apparently someone out there couldn't stand this kind of “doing well”?

I didn't ask anything else.

He thought he'd smoothed it over.

How did he do it so naturally?

How long had he been lying to me?

Three months? Six months? Or was it a scam from the very beginning?

I went back to the bedroom, lay down, and my mind went blank.

Not because I didn't want to think.

Because I couldn't anymore.

I was too tired.