The resignation letter was still warm from the printer, the smell of ink clinging to it.

"You're sure about this?"

My supervisor's face didn't show much, since he'd already approached me about it privately before. But there was real regret in his voice.

"With your talent, staying at this company is a waste."

He pressed a business card into my hand. Printed on it was the name and contact information of one of the top firms in Shoreline City.

I took it and politely declined his kindness.

"I understand everything you're saying, but Dana still needs my help."

After graduation, Dana and I had joined this company together.

Dana wasn't short on ability. He just couldn't bring himself to swallow his pride.

A client would push back a couple of times, and he'd toss his files down and walk out.

Under the double pressure of quotas and the mortgage, I often saw him hunched in the stairwell, smoking in silence.

So afterward, every client I closed, I'd hand them Dana's card before they left.

"Mr. Gilbert will be handling everything from here. He's more of an expert than I am."

The day he made sales champion, he spun me around in our apartment, the grin on his face impossible to stop.

In that moment, I'd thought all of it was worth it.

Now, I didn't hesitate. I nodded.

"I'm sure."

As I walked out of the company, the phone in my pocket buzzed.

"Hello, is this Ms. Harding? About the wedding gown you ordered with us…"

I flagged down a cab and got in.

"I don't need it anymore. Just cancel it for me."

There was a pause on the other end. "But… ma'am, perhaps you should come in and see it for yourself."

A flicker of confusion crossed my mind, but I gave the driver the address anyway.

The second I pushed the door open, I heard a familiar voice inside.

Samantha was wearing my wedding gown, the side zipper strained open along a split seam.

"What kind of quality is this? I only wore it once and it tore."

The shop assistant stood beside her, scrambling to explain.

"This was custom-made to Ms. Harding's measurements. Some places not fitting are unavoidable."

When they saw me, all three of them froze.

Dana strode over and planted himself in front of Samantha, shielding her completely behind him.

I didn't look at them. I waved the assistant over and paid the balance with my card.

Then I picked up the scissors lying nearby and slashed a long gash through the skirt.

Samantha's eyes reddened on the spot, brimming with tears, which only made her look more pitiful and lovely.

Dana seized my hand, stopping me.

"What are you doing!"

I lifted my eyes to him, my tone matter-of-fact.

"This is mine. What I do with it is my business."

"You're the one who should explain why you brought someone else to try on my dress."

He wrenched the scissors out of my hand, crouched down, and inspected the tear carefully.

"Samantha's ex-husband never gave her a wedding. She's never worn a bridal gown, so I wanted to bring her here to feel what it's like."

The more he talked, the more his patience drained away, until he shot to his feet.

"But now it's all ruined."

"You're a woman too. Shouldn't you understand better than anyone what a wedding gown means to a woman?"

I looked at the coldness in his eyes and suddenly realized I had never truly known Dana at all.

How else could he say something so hypocritically two-faced?

"If you understand all that, then did it ever occur to you what this gown means to me?"

But Dana didn't spare me so much as a glance.

He soothed Samantha, coaxing her out of the ill-fitting gown.

"Carmen, this isn't the time to throw a tantrum."

He flung the gown at me, knocking my hair out of place.

"You broke it yourself, so you can deal with it yourself."

He took Samantha's hand and swept out without a backward glance.

The clerk picked up the gown, at a loss for what to do.

I grabbed my bag and patted her shoulder.

"Just throw it away."

Dana and the dress. I didn't want either of them anymore.

Back home, I threw myself down onto the bed.

Last night's dinner had been too greasy, and since morning my stomach had been aching dully.

Finally a sharp wave of nausea surged up my throat, and I clapped a hand over my mouth and rushed into the bathroom.

After hitting the flush button, I braced myself against the sink and stood up.

Dana had come back at some point. He stood in the middle of the living room, his face gone pale.

His voice shook a little.

"You're pregnant?"

I stood in the bathroom doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the frame, and the whole thing struck me as funny.

The nausea was still rolling up inside me, sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes.

But I didn't tell him the truth.

"Yeah. Just found out. Do you plan to keep it?"

Dana's face went blank, and his hands trembled as he searched his pockets for a coin.

"Let's flip a coin to decide."

But he dug around for ages and couldn't find a single one.

I walked up to him and pressed a round object into his palm.

"Heads, we keep the baby. Tails, I get rid of it."

"Dana. Flip it properly."

I looked at him, long and hard.

He tossed the coin smoothly into the air, caught it on the back of his hand, and covered it.

The clock in the corner ticked on, and neither of us said a word.

After a long moment, Dana finally lifted his hand and looked.

"Tails."

His tone was calm as he turned the coin over and closed it in his fist.

"Carmen, we'll have a baby someday. It's just that now, the timing isn't right."

I looked into his eyes, wanting to ask him when the timing would be right, why it wasn't right now.

Wanting to tell him the pregnancy was fake, that even the coin just now was only an ordinary arcade token, with no heads or tails at all.

But in the end I said nothing.

As I packed the last piece of clothing into my suitcase, the phone on the bed started buzzing nonstop.

I opened it and found the class group chat had blown up.

"Did you all see the video Samantha posted? I never would've guessed Carmen was that kind of person."

"At the reunion that day I felt something was off between them. The original girlfriend running into the other woman. No wonder Dana ended up walking out on Carmen."

"The pull of a first love. No one can resist it."

"…"

Someone had reposted Samantha's video, the cover a photo of her and Dana together.

I tapped in. The title was A Day-Date With My First Love.

She and Dana had gone back to relive the barbecue stand outside the school, ridden the Ferris wheel to the very top, tried on wedding gowns, and finally stopped on a rooftop.

I recognized it. This was the place where Dana had once confessed to me.

Samantha held up the camera, her voice full of regret.

"Such a shame. That fireworks display you set off for me back then, I never got to see it."

"You promised me you'd have one custom-made, fireworks that would spell out my name when they bloomed in the sky. Did you do it?"

Dana's face flickered in and out of the darkness.

My hands shook, and I could barely keep hold of the phone.

"I did it," he said.

Something inside my head snapped.

I suddenly remembered that night Dana confessed, how his gaze had passed through me as if he were looking at something far away.

So it turned out that in the sky behind me, Samantha's name had been written. She was the one he'd really meant to confess to.

So it turned out our beginning had been a mistake all along.

The words had barely left Dana's mouth when the sky overhead lit up bright as noon.

A thousand fireworks burst open before the two of them.

Samantha's tears spilled over.

The comment section lost its mind, tens of thousands of blessings and envious gushing pouring in.

Someone asked: "Then why did you two break up back then?"

Of all the comments, Samantha singled out that one to reply: "Because of a certain person. If not for her, I would never have been left homeless in a foreign country."

One sentence, and the waves rose a thousand layers high.

The internet mob was a powerful thing. My social accounts were overrun in no time.

My inbox flooded with every kind of vicious curse.

I stood, dug through the drawer, and pulled out the itemized wedding costs, the recording of his proposal, and the old security footage I'd saved from that night.

I'd kept all of it, carefully, as keepsakes.

I opened my account, drafted a long post, and attached the list of evidence.

A second before I tapped send, the phone was yanked out of my hand.

Dana stood in front of me, scrolling through the proof, his face dark enough to drip water.

"Doing this will destroy Samantha."

Right in front of me, he deleted everything I'd labored over, then hurled the phone to the floor and ground it to pieces under his heel.

He tore the printouts to shreds too, scattering them into the trash.

Something in me snapped.

"But she's already destroyed me!"

My finger jabbed hard into Dana's chest.

"That scale in your heart has never once tipped toward me."

"And the multiple-choice question of your life only ever had one answer."

"Dana, I hate you to the bone."

I grabbed my suitcase and turned to leave, but he caught my arm and hauled me back.

I wrenched free and turned. Dana's eyes were bloodshot.

"Where do you think you're going? Until this dies down online, you're not going anywhere!"

"Let go of me!"

In the middle of the struggle, a mocking voice rang out behind me.

Patrick stood in the doorway holding a length of rope, one corner of his mouth curled up.

"Three days are up, Carmen. I've come to tie you up and drag you home."