Oscar Ford and I had been together for four years, but in the very first month of our long-distance relationship, he asked to break up.

“Sorry, I’ve fallen for someone else.”

“She’s prettier than you, and she understands me better.”

“I’m not interested in you at all anymore.”

But later, he was the one begging me to take him back.

…

When I got home from work, I picked up my phone and glanced at the screen. Our chat was still stuck on the message I’d sent him half an hour ago.

So busy? I muttered inwardly, then typed another message:

“I’m home and about to eat. Are you off work yet? Tomorrow’s the weekend, you can finally get some rest.”

I even snapped a photo of my dinner and sent it to him.

Bowl in hand, I scrolled through my phone while keeping an eye out for his reply.

It wasn’t until I was doing the dishes that I finally heard the Facebook notification sound.

I hurriedly wiped my hands on a towel and grabbed my phone.

Five words hit me in the face: “Let’s break up.”

My mind went blank. I had no idea why he would suddenly say something like this.

“What’s wrong with you?”

This time, he replied almost instantly.

“I don’t like you anymore.”

“To be honest, I didn’t reply just now because I was having dinner with a coworker. It wasn’t convenient to message you.”

“I’ve fallen for her.”

Each sentence landed harder than the last. My brain felt like it had short-circuited. I even forgot to question him.

“So let’s break up.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” When I finally came back to my senses, I just couldn’t believe it. Four years together, and he could just toss it all aside like that?

“I don’t have the time or energy to joke about this,” Oscar replied, his tone icy. “There’s a pretty, warm-hearted girl in my department. We get along really well.”

“I gradually realized I wanted to see her every day, that I was looking forward to working with her. That’s when I knew I’d fallen in love with her.”

I tried calling him, but every voice call was declined.

“We’ve been together too long. I don’t feel the way I used to about you. I honestly can’t bring up the slightest interest in you anymore.”

“If you want to call me a scumbag, go ahead, whatever. Either way, we should break up. I hope you meet someone better than me.”

When I sent another message, a glaring red exclamation mark popped up.

He’d deleted me.

A crushing sense of suffocation wrapped itself around me, making it hard to breathe.

Driven by pure emotion, my brain pushed me into a reckless decision.

I immediately bought a ticket for the earliest train the next morning to the city where Oscar lived.

Oscar and I had been together for more than four years. We’d gone from college into the working world side by side, each other’s first love.

After graduation, I got into my current company through campus recruitment and did pretty well. Oscar, on the other hand, kept hitting wall after wall at his job until he was finally forced to resign.

At first, he’d wanted to stay in this city with me—no couple wants a long-distance relationship if they can help it.

But he went to interview after interview and still couldn’t find any job that matched what he had in mind.

Around that time, one of his college roommates told him about an opening at his company: good pay, good benefits—the only issue was that it was in another city.

After hesitating for a long time, Oscar finally decided to give it a try, and that’s how our long-distance relationship began.

When he first moved, he called me every day. He’d message me all the time, always telling me how much he missed me.

But in the past two weeks, his messages had come less and less often.

I’d thought he was just busy with work. Only now do I realize—

He’d fallen for someone else.

But I just couldn’t figure it out—how could a relationship we’d had for so long fall apart over one month of long distance?

I had to ask him face-to-face.

I barely slept that night. As soon as I woke up, I rushed to the station.

Even though we were in different cities, Oscar wasn’t that far away. The high-speed train got me there in under three hours.

I took a cab straight to his apartment.

I knocked on his door.

When he opened it and saw me standing there, his expression turned awkward and stiff. “What are you doing here?”

“I just want to know…”

“Want to know what?” he cut me off impatiently. “I told you, we’ve already broken up.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but a sugary, coquettish female voice floated out from inside: “Oscar, who is it? It’s so early.”

A tall, beautiful stranger stepped out from the bedroom. She slid her arm through his, looking me up and down.

I stared at her, then at the faint red marks on Oscar’s neck and shoulder. Nausea rolled through me.

“How come you’re awake?” Oscar’s eyes softened when he looked at her. He reached up to ruffle her hair. “Didn’t you say you were sleeping in till noon today?”

“I got woken up,” she pouted. “Who is she, your ex-girlfriend?”

“Go back and get some rest,” he said gently. “I’ll be right there after I’m done.”

She gave me another look or two before turning and walking back into the bedroom.

“You saw it yourself,” he said flatly. “I have someone I like now. Do me a favor and go home. Don’t make my girlfriend misunderstand.”

“Yesterday you told me you had someone you liked. Today I find her living with you. This pace is a little—”

“We’ve broken up. The pace of my new relationship is none of your business, is it?” Oscar’s gaze on me was icy. “There’s no way back for us. Give it up. If you keep standing here and refuse to leave, I’ll call the police and report you for harassment.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He hadn’t been this kind of person before. At least, I’d always believed he wasn’t.

He finished speaking and shut the door without a moment’s hesitation. Just like that, our four-year relationship ended in his cold, ruthless words, a sloppy, ugly finale.

I honestly don’t know how I made it back home.

My tears finally burst, like a dam breaking. Everything I’d been holding in over the last two days came pouring out.

I cried until my body gave out and I passed out from exhaustion. When I woke again, it was already four or five in the morning the next day.

After using the bathroom, I went to wash my hands at the sink and accidentally glanced at the mirror. The woman staring back at me looked haggard, dark circles under her eyes, her face completely drained of color.

A bitter smile tugged at my lips. Even I couldn’t stand the sight of myself like this.

But I really couldn’t control my emotions.

We had loved each other so much once.

We were in the same department in college, grew close from working together all the time, and slowly, we started to like each other.

Even after graduation, before the long-distance part started, he still treated me really well.

We rented a small place together. No matter how tight money was right after graduation, he never skimped on gifts or a sense of ceremony for holidays and special occasions.

When I was stressed out about finding a job, he always managed to support me emotionally.

Because I didn’t like eating breakfast, on the days he was still unemployed, he would get up early and come up with different ways to make breakfast for me.

Late at night, when everything was quiet, he liked to hold me in his arms, eyes shining, and tell me he was going to marry me.

We had even agreed that this Christmas, we would visit each other’s parents.

How am I supposed to accept that someone like that can just say he fell in love with someone else, and that’s that?

“I don’t know why he suddenly turned into this,” I told Felicity.

She knew I’d been in a bad mood since the breakup, so she took the initiative to invite me out for dinner.

After listening to the whole story from beginning to end, she spent a full hour cursing out Oscar and his ancestors eighteen generations back.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “People don’t suddenly rot in one month. Either he was rotten from the start, or he’s been changing bit by bit all along. Your filter on him was just too damn strong, so you didn’t notice.”

“And you even went over there to try to get back together with him,” she added, hating the fact that I wouldn’t toughen up. “You little love-brain idiot, if you actually get back with him, I’m cutting you off.”

She said there had to have been signs, but I really couldn’t figure out where things had gone wrong.

“If you can’t figure it out, then stop trying. There’s no need to torture yourself over some piece-of-shit guy.”

“But we’ve been together for almost five years.”

“You should be grateful you found out now that he’s trash. You’ve still got so many more five-year stretches in your life,” Felicity said. “Thank God you didn’t waste even more time on him.”

I let out a sigh.

“You,” she went on, “you’re already stressed about work, and now your relationship blew up too. It’s perfectly normal to feel depressed.”

To save more money and ease the pressure on both me and Oscar, I really had been throwing myself into work. I was practically always working overtime at home on weekends.

“You need to go out and have some fun, really relax for once.”

Only when she said that did it hit me: after our graduation trip, I hadn’t gone anywhere for fun at all.

“Reel in that workaholic streak of yours, take a few days off. I’ll take you out and show you a good time.”

“But my job…”

“Stop.” Felicity made a shushing gesture. “You’re barely holding yourself together right now, and you’re still worried about work? Listen to me. Take some time off and rest. Who knows, maybe you’ll come back a whole new person.”

In the end, I listened to her and asked for a week off.

Because I almost never took leave, my department head was genuinely surprised when he heard my request. “Vera, did something happen at home?”

I didn’t spell it out, just vaguely let him assume there was something going on.

He didn’t press further and approved my leave without hesitation. “Then take the time to rest properly. Take care of whatever you need to at home before you come back.”

“You really do need a break,” he added. “Among the younger people in our company, you’re the one who works the hardest.”

Felicity and I planned the trip together, and not long after, we set out for our first stop.