Leona's heart skipped a beat. Almost instinctively, she stepped forward and snatched the letter from Sebastian's hand.

"What are you doing?"

Her voice trembled just slightly, but it was mostly cold and wary.

Sebastian's hand froze in mid-air as he was clearly taken aback by her sudden reaction.

Then his gaze turned icy. "The mailman said there was no one at your house. Your emergency contact is me, so he gave it to me to sign for you."

Emergency contact…

Leona's chest tightened, and a dull ache spread through her at that.

She had set him to be her emergency contact a long time ago. It was so long ago that she had almost forgotten about it. Back when he was her whole world, she had naturally entrusted such an important thing to him.

Leona lowered her gaze, hiding the turmoil in her eyes. "I forgot to change the emergency contact. I'll update it later."

She didn't look at him again and quickly grabbed a pen from a nearby table. With deliberate precision, she signed her name on the receipt—Leona Langham.

From now on, she would have nothing to do with him.

After signing, she turned to go home.

But then she heard Sebastian ask the mailman behind her, "Is this the only letter? There's no letter for me? We're going to the same university, so they should've arrived together."

The mailman confirmed, "Yes, this is the only one."

Sebastian furrowed his brow and called out to Leona, who had already taken a few steps away. "Leona, open yours and check. Maybe my letter is with yours."

Leona stopped, but she didn't turn around. Her voice was firm with no hesitation. "It's not here."

Her certainty caught Sebastian off guard, leaving him uneasy. "How can you be so sure?"

Leona took a deep breath, ready to reveal the decision she had kept buried for so long. Just as she was about to speak, Sebastian's phone rang.

It was Maureen.

As soon as he answered, Maureen's tearful voice came through. "Sebastian, where are you? I'm scared… I think someone's following me…"

Sebastian's expression instantly changed, his focus immediately shifting to Maureen. His voice was filled with the urgency and worry Leona used to hear so many times. "Don't be scared. Stay where you are and don't move. Send me your location. I'm coming now!"

Without sparing Leona another glance, he turned and quickly walked toward his car. He didn't even hear her quietly say, "I changed my college application, so we didn't apply to the same university."

Soon, the engine roared to life, and the car sped away.

Leona stood still, watching the car disappear into the night, and the last ripple of emotion in her heart finally faded into silence.

In the days that followed, Leona quietly made preparations for her journey.

Southsea University was a long way from here, so she knew she would need to start everything from scratch.

On the other hand, Sebastian's social media was unusually active.

Every day, she saw updates with photos and videos of him, and he always had Maureen by his side. They hiked together at sunrise, with Maureen resting her head on his shoulder as the clouds rolled beneath them. They went camping and sat by a bonfire, while Maureen fed him skewers of grilled food. They checked off countless popular tourist spots, posing for intimate photos at each landmark…

In every photo, Sebastian's gaze was relaxed, and his smile was warm.

Their classmates commented on his posts.

"Seb, is this official now?"

"Please be together forever!"

"Maureen, you're so cool to win Seb over!"

Leona swiped through the screen, looking at those vibrant but blinding images. A heaviness settled in her chest, like a rock weighing her down, but strangely, the sharp pain that had once taken her breath away did not arrive as expected.

This was what it felt like when her feelings had completely shut down.

The sun was shining brightly the day she went back to the school to pick up her documents.

As soon as she entered the gates, she saw Maureen, arm-in-arm with Sebastian, posing for photos in front of the bulletin board and making cute faces for the camera.

Sebastian still wore a slightly aloof expression as usual, but his lips were curved into a small smile as he went along with her antics.

Leona stood at a distance, and at that moment, she was flooded with memories of herself and Sebastian.

They had walked hand-in-hand down every tree-lined path in this very school. He had once pinned her against a wall for a secret kiss. They would spend hours lying on desks, making plans for the future, swearing to go to Northsea University together, and getting married after graduating from there…

Those beautiful moments seemed like a distant, blurry dream to her now.

Since Maureen appeared, everything had changed.

As for Leona and Sebastian, they no longer shared a future.

Leona quietly turned and walked away from them, heading toward the school's back garden.

There, an old banyan tree stood, its trunk once carved with Sebastian's name and hers, accompanied by a small heart.

It was during their first year of high school when Sebastian had pulled her close, carefully etching their names into the bark with a pocketknife. He said this meant they were carved into each other's lives forever.

Now, Leona took out the key she always carried, found the names, and started to scrape them away with force, little by little.

Just as she finished scraping and was preparing to leave, Maureen's playful voice and footsteps echoed from behind.

"Sebastian, come look! I heard that if we carve our names into trees in this grove, our future will be bright! Let's carve our names too, okay?"

Leona didn't turn around, but she could imagine Sebastian nodding in agreement.

Sure enough, she heard his deep voice. "Okay."

Then, she heard the faint scraping sound of a knife against the tree bark.

Right beside the tree where Leona had just removed their names, the two of them had chosen another one and carved the names "Sebastian" and "Maureen" side by side.

Leona kept her back to them, remaining silent.

After completing her task, she put the key back into her pocket and turned to leave.

But just as she reached the lake at the edge of the garden, Maureen caught up with her from behind.

"Leona, wait!" Maureen called out, holding a small hairpin in her hand.

"You dropped something."

Leona recognized it as the hairpin she had accidentally left behind earlier. She reached out to take it.

But Maureen withdrew her hand slightly, smiling with a mix of mockery and amusement. "Leona, from now on, the only person who will be with Sebastian is me. You'll never have the right to be with him again. I'll prove to you that in his heart, I'm a thousand, no, a million times more important than you."

Leona, tired of engaging in useless verbal battles, just wanted to take the hairpin and leave quickly.

"Give it back," she said, her tone dismissive.

Her complete disregard infuriated Maureen.

With a tight grip, Maureen yanked Leona's wrist, her voice rising in frustration. "What's with the act? Just because you two grew up together, does that make you so special? Do you even know what they say about childhood sweethearts being no match for fate? Sebastian and I are meant to be! You'll always just be a background figure in his life!"

"Let go!"

Leona's wrist ached, and she struggled to break free.

"I won't!"

The two girls tugged at each other by the lake. In their heated struggle, one of them slipped.

With two loud splashes, both of them fell into the water, the force of the impact sending waves splashing everywhere.

Leona knew how to swim, but the sudden shock of the cold lake water surrounding her body made her calves seize up.

She was cramping.

Her legs went numb, and her body started to sink uncontrollably. Water rushed into her nose as panic surged through her.

Just as she felt the darkness closing in, she saw Sebastian diving into the lake without hesitation.

In that moment, the small flame in her heart that was nearly extinguished weakly flickered to life.

But in the next instant, that flicker of hope was snuffed out as she watched him swim straight toward Maureen and grab her waist, pulling her to safety without sparing a single glance back at Leona.

While Sebastian helped Maureen back onto solid ground, she clung to his arm and coughed loudly. Then, in a deliberate tone, she shouted, "Sebastian, Leona is still in the water!"

Sebastian looked back at Leona, who was struggling in the water, barely holding on. His voice, cutting through the water, extinguished the last flicker of hope within her.

"We've broken up. She has nothing to do with me."

With that, Sebastian helped the shaken Maureen to her feet and turned to leave, leaving Leona in the increasingly cold water, who was slowly losing all her strength.

When Leona finally regained consciousness, she found herself staring at the sterile white ceiling of a hospital room.

A few classmates were gathered around her bed. They were visibly relieved when they saw her awake. "Leona, you're awake! Thank goodness! You scared us to death!"

It turned out that those classmates had happened to pass by the lake and saw her unconscious body being washed ashore. They quickly called for help and got her to the hospital.

"We tried calling your parents, but the call didn't go through... So we, um, we took the liberty of calling Sebastian…" one of the classmates explained awkwardly.

Another added, his tone tinged with disbelief and anger, "We told him you were in the hospital and asked him to come. But he said that you two had broken up, and you have nothing to do with him!"

Leona quietly listened, her expression unreadable. When she heard the words "nothing to do with him," a faint, almost imperceptible sneer tugged at her lips.

Look at that. That was the very same guy she had loved for so many years.

When he didn't love her anymore, his heart was harder than the rocks at the bottom of the lake.

Her classmates saw the look on her face and felt both uncomfortable and sorry for her. They began offering words of comfort.

Leona propped herself up and gave them a reassuring smile.

"Sebastian's right. We've broken up. From now on, I don't have anything to do with him," she said softly.

Her classmates exchanged uneasy glances, still not believing it. "How is that possible? Didn't you two make plans to go to Northsea University together?"

Leona lowered her gaze and quietly replied, "No, he and Maureen are going to Northsea University. I applied to…"

Before she could finish, the door to the room was suddenly flung open.

Leona's parents rushed in, their faces full of worry. "Nana! What happened? How did you fall into the lake? You scared us half to death!"

Her parents surrounded her, asking about her condition and making sure she was okay. Leona reassured them, but her mind wandered.

In a daze, she thought she saw a familiar tall figure by the door, wearing that black jacket she knew so well.

But when she looked again, the doorway was empty, and the only people passing by were medical staff and patients.

After confirming that Leona was fine, her parents completed the discharge paperwork.

Leona thanked her classmates and bade them goodbye.

For the next week, Leona focused on resting at home while she connected with a senior from Southsea University in her new student group chat, learning about the campus as well as booking her flight.

Her parents, watching her busy, seemed hesitant but eventually spoke up. "Nana, Sebastian's family is holding a celebration party for his college admission, and they've invited our family. What do you think?"

Leona stopped packing for a moment, then nodded quietly. "Okay, I'll go."

On the day of the party, Leona and her parents arrived on time with their gifts.

When she saw Sebastian, they merely nodded at each other without exchanging a single word.

Their parents immediately noticed the awkwardness and assumed their kids must have had some kind of disagreement.

Trying to smooth things over, Sebastian's mother, Olivia Walters, grabbed Leona's hand and laughed. "Nana, come over and sit here. Seb's just a little obstinate. You two will be going to university together soon, so make sure to be more considerate of each other, okay?"

Henry Kane, Sebastian's father, also patted Sebastian on the shoulder. "You should give in to Nana."

Sebastian silently stood to the side, his expression as cold as ever. He didn't even glance at Leona.

Leona took a deep breath, about to tell them she and Sebastian had broken up, when suddenly, the door opened with a commotion.

Holding a huge bouquet of bright sunflowers, Maureen walked in looking gorgeous and radiant. She greeted Henry and Olivia politely. "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Kane! Sebastian, I've come to congratulate you!"

As soon as Sebastian saw Maureen, his cold expression melted away, and his eyes softened. Without waiting for a response from his parents, he naturally said, "You're here. Come in."

He completely ignored Leona and her parents, walking straight past them as he led Maureen in.

Henry's and Olivia's smiles turned awkward as they quickly ushered Leona's family inside. "Oh, come in, come in, please sit…"

The entire evening, Leona's parents couldn't take their eyes off Sebastian and Maureen.

They watched how Sebastian served Maureen food, how he drank on her behalf when others offered her, and how they whispered intimately to each other.

Gradually, their expressions shifted from confusion to understanding, and then to a deep sorrow for their daughter.

When Leona went to the restroom, her parents pulled her aside. Her mother, Teresa Burton, whispered, "Nana, tell me honestly, what's going on with you and Sebastian? Is he deliberately trying to make you jealous with that girl? You two have been childhood sweethearts for so long. Don't let something insignificant get between you."

Leona thought about the countless breakups and reconciliations over the years. Each time they briefly made up, it was always followed by him becoming even more hurtful toward her.

She shook her head, her voice tired but resolute. "Mom, this isn't something insignificant. I'm really ending things with him for good."

Then, she took a deep breath and finally revealed the decision she had kept buried for so long. "Actually, I changed my college application. I'm not going to Northsea University. I'm going to Southsea University."

Her parents were shocked, unable to speak as they stared at her.

Southsea University? That was a thousand miles away from Northsea University!

Before they could say anything, a loud gasp followed by a sudden crash echoed through the center of the hall.