Chapter 2

After cleaning up the dust as best as I could, I crashed onto the old couch.

The next morning, loud, frantic knocking jolted me awake.

A woman's voice drifted through the door. I sat bolt upright, assuming Evelyn had tracked me down.

I walked over and swung the door open.

When I saw the young woman standing on the porch in a soft pink dress, I froze.

Because of the upcoming redevelopment, most of the neighbors had already moved out. When I arrived last night, the entire street was pitch-black and practically deserted.

"Logan! You're actually back?"

Her eyes widened in delight, and she threw her arms wide as if to hug me.

I took a step back, studying her with a puzzled frown.

It wasn't until I noticed the tiny beauty mark at the outer corner of her eye that a slender, familiar silhouette surfaced in my memory.

When we were kids, the girl next door always wore twin pigtails and trailed behind me, constantly calling my name.

She had a sweet baby face, and whenever she smiled, that tiny mark crinkled with life.

I remembered her father had been an uncontrollable gambler who beat her and her mother every time he lost.

My mother was still alive back then. Heartbroken seeing the bruises on the girl, she frequently invited her over for dinner.

Years had passed, yet her smile was just as warm and radiant as ever.

Suddenly, a photograph in Evelyn's bedroom flashed across my mind.

In that photo, Evelyn also wore twin pigtails, leaning against a teenage boy's shoulder, smiling with a pure, radiant joy I had never once seen in all the years we were together.

It was only then that I realized Evelyn wasn't someone who didn't know how to smile.

She simply reserved all her warmth and beauty for another man.

We had fought bitterly over that photograph. She had scoffed, telling me coldly that in her heart, I would never measure up to her first love.

We fell into a brutal cold war after that. In the end, my mother had talked me down: "Why should a living, breathing man compete with a ghost?"

Later on, I swallowed my pride and smoothed things over myself. But from that day forward, Oliver's name became a forbidden topic between us.

I had been lost in my own delusions back then. Only now did I understand the harsh truth:

If a woman doesn't even want to give you a genuine smile, you hold no real place in her heart at all.

After catching up for a bit, Clara invited me to go hiking.

She told me there was a meteor shower tonight, and if I had any wishes, I could make them under the stars.

I originally wanted to decline, but seeing the bright, hopeful look on her face, I didn't have the heart to ruin her mood.

On the trail up the mountain, we talked about everything.

I learned that her past few years had been agonizing. A year ago, pushed beyond her limits by years of domestic violence, her mother had stabbed her father to death in self-defense.

To Clara, it seemed like freedom on the surface, but losing both parents and inheriting her father's massive private debts had nearly crushed her.

Even under that suffocating weight, she remained remarkably optimistic.

Looking down at the dirt trail, I suddenly felt that my own past few years had been a pathetic failure.

I had believed that marrying Evelyn and being with the woman I loved would guarantee my future happiness. I was dead wrong.

For her, I gave up my promising career as an independent designer. For her, I learned gourmet cooking and floral arrangement, desperately trying to build shared interests with her.

In the end, I had simply turned myself into a punchline.

Yet looking at Clara, despite everything she had suffered, she was still fighting for her dreams.

She was still entirely herself.

Right then, my phone buzzed with an incoming voice message from Evelyn.