Chapter 3

The screen kept scrolling.

【Day 37: The new assistant is always making little digs at her. Transfer her out tomorrow. Progress -1%? She seems to think there's something going on between me and the assistant.】

That assistant. I remembered her.

The first time she met me, she smiled and said,

"Mr. Farley trusts me a lot. Today I even remade the bed in his lounge for him."

No one else was allowed near Scott's desk, let alone his personal things.

I didn't make a scene right there.

On the drive home I only asked him,

"Your assistant knows you very well."

He gripped the wheel, silent for a few seconds, then said,

"She's handling the admin handover."

Then he added,

"It's just work."

The next day, the assistant was transferred out.

Scott didn't explain, and I chalked the reassignment up to a guilty conscience being cleaned up.

But attached after the log entry was a personnel note he'd never sent me.

【She deliberately offended Miriam. She can't stay near me. Change the reason for the transfer to a routine reassignment. Don't let Miriam become the subject of gossip.】

Now, with the attachment on the screen in front of me, I finally saw it. He had dealt with the person who insulted me, and dealt away his own explanation right along with her.

Next entry.

【Day 128: Passed a bakery, saw her stare at the strawberry cake for three seconds. Bought 100 of them, put them everywhere she might pass. One of them's got to reach her, right? Progress +2%.】

I stared at that line for a long time without moving.

That day, the same strawberry cake had turned up at the company front desk, in the underground parking garage, at the coffee shop I always went to, even at the security booth of my mother's building.

I thought the bakery was running a promotion.

I got one and passed it off to a coworker without a second thought.

That evening, when Scott saw me come home empty-handed, he asked,

"On the way today… did you see anything?"

"No."

He nodded and turned into the kitchen.

There was one more line added to the log.

【She didn't get one. A hundred wasn't enough either. Somehow my effort always ends up far away from her.】

I raised a hand and pressed it over my mouth.

The tears fell onto the keyboard anyway.

I had always believed he didn't love me, that he had never once shown me any feeling.

But it wasn't that Scott hadn't shown it.

It was only that every time he showed it, he went around whatever way I could have understood.

He didn't ask if I wanted the cake. He bought a hundred and played the odds.

He didn't tell me why he transferred the assistant. He just wrote "not suited to the position" on the order.

He thought saying the dress looked nice was too much of an intrusion, yet he made my photo into the heroine of a game and hid it on a drive no one knew about.

I kept scrolling down. The progress rose very slowly.

I asked him "have you eaten?" on my own once. Plus 0.3%.

I didn't pull away from his embrace when he'd been drinking. Plus 1%.

Once, when he had a fever, I left the medicine on the table and walked out without waiting for him to wake, and he logged three separate entries about it.

By Day 301, the progress stopped at 20%.

【The company's cash flow is about to snap. If it can't be hidden, then we'll divorce. I can't drag her down with me.】

【Progress paused.】

The next attachment for that day was a divorce agreement.

The name of the second party was mine.

It wasn't my handwriting.