13 Noah
Ethan and Chase hadn’t contacted me for
days. Rumors circulated that they were
<
dating. Even the group chat, originally created
to mock Ethan, was shipping them.
[Love at first sight?]
[Whoa, did we do a good thing? Hahaha!]
[Chase is really good–looking. Didn’t Ethan
have a thing for you, bro?]
I stopped reading. Frustration and anxiety
overwhelmed me. Could Ethan really fall for
someone so easily? She’d always been by my
side… She never refused me. She was
stubborn yet obedient. Until Chase’s post
shattered everything.
I was at a bar, celebrating my recent takeover
of the family company.
“Your family business is booming,” someone said. “Once Changhe Industries returns, North City will be a two–horse race.
<
“Changhe Industries… the founder is old, his
eldest son died, no heir… how can they
compete with the Hes?”
“No, no, that’s old news. They found their second son who was lost as a child…”
THE
My friends found me sitting alone.
me sitting
“Noah, check this out,” one said, showing me
his phone. “Ethan seems pretty innocent, but she plays hard.”
The picture was dark, but I recognized Ethan hugging someone.
It felt like a string in my brain snapped. My ears rang, my fingers trembled.
What the hell…?
I grabbed my friend’s collar. “What the hell is this?!”
The bartender, knowing us, intervened. My
<
friend looked at me in disbelief.
“Noah, you’re the one who set them up.”
“You regret it?” He said slowly, “You’re
reaping what you sow.”
I slumped down, pouring another drink. My
friend called Ethan. She didn’t answer. I
scoffed. She really didn’t want me anymore. “Bro, don’t be like this,” my friend said. “She
seems serious. She wouldn’t fall for someone
just because of their looks.
That’s right. They’d only known each other
for a few days. She was… just angry at me. But I was still uneasy.
That night, I searched for information about her past. I knew her parents died when she was young, and she grew up in an orphanage. The next morning, I drove there. I met a
J
woman who’d worked there for over thirty
years.
When I mentioned Ethan, she gasped.
“Oh, her,” she said. “The girl who went to
college two years ago.”
She looked at my watch–a seven–figure,
limited edition–and her tone changed. “Come
in, young man. I have lots of her photos in the
archives.”
Photos of her growing up–unhappy, then
with pigtails, then prettier and prettier… She learned to dress up, put on makeup, pick
pretty dresses.
I smiled, flipping to a photo of all the kids.
graduating. Ethan was in the middle, next to a tall, thin boy with short hair, glasses, and a
birthmark.
<
It was Chase.
The woman asked cautiously, “Are you
Ethan’s boyfriend?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Oh, the boy next to her… that’s Ethan’s first
love. But don’t worry, that boy, Kai, is dead.”
Dead…
“He died in a plane crash,” she continued.
“He changed flights to get back for his
girlfriend’s birthday…”
My brain felt like mush. If the boy in the
picture was dead, who was the person I saw
at school? A replacement? So, Ethan was
with Chase because of his looks? Love at
first sight?
I clenched my fist. I wondered if Chase would
want to be a dead man’s shadow. If I told him,
く
would he stay?
