Chapter 1
It was a full year later when my remains were finally discovered.
After the accident, the area had been sealed off, no one allowed in or out.
Massive boulders blocked the path completely, and I couldn’t find my way out, trapped in a tiny cave. By the time the rescue team arrived, all that was left of me was a skeletal remains.
Rats and insects had long since picked my flesh clean, leaving nothing but bone. Even the remnants of my clothes were scattered, dragged yards away.
I don’t know why my soul hadn’t dissipated. After a year in that lightless place, I had long since moved from initial despair and terror to a strange calm.
I stood in the corner, watching them carefully gather my bones, taking them away for DNA comparison.
When I floated out of the cave with the rescue team and the sunlight found me, it felt incredibly unreal, like a daze.
On the way down the mountain, one of the female team members, Sarah, was excitedly waving her phone.
“Julian is talking about his fiancée again in an interview! He’s so devoted, why would she just disappear like that, so ungrateful for his devotion?”
Hearing that name after so long, I instinctively looked up.
“Oh, remember when his fiancée planted that field of sunflowers for him? When they bloomed, Julian posted so many updates that day, just showing them off.”
“But if they really loved each other, they’ll surely clear up any misunderstandings and get back together, right? Julian’s rich and handsome, after all!”
A few of them huddled together, chattering away, their eyes shining as they gushed about Julian’s meteoric rise and impressive success story. Listening to their words, I froze, my mind a chaotic mess.
Julian rarely had other people around him. For all those years, the only woman he’d been close to was me.
It wasn’t that he was a saint. It was that I was relentlessly, stubbornly, desperately clinging to him.
The day before we went to the mountains, I’d planted the entire backyard with sunflowers. I’d squatted for so long that when I stood up, my vision blurred, and I fell to the ground. Julian just walked past, utterly indifferent, not even sparing me a glance.
He’d always been distant, even after seven years together; most of the time, he still treated me like I was invisible.
When I scrambled awkwardly to my feet and chased after Julian, he looked at me with a calm gaze. I frantically tried to explain, signing wildly, but as our eyes met, it was like a sudden, icy splash of reality.
Julian didn’t understand sign language, and I couldn’t speak. Our everyday communication was always through written words.
“Julian, when the flowers bloom, can we get married?”
I carefully typed out the sentence, showing him the screen. Even though everyone else dismissed our relationship, I stubbornly held onto Julian.
He didn’t answer for a long time, and my previously tense emotions slowly calmed down.
The scrapes on the back of my hand, the cuts on my calf from the sharp spade. His gaze, light and dismissive, swept over my scrapes and the desperate mess I was, before he simply turned and walked away.
He never believed I loved him. Over the years, I’d wanted to marry him countless times, but he always refused.
I never even got the chance to explain myself, only able to helplessly write ‘I love you’ over and over again. When others mocked and questioned me, Julian never seemed to care, even letting their rumors fester.
The phone screen automatically dimmed, but I remained standing there, my expression dazed. If he didn’t believe me, why did he choose me in the first place?