The first thing Gu Ze Yan did was stand very, very still.
He couldn't move. Couldn't even breathe.
The paper on the table seemed too light to weigh this much, yet it pinned him like a stone. The handwriting—neat, steady, almost polite—was hers. Only a few words.
"I'm sorry, Gu Ze Yan. Goodbye."
His chest rose and fell violently, yet no air seemed to reach his lungs. He wanted to laugh—yes, laugh. Because this was too absurd. Yesterday, hadn't she sat beside him on the bridge, smiling under the cold wind, listening to his wild talk of traveling the world? Yesterday, hadn't she leaned against him, kissed him softly, and whispered good night?
How could "goodbye" appear in his home the very next day?
His hands trembled. Slowly, he forced himself to move. He strode toward the wardrobe and yanked open the doors.
Empty.
Not completely.
Her dresses and coats were there—the expensive ones he had bought her at boutiques, the luxury fabrics that still carried the scent of perfume from the shop. Perfectly folded, untouched, as though they had never belonged to her.
But the others—her old scarf, the worn cardigan, the white blouse she loved for its comfort—gone. The shelves that once held her notebooks and hairpins were bare. He pulled open drawer after drawer, each one emptier than the last.
The ache in his chest worsened with each slam of wood. She had taken her life with her. Only what he had given her remained, abandoned.
Ze Yan staggered back a step. His knees almost buckled.
Yesterday, she had been in his arms. Yesterday, she had laughed. Yesterday, her lips had been soft under his. Today, her presence had been erased from every corner of his home.
The question formed silently on his lips before it broke into sound, hoarse and harsh.
"Why?"
The word echoed in the apartment like a curse. He whispered it again and again, until it no longer sounded like language at all.
---
The Search
His keys nearly slipped from his hands as he grabbed them. He rushed to the car, driving without thought, the city lights streaking into blurred rivers outside the windshield.
First stop: her old apartment.
The building loomed gray under the harsh streetlamps. Tape still sealed the door where the police had investigated Si Yao's fall.
Neighbors recognized him instantly. A few middle-aged women came forward, offering polite greetings.
"Mr. Gu, how is Xiao Yun? We haven't seen her in a long time."
His throat tightened. He forced the question out. "Has she come here today?"
They shook their heads. "No… no, not at all. Her place has been sealed since that day."
One of them sighed softly. "Such a pitiful child, to lose her sister like that… Tell her to eat well, won't you? She's too thin."
Ze Yan's lips curved into something that might have been a smile, though it hurt more than crying. He nodded stiffly, thanked them, then turned and walked away before his composure could shatter in front of strangers.
Back in the car, his hands clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles blanched. Not here. Where, then?
He drove to the bookstore café. Dark. Closed. Chairs stacked neatly inside. He pressed his palm against the glass, hoping absurdly that if he looked long enough, she would appear on the other side with her apron and her warm smile.
Nothing.
He went to the tutoring center. Empty. Dark classrooms, desks abandoned.
The city blurred around him. He circled roads, scanning sidewalks, bus stops, shopfronts. Every slim figure in a long coat made his heart leap, then collapse again when the face was not hers.
She was nowhere.
The city had swallowed her whole.
---
Return to Emptiness
By midnight, Ze Yan returned to the apartment.
He unlocked the door slowly, carefully, as if fearing what he might—or might not—find inside. A desperate, childish part of him whispered that maybe this was all a cruel prank. That she would be standing there, arms crossed, smiling at him the way she always did when he came home late.
The door opened.
Silence.
The apartment smelled faintly of her still—her shampoo, her lotion, the light fragrance of books—but it was only ghost scent. She was not there.
The weight of the world finally crushed him. His knees buckled. He dropped to the floor, his palms pressed into the cold wood.
The note lay on the table, quiet and merciless. Next to it, the engagement ring box he had given her, unopened. Beside it, the hairclip he had placed in her hair on the ferris wheel, and the bank card he had forced into her hand.
All returned.
His throat tore open. A raw sound clawed its way out. He screamed her name—once, twice, until it grew hoarse, until the walls themselves seemed to tremble.
Tears came next, unstoppable. He had not cried in years. He had taught himself to hold the world with an iron grip, to never falter in front of anyone. But tonight, with only the empty apartment as witness, Gu Ze Yan broke.
He cried like a man who had lost not only his love but his very reason for breathing.
"What did I do wrong?" he whispered into his hands, voice shaking, broken. "Why… Sunny, why did you leave me?"
---
The city outside went on. Cars passed, laughter echoed from late-night bars, neon signs blinked in rhythm with the river of life.
But in the apartment, Gu Ze Yan remained collapsed on the floor, clutching the abandoned ring box in one trembling hand.
Every corner echoed with her absence. Every shadow mocked him with memories.
And still, his voice whispered through the silence, again and again—
"Sunny… come back…"