The first few months were a blur of numb existence. Mei Lian had fled to a small city across the ocean, a place where no one knew her name or her history. She exchanged her elegant dresses for comfortable sweaters and her high heels for walking shoes. Her days were a quiet, solitary rhythm: a morning jog through a foreign park, a few hours spent studying a language she barely spoke, and long nights staring at her reflection, trying to find the girl who had once believed in fairytales.
She worked a simple job, serving coffee and pastries in a tiny shop. The repetitive tasks were a form of meditation, a way to keep her mind from wandering back to the past. Every now and then, a customer would mention a wedding, a new family, or a life back home, and a sharp, cold pain would lance through her. But she had become an expert at burying the hurt. She built walls around her heart, each brick a memory she had decided to lock away forever.
Three years passed in this silent, self-imposed exile. The sorrow didn't vanish, but it transformed. It became a quiet companion, a dull ache she had learned to live with. She no longer cried every night. The pain was just a part of who she was now, like a shadow she couldn't outrun.
Then, the call came. It was late at night, and her phone, a device she mostly used for work, lit up with a familiar name: Father. The sight of it sent a jolt of dread through her. He rarely called. The silence had been mutual, a tacit agreement to avoid the painful subject they couldn't possibly discuss. Hesitantly, she answered.
His voice was strained, hoarse with a grief she had never heard before. He didn't ask how she was or where she had been. He just spoke, his words a desperate scramble of sorrow and disbelief.
"Huayin... she's gone."
The world tilted. The simple phrase was a physical blow. Mei Lian's mind couldn't process it. Huayin? Her beautiful, kind, perfect sister? The one who had everything?
"An accident," her father continued, his voice cracking. "A car... off a cliff. They found the wreckage, but... but not her. Just... an investigation."
The line went silent for a moment, save for the sound of her father's raw sobs. Mei Lian felt her own breath catch. It wasn't just sorrow, it was a terrifying, suffocating disbelief. Huayin was invincible. This couldn't be real.
"You have to come home," he said, his voice now a desperate plea. "The family is... broken. And the business... people are talking. It's a disaster."
He didn't mention Gu Yichen, but Mei Lian didn't need him to. She knew. The man who had been her sister's husband was now a grieving widower, and she, the sister who had run away, was the only one who could possibly fix this broken family. The thought terrified her.
She had built a life on avoiding this very reality. But now, with a single phone call, the walls she had so carefully constructed crumbled to dust. The sorrow she had held at bay for three long years came flooding back, bringing with it a horrifying, new responsibility. She had to go back. To a home that no longer felt like hers, to a family she had abandoned, and to the man she had never stopped loving, who was now a ghost of a memory, grieving for the woman she could never be.