Morning arrived slow and gray, the kind of light that didn't warm — only revealed exhaustion. Dawn crept through the curtains like tired breath, settling over the silent bedroom.
Lian Yue sat at the edge of her bed, palm pressed against her stomach as another wave of nausea rolled through her. She closed her eyes, breathing through it, fingers curling into the bedsheet. The room felt too still, too hollow — as if even the walls could hear the quiet in her marriage.
Another restless night.Another morning feeling faint and fragile.
Her body was quietly rebelling — the way hearts do long before the mind admits the truth.
She had told herself it was stress.She needed it to be stress.
Because the alternative… she didn't have space in her life, or her heart, for another ache.
She stood slowly, steadying herself on the nightstand. Her reflection in the mirror caught her — pale skin, tired eyes, hair brushing against her cheek. She looked like someone who had been holding her breath for too long.
She reached for her bag.No note on the table.No soft voice asking where she was going.
There was no need. Shen Tinglan wouldn't ask.He hadn't asked in months.
She slipped out quietly, like someone leaving a stranger's home instead of her own.
Hospital
The hospital carried that sterile chill — the smell of disinfectant, the muted footsteps, the quiet hum of machines. She sat in the waiting area, fingers twisting the strap of her purse, trying not to tremble.
Around her, life moved — a mother soothing a child, a man flipping through reports, nurses passing briskly — yet Yue felt suspended in stillness, like she was underwater while the world breathed above.
Her vision blurred again for a moment. She lowered her gaze, breathing slowly. Fluorescent lights reflected softly off her hair; she looked delicate, breakable, like porcelain left out in the rain.
Minutes stretched into something heavier.Waiting had never felt so loud.
Finally, the doctor returned, holding a file with the kind of gentleness that always came before truths that changed things.
"Mrs. Shen," she said softly, "you're pregnant."
Time staggered.
The air thickened around her, as if someone pressed a hand against her ribs. Her ears filled with a slow, heavy heartbeat — her own — and the world blurred again, not from dizziness, but from realization.
Pregnant.
The word echoed — unfamiliar yet piercing.
A child.A life forming quietly inside her — while her marriage slowly withered in silence.
The doctor's voice continued, steady and calm.
"You're a little over five weeks. It's still early. We'll start supplements. You need rest. And…try to avoid emotional strain. Stress isn't good for the baby."
Baby.
The syllables wrapped around her like a thread — thin, fragile, impossible to ignore.
Warmth didn't come. Not immediately. Instead, something hollow tugged at her chest — fear, longing, uncertainty tangled together.
She nodded numbly, murmured something polite, and walked out.
When she sat on the bench just outside the consultation room, her hands wouldn't stop trembling. She clenched them in her lap, breath shaky, heartbeat too loud.
A child. With him.At a time when she was quietly gathering the courage to leave.
Her phone vibrated.A flutter of foolish hope.Maybe—
Bank notification.
She laughed, soft and breathless — the sound brittle, almost sharp. Humorless.
Of course.
A child with a man who no longer reached for her hand.A child in a home where silence had become routine.A child in a marriage where she felt alone even while sitting beside him.
Her palm drifted to her stomach — hesitant, unsure.
Could she raise a child in a house without warmth?Could she bring a life into love that only lived in memory now?
Her mind whispered no — a voice shaped by bruised silence.But somewhere deeper, softer, her heart trembled with a maybe.
Tears gathered, shimmering but unshed.Not here.Not yet.
She wasn't weak.She was just… tired. So unbearably tired.
Leaving the Hospital
Outside, the wind greeted her with a gentle chill, brushing against her cheeks like a quiet comfort. The world felt startlingly normal — cars passing, people chatting, leaves rustling. As if nothing monumental had just shifted.
But something inside her had moved — painfully, quietly.
She pulled out her phone.No missed calls.No messages.
Of course not.
He wouldn't notice she had been gone all morning.He wouldn't ask.How could he? He didn't see her anymore.
A marriage shouldn't feel like this — two people living side by side like ghosts, each waiting for the other to break first, to speak first, to care first.
She swallowed hard, placed a hand over her stomach again, protective without meaning to be.
Her voice came out barely above a whisper, fragile as smoke:
"I don't know what to do."
The wind carried the words away as though even it had no answers.
Life never paused for heartbreak.Not for hers, at least.
She began to walk, steps slow, heavy with the weight of choices she wasn't ready to make. The city moved around her — loud, alive, indifferent — while she moved like someone carrying grief and hope in the same fragile breath.
Every step home felt like walking toward a crossroads she had never prepared for — a quiet future she hadn't planned, a goodbye she hadn't voiced, a life she hadn't expected.
Inside her chest, something new and fragile fluttered — a beginning in the middle of an ending.
And she kept walking — the silence louder now, the world brighter yet colder, her heart beating with fear… and something like longing.
She didn't know what tomorrow looked like anymore.But today — today she walked with two lives inside her:
The one she lived.And the one just beginning.
Alone.Unsteady.And trembling with a truth she wasn't ready to speak.