Night settled softly over the apartment, shadows stretching across the living room like memories she hadn't asked for. The city outside hummed, but inside, everything was still.
Lian Yue sat by the window with her knees drawn close, a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The moonlight brushed her face, softening the exhaustion but not hiding it.
Her palm rested over her stomach again — not dramatic, just instinctive.Protective.
For hours she had been silent, thinking, breathing, hurting, choosing.
Ending this… ending the little heartbeat inside her — it would be easier. Cleaner. No strings to pull her back into a life she already stepped out of.
But when she closed her eyes, she didn't see escape.She saw emptiness.A silence deeper than the one she lived with now.
She had grown up feeling unwanted, surrounded by people who only remembered her when they needed something — money, help, support, attention. Love came with conditions. Affection was a transaction. She was a daughter when it benefited them, a burden when it didn't.
A family in name, not in warmth.
She knew what it felt like to be born but not welcomed. To exist in someone's house but not in their heart.
Her fingers curled slightly over her abdomen.
I won't do that to you.
If she let go of this child to save herself from difficulty, pain, loneliness… then what made her any different from the people who abandoned her emotionally?
No.No, she would not repeat history.
She wasn't sure how she would manage rent, hospital bills, sleepless nights, and loneliness — but she would manage.
She would rather struggle building something than survive in a life where she kept losing pieces of herself.
Her lips trembled, but her voice was steady as she whispered into the dark:
"You will not grow up wondering if you were wanted."
A tear fell before she could stop it — not from despair, but from the sheer weight of acceptance.
This was her child.Her choice.Her promise.
A soft flutter of emotion warmed her chest — fear, yes, but also a fierce, fragile determination.
She could not save her marriage.She could not save the love that already left her long before she walked out.
But she could save this new beginning.She could be someone her child felt safe with.She could be the home she never had.
She inhaled, slow and deep.
"I will raise you," she murmured, voice hushed and tender. "Even if it's only the two of us."
Outside, a breeze brushed against the window.Inside, a life — tiny, just beginning — rooted itself quietly inside her.
And for the first time in a long time, her heart didn't feel like a battlefield.It felt like soil — scarred, but fertile, ready to grow something pure.