The first week passed quietly.
Too quietly.
I learned the rhythm of the city by accident—when the buses arrived, which cafés opened earliest, which streets stayed loud past midnight and which softened into something almost peaceful. I learned how to blend in. How to walk without looking lost. How to exist without being noticed.
It should have felt lonely.
Instead, it felt deliberate.
I woke early every morning, not because anyone expected me to, but because I wanted to. I cooked simple meals. I studied. I walked. I sat by the window in the evenings and watched strangers live lives that had nothing to do with me.
No one here knew I was an heiress.
No one here watched my every expression for meaning.
No one here was waiting for me to become someone's future wife.
For the first time, my life was not a waiting room.
---
Back home, the waiting had turned into unrest.
"She hasn't contacted anyone," Han Zhe snapped, pacing the private lounge of the club. "Not a single message."
Gu Chengyi sat opposite him, fingers steepled, expression controlled but tight. "That's intentional."
Shen Yu leaned against the window, arms crossed. "She wants us to know she's gone without giving us access."
Han Zhe scoffed. "Since when did she become this calculated?"
No one answered.
Because the truth was uncomfortable.
She had always been like this.
They simply had not been paying attention.
---
The search expanded quietly.
No public announcements.
No missing person reports.
No family scandals.
Private investigators were dispatched under layers of anonymity. Financial analysts examined data that revealed nothing. Old acquaintances were contacted, only to confirm that I had told no one.
"She planned this for a long time," one report concluded.
Gu Chengyi read that line several times.
Planned.
It meant my departure had not been born from impulse or weakness. It meant it had taken resolve. Courage. Finality.
"She didn't leave because she was emotional," he said quietly. "She left because she was done."
Han Zhe slammed his hand against the table. "That's ridiculous. She's been part of our lives since forever. You don't just walk away from that."
Shen Yu finally turned. His gaze was sharp.
"You do," he said, "when you realize you were never truly part of theirs."
The words landed harder than expected.
---
I received my student identification card on the eighth day.
It was a small thing. Plastic. Cheap. Barely worth noticing.
But when I held it in my hand, my fingers tightened.
Lu Yanxi.
No titles.
No family crest.
No expectations attached.
Just a name.
I slipped it into my wallet and walked out of the administration building with a strange lightness in my chest.
This was what it felt like to begin without permission.
---
The first near-miss happened on day ten.
I didn't know it at the time.
I was in a bookstore near campus, flipping through a secondhand copy of a novel I'd loved years ago. The place smelled faintly of dust and coffee. The bell above the door chimed softly as someone entered.
I glanced up without thinking.
And froze.
Not because I saw someone familiar.
But because my instincts screamed.
I moved.
Two steps to the left. Another aisle. I pretended to browse, my heartbeat steady—not panicked, just alert.
Moments later, I caught sight of him in a reflection.
One of Gu Chengyi's men.
I recognized him instantly.
The corners of my mouth curved slightly.
So they were closer than I'd thought.
I paid in cash, exited through the back door, and disappeared into a side street within seconds.
By the time the man reached the counter, I was already gone.
---
"She slipped away again," Gu Chengyi's assistant reported grimly.
"Again?" Han Zhe demanded.
"Yes. Someone spotted her. Briefly."
Gu Chengyi closed his eyes.
That wasn't luck.
That was awareness.
"She knows we're looking," Shen Yu said slowly. "And she's choosing not to be seen."
The room fell silent.
That changed everything.
---
That night, I sat cross-legged on my bed, notebook open in front of me.
I wrote down everything I wanted.
Not what I was expected to want.
Not what would please anyone else.
What I wanted.
Independence.
Stability.
Purpose.
Love—only if it came without conditions.
I paused, pen hovering.
Then I added one final line.
Never again be chosen last.
I closed the notebook and felt something settle inside me.
Resolve.
---
Back home, the pressure escalated.
"You will bring her back," Mrs. Gu said sharply to her son. "This situation is unacceptable."
"She is not property," Gu Chengyi replied coolly.
"Then act like she isn't," Mrs. Gu shot back. "Stop treating this like a negotiation and start treating it like what it is."
A mistake.
Gu Chengyi said nothing.
But when he returned to his office, he removed a framed photo from his desk.
It was old.
The four of us, sitting on the grass as children. I was laughing, hair undone, while Han Zhe made a face at the camera and Shen Yu looked away.
Gu Chengyi had been smiling.
He stared at it longer than he meant to.
He could not remember the last time he had noticed when that smile faded.
---
Han Zhe, meanwhile, did something reckless.
He boarded a plane without authorization from his family.
If she didn't want to be found, he would find her anyway.
Not to bring her back.
But to ask why.
---
Shen Yu took a different approach.
He stopped pushing.
Instead, he started listening.
Patterns emerged where force had failed. Places I returned to. Times I moved. Habits forming quietly, predictably.
"She's not hiding," he murmured. "She's living."
And somehow, that realization hurt the most.
---
On the fourteenth night, I dreamed of the corridor.
The voices.
The laughter.
The words that had ended everything.
But this time, I didn't stand there listening.
I walked past the door.
I woke up before dawn, heart calm.
I had crossed a line I could not uncross.
---
Across the ocean, three men sat in three different rooms, staring at three different ceilings.
For the first time in their lives, they shared the same thought:
She is not coming back the way we imagined.
And for the first time, they were afraid that if they ever did find me—
I might already belong to a life that no longer included them.