The Wind Passed the Old Love, No Twilight Left

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When the county clerk's office called our number, Sophia, standing beside me, suddenly stopped.

Actually, the person I really love is Owen.

Last month, while you were away on business, I took him to the Maldives for a vacation. We'd already slept together by then.

Last night he cried and begged me for one last time, said he'd never come between us again after that, but I just couldn't bear to hurt him.

"Owen is still young, he's too innocent, he can't live without me. I can't let him down."

I stared at Owen beside me in disbelief.

Just moments ago he'd been crying with gratitude for all my years of support, calling me his own brother.

But now his eyes were rimmed red. "I'm sorry, Evan, but love doesn't care who came first..."

Sophia glanced at the household register in her hand, her tone offhand.

"Evan, I don't want to keep it from you anymore."

"Don't worry, the place of my husband is still yours. Owen just needs to stay by my side."

"Whether you go in and sign the license or not is up to you."

...

I stared hard at Sophia, then slowly shifted my gaze to Owen standing next to her.

This was the fiance I had loved for seven years.

This was the poor student I had funded for five years.

They had been rolling around in bed together in the Maldives behind my back, and they'd still been carrying on the day before we were supposed to sign the marriage license.

I tore the queue ticket to shreds.

Scraps of paper drifted down across the floor of the county clerk's office.

Sophia's face darkened instantly.

"Evan, what the hell has gotten into you?"

"This is the county clerk's office. Watch how you behave."

I ignored her and turned my gaze to Owen.

"I funded you for five whole years."

"I put you through college, bought your clothes, paid your tuition, even covered your mother's medical bills."

"Is this how you repay me? By sleeping with your benefactor's fiance?"

Owen shuddered, and mumbled out an explanation:

"No... Evan, you come from a good family, you're talented. Even if you never marry, you'll live well."

"But all I have is Sophia. If you... if you can't accept it, I might as well go smash my head against the pillar in front of the county clerk's office right now!"

Crying, he backed away, and actually made as if to throw himself at the pillar beside him.

Sophia caught him just in time, then turned and glared at me.

"Enough, Evan!"

"It's bad enough that you act so high and mighty all the time."

"Don't you know Owen has severe depression? Are you happy only once you've driven someone to their death?!"

Depression?

I let out a cold laugh.

"He wasn't depressed when he was spending my money on things."

"He wasn't depressed on vacation in the Maldives."

"Now that he's been exposed in public as the other man, suddenly he's depressed?"

A flicker of panic crossed Sophia's eyes, then she raised her voice, righteous.

"I'm the one who took him there!"

"He's usually under too much pressure, he needed to relax."

"Can you please stop being so aggressive all the time?"

Looking at the woman I'd been with for seven years, I felt she was a complete stranger.

I gave up my chance to go abroad for her, stayed by her side from having nothing all the way to taking her company public, and she treated everything I'd given as her due.

Owen timidly cut in:

"Evan, please don't blame Sophia."

"It's all my fault. I couldn't help falling in love with her."

His shameless words made me laugh with rage, and I raised my hand to slap him.

But Sophia stepped in front of Owen.

"Evan, haven't you made enough of a scene?"

"I already told you, the place of my husband is still yours. What more do you want?"

"Do you really have to make things this ugly?"

Looking at their brazen, twisted excuses, I felt utterly sick.

Just as I was about to leave, the phone in my bag suddenly started buzzing frantically.

It was the hospital.

I pressed answer.

A nurse's anxious voice came through at once.

"Are you family of Magnolia's?"

"Magnolia just suffered a sudden stroke and is in emergency treatment right now!"

"Her condition is extremely critical. Please come to Downtown General Hospital immediately to pay the fees and sign the paperwork!"

My mind went blank with a buzzing sound, and all the blood in my body seemed to run backward.

Grandma had always been strong and healthy. How could she suddenly have a stroke?

In a trembling voice, I asked the nurse what had happened.

The nurse sighed and said helplessly:

"The old lady collapsed suddenly while she was looking at her phone."

"The screen was still lit up. She must have been looking at a social media post."

"We didn't look closely at what the post wasprobably just some ordinary vacation photo..."

A post?

Just as I stood there shaking, Owen Harding, hiding behind Sophia Delgado, suddenly let out a cry of alarm.

"Grandma's in trouble? How could this happen..."

"Sophia, it's all my fault... While I was waiting for you two, I posted a nine-photo collage of us in the Maldives, with a caption..."

"I clearly remember blocking everyone in Evan's family. Maybe... maybe I accidentally missed Grandma."

Hearing Owen's words, I understood the whole thing in an instant.

He'd deliberately blocked me from his postyet the one person he left off was my grandmother, the only family I had to lean on!

Grandma loved Sophia most of all, and she'd been looking forward to us signing the marriage license today. How could she bear a shock like that post!

I stared hard at Sophia and Owen, and spoke each word slowly and deliberately.

"If anything happens to my grandmother, I'll make the two of you pay with your lives!"

Then, without looking back, I ran out of the county clerk's office.

The moment I got into the taxi, the hardness I'd forced myself to keep up shattered.

I buried my face in my hands, and the choked sobs I was trying to hold back filled the cab no matter what I did.

Grandma was the only family I had left in this world.

My parents died young, and Grandma raised me by collecting scrap.

Later, when Sophia's startup ran out of money in its early days, it was Grandma who took out her entire life savings to help her through it.

And now, the woman she'd loved like her own grandson had driven her to a stroke!

The car soon pulled up in front of Downtown General Hospital.

I hurried toward the emergency building.

The red light over the emergency room was still on. I leaned against the wall and could only silently pray that Grandma would be all right.

After a dozen minutes or so, a rush of hurried footsteps came from the end of the corridor.

I slowly raised my head.

I saw Sophia and Owen hurrying toward me.

Sophia's chest was heaving violently, her breath ragged, as if she'd been running hard.

She walked up to me, took a bank card out of her pocket, and held it out.

"Owen told me everything. He didn't do it on purposehe just forgot to set his groups when he posted on social media."

"Grandma has always been in good health. This time she just got a little upset, that's all. Stop blowing everything out of proportion."

"There's three million on that card. Consider it Owen's compensation to you, plus repayment of the past five years of financial support, principal and interest."

"And stop holding your favors over him. He's sensitivehis pride can't take it."

I stared at the card in disbelief.

My grandmother was still in there, her life hanging in the balance, and he had actually come here to talk about buying out my debt of gratitude? To protect his mistress's pride?

I knocked his hand away hard, and the card slammed down into a far corner.

Sophia's face went ashen in an instant.

"Evan, you don't know a good thing when you see it!"

I looked at him coldly, my voice shaking with fury.

"Pride?"

"He's a parasite who only stays alive on my charitywhat right does he have to talk about pride?"

"Where was his pride when he was crying and begging me to pay for his schooling?"

"Where was his pride when he was rolling around in bed with you on that island?!"

Owen looked as if his most tender wound had been struck, and tears spilled from his eyes.

"Evan, how can you insult me like this?"

"I know I owe youif it comes to it... to it, I'll pay you back one payment at a time!"

Sophia pulled him behind her protectively, her eyes full of disgust as she looked at me.

"Evan, you are completely unreasonable!"

"You think you can buy out someone's whole life just by throwing money at it?"

"You're always so overbearing, never once considering anyone else's feelings. I've had enough of you a long time ago!"

"If you weren't always so aggressive, would I ever have fallen in love with Owen?"

"Would I have lost control and slept with him back when you were in the hospital with a stomach bleed?!"

Hearing that from Sophia, my mind went completely blankI couldn't even get the words out.

"What...?"

Last week, to lock down the most crucial round of investment before her company's IPO, I drank three whole bottles of whiskey with the investor, and ended up vomiting blood and being rushed to the hospital.

I lay in that hospital bed in agony, and when I called Sophia her phone was switched off the whole time.

Afterward she held me with a guilty face and said she'd pulled two all-nighters at the office, that she was so exhausted she'd fallen asleep.

I believed her. I even felt sorry for how hard she was working to build her company.

So it turned out...

So it turned out that at that very moment, she was in bed with Owen, tangled up together!

My tears finally broke loose and came pouring down.

"Sophia, are you even human?"

I lunged at her like a madman, wanting nothing more than to tear this woman I no longer recognized to pieces.

Owen rushed up and grabbed my arm.

"Evan, don't hit Sophia!"

In the struggle, I threw my arm out hard.

Owen went down with it, dropping onto the ground, clutching his ankle and groaning in pain.

"It hurts..."

Sophia instantly threw me off in alarm and strode over to help him up.

When she turned to look at me, her eyes were ice cold.

"Evan, you are beyond hope! You can stay right here and think about what you've done!"

With that, she helped Owen up and turned and left.

I slid down onto the floor, staring at the direction they'd vanished in, unable to even manage a laugh.

Just then the door to the emergency room swung open, and the doctor came out, drenched in sweat.

"Who's here for the patient Magnolia?"

I scrambled over and grabbed the doctor's white coat.

"I am, I am!"

"Doctor, how is my grandmother?"

The doctor pulled off his mask and sighed.

"We saved her life."

"But her condition is still very serious. It could take a turn for the worse at any time."

"For now let's move her to a room for observation."

Grandma Magnolia was wheeled into a private room.

She wore an oxygen mask, and her once kind face was now lifeless.

I stood by her bedside, holding her wrinkled hand tightly, tears falling silently onto the sheets.

"Grandma, you have to get better. You're all I have left."

I prayed silently in my heart.

As long as she could wake up, I'd give up everything.

Sophia Delgado, the money and the trust that had been swindled from menone of it mattered.

I could let all of it go.

By eight that night, her condition had stabilized a little.

I got up and went down to the hospital cafeteria to buy her some liquid food, so she could eat it when she woke up.

But when I hurried back with the thermos, I saw Owen Harding sneaking into the room while I was gone!

He was standing at Grandma's bedside, bent down, murmuring something in her ear.

The next second, her body suddenly began to convulse violently. The vital signs monitor beside her sounded its alarm, and the red indicator light flashed wildly.

I rushed over and shoved Owen aside.

"What are you doing!"

Owen stumbled from the push and cried out in a panic.

"I only came to tell Grandma some good news."

"I told her that Sophia is already pregnant with my child."

"I don't know why she suddenly reacted like this!"

I turned to look at the bed.

Two lines of tears were streaming from the corners of Grandma's eyes, and a hoarse rasp came from her throat, as if she wanted to say something but couldn't get out a single word.

The heart rate on the monitor plummeted, and her blood pressure dropped to a dangerous level.

I screamed in desperation, jamming the call button at the head of the bed.

"Doctor! Nurse!"

"Someone, come! Someone, please come save my grandma!"

Watching her pupils slowly go slack, my eyes went red and I lunged at Owen, clamping both hands around his neck.

"I'll kill you!"

"I'm going to kill you!"

Owen's eyes rolled back as I choked him, and he beat frantically at my arms with both hands.

"Let let go of me"

Just then, Sophia appeared at the door carrying a fruit basket.

"Evan, have you lost your mind!"

Sophia screamed, rushed over, shoved me aside, and caught Owen as he slumped to the floor.

"Owen, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Owen clutched his neck and groaned in pain.

"Sophia, my back hurts so muchit feels like it hit the bone. What if I can't take care of you anymore?"

Hearing that, Sophia immediately helped him up and led him out of the room.

"Doctor!"

"Please save my husband!"

I looked at Grandma on the bed; her chest had stopped rising and falling.

A stark straight line stretched across the monitor, and the alarm echoed through the room.

Then doctors and nurses rushed in, pushed me out of the way, and began emergency resuscitation on her.

The defibrillator shocked her body again and again, but it could no longer bring her back.

Half an hour later.

The doctor set down the instrument in his hand, pulled over the white sheet, and slowly drew it up over Grandma's face.

"The patient has no vital signs."

"My condolences."

I stared blankly at the doctor.

Condolences? How was I supposed to grieve?

Grandma was the only family I had left

I walked, step by step, to her bedside and knelt down.

Under the crushing grief, I couldn't even shed a single tear.

I knelt there for three full hours.

Only when my legs had lost all feeling did I pull myself up by the edge of the bed.

I called the car from the funeral home and had the cremation done that same night.

The moment the door of the cremation furnace closed, I seemed to see Grandma smiling at me, telling me to live well and not to shed tears for people who weren't worth it.

It was four in the morning when I walked out of the funeral home with the urn in my arms.

I took out my phone; the screen was completely blank.

No missed calls from Sophia, no messages either.

She was probably with Owen right now.

I put my phone away and took a taxi back to the place once called home.

When I pushed open the door, the whole place was full of traces of the life Sophia and I had shared.

The wedding photo on the wall, the couple's slippers in the entryway, and that pair of custom mugs on the coffee table.

How ironic.

I packed a few clothes, then set Grandma's death certificate on the table.

Before I left, I took one last look at the place, and then closed the door behind me without a shred of mercy.

The airport terminal was bustling with people.

I watched the flights taking off outside the window, and felt strangely calm.

The boarding announcement came over the loudspeaker.

I stood up and hugged the urn tight against my chest.

Without looking back, I walked toward the gate.

Goodbye, city that made me lose everything.

Goodbye, Sophia.