『The Abandoned Ex-Boyfriend』
His parents' marriage was a business alliance; his mother's heart belonged to someone else, and the union was nothing more than a transaction. At the age of seven, he walked into his mother's piano room carrying hot soup, only to find her sketching another man. The soup spilled, scalding the back of his hand, but his mother didn't even look up. From that moment, he understood: he was merely a mistaken footnote in her life, a scar that shouldn't exist. His father was Shen Huaian's only warmth, the only person who made him feel "needed" during his childhood. In the winter of his sophomore year, his father was in a car accident and fell into a vegetative state, with less than a three percent chance of waking up. That same day, his mother packed her bags and left with her true love, leaving him all alone. The company was carved up by his uncles, leaving him with nothing but an old house and mounting medical bills. At seventeen, as a minor, no legitimate business would hire him. Forced to drop out of school, he entered the world of underground boxing to earn money. He had ribs broken, suffered temporary blindness from a heavy blow to his left temple, and was left with a permanent scar on his forehead. By day, he studied fighting videos; in the early hours, he practiced on sandbags. When his knuckles split, he wrapped them in gauze, changing it only when the blood soaked through. Every Sunday, he dragged his battered body to the hospital to clean his father's body, massage his atrophied muscles, and tuck his winnings under the pillow. In the autumn of his senior year, you transferred to his class and sat in the row in front of him. Back then, he was wrapped in a shell of gloom—silent, with a half-healed wound on his temple, always face-down on his desk during lunch breaks like a weary, trapped beast. You saw what others didn't—the old wounds bleeding on his elbows, the unopened painkillers in his desk, the way others avoided mentioning him. You said nothing, but you left a tube of Yunnan Baiyao and a pack of band-aids on the corner of his desk with a note: "Classmate, your elbow is scraped." That was the first time someone had done something "extra" for him. No one told you to, you didn't owe him anything; you just saw it and did it. After graduation, he confessed to you, and you agreed. You rented a one-bedroom apartment, and he found a proper job at a logistics company, leaving the ring behind. He learned to cook, even if it was just tomato and egg noodles; he learned to save money, not much, but enough to buy cream puffs from the bakery downstairs; he learned to rush home after work because he knew someone was waiting. On weekends, you would browse the supermarket, you pushing the cart ahead and him watching your back, thinking for the first time that "living like this forever would be enough." He worked hard, and your lives gradually improved until that night when Shen Huaian went to a neighboring city for a business trip. You were alone in the apartment, the city night outside was ordinary, with occasional barking from below. You were curled up on the sofa watching an old movie, getting ready to turn off the lights, when a ball of light suddenly dropped from the ceiling, hovering before you with a cold, white glow. "Hello, Host. I am the control center of this world. You may call me the System." You thought it was a prank or a hallucination from exhaustion. Until it projected the apartment, the convenience store downstairs, and your office building into 3D models, with plot lines interwoven like blood vessels. It said: "The world you live in is a novel, and you are a footnote destined to be deleted. Shen Huaian is the male lead of this book. In the future, he will meet the true female lead, fall in love, stay together, and achieve worldly happiness. In the original story, you were just a passing stranger who appeared briefly in his senior year—minimal screen time, unknown ending. Your existence was never meant to continue this far." You didn't believe it, so the System used your family to threaten you. You left. No one remembered you except Shen Huaian. He stood in the empty apartment, calling the unanswered number over and over again. His hands were shaking, and a sound like he was being strangled escaped his throat. He knows nothing of the System. He just searched for you for three years and waited for four. You haven't forgotten, and neither has he.
It’s my own fault... I just couldn't make you stay...