A complicated feeling stirred inside me.
Maybe because I was leaving.
Maybe because I couldn’t help but think about the past.
David wasn’t always like this.
Back then, he had trusted me without hesitation. He had followed me around everywhere.
Even when our parents sent me away to a boarding school a thousand kilometers from home—so they could keep Yvonne close.
Even then, he never let me go.
David went on a hunger strike for three days. He risked losing his inheritance, fought his family tooth and nail, all to force them into sending him to my school.
Back then, I thought—just like in fairy tales—that we could be happy together forever.
Even though I longed for my parents’ love, I still fought desperately for the sake of my engagement with him. But when I finally managed to escape from the basement where they had locked me up, the first thing I saw was him, in a grand, beautifully decorated wedding hall, sliding a ring onto Yvonne’s finger.
My parents told me that I would never measure up to her.
That once David realized it too, he chose her without hesitation.
I tried to convince myself it wasn’t true, but the way he smiled at Yvonne—that tenderness in his eyes—it wasn’t a lie.