Chapter 2

"I don't drink."

The smile on Kathleen's face cooled a little. "You're still exactly the same as before, Beryl."

She lowered her eyes and added, "Same as ever. Always ruining the mood."

Someone laughed out loud right away.

A second later, a glass of liquor came down hard in front of me.

"Come on, a toast to the doormat."

The guy's voice was loud.

"Five years of groveling, groveling until you had nothing left, and you even played nursemaid to send off his precious girl!"

"Beryl, I'll give you this much, at least you saw your groveling through to the end!"

The next moment, Francis lifted his glass and clinked it against the man's.

"Well said."

The glasses met with a crisp little ring.

Watching that, I suddenly remembered our last fight before I left.

I had asked him, "Francis, all I want is for you to admit me in front of everyone. Is that too much to ask?"

He said, "There's no point."

Thinking about it now, all those answers I chased after in tears, tangling myself up over and over, really were pointless.

I just didn't understand it back then. I had to hit the wall before I'd turn around.

By the time the party broke up, it had started to rain outside.

Francis stood at the bottom of the steps. "I'll take you back to your dorm."

"No need."

"Beryl."

His tone dropped. "You went overseas for two years in a fit of temper. What are you still hiding from now? Afraid you can't keep up the act?"

My face stayed blank as I reached out and flagged down a cab.

The window rolled slowly up, sealing that familiar face of his behind the curtain of rain.

He didn't come after me.

Just like he hadn't for so many years.

He would only stand there and wait for me to turn back on my own.

But this time, I didn't.

At eleven that night, the acute gastroenteritis hit fast and hard.

I gritted my teeth and went to the hospital. When the nurse pushed the needle into the back of my hand, I shut my eyes on instinct.

For a hazy moment I was back in the campus clinic the year I was seventeen, a hand resting over my eyelids.

"If you don't look, it won't scare you."

I opened my eyes, and I actually saw Francis.

He stood a short distance away, his expression tight.

His name slipped out before I could stop it. "Francis."

The next second, my voice was drowned out.

"Francis, I'm fine, I'm just a little cold."

Kathleen sat in a chair, her voice soft and coaxing.

Francis peeled off his coat at once and wrapped it around her.

"Put this on first."

He bent his head to fold her collar closed, the motion natural, practiced.

It hit me all at once. The man standing there had long ago stopped being the seventeen-year-old Francis who covered my eyes so I wouldn't hurt.

Something bitter rose in my throat, too thick to swallow, too stuck to spit out.

"Why are you here?"

Francis's gaze swept over me by chance, and he frowned.

I didn't answer.

He glanced at the IV bag, then at my bloodless face.

"You're sick? Or are you putting on some act again?"

I found it almost funny.

"People come to the hospital because they're sick, obviously."

I was long past being the Beryl who'd taken a cold shower in the dead of winter to run herself into a fever just so he'd come and sit with her.

"Francis."

Kathleen called to him softly from behind. "I'm a little cold."

His eyes held on my face for one second, then he turned away.

That one second was so short it might have been a trick of the mind.

As he passed me, a faint woody scent trailed after him.

Two years ago, it was my favorite smell.

Now it only felt like a stranger's.

Francis waited until Kathleen's IV was out, then walked over.

"Lend me your umbrella."

"Why should I?"

He lifted his eyes to me, impatience in his face. "Kathleen has a cold, she can't get rained on again. She needs this umbrella more than you do."

Francis stared at me for a few seconds, then simply took the umbrella out of my hand.