Chapter 9: The Last Goodbye
I couldn’t care less about the rules anymore—I scrambled out of the closet in terror.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t find the real Luo Ping anymore.
"Luo Ping… Luo Ping… Luo Ping!"
I called his name over and over.
The figure before me writhed in agony, clawing at its own body.
Flesh peeled away, and then I heard the sickening crack of bones snapping, one after another.
I collapsed to the floor, numb.
I didn’t know if this was really my boyfriend.
All I felt was an overwhelming grief, crushing my heart.
I could barely breathe. I just wanted to cry until the world went dark.
"Live well… Forget me."
Those were Luo Ping’s last words.
Then, the figure dissolved into a pool of blood.
"Luo Ping… You’re my boyfriend. You’re not a stranger. This is your home—you don’t need an invitation!"
I scooped up the blood in my hands, drowning in despair.
"Doctor, how is my daughter? Will she wake up?"
"Nuan Nuan, please… Open your eyes. Mom’s begging you."
I didn’t know when I’d blacked out again, but in the haze, I heard voices calling my name.
I couldn’t move—it felt like sleep paralysis.
I struggled desperately, but only tears escaped, rolling down my temples.
Luo Ping was dead.
The man who had stayed with me for four years, who promised to marry me after graduation—he was gone.
I remembered it clearly.
After Grandma died, I hated my parents for years.
I blamed them for her death.
I withdrew into myself, refusing to see or speak to them.
And my parents?
After their divorce, they remarried, started new families.
I was just an afterthought—an expendable daughter.
The cruelest joke?
My father, who always said a second child would be a burden,
had a son with his new wife almost immediately.
He didn’t not want kids—he just didn’t want another one with Mom.
I hated him.
I hated him so much.
One blow after another left me with severe depression.
I tried to end my life, again and again.
But there was always one person who stayed by my side.
Who noticed when I was slipping.
That person was Luo Ping.
He was my boyfriend.
And he saved my life.
But he died.
A car accident.
On the day he took me to visit Grandma’s grave for Qingming Festival.
"A drizzling rain falls like tears on the Mourning Day."
The poem was right.
The rain that day was relentless.
So heavy that no one heard my screams as I cradled his body on the roadside.
My phone was shattered.
So I carried him, step by step, through the storm.
The man who pulled me back from the edge had fallen himself.
I couldn’t remember what happened after.
Just fragments—his funeral.
My mind had locked away the rest.
But I refused to accept he was gone.
I kept wondering why he never came back, why he never answered my messages.
My head throbbed. I couldn’t think anymore.
I bit down hard on my tongue—
And finally, I wrested back control of my body.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a white ceiling—
And my parents, both weeping at my bedside.
For the first time in years, they were together.
"Dad… Mom…"
I tried to speak, but my throat was raw.