Chapter3

I stood up, pressing a hand against my aching stomach. "I don't feel well, I'm going home first."

"Emma, when are you going to stop throwing this tantrum?" Daniel's voice sank.

A trace of unease crept onto Sophia's face, though her eyes drifted toward Daniel first. "Is this because of me... Emma, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Daniel furrowed his brows and placed the glass of whiskey back onto the table. "Just ignore her. She refuses to look at the bigger picture. Does a tiny thing like this really warrant such a scene?"

The entire table fell instantly silent. Everyone exchanged bewildered glances as they looked at the three of us.

I stood frozen in place, waves of agonizing cramps twisting my stomach, and tears welled up uncontrollably. I forcefully covered my mouth, grabbed my bag, and sprinted out of the restaurant as if fleeing for my life.

On the drive back to my apartment, my stomach hurt so severely that I could barely grip the steering wheel. The moment I walked through the door, I collapsed onto the couch, curling myself entirely into a ball.

"Emma?" My sister, Jennifer, poked her head out from the kitchen. "Why do you look so awful?"

"I'm fine, just a stomachache." I kept my eyes closed, my voice sounding incredibly weak.

Jennifer frowned and sat on the edge of the sofa. "By the way, Daniel just texted me."

I opened my eyes.

"He said you blocked him." Jennifer's voice was flat. "He asked if you were still mad."

I let out a soft laugh.

It had been an entire night. He had finally noticed that I blocked him.

I closed my eyes and didn't say a word.

Seeing my silence, Jennifer spoke again. "Oh, right, he came over last night to borrow the projector. He said he had to rush a document. You were asleep, so I didn't wake you."

I sat up and took her phone. The projector's auto-save history was still there. I clicked it open, and it was a "Promotion Agreement for Regional President of New York Headquarters," accompanied by an astronomical compensation package. The recipient field read: Sophia. The document was covered in dense annotations, carefully reviewed word by word, line by line; he had even meticulously adjusted the line spacing for her.

A month ago, I had simply wanted to request the official title of "Chief Technology Officer." He hadn't even bothered to look up then. "You don't need these empty titles. You own a piece of the company anyway."

It turned out that the concept of an "empty title" depended entirely on who was asking.

My stomach hurt even worse. Just then, my phone rang. It was my mother.

"I heard Daniel is becoming more and more successful." She nagged on as usual. "You two grew up together. He’s highly ambitious and cares a lot about his pride, just be accommodating to him."

She let out a heavy sigh. "Never mind. You have a dull personality, you're not sexy or hot like other girls, and your educational background isn't that high. A guy like Daniel was never yours to keep anyway."

I gripped the phone, completely unable to utter a single word of rebuttal.

Only after I hung up did Jennifer notice the tears I could no longer hold back. She silently handed me a tissue.

"Since when did you start believing you didn't deserve better?"

I didn't answer.

The next day at my cubicle, I dug out an email I had never deleted. It was from our biggest European competitor, whose North American headquarters was located in Seattle. Three months ago, they had sent out an offer for a Senior Technical Partner position. I stared at that email for a remarkably long time before typing my reply:

[I accept your offer for the Senior Technical Partner position.]

The moment I clicked send, I leaned back in my chair. A sudden thought struck me—the distance from San Francisco to Seattle was exactly eight hundred miles.

It seemed the distance I was about to travel was just far enough to leave five years of my past self behind.

After signing the contract, I didn't tell a single soul. Even the onboarding manual was placed face-down at the very bottom of my drawer, buried under a pile of old files. I asked HR for a week off, claiming I wasn't feeling well. Then, I stayed home, barely stepping out of the apartment at all.

During the day when Jennifer went to work, I would sit alone on the couch, watching the shadow of the same tree outside the window slowly shift from left to right. Sometimes my stomach ached, sometimes it didn't, but that deep sense of emptiness lingered constantly.

One day, Jennifer came home from work and saw me still sitting on the couch. She placed a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, walked over, and sat down beside me. After a while, she finally spoke up. "You never used to take days off."

I replied, "Yeah."

She said, "So you've really made up your mind this time."

I replied, "Yeah."

A week later, I returned to the office. I commuted normally, wrote code normally, and added notes to Daniel's schedule normally, acting exactly as if nothing had ever happened. Daniel and Sophia were entirely oblivious that my countdown had already begun.

Once, he walked past my desk and asked casually. "Why have you been so quiet lately?"

I looked up and offered a faint smile. "It's nothing, just rushing a project."

As I said those words, I realized that my heart didn't hurt anymore.

On the day of my resignation, I specifically timed it during Daniel's lunch break to go to the company lounge to grab something a colleague had left for me.

As I pushed the door open, I unexpectedly found Daniel and Sophia sitting right there.