I'm sorry, but your fiancé loves me.

After that night, Zhou Yao disappeared.

When Yun Muqian woke up in the morning, she saw sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains. She picked up her phone and glanced at it, but there was no message from Zhou Yao.

They didn't have a habit of chatting every day, but the night before, she said, "Remember to dry your hair when you get home," and he replied, "Dried it," followed by a smiley face. That smiley face was the same one she had sent him before, and she had smiled at the time, thinking that this person learned things quite quickly.

No news on the second day. Still no news on the third day.

On the fourth night, she received a bank notification that the money had been deposited into her account.

She clicked on it and saw an eight-figure transfer from Zhou Yao's account to hers, with only one line of text in the remarks section:

"I really wish I could get to know you again."

The next morning, a message arrived while Yun Muqian was heating milk in the kitchen. Her phone screen lit up; it was a new message. She opened it; there was only one sentence:

"Zhou Yao has been found."

She typed two words: "Where are you?"

"By the river."

The river is more than an hour's drive from the city center. The police discovered it in the early morning when some citizens who were out for morning exercise saw the floating clothes on the riverbank and reported it to the police.

When they were pulled from the water, the person was already gone. Most of their belongings had been washed away by the water. In their pocket, there was only one thing with soft, waterlogged edges. At first glance, it looked like a folded photograph. It was ruined by the water, and the image on it was completely blurry and unrecognizable.

The police casually threw the rotten photo back into the river, initially determining it to be a suicide with no signs of homicide.

Zhou Yao transferred all his savings to Yun Muqian, keeping nothing for himself. The last note on his phone read: "I truly wish I could get to know you again."

The funeral is scheduled for three days later.

The weather suddenly turned colder that day, and the wind was strong, making the wreaths at the entrance of the mourning hall rustle and the white elegiac couplets flutter in the wind. In the black and white photo, Zhou Yao was smiling, his eyebrows and eyes curved, just like when he was alive.

Yun Muqian stood in the corridor outside the mourning hall, wearing a long black dress, looking at the photo. Through the crowd of people and the fluttering wreaths and ribbons, she felt that smile was both familiar and distant.

Zhou Xue knelt beside the coffin, completely devastated.

She was dressed in black mourning clothes, her hair was disheveled, her face was covered in tears, and her voice was hoarse from crying, with only dry, broken sobs coming out of her throat.

"Zhou Yao!" Her voice cracked, sharp and broken. "Get up! Get up and talk to me! How could you leave us like this!"

Her forehead was pressed against the coffin lid, and she was lying face down on the coffin, her shoulders heaving violently. Someone tried to pull her away, but she shook them off.

She originally told her younger brother that Yun Muqian was Jiang Xiaohua, and said some very harsh things, actually hoping that her brother would stop liking her and stand on the same side as her, but she didn't expect that it would drive him to his death.

She cried until her vision blurred, and she slid down to her knees. Zhou's mother had already fainted several times from crying. She was helped to sit on a chair next to her, curled up in a ball, her shoulders trembling. Zhou's father stood on the other side, his white hair disheveled, his lips tightly pressed together.

Apart from Yun Muqian.

Zhou Xue suddenly saw Yun Muqian. She was standing quietly in the corridor outside the mourning hall, separated from several rows of wreaths and the bustling crowd. She was wearing a black dress, her hair was tied up, and her face was bare.

Zhou Xue's gaze pierced through the crowd and landed on her face. In that instant, all the tension in her mind snapped.

"It's you—" Zhou Xue suddenly rushed in that direction. Her movements were too fast and too fierce, and the people around her did not have time to react. She stumbled through the crowd, knocking over a row of wreaths, scattering white and yellow chrysanthemums all over the ground, which were trampled into the mud.

"You killed him! It was you!"

When she rushed in front of Yun Muqian, the people around her finally reacted, and several of them reached out to stop her. Zhou Xue was restrained, but she was still struggling desperately forward, her nails slicing through the air, only inches away from Yun Muqian's face.

Her tears mingled with her disheveled hair, covering her face, and her lips parted to reveal her clenched teeth.

"He was perfectly fine, why did you have to appear in front of him, why did you..." Zhou Xue's voice choked, turning into a heart-wrenching, dry sob, "You deliberately got close to him. You made him like you, you vicious person!"

Yun Muqian stood rooted to the spot, motionless, watching Zhou Xue's distorted face, swollen with tears and anger, and merely managed a slight smile: "My condolences."

However, the shoving in the crowd was too intense. Zhou Xue was still struggling to move forward, and the people pulling her from behind were also exerting force. With the two forces clashing, Yun Muqian was suddenly pushed backward by the inertia of the crowd.

She was wearing high heels, and her heels hit the edge of the corridor steps, making it look like she lost her balance and fell down.

The scene fell silent for a moment. Then someone screamed, someone shouted "Call an ambulance!" and someone rushed over and knelt down to check on her condition.

Zhou Xue was pulled back and looked at Yun Muqian, who had fallen to the ground on purpose and even scraped her forehead.

The scene was in complete chaos. Someone was squatting next to Yun Muqian, pressing a handkerchief against the blood seeping from her forehead. The blood stained the white handkerchief, forming a small red flower. The funeral music was still playing in the mourning hall. The deep cello music and the sharp voices mixed together, making the air feel stuffy and chaotic.

Zhou Xue was being held up by two people, and she was still trembling.

She watched Yun Muqian lying on the ground, and saw the people around her frantically rushing to her aid. "I didn't use any force at all!"

She suddenly spoke, her voice shrill and hoarse, "Someone grabbed me! I didn't touch her at all! She fell on her own! She did it on purpose!"

No one paid any attention to her. Or perhaps someone heard her, but no one looked up at her.

"She fell on purpose!" Zhou Xue's voice rose even higher. She struggled to take a step forward, only to be pulled back by the people behind her. "Look closely, I'm standing right here, and she just leaned back and fell down. Can't you see that?"

"Ms. Zhou, please calm down." A young man in a black suit stepped in front of her, his tone polite but distant. "Everyone is feeling very upset today. Please go back and rest."

"The ambulance is here—make way—"

The crowd parted to make way. The stretcher was loaded into the vehicle, the doors closed, the blue lights came on, and the horn blared, breaking the somber atmosphere outside the mourning hall.

Zhou Xue sat on the steps, watching the car drive away. Her tears dried and then became wet again, leaving her face feeling both dry and sore.

The river continued to flow, carrying with it a photograph with its edges rotten from being soaked in water, flowing into even more distant and expansive waters. The face in the photograph was blurred; no one knew who it was.

But the river knew, the stones knew, and the water that had flowed silently through countless days and nights knew that a young man had walked in just before dawn, carrying something in his pocket that he couldn't bear to let go of, something he would still carry even if he jumped in.

That's a photo of Yun Muqian.

The water carried him away, perhaps to a place where he hoped to start anew.