Eat Your Regret

Christopher buried his head in the crook of my neck. He was still lying to me.

I pushed him away gently and said, "I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

As I turned my back to him, I recalled him knocking on my door three years ago while covered in blood. He'd asked me to save him. The blood had come from his leg—he seemed to have been in an accident. He'd looked like a wounded stray.

He'd told me he was an orphan and had nowhere to go. Coincidentally, I was also an orphan. I'd been alone since leaving the orphanage.

I'd taken him in and cared for him. When the doctors informed us Christopher had to be operated on to walk again, I'd told him I would make it happen. He'd held me tightly and told me no one had ever treated him that well.

Now, I knew it was all a lie.

Since Mr. Linden Senior's death, Linden Group had undergone a reshuffling of powers. Christopher had pretended to be crippled so he could hide in my apartment and escape his uncles, who were trying to hunt him down. He'd even gotten a friend who was a doctor to lie to me.

Now that he was ready to return, he no longer had to keep the act up. He could bid farewell to his past and restore his identity as the Linden family's scion and heir. I was nothing but a tool and a pawn.

I stayed up the whole night. When I woke up, Christopher was still asleep. I freshened up before leaving the apartment for work.

Three years of working around the clock had numbed me to everything else. I was so busy with food deliveries at noon that I didn't have time to take a break. It was only when I sensed the heat coming from my head that I realized I'd probably gotten a fever.

I pulled out my phone to complain about it to Christopher when I remembered that he was no longer the man I knew. He wasn't the man I believed to share the same fate as me and who could understand me.

I was about to put my phone away when I received a push notification about a trending news article. "The Linden family's heir regains power and celebrates his fiancée's birthday."

My heart ached when I saw Christopher's familiar face. Was he that eager to get rid of me? He'd hurried to celebrate his fiancée's birthday almost as soon as I'd left the apartment.

The photo in the article showed a lavishly decorated hall. Christopher had an arm around the young woman I'd seen on the deck. He half-held her hand as they cut the cake together. Her hands were slender and flawless—it was clear she'd taken good care of them.

I repeatedly scrutinized the photo. The cake was gigantic—it was an eight-layered one, and there were even small figurines of a couple kissing on top of it.

Rumor had it Christopher had made the cake himself. It turned out he was willing to go the extra mile for these things.

On my birthday, all I'd gotten was a cake that was close to the expiry date with a single candle on it. We'd celebrated in our dim apartment; he'd covered my eyes while singing me the birthday song. I'd been moved to tears.

I supposed he thought he could just brush me off with anything. After all, he wouldn't spend more than necessary on me.

In his eyes, I only deserved to have a cheap bracelet, wear cheap clothes, and be moved to tears by a cheap cake and birthday song.

Bitter tears welled in my eyes. I wiped them away; the calluses on my fingers made my eyes hurt. I felt like a creep who could only secretly watch as other people had their happy-ever-afters.

I started texting Christopher to tell him I wanted to break up with him. Before I could finish, the restaurant's manager called my name. It was lunch hour, and it was so busy that I wished I could sprout a few more pairs of hands.

I ran around, feeling so weak in the legs that I could collapse at any second. The fever was getting to me, so I accidentally ran into a customer while serving food.

The pain from the hot food spilling on my arm cleared my mind for a brief moment. Then, the sound of things shattering made my heart sink.

I stared at the broken bracelet on the floor. In the next second, I was slapped hard.

"How the heck were you trying to serve the food? Are you blind? Look at how you've broken my bracelet! You'd better start thinking about how you're going to pay me back for it!

"God, why did this have to happen to me? I bet you don't even know what this bracelet is made of—it's a diamond one. You can work until the day you die, but you still won't be able to repay me for it! It's worth 50 thousand dollars!"