Stormwater Collection Station

My wealthy fiancé was kidnapped, and I poured everything into finding him. I fought tooth and nail to restore him to his rightful place in high society, to help him track down the real culprits. In return, he honored the engagement between our families and eventually married me.

Yet he hated every single day of that gilded life—and he hated me even more, the one who had dragged him back into it. His heart had always belonged to that girl from the small town, his “white moonlight,” Joyce.

Then came the day the traffickers returned for revenge. He rushed out and took a fatal knife meant for my father. With his last breath, he gathered every ounce of strength to whisper, “Ashley, in the next life… don’t come looking for me. Let me and Joyce live a peaceful life in Clearwater Town.”

Now he was finally free. I couldn’t shed a tear; I only nodded, my voice a hoarse rasp. “All right. I promise you.”

If there is a next life, Alan… I’ll let you have it.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I went to Clearwater Town to find him.

…

The moment my consciousness snapped back, a wave of humid air flooded my nostrils, thick with the scent of damp earth and greenery. My eyes flew open. I was sitting in a beat-up minivan.

Outside stretched an endless vista of green mountains and patchwork fields.

I looked down at my own hands—pale, slender, without a single callus from years of domestic chores. On my wrist, the Patek Philippe watch read 3:00 PM. The date was… August 27th.

The very day I had found Alan in my past life.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I stumbled out of the car, scrambling onto the roadside.

Not far off, on a winding dirt path between the fields, two figures stood close together. The man wore a faded, threadbare T-shirt, his frame lean and straight, his profile achingly familiar—handsome and sharp. He was leaning down, gently wiping a smudge of dirt from the cheek of the girl beside him.

She wore a floral-print dress, her hair in two braids, laughing with a carefree, innocent joy.

It was Alan and Joyce.

In my past life, this scene had driven me mad with jealousy. I’d charged over like a lunatic, declaring my claim without a second thought, wielding an outdated engagement contract to tear apart what I called a pair of “shameless lovers.” I told Alan he was the long-lost only son of the Alan's Group, a top-tier family in Capital City—that his parents had been searching for him day and night. I told him *I* was his real fiancée, promised to him since childhood.

I thought I was saving him. Pulling him from the mud. Returning him to the world that was rightfully his.

I was wrong.

I destroyed his peaceful life and buried my own in the process.

Now, the late summer wind swept across the rice paddies, rippling the golden stalks. Alan and Joyce’s laughter, clear as silver bells, carried on the breeze.

In that moment, I felt a peace I’d never known.

I watched them as though they were a landscape painting I had no part in. Those six years of love, hate, and entanglement—the soul-wrenching arguments, the silent tears in the dead of night—all of it felt like an old movie from another century. Faded, blurry, leaving behind nothing but an endless exhaustion.

Alan, I came.

And as you wished, I won’t disturb you again.

I turned around. Without a shred of lingering attachment, I climbed back into the minivan that had brought me here.

“Driver, turn around. Back to the airport.”

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, surprised. “Miss, you’re not looking for the person anymore?”

I shook my head, leaned back against the seat, and closed my eyes.

“No.”

Never again.