Where Love Is More Desolate Than Life

I stumbled into the bathroom and repeatedly splashed cold water on my face, but I couldn't calm myself down.

It was my wedding day tomorrow. The invitations had been sent, the hotel had been booked, and my wedding suit was hanging in the closet. Everything was ready.

My hands trembled as I tried to call Izzy. I called three times. All three went unanswered.

I froze up for some time. Something made me decide to call Conrad.

Again, the line was busy.

My heart sank.

I couldn't wrap my head around this. Did they ever feel the slightest hint of guilt toward me when they were busy fooling around behind my back? Or were they completely swept up in the thrill and the excitement of an affair?

I knew Conrad was a social media influencer who did travel content. He was always filming wherever he went and could be found on every social media platform. I also knew that content creators often had countless alternate accounts.

Using the hotel's location as my search tag, I looked through all the posts tagged in the same place.

At last, I found a photo uploaded by an account with the username "TheUnlovedOneIsTheOtherMan".

It featured the slender hands of a woman grasping a bottle of champagne, preparing to pop it. The bracelet around the woman's wrist was my birthday gift to Izzy last year.

Those hands were hers.

The caption was pretty simple. "Living on stolen time. Every second is a countdown."

There were already dozens of comments on the post. Some said true love would always prevail, while others questioned the account owner for knowingly being the third party in a relationship.

Hands trembling, I tapped on the profile, only to find that this account was completely different from the other account I'd previously discovered.

This account had over 100 thousand followers, and it had been created far earlier.

It seemed that Conrad had been using this account to record the story of the three of us.

The very first post he made was a sarcastic dig at me for being so scheming.

"If I'd known that the prettiest student in the literature department could be won over so easily, I would've pursued her myself. I can't believe my buddy actually managed to get her. He didn't even bother telling me that he was going on a date. He just had to let me show up looking all unkempt in my pajamas just so that he would look better in comparison, huh? I can't believe him."

Someone in the comments joked about our friendship being just for show, and he replied with a smirking emoji.

Later on, when I caught a cold and ran a high fever, Izzy came to look after me. What he ended up writing was, "A certain someone is so pampered. He expects others to wait on him just because he has a fever. Still, I guess it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me. I got to spend some alone time with her. He sure knows how to create opportunities for me to get to know her."

It turned out that the two of them had been secretly having a thing behind my back the whole time.

Another one of Conrad's posts read, "We both added each other with alternate accounts without even discussing it first. Doesn't this mean we're totally in sync?"

That was the caption to a series of censored chat logs. The two of them discussed music, philosophy, and everything Izzy thought I wouldn't understand.

Conrad always knew exactly what to say to keep the conversation going. Izzy commented that talking to him was always so easy and effortless.

On Valentine's Day, Conrad sent a box of handmade chocolates to her office. He refused to accept her gift in return, saying he didn't want her to spend money on him. She was so moved that she said he was unlike any of the other guys.

They maintained the affair cautiously, each update carefully emphasizing it was just done out of consideration for me. His gifts to her were his way of thanking her for taking care of me. Their dinners together were just his way of trying out restaurants for me.

All his descriptions of me made me sound like an immature guy with a bad temper.

Thus, with the help of their self-deceiving lies, they relished in the thrill of their illicit relationship.