One day, I ran into that young woman—the one who looked like a cold porcelain doll—out on the street.
She grabbed my hands the moment she saw me, acting incredibly warm, as if I were a long-lost relative.
Her eyes were wild with panic, and her speech scrambled together incoherently.
“You’re a good person,” she blurted out, her voice trembling with intense sincerity. “You really are.”
She clutched my fingers tighter, tears welling in her eyes.
“I regret it so much,” she sobbed. “I was the one who begged you to let him go back then. But looking back now, it would have been so much better if he had just stayed with you.”
I stared at her, stunned into silence.
“He found another woman,” she continued, her voice breaking. “Someone better than me. This time, he left for good. He’s never coming back.”
As I gently talked with her and pieced the story together, I learned that she and her husband had actually married for love.
Even now, she was still deeply in love with him.
Yet in the end, she had been discarded just as ruthlessly.
I felt a profound pang of pity for her.
She was just like the person I used to be—still clinging to a fragile fairytale, desperately believing that love was something sacred and pure.
“How are you going to manage your life now?” I asked her quietly.
“I have to find him,” she replied firmly, wiping her face. “A woman must stay faithful to her husband for life. That’s my duty.”
“And what if you never find him?” I asked.
She bit her lower lip hard, unable to squeeze out a single word.
She had in-laws to serve and her own parents to worry about, living without a single shred of personal freedom.
She even looked at me with a touch of envy in her eyes.
“I envy you,” she murmured softly. “You have no strings attached. You’re completely free.”
I could hardly believe my ears—someone was actually envying me.
I almost laughed out loud, but the sound died in my throat. My so-called freedom was nothing more than a cruel joke.
She had steady meals and a roof over her head, but zero freedom of her own.
I had all the freedom in the world with no one to control me, yet I couldn’t even guarantee my next meal.
We were just two miserable souls, both trapped by the exact same fate.