Chapter 1: Three Years Late
"Evelyn."
Lucas stood in the doorway, his hand still on the knob.
The woman outside watched him in silence. She was every bit as beautiful as she’d been in his memory, only now that beauty carried a colder, more mature distance.
For a second, he just stood there. Even his breath seemed to slow.
Scenes from three years ago rose from the deepest part of his mind, one after another, like someone had dragged them out by force.
Back in his senior year, Lucas rented a small apartment off campus.
The place was tiny. The paint on the walls was old and peeling, the windows never sealed properly, and whenever it rained, damp, chilly air slipped in through the cracks. But for Lucas at the time, it was the best he could afford. It wasn’t too far from school, the rent was barely manageable, and late at night, after everything quieted down, he could hear the automatic doors of the convenience store across the street sliding open and shut.
Evelyn Sterling was a sophomore.
She wasn’t the kind of girl who had to try to stand in the center of a crowd. Most of the time, she only had to walk down a campus path with a book in her arms, and the noise around her would drop a notch. Plenty of people knew her. Very few dared to approach her.
She was beautiful, aloof, untouchable—and from the look of her, her family came from a world ordinary students could barely imagine.
Lucas had never thought he would have anything to do with her.
Until one rainy night, on his way back to his apartment, he saw her.
Evelyn was standing in a patch the streetlight couldn’t reach. Her face was frighteningly pale, her fingers clenched tight around the edge of her coat. She kept looking back, like something was chasing her.
Lucas had already walked a few steps past her before he stopped.
He wasn’t the type to stick his nose into other people’s business. But the way she looked that night was nothing like someone who was simply drunk or lost.
"Evelyn Sterling?" he called, tentative.
She raised her head and looked at him.
Those eyes, usually so cold they felt untouchable, were filled with panic she couldn’t hide. She recognized him, but instead of keeping her distance like usual, she hurried over and grabbed his sleeve.
She begged him to take her away.
Lucas didn’t ask questions. He brought her back to his small apartment, planning to shut the door and call the police immediately. But the moment he took out his phone, he heard the rustle of fabric behind him.
He turned.
Evelyn was leaning against the wall, her cheeks flushed an unnatural red. Her fingers were clumsily fighting with her own buttons. Her movements were messy, completely unlike her. Her eyes were unfocused, her breathing came too fast, and she could barely stand.
Lucas’s back went rigid.
He realized something was wrong.
She had been drugged.
"Don’t move." Lucas stepped forward and caught her hands, wrapping her coat back around her before it could slide off. "I’m calling the police."
But the second Evelyn heard "police," she panicked even harder.
She grabbed his wrist. Her fingertips were terrifyingly cold, and her voice trembled.
"No... don’t call the police."
When she said it, she wasn’t looking at his phone.
She was looking at the door.
As if calling the police would bring something even more terrifying straight to them.
Lucas didn’t know what she was afraid of. He didn’t know what had happened that night before she found him. He only knew that if this dragged on any longer, something was going to go badly wrong.
That night, he didn’t touch her.
He took Evelyn to the hospital and stayed in the corridor until dawn. Under the cold white lights, on an icy bench, he sat there and looked toward the emergency room doors again and again. Only when the doctor came out and confirmed she was out of danger did he stand up and leave.
He didn’t leave his contact information.
Lucas thought that incident would be like some absurd dream, slowly buried by time in the deepest corner of his memory. She was Evelyn Sterling, and he was just an ordinary student renting a cheap apartment, worrying every day about living expenses. There shouldn’t have been anything after that.
But a week later, Evelyn found him.
It was raining that day. When Lucas walked out of the classroom building, he saw her standing by the roadside without an umbrella. Rain had soaked her long hair and shoulders, yet she still stood perfectly straight, cold and beautiful, no different from the Evelyn Sterling people whispered about on campus.
Only the way she looked at him had changed.
"Why did you take me to the hospital that night?" she asked.
Lucas Carter froze.
Evelyn looked at him and asked again, "And why did you leave right after?"
Lucas didn’t know how to answer. He thought he’d only done what he was supposed to do, and he also felt he had no right to ask anything more. That night was clearly not something she could casually bring up, so he had chosen to leave. Chosen not to intrude.
But from then on, Evelyn began appearing in his life from time to time.
Sometimes it was outside the school library. Lucas would walk out carrying a stack of old books, look up, and see her standing at the bottom of the steps with a coffee in her hand, but never calling his name.
Sometimes it was downstairs from his rented apartment. She would wait there quietly, and when he came back, she would only say, "I was passing by."
Sometimes she would sit across from him and watch him eat a bowl of instant noodles so cheap they were almost hard to swallow. She wouldn’t speak, and Lucas wouldn’t know what to say either. Steam rose from the noodle bowl and hung between them, blurring her face.
She never explained what had happened that night.
She never explained who she had been hiding from.
Then came another rainy night.
Evelyn was drugged for the second time.
This time, she noticed something was wrong before the drug fully kicked in. She hid in a bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and forced herself to stay conscious.
She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t contact her family. She didn’t know who she could still trust.
In the rain, right at the edge of losing consciousness, she finally came to Lucas’s door.
When Lucas opened it, she was soaked through, but unlike the first time, she wasn’t completely delirious. She wasn’t incoherent.
She was holding herself up by sheer will.
She looked at Lucas and said, "Don’t push me away."
Then she hugged him.
Lucas thought she was sober. He thought she had come to him on her own.
To Lucas, that night, both of them were conscious. Both of them understood. And neither of them backed away.
But for Evelyn, that night had never been so clear.
The drug hadn’t knocked her out. It had only clouded her judgment, smashed through her defenses, and shattered her memories into pieces.
She only remembered the rain, Lucas’s voice, his embrace—
And then morning.
When Lucas woke up the next day, she was already gone. There was only a note left on the table.
She said she was dropping out and going overseas to continue her studies.
She also said—
Don’t look for me.
After that, Lucas never saw her again.
Until now.
Outside the door, Evelyn looked away and turned slightly to the side. Her voice was calm, as if she had only come to return an old book.
"Cici, come here."
Only then did Lucas notice the little girl standing behind her.
The girl was hiding by the door, showing only half her face. She looked soft and tiny, her hair neatly done, a small bag hugged in her arms. Her big, pretty eyes looked at Evelyn first, then timidly turned to Lucas.
Evelyn said softly, "Call him Daddy."
The little girl slowly walked up to Lucas. She lifted her face and studied him solemnly, then called out in a sweet voice:
"Daddy."
