Chapter 5

By then, we had almost finished eating, and as the soup was served, Amelia began to recount her past with her first love.

“My parents have always kept a strict watch over me. From childhood to adulthood, they arranged everything for me, and all I had to do was obey.

“So before I met him, I hadn’t really been in any relationships. Those little crushes don’t even count; once I was with him, I forgot all about them.

“Initially, my parents didn’t want me to date. They always thought relationships during school years were unreliable. But after meeting him, they quickly changed their minds and thought we were good together.”

I sipped my soup and agreed, “It seems he was indeed reliable.”

“Yes,” Amelia’s face lit up with a reminiscent smile, “During those years of dating, he really cared for me. I guess I was too constrained by my family before, which led me to completely unleash my nature with him. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back now, I was really quite unreasonable.”

I chuckled, “You and ‘unreasonable’ don’t seem to go together.”

“I was too young then… You might not believe it, but in my junior year, because he was busy with his internship and couldn’t spend time with me, I would often argue with him. He was very accommodating and never got angry with me. But I still felt it wasn’t enough. Once, I got so mad that after arguing with him, I went out shopping alone, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. So I took off the couple ring he gave me and hung it on a nearby tree branch…”

I looked at her in surprise, “And then?”

“He came to reconcile with me that night, didn’t see the ring, and got very upset. I guess he misunderstood something, and seeing him so angry, I got a bit scared and admitted my mistake the next second. Guess what he did after hearing that?”

“He wouldn’t have hit you, would he?”

Amelia burst into laughter and shook her head, “The next day, he skipped his morning classes and searched every tree along that street… It was so cold then, and his hands got frostbitten from looking for the ring.”

“…That’s definitely something young people would do. Did he find the ring in the end?”

“He found it, but he didn’t give it back to me. I think maybe that’s when he started to grow cold towards me.”

I was deeply shocked and didn’t know what to say to comfort her.

But Amelia just wanted someone to talk to, and didn’t seem to mind my reaction.

She told me that later, her family disagreed with them being together. It was a long struggle, but they eventually couldn’t hold on and broke up.

I expressed regret verbally, but in my heart, I thought, “Parental disapproval” seems like a shallow reason, but the process of resisting it wore down so much. Coupled with the previous sense of entitlement, that one “disapproval” was merely the last straw that broke the camel’s back.