When I found him, he was fiddling with his computer.
Seeing me, he smiled as if nothing was wrong.
"So many days without visiting me, what were you up to? Did some male ghost flirt with you？Is he handsomer than me..."
"Did you kill someone?"
I interrupted him forcefully.
He paused for a moment, then continued, "These days you weren't here, my emotional life did indeed improve quite a bit."
I enunciated each syllable clearly, calling out this name slowly.
He fell silent.
"I'm asking you, did you kill someone?"
My voice trembled at the end; I couldn't imagine his response.
He looked at me: "Yes, the one who just got out of jail."
My tears flowed uncontrollably once more.
My voice already crying: "Adam, why, what will you do now..." because he killed for me.
He was once a man with a bright future, yet he became a murderer because of me.
He whispered, "This is just the beginning."
I shook my head incessantly: "Don't do anything else, what if you get caught?"
Tears had already blurred my vision, his face turning into scattered spots.
"You should let go, I have already accepted my death, you should..." my heart ached unbearably, I cried and pleaded with him, "Don't get stuck in the past, you should at least live well, go to work, fall in love."
At least don't get mired in this quagmire because of me.
His tongue flicked across the corner of his lips, the tears he tried to hold back eventually fell.
"Sophie, do you know?" he no longer struggled, looking at me.
Our eyes met.
A tear fell, passing through my hand; I couldn't feel it, yet it seemed scaldingly hot.
"The day you were killed, I had planned to propose to you."
I was stunned, then painfully lowered my head.
"We were so close to having each other."
He passed his hand over my cheek, grabbing at air because he couldn't touch me.
He then frowned and shook his head: "Instead of now, when I can't even wipe your tears."
"Why is you dead?" his voice mournful.
"Why did it have to be you?"
"I will make them pay."
I said tremblingly, "What do you plan to do?"
He chuckled lightly, pulling out a USB drive.
"At least, let's make all this public first."
"How did you find it?"
This USB drive was a compilation of all the evidence I had gathered.
It is a report on the dark industry chain behind A Group.Data so extensive and content so dark, it could topple a powerful corporation, but not without facing significant resistance.
My death was a bloody example of that.
No one else had seen this data before me; I had already made excuses to break up with him before the investigation.
But I didn't expect, he would find it under that locust tree.
"Why have you never told me?"
There was a glimmer in his eyes.
"Darling, you knew I was contemplating suicide, but you never came to talk to me about it, did you?"
I lowered my gaze.
Pain is not always manifested in loud cries; one can suffer acutely when sober.
Initially, I really wanted to stay with him for a while before departing.
I watched him start his company, watched him flourish.
He is a genius, a standout.
Whatever he does, he does well.
Yet every night, his insomnia and angina vividly demonstrated how my death tortured him.
He continued to work numbly.
I thought time would heal his pain, until I saw he had prescribed himself many sleeping pills.
On the night he planned to end his life, a girl was very forward, even wanting to go home with him.
I watched as he coldly refused.
I finally appeared to her, frightening her away.
And I made a face at him.
I thought he would at least be scared, but he wasn't.
Calm as ever, he said to me, "Long time no see."
Thinking about it now, he must have rehearsed many times in his mind the scenario of my return.
Though there was initially no sign of that, the dampness on his pillow betrayed him.
A crybaby.
