Chapter 1

This was the forty-ninth time Sean had abandoned me for Joy.

He was a psychiatrist, and Joy was his severely depressed patient.

Because of Joy, he had repeatedly left me stranded at theme parks, coffee shops, and just about everywhere else.

This time, it was our engagement party.

I grabbed his hand, desperate to make him stay.

"The ceremony starts in ten minutes," I pleaded. "Just walk down the aisle with me. Does she really need you right this second? Can't she wait ten minutes?"

Sean looked at me, a flicker of irritation flashing across his eyes.

"Is an engagement party more important than Joy's life?"

Later, I handed him forty-nine origami paper cranes.

After unfolding them one by one and reading the words written inside, he broke down, weeping his heart out.

His words stabbed into my chest like a thorn.

Joy. I was willing to bet that her name had crossed Sean's lips more often than my own.

"Are you really leaving?" I heard my voice tremble. Even though I knew deep down he would run to Joy, I still wanted to test my worth. I wanted to see if I carried any weight in his heart—enough to keep him at our engagement party, an event we had spent half a year planning.

Sure enough, a second later, Sean slipped his hand from my grasp. He looked at me with an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry, Chloe. Wait for me to come back. I promise I'll make it up to you with another party."

With that, he turned on his heel and walked away without the slightest hesitation.

Several friends and relatives saw him hurry off and immediately swarmed around me, asking what had happened.

I watched Sean's back fade into the distance. With their questions echoing in my ears, I forced back the tears brimming in my eyes and announced to the crowd, "I'm so sorry, everyone. Today's engagement ceremony is canceled. Sean... he..."

The words caught in my throat. Under everyone's gossiping gazes, I salvaged the last shred of my dignity. "One of Sean's critical patients had an episode. She's in desperate need of emergency psychiatric counseling, so Sean had to go take care of her."

A heavy silence fell over the room for a few seconds.

Then, hushed whispers broke out around me.

"What kind of patient could possibly be more important than his own engagement party?"

"I heard he's ditched her for this patient more than once."

"Doesn't sound like a normal doctor-patient relationship to me..."

Surrounded by their murmurs, I turned my head away, and a searing teardrop rolled down my cheek.

Sean and I had been together for seven years, deeply in love the entire time. I used to believe we would smoothly get married, have children, and spend the rest of our lives together. But everything changed after Sean finished his residency and took on his very first patient, Joy.

Joy suffered from severe clinical depression. Her condition was critical; before meeting Sean, she had already attempted suicide twice. After six months of therapy with Sean, her condition improved, but she also developed an extreme, unhealthy attachment to him.

Whenever anyone tried to keep her from seeing Sean, she would self-harm and throw violent fits. But because she was the first patient he had ever taken on, Sean was stubbornly determined to cure her. He catered to her every whim and responded to her dependence without fail.

I had fought with Sean over this. But every time he pulled out photos of Joy covered in self-inflicted wounds, all the fight drained out of me.

"She's sick, Chloe. Why are you getting jealous of a patient?"

"I told you, she has an illness. Can you stop causing drama?"

"She's in this state. If I don't stay by her side, wouldn't that go against my medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath?"

That single excuse—his medical duty—choked back every word I wanted to say.

That was the first time we ever had a cold war. In the end, I was the one who broke down and apologized to Sean. And starting from that day, I began folding paper cranes.

My name is Chloe, but my friends call me Seven. Seven times seven equals forty-nine. From that day on, I started folding origami cranes. On each slip of paper, I wrote down the date, the location, and the incident. Every time Sean abandoned me for Joy, I wrote a note, folded it into a crane, and dropped it into a jar.

Seven times seven is forty-nine. Once I reached forty-nine, I would make up my mind to never love Sean again.

And this time, leaving me alone at our engagement ceremony was the forty-ninth time.