Chapter 5

Seeing my serious expression, Jackson's breathing hitched. He threw down a black card and rushed out the door.

"Amy, we both need to calm down. I'm leaving first. I'll come find you in a couple days."

The door slammed shut.

I lost all strength, slowly sliding down against the door frame, crying my heart out.

After crying myself out, I started packing.

Though this was supposedly Jackson's and my home, there really wasn't much that belonged to me.

Barely one suitcase was enough to hold everything.

He'd bought me a lot of clothes, food, and daily necessities.

But I always felt they weren't mine, that using them made me uneasy, so they were all sealed in a small cabinet, untouched.

After washing up, I sat at the vanity, staring at the woman in the mirror for a long time.

My left eyelid was tightly shut, my right eye was swollen red like a walnut from crying, and a bright red handprint marked my face.

Anyone who saw this would call it a ghost.

I took a deep breath and opened the vanity drawer.

It was full of various prosthetic eyes Jackson had bought me, 108 of them in total.

When he bought them, he looked at me with a smile full of tenderness.

"My wife, so what if you can't see with one eye? That's your badge of love for me, and I cherish it."

"From now on, I'll buy you all kinds of colors and styles. Your eye deserves to hold the sun, moon, and stars—it shouldn't be confined to plain black."

I reached out to touch the red one—the first eye he bought me, red, with a bit of straight-guy aesthetic.

Then I touched the green one—back then he smiled and told me we'd cosplay Hatsune Miku someday.

Then the gem purple one, the same as the one I lost yesterday. I loved purple, so he bought me a dozen.

The person who used to stroke my hair and praise my left eye like a rainbow.

Now he looked at me with disgust, finding my tightly shut eyelid revolting, blaming me for embarrassing him.

I took one last look at those prosthetic eyes and closed the drawer.

Before leaving, I exported the bedroom surveillance footage, captured screenshots of Violet walking around my house naked with a light mosaic, and posted it online.

[My boyfriend Jackson's childhood friend Violet used being drunk as an excuse to wear my nightgown and sleep in my bed in my house, then said I was overthinking it. Is this my fault?]

After posting, I logged out of the account and turned off the computer.

The post named names and showed faces.

I didn't believe they could suppress it completely.

Perhaps even Jackson himself didn't remember.

The surveillance he installed so I could see clearly with my bad eye had become the final straw that broke them.

I bought a ticket on the next flight to Miami.

I left the organized keys, bank cards, and a guarantee letter Jackson had personally written to show his loyalty on the entrance table.

I left without looking back, without a trace of attachment.

The moment I closed the door, the landline behind me suddenly rang with Jackson's voice.

"Amy, answer the phone!!"

Only he knew the home phone number. Anyone could guess who was calling.

I curved my lips and forcefully shut the door.

Jackson, we'll never meet again.