The Decade I Loved You

“Mr. Stone?”

While I was taken aback by the knowledge that Ron was at the door, Flora broke free of my grasp and fell to the side.

“Ah!”

When Ron came in, he saw Flora falling on the floor.

“Flora!” He quickly rushed over and carefully helped her up.

I had never seen him so anxious before.

“Willow, are you crazy?!” he practically yelled.

Feeling at a loss, I tried to defend myself. “I did not—”

But Flora interrupted me.

“Ron, don’t blame her… She’s just fulfilling her duties as a secretary and didn’t want me to go into your office to look for you. Then, I accidentally…” As she spoke, she started crying. Everyone in the office aside from me thought that she had suffered some great injustice.

Ron gently picked Flora up and gave me a cold sneer. “Miss River, you’re just a secretary. Stop vying for things that will never come to be. Flora is a kind soul, so she won’t hold this against you. But if this happens again…”

He gave me the ruthless expression I was incredibly familiar with.

Whenever the company was in trouble or he ran into a problematic person, he would show this expression, and I would take care of the problem for him.

But this time, he was directing that expression at me.

“Tell everyone that Flora won’t need any appointments or prior notifications to go anywhere in the company.

“As for Willow, since she hurt someone in the company, she won’t need to come to the company over the rest of the month.”

With that said, he turned around unhesitatingly and wanted to bring Flora to the hospital to get her checked.

“Ron.”

He turned around and stared at me with an impatient scowl.

“Did you know that I was at the door yesterday?”

He was stunned for a moment. When Flora whined in pain in his arms, he seemed to have finally registered what I was saying and said, “You look ugly while crying.”

Then, he stormed off, as if he was worried about Flora being in pain.

Honestly, we had cameras in our offices.

But that did not matter. Ron was partial toward her, and he had plenty of other ways to pin the blame on me, then punish me for it.

The people gathered in the office looked at each other before they left.

I bowed my head, and my tears gathered into a puddle on the floor.

Why was I crying again?

Ron was right.

I looked ugly while crying.

While I was on my way back, I fainted on the roadside.

When I woke up, I was told that I needed to be hospitalized.

I was surrounded by the smell of disinfectant when I handed in my resignation letter.

I did not need any severance, so I deleted all the contact numbers of my colleagues at work.

The doctor urged me to go through surgery again.

I just smiled and said that surgery would hurt a lot, and the success rate was not high, anyway.

The doctor angrily admonished my views before sighing and comforting me by saying that I had to be strong and keep on fighting courageously, even if I was alone.

But I had no hope to continue living.

I was too tired.

If I was alive, no one would be happy for me.

If I died, no one would be sad either.

That was good too.

At night, I slept, and I dreamed.

In my dream, I was surrounded by a group of people as they hit and cursed at me. They tried to blackmail me so that I could clear my father’s debt.

I fought back like a mad woman, but I could not win against the men.

Just when I wondered whether I should just take my own life, Ron showed up.

He put his school jacket over my head and said, “Don’t be afraid.”

When I saw light again, those people were gone.

I did not know how he did it.

He did not tell me how either. He just told me that those people were not going to pester me anymore.

From then on, I was sick.

It was a sickness of love, and the cause of it was Ron.

I was head over heels for him for ten years, and I never once complained about it.