We Were Simply A Transient Presence In Each Other's Lives

"I came to get something," I said calmly as I walked past Jere.

He let out a sigh of relief. "What could be so important? Never mind. I will run you a bath first. Getting soaked in the rain like that, do you not worry about catching a cold?"

I turned and looked at his back.

The more I had once loved listening to him nag me, the more ridiculous it seemed to me now.

I loved his nagging because I used to believe it showed how much he cared about me.

After we were officially together, I could not resist showing off our relationship either, like taking pictures and posting them on social media.

I once posted a photo of him wearing an apron as he stood in the kitchen, taken from behind him with a caption that read, "Three dishes and a soup made by someone. What a feast! Is this what they call husband energy?"

In that photo, his shoulders were broad and his waist slim, while the diamond cuff links on his sleeves glittered.

I had also posted a photo of the flan he had made, captioned, "I never knew the flan he made could be so sweet. It is sweet enough to melt my heart!"

I posted plenty of things like that, and Jere always encouraged me to share more on social media.

He said he wanted the whole world to know what an amazing boyfriend I had.

Back then, I thought he was just as unable as I was to contain his joy about being together.

Only now did I realize that he had probably wanted me to keep telling everyone things about our relationship as he did, preferably so Nina could see every single post clearly enough to get jealous and regret leaving him.

I looked at the framed photo of Jere and me on the desk.

He had his arm around my shoulder, smiling with restrained, noble elegance.

But even someone as distinguished as him could become a pitiful person unable to be with the one he truly wanted.

I admired how infatuated he was with someone, but he should not have used me as a stepping stone.

I looked at myself with a sweet, happy smile on my face in the photo and suddenly found it a painful sight.

I pulled the photo out of the frame and tore it in half expressionlessly.

I had thought the sweet moments and happiness we had were real, but that was just something I believed.

While I had been happily believing that this was what love felt like, the truth was that all the sweet moments and happiness he had given me were fake.

It was simply what had been left over for me after he had given them to someone else.

It was like a piece of bubble gum.

I put it in my mouth and thought it was sweet, only to find out that someone else had already chewed it and spit it out.

There was another framed photo on the desk.

It showed a group of people, young and old, standing together in a courtyard.

I remembered asking Jere who the girl with the ponytail standing beside him, with her arm linked through his, was.

Maybe it really was because of a woman's intuition; the moment I saw her, I felt something weird inexplicably.

Maybe it was because Jere was holding her hand so tightly in the photo, and the way he looked at her was so intensely focused.

At the time, Jere had casually told me that she was his neighbor during childhood.

In reality, Jere had placed that photo of Nina on his desk and looked at it every day.

I simply had not known.

Jere's grandfather was also in that group photo.

I looked at his face in it, and my eyes began to sting.

I lowered my head, and a tear fell onto the desk.

Jere had pursued me relentlessly for three whole months, making such a grand spectacle of it that everyone knew.

But I had never accepted his confession at that time.

I knew my place.

The gap between our backgrounds was simply too great.

I was afraid he was only interested on a whim, and that the moment he lost interest in me, he would simply break up with me.

I never imagined the truth would be even more frightening and humiliating than his passing whim.

I began to see Jere differently the day his grandfather was hospitalized because he was seriously ill.

That night, he appeared in front of me in the rain and pulled me into his arms.

Choking back a sob, he buried his face against my neck and said, "Nancy, I am scared."

He looked like a stray huge doggy caught in the rain, homeless, worth a great fortune, yet heartbreakingly vulnerable.

They said that going soft on someone was the beginning of falling in love with them.

And that was the moment I fell.

After that, I often made all kinds of nutritious food for him to take to the hospital for his grandfather.

I would make the same food for him and his grandfather to eat together.

Every time, he would smile and say, "Babe, you're the best!"

The day the doctor told him that his grandfather was in critical condition, I cried with him.

I held him and repeatedly told him that his grandfather would get better.

That night, I fell asleep in the hospital hallway. Half-awake, I felt someone watching me.

I opened my eyes and glanced around.

I thought I was dreaming, so I closed my eyes again.

In my eyes, Jere had always been passionate, cheerful, and considerate, so I never thought he would look at me with such a complicated, unreadable expression.

Now that I thought back on it, my heart only ached.

I wanted to know whether Jere had felt even a trace of guilt that night.

But I supposed I would never know the answer.

I finished gathering all my identification documents and walked out of the bedroom.

Jere was hurriedly walking toward the door with his phone in his hand.

When he saw me, he paused. "I ran a hot bath for you. I left your pajamas on the rack beside the tub. Your skin has been a little sensitive lately, so you can only wear cotton and silk. Throw out all those polyester clothes later."

I stood there without moving or saying anything.

"Something urgent came up at the company. I have to deal with it. Take a nice bath and go to sleep, okay? Do not run around. Since you got soaked in the rain, drink plenty of warm water and wait for me to come back," he said as he changed his shoes by the door.

The moment the door closed, I heard his helpless, resigned voice coming from outside. "God. Can you just call a delivery service when you ran out of tampons? Did you really have to make me go buy them? Okay, fine... I will bring you some flan."

I suddenly gagged.

I felt like Jere was disgusting. And I decided I did not want him anymore.