Exposing the Homewrecker Couple

After work, I curled up on the old sofa in my rented place—its springs all sagged, making my back ache after sitting too long. The phone was slipping in my hand. After watching two funny videos, my finger scrolled down without thinking and suddenly stopped on a post with a red headline—"The Class Way of Winning Over Your Handsome Neighbor." The poster's profile pic was tiny, so I clicked to enlarge it, and my heart instantly sank. It was two young faces leaning against a ginkgo tree, smiling, with the ginkgo forest near University A in the background—the leaves yellow like they'd been dusted with gold. That was a photo I took. That autumn, my boyfriend, Leo Truman, brought me to the ginkgo forest for the first time. Suddenly, Marisa Woods popped out from behind the tree, linking arms with Leo, and said, "Freya, help us take a picture—I've never had a photo with Leo before." At the time, I was still smiling and said, "You two are getting so close," and she winked, replying, "Why so formal? We're basically best friends now." Looking at this photo now, Marisa's head is resting on Leo's shoulder, her fingers quietly hooking onto the edge of his shirt. My heart clenched suddenly, and my fingertips trembled as I scrolled into the comments. The top comment was left by the original poster herself, each sentence like a jab: "His original girlfriend's got a bad temper and is super clingy. Last time, I faked a twisted ankle so Leo would take me home, and the she threw a little tantrum over it." "She didn't get into a good university, serves her right. Now she has to scrape together rent money from painting gigs, stuck in the mud her whole life. And she thinks she can compete with me." She even added a comment with a smug emoji: "Leo's paycheck card is all with me now. Just bought me a new designer bag last week." Each word felt like a needle stabbing the softest part of my heart, and tears suddenly welled up. I stared at the screen for three minutes, finally certain that the "original girlfriend" in that viral post—the one whose boyfriend was stolen, whose university choices were hijacked, whose life was ruined—was me. The scene from five years ago suddenly rushes back. Leo stood downstairs outside my place and said, "Freya, we're not right for each other. Marisa gets me more than you do," his tone cold as ice. Mom lay in the hospital bed, pale, with a breathing tube in her nose. The caregiver pulled me aside and said, "Miss Robinson, if the medical bills aren't paid soon, the medicines will be cut off." The scar from when I tried to kill myself still scars my wrist. I bled so much back then. Dad was holding me, running to the hospital, his voice shaking: "Freya, don't leave us—your mom still waiting for you." These past five years, I've barely managed to stand my ground, renting this tiny little apartment, scraping by with illustration gigs to pay rent and medical bills. Every week, I go to the hospital to wipe my mother's hands and tell her about the pictures I've drawn. I thought the past would stay in the past, thought all that crap had long since been blown away by the wind. But this photo, this comment—they yanked me back hard to that muddy summer, where even breathing hurts.