Chapter 3
1075words
Ethan had no idea how long he'd sat in the car. His tears had dried, leaving stiff tracks on his face. His brain—once capable of processing millions of calculations per second—now resembled a burned-out hard drive, containing only one emotion: a vast, all-consuming regret.
The sky shifted from black to deep blue to pale dawn as New York—the city that never sleeps—began another day outside his window.
The rushing crowds, flickering traffic lights, familiar street scenes—all seemed like an out-of-focus silent film from another world.
He finally started the engine, its roar jarring in the silence. He drove home, movements mechanical, eyes empty.
The sorrow hadn't vanished; it had crystallized into something harder and colder.
When he returned, Anna was waiting. Dressed in an impeccable suit, tablet in hand, ready for her daily briefing. "Good morning, Mr. Hayes. Based on overnight market fluctuations, I've adjusted your portfolio's risk exposure. Regarding the new coffee supplier, I've shortlisted three candidates..."
Her voice—once heavenly music of efficiency—now struck his raw nerves like a cold chisel.
He raised his hand slowly, cutting her off.
"Anna," he began, his voice so hoarse he barely recognized it, "I'm sorry, but please leave."
Anna's perpetually appropriate smile cracked for the first time. She froze, visibly processing this illogical command. "...I'm sorry, sir? Is there an issue with my performance? If it's about the coffee, I promise—"
"Your performance is perfect," Ethan said softly, the word tasting like ashes. "It's me." He looked up, his bloodshot eyes revealing a bottomless fatigue and pain Anna had never witnessed.
After Anna departed—confused but professionally courteous—Ethan approached the massive window.
He'd stood here countless times, looking down at the city, intoxicated by the power of having the world at his feet. Now he felt like the loneliest, most pathetic reflection in the entire skyline.
He pulled out his phone—once the command center of his business empire. He scrolled through contacts that read like a financial magazine's who's-who: Mark, industry CEOs, top investors...
With fingers steady from numbness, he sent two messages.
The first to his COO, once his most trusted lieutenant:
Taking time off. Handle company matters. Don't contact me.
The second to Mark:
Need to be alone. Don't call.
He found the dust-covered projector he'd bought years ago for Super Bowl parties. He spent thirty minutes meticulously cleaning it, connecting cables, adjusting focus in the darkened living room. A blank square of light hit the white wall where a minimalist painting once hung—both ominous and hopeful.
He took a deep breath and connected the hard drive he'd discovered.
The universe seemed to pause.
Mia was right there.
Wearing a white dress at the beach they'd visited five years ago. The footage was shaky with wind noise, but she was vivid, real. Her hair tousled by sea breeze as she faced the camera, laughing freely, spinning with her dress billowing around her.
Her laughter, distorted through the projector's tinny speaker, struck Ethan's heart like a sledgehammer.
He collapsed to the floor, head tilted back, staring at the ghostly image on the wall.
The flood of images overwhelmed him.
This wasn't gentle nostalgia but a public execution for all his past sins.
He watched Mia's twenty-fifth birthday party, friends singing around her. In candlelight, she closed her eyes, hands clasped, making a wish. Beside her, his younger self smiled but kept glancing at his phone, as if awaiting an email more important than his wife's wish. Now he desperately wondered: what had she wished for? Had he ever asked? He couldn't remember—he probably never had.
He watched their first Alps ski trip—Mia, athletically hopeless, tumbling down the slope, then lying in the snow facing his camera, breaking into a silly, radiant laugh. He remembered thinking she was foolish, wasting time, even snapping at her to hurry. Now, seeing her face flushed with cold and joy, utterly pure, he felt only regret and desperate longing to return to that moment.
He watched endlessly, day becoming night becoming day.
The projector's hum became the only sound on his lonely island of memories.
He watched her learning to bake, face flour-dusted; watched her in her studio late at night, quietly working by lamplight; watched her on ordinary mornings, lazy in bed, smiling at him with sleepy eyes...
These mundane moments he'd once taken for granted now became blades, slicing his heart to ribbons.
On one sleepless morning, footage showed their Provence trip. Mia stood in an endless sunflower field, saying: "Ethan, look, I love sunflowers most. They're so silly, always stubbornly facing the sun. Even when it sets, they bow their heads and quietly wait for tomorrow's sunrise. Like naive, stubborn, hopeful fools."
"Like fools..." Ethan murmured.
A wild, desperate idea struck him like lightning.
That day, he left his apartment for the first time. Like a pilgrim on a holy mission, he visited every flower market in New York. He bought all the sunflowers he could find. The first bouquet looked pathetic in the vast apartment. Not enough. Nowhere near enough. So he returned. Again. Again. Countless times.
He filled every corner with his wife's favorite flowers.
And there, in the center of this shrine built with his own hands, he found a dusty picture frame on a forgotten bottom shelf.
Their wedding photo.
In the photo, he wore a sharp suit, handsome and confident, with an irrepressible smile—a man certain of his brilliant future. Beside him stood Mia in white, smiling quietly, her eyes holding a complex mixture of love, trust, and a hint of worry he'd never bothered to understand.
With trembling hand, he wiped away the dust and clutched the frame to his chest like the world's most precious treasure. Slowly, he sank to his knees on the cold concrete floor strewn with fallen petals.
"I'm sorry..."
The first confession emerged as a painful whimper torn from his throat.
Once he began, the rest poured out like a breaking dam.
"I'm sorry... Mia... I'm sorry..." He buried his face against the frame, voice shattered. "I'm sorry, I was wrong... so wrong..."
He knelt there, surrounded by thousands of dying "suns," facing a photograph that would never answer, repeating his useless, too-late confession.
On the white wall behind him, the projector worked faithfully. In its flickering light, young Mia remained frozen in an eternal loop, laughing silently at the world she had once so deeply loved.
She knew nothing of this.
