Chapter 3: Rooftop and a Memory from the Past

║Chicago, Illinois, US║

Ann let her lips hum softly as her feet cheerfully stepped after she unlocked the door to her apartment.

Well, now she lived in an apartment she bought in her own name—spending most of the savings she had and making her wonder if she could survive in Chicago with the remaining money. However, it seemed she didn't have to worry anymore because she had gotten a job. At least she knew she wouldn’t go hungry next month, and maybe she could still survive for a few more months with the money she had left.

“Oh, shit,” her hum stopped when she looked at the pile of boxes she had purposely placed near the closet.

There weren’t many items she brought from her hometown to Chicago. Aside from the fact that she ran away from her ex-husband's house and didn’t have time to pack everything, she knew she couldn't use any shipping services as that would leave a trail. So, among all her belongings, these were the only things left that she brought to her new apartment.

“Do I really have to unpack all of this?” Ann realized no one in her apartment could answer her question. In fact, she didn’t have anyone in this city. It seemed she really had to consider her idea of getting a dog so she wouldn’t feel so lonely. Or maybe a cat wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. But if she wanted to go for walks in the city park in the afternoons, a dog seemed like a better fit.

Regardless of her idea to get a pet, there was something important Ann needed to do now.

Her job agreement with Maisie happened so quickly, and Ann was grateful for that. She didn’t mind Maisie's salary and had no issues with the pastry-making equipment in the café. Maisie had said she was willing to buy any equipment and ingredients Ann mentioned, but it seemed better to discuss the café’s pastry menu before purchasing supplies. And just like Ann quickly agreed to the salary offer, Maisie also readily agreed to every pastry suggestion Ann proposed. In just 2.5 hours, Ann landed a job she had dreamed of since she was a child. And 15 minutes before she went home, they discussed a few things the café might need before Maisie’s grand opening next week.

Well, it was a newly built café, and Maisie said she needed a friend to accompany her to shop for café supplies. Maisie asked her to come tomorrow morning to help her prepare, and of course, Ann agreed to assist. She had no other activity, and spending time with her new boss sounded like a good idea.

The problem was that Ann couldn’t find the right time to organize her apartment, even though she knew the place still needed a lot of work.

Maybe she couldn’t exactly call it “work,” just a little touch-up to make it look tidier and more comfortable to live in. And the first thing she needed to do was sort out all the boxes she had left stacked up for the past few days.

It had been a long and slightly exhausting day, but if not now, then when would she do it?

So, instead of lying on her bed and playing on her phone as she had planned earlier, she walked toward the pile of boxes and started thinking about where to store all these things so her apartment wouldn’t look cluttered.

The first box contained important documents like her birth certificate, divorce papers, diplomas, and other documents. She would place them in her bedroom closet and keep them safe. As someone who had worked in the legal field, she knew how important these documents were, and she would have a hard time if she lost any of them.

The second box contained a pile of photo albums that she somehow managed to save in such a short time. She was almost amazed at herself for being able to bring these precious albums—a collection of photos she had intentionally printed and stored in an album for easy carrying. She had owned the albums since she lived with her parents, and now she had forgotten when the last time she printed photos was and stored them there. It seemed she needed to start printing photos again and filling the albums with new pictures from her time in Chicago.

The first album...

The second album...

And...

Oh God, Ann could feel her heart pounding as her hand touched the cover of a book she knew all too well, even though she realized it had been years since she last opened it.

Her old journal...

How could she not realize when she packed this journal into the box that she initially planned for her photo albums?

It turned out she had hidden this journal among the photo albums and placed it in her bedroom closet after she married Alban.

Without realizing it, she had let so much time pass and had forgotten about this journal, even though she remembered that she used to spend hours sitting with a pen in her hand.

She must have been a teenager at the time—years ago.

Unconsciously, Ann let her hand pull the ribbon bookmark, causing the journal’s pages to open to the last entry she had written.

It turned out to be the last journal entry she had ever written—the journal she never managed to finish because... because of a reason she still remembered vividly.

~He’s not here. He’s not at his grandmother’s house, which is now buried under the winter snow. He’s not here when I walk alone to the school bus on the last day before Christmas break. He’s not here when I cry under the tree after my father hit my mother in front of me. He’s not here when I sneak into his grandmother’s house and burn the leftover wood we collected to warm his body. He’s not here. And now I’m starting to forget how his scent used to comfort me when I cried. He said he’d come for me after he turned 18, which means he asked me to wait for him for a year. But can I really wait for him until next year?~

Ann wiped away the tears that had unknowingly started to fall.

She had only read a snippet of the last sentence from the journal she had written years ago. Yet she cried so easily, as if she had just watched a heartbreaking drama.

She must have been around 15 years old when she wrote that journal. And she had just experienced her first heartbreak.

Damn. Ann could still remember how devastated she was back then, and maybe now she could laugh at herself, knowing the answer to the last question she had written in her journal.

That man—her first love, whom she had cried over all through that winter—never returned to her town as he had promised.

It wasn’t Ann who couldn’t wait, but the man who deliberately broke his promise, making Ann a foolish girl who intentionally delayed her college studies in the hope that her first love would return and pick her up.

Oh well. After all this time, she hadn’t fallen in love with a man; he was just a boy. He’s just a boy.

Alright. Ann had an idea.

What if she bought a notebook tomorrow and started writing her journal again? Her last journal ended sadly; what if she made a new journal and tried to write a happy ending?

***

It turned out Ann couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning to buy a journal. Rather than waiting, she preferred walking out of her apartment to the school supply store, which wasn’t far from her building. After that, she walked past her apartment floor and decided to sit alone on the rooftop.

Oh, it seems she was indeed getting a streak of good luck. Now she not only had an apartment but also a rooftop that seemed to be disliked by the other apartment owners.

In fact, this place was very pleasant. She could gaze at the starry sky and the twinkling lights of vehicles from afar—making her feel small when she considered how vast Chicago was when viewed from above.

Alright, where should she start this journal?

The matchmaking and arranged marriage by her parents?

Alban’s infidelity and how that man always hit her every time they fought?

Or the first time she opened her eyes in the hospital and realized she had just had a miscarriage?

Damn. This wasn’t a good start. She wanted a good beginning—something that didn’t have to mention the unpleasant parts of her life.

Her job as a pastry chef at Maisie's new café.

Yes, that was a nice story to begin with.

Her apartment in Chicago was a delightful place. She would also talk about her apartment and how she found her old journal. Maybe she should take some time tonight to read her old journal and remember how foolish she was when she was in love.

Maybe she could add a story about her encounter with the obstetrician who now knew most of the sad stories of her life. She had just divorced, and the doctor offered her a new contraceptive.

Hell, Ann felt like screaming in his face and telling him she had no man to have sex with! At least, that’s what was happening now.

The cuts on her hands. It didn’t seem to matter if she shared a little about how she got that wound and what her father’s expression was when he found Ann lying in tears on the hospital bed with blood all over her body. Her mother fainted, but even though her father didn’t do the same, she knew that what she did at that moment was enough to shake his composure.

As she told her obstetrician, the cause of the cuts on her arm was that she lost her child. She never knew she was pregnant, but the fact that she lost a child was enough to make her lose her sanity.

A miscarriage. It was something she thought would never happen to her, but it turned out she had to go through it alone.

“Damn!” Ann couldn’t hold back her curse when she realized she was crying again. “Damn you, Alban! I’ll kill you if you show up in front of me! ARGH! Damn!” Then, the curses turned into harsh words and loud sobs.

This was frustrating. It was very painful to realize that a little part of her felt sad when she realized she might not be able to visit her hometown again after all the chaos that happened. She might not even be able to meet her mother...

“Argh,”

The sound of crying and curses that came from her lips stopped abruptly. This time, it wasn’t Ann’s voice.

Ann swore that no matter how angry and crazy she was, her voice wouldn’t suddenly turn into a groan belonging to a man.

Her eyes quickly scanned the entire rooftop—paying attention to every detail until she found a pair of hands raised up while their owner was lying covered by a pile of chairs that had been left abandoned at the end of the wall.

Ann blinked.

It seemed she had made sure this place was empty before she sat down and immersed herself in her journal notes. So why was there suddenly someone here? And annoyingly, Ann recognized that man’s face. It was the same face as the man who asked about the cuts on her wrist that morning in his room.

He is… the same doctor that she met this morning.

Oh damn. They weren’t supposed to run into each other, were they?