1. A university junior contacted me for an interview about "Seven Years of Love," referencing my past with Alexis Medlock—our romance still legendary on campus forums. "Are you still as in love?" she asked. "No," I said. "We're divorcing." She looked crushed. "No chance to fix things?" Truth was, I only realized two weeks ago: Alexis had stopped loving me. It began with a small fight. My seasonal illness always required special medication—Alexis used to portion doses with care, leaving notes saying how many to take. That day, the drawer was empty. Since we'd graduated and entered the professional world, Alexis had been working himself to the bone. He was always busy, always stressed. I told myself he'd just forgotten. I tried calling him, but his line was busy. I sent him a text, asking him to pick up a box of my medicine on his way home. It wasn't something you could get on a delivery app, and I was too dizzy to even get out of bed. Hours passed with no reply. I figured he was just swamped. I spent two agonizing hours wrestling with a fever and a spinning head. When Alexis finally came home, his hands were empty. "My medicine?" I asked, my voice weak. He frowned. "What medicine?" He checked his phone then and saw my message. I expected him to say he'd go out and get it right away, or at least order a courier. He did neither. Instead, he looked at me with an expression bordering on disgust. "Have you completely lost all ability to function?" he snapped. "It's just a box of pills, Anna. Did you really have to wait for me to get it? I'm busy. Couldn't you have just gotten it yourself? Can't you be a little more considerate for once?" It was the first time I had ever seen him truly angry. His voice was harsh. I sniffled, my voice thick from my cold. "Okay. I get it." Humiliation… helplessness… pain… The emotions crashed over me, suffocating me. I had tried so hard not to be a burden. I knew how busy he was. I rarely bothered him, terrified of being seen as a nuisance. When the lightbulb in the living room burned out, I watched a tutorial online and replaced it myself. My fever was raging. Alexis's image blurred before my eyes, splitting into two. As my consciousness started to fade, I gripped the sharp corner of the bedside table, the pain a welcome anchor to reality. "Alexis," I rasped, "could you please just call..." 911. I never got the word out. He cut me off. "I have to get back to the office. Don't bother me with little things like making a phone call. My time is valuable." My body went rigid. My eyes burned. When did it happen? When did asking him to make a simple phone call for me become an imposition? Alexis, what happened to you? 2. "So what happened? Who took you to the hospital?" the student asked, her pen poised over her notebook. I gave a self-deprecating smile. "I did." After he left, I squeezed the sharp corner of the table so hard my hand started to bleed, but I didn't let go. In that last sliver of consciousness, I managed to dial 911, gasp out my address and the door code, and then I blacked out. I woke up two days later. When I checked my phone, there wasn't a single message from Alexis. That's when I scrolled up through our chat history. With a dawning horror, I realized it was almost entirely me initiating contact. Looking at the dates, the conversation was grayed out for nearly the entire past year. "So, was it just that Alexis was too busy and neglected you?" she asked gently. I shook my head. "No." After I woke up, the doctor gave me the all-clear for discharge. I was at the cashier's office, waiting to pay my bill, when I saw him. Alexis. He was at the front of the line, paying for something. When he got his receipt, I followed him, silent as a shadow. For a wild moment, I entertained a fantasy, a plot twist straight out of a novel: maybe his sudden change in behavior was because he was secretly dying of some incurable disease. I trailed him to a hospital room. He walked over to a young woman with pigtails. Her face lit up when she saw him. "Alexis, thank you so much for this," she said, her voice bright and cheerful. "You're so busy at work, I feel bad making you run these little errands for me." Alexis's voice was impossibly gentle. "You just focus on getting better. I'm here for you." A hot rush of anger surged through me. I threw open the door and stormed in. Alexis looked up, first with surprise, then with a deep frown. "What are you doing here?" "So this is your 'busy schedule'?" I demanded, my voice shaking. I desperately wanted him to give me a plausible explanation, any excuse I could cling to. Honestly, I was ashamed of myself in that moment. I should have been the fiery heroine from a movie, slapping him across the face and spitting the word "divorce" at him. But I couldn't. Alexis grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the room. "Have you lost your mind? This is a hospital, not a place for you to make a scene." "Make a scene?" I shrieked, all reason gone. "You told me you were busy with work! Is this 'work'? Hanging out with another woman?" My voice echoed down the sterile hallway, drawing stares from passersby. Alexis was like a robot, his voice devoid of any emotion. "She's my apprentice, a fresh college graduate. Is it a crime to help her out a little?" Help her out? All the suppressed emotions of the past few weeks erupted. "I asked you to get me one box of medicine, and you couldn't be bothered! You said you were busy, that I was wasting your time..." "It's not the same, Anna! You're twenty-seven years old! You're an adult!" A suffocating wave of despair washed over me. He was right. I had almost forgotten. We had been together for seven years, from the time I was twenty to the woman I was now. When I looked at him again, my eyes were so red they felt like they were bleeding. But there was no trace of sympathy or guilt on his face. Only impatience. In that instant, all my strength drained away. I had no fight left in me. I gave him one last look and walked away. 3. "Did he come after you?" I looked at her, my mind drifting back to that day. After leaving the hospital wing, I went back to the cashier, paid my bill, and left. In the taxi, an emotional advice show was playing on the radio. The host was discussing a familiar topic. 【What kind of couple can survive the seven-year itch?】 I had once asked Alexis about that. I told him how so many couples fall out of love before the seven-year mark, and I asked him what would happen if he didn't love me anymore. He had turned to the crowded plaza we were in and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Alexis Medlock will love Anna Reed forever! For the rest of his life! What seven-year itch? I'm going to be with Anna forever!" He was so reckless, so unconcerned with the strange looks he was getting. In that moment, I truly believed we would be together for a lifetime, that the seven-year itch was something that happened to other people. But I got home that day, and Alexis never called. Instead, his apprentice did. "Anna," she said, her voice dripping with faux innocence. "I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding. Alexis was just helping me out because he felt sorry for me. The company really is that busy. He wasn't lying to you." He hadn't lied. But he hadn't cared either. The old Alexis would never have abandoned me to take care of someone else. The old Alexis remembered every little thing about me. If he accidentally made me angry, he would rush out and buy me my favorite stuffed animal to make it up to me. When I was sick, his eyes would well up with tears and he’d whisper, "Why isn't it me who's sick?" He even tried to catch my colds by cuddling with me, earning a stern lecture from our doctor. His tenderness was reserved only for me. When a cousin's daughter was in the hospital, and they asked him to watch her for one night, he refused. "I can give you money," he’d said, "but I can't stay. I have to take care of Anna." Back then, he never found me annoying. He never treated me with the cold indifference he did now. But the Alexis of today... he didn't even want to talk to me. He didn't want to see me. 4. "Why were you so sure he didn't want to see you?" My thoughts were pulled back to ten days ago. After our fight at the hospital, we both retreated into a stony silence. It was a cold war. The next time I saw him was when I was admitted to the hospital for a sharp pain in my abdomen. It was appendicitis. I needed minor surgery. The doctor told me I needed a family member to sign the consent form. That was the first time I called him since our fight. "Hello?" His voice was so distant, so detached. It felt like I was talking to a stranger, not the man I had shared a bed with for seven years. "I need surgery for appendicitis," I said, my own voice flat. "The doctor needs a family member's signature." There was a long pause on the other end. Then, "I'm on my way." He arrived about thirty minutes later. He didn't ask how I was feeling. He didn't ask if I was in pain. He didn't seem to care that I was about to go under the knife. The old Alexis would have been a blubbering mess. "Where do I sign?" The doctor pointed to the line. Alexis scribbled his name. He looked at me then, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he just turned and left without a word. I didn't know if he was still angry about our fight, or if he just genuinely didn't want to be there. It was probably the latter. The surgery was a success, but I had to stay in the hospital for a few days to recover. In the bed across from me was a middle-aged couple. The husband had brought his wife a thermos of soup. "I told you," she grumbled, "I don't want chicken soup." "It's good for you," he coaxed. "I'll make you something different tomorrow." "You'd better," she said, but she was smiling. Then she noticed me. "Dear, where's your family?" "They're busy," I said. The truth was, my parents had emigrated with my younger siblings the year I turned eighteen. I hadn't heard from them since. I could never bring myself to admit that they had abandoned me. For a long time, I thought fate had been fair. I had lost my family, but I had gained Alexis, a man who loved me with his whole heart. Now, I had nothing. "Busy or not, they should be able to spare some time for you," the woman clucked sympathetically. Her husband gently shushed her. "Here, young lady," he said, offering me a bowl of their soup. "Have some." I was about to refuse, but the woman had already pressed the warm bowl into my hands. The moment I felt its heat, the dam broke. All the strength I had been clinging to for days crumbled. I was utterly, completely alone. 5. "What happened after that?" That was five days ago. The day I was discharged from the hospital happened to be the same day Alexis's apprentice was discharged. He had been at the hospital with her the whole time, but he hadn't visited me once. I watched as he carried her bags, carefully helping her into a waiting car, his every move radiating a nervous tension I hadn't seen from him in years. Not with me, at least. Maybe I had been refusing to see what was right in front of me. There is only one reason a man changes so drastically: there's someone else. I stood there for a long time, watching them. They never even noticed me. As the car pulled away, it finally hit me. It wasn't that Alexis had changed. It was that he had given his love to someone else. My heart shattered into a million pieces. When I got home, the apartment was exactly as I had left it. Alexis had probably forgotten this place even existed. If he didn't want this life anymore, why was I still holding on to it? I went through the apartment and gathered all of his things. I kept a few valuable items, but the rest I packed up and sold. The space felt so empty afterward, as if I had been living there alone all along. As if the last seven years had been nothing but a dream. That's when the thought of divorce first entered my mind. And once it was there, it took root. I hired a lawyer and had a divorce agreement drawn up. My demands were simple: one million dollars and the apartment. I wouldn't live in it, though. I'd sell it. I didn't contact Alexis myself. I had the lawyer do it.
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