Winning Her Heart Back

 Their High School Days

The thought of the possibility hit Emelie so hard that she found it difficult to breathe.

Her body was already weak. Before that day, she hadn't even been able to get out of bed. She was only holding on now through sheer willpower.

Emelie quickly took out a small bottle of pills from her pocket, poured a few into her hand, and tossed them into her mouth.

Then she got up and went to the self-service water dispenser, filling a cup with cold water and gulping it down.

The coldness that spread to her stomach helped her calm down.

No...

It was impossible that William knew she wasn't dead.

He had killed her with his own hands and personally ordered her body to be disposed of. He should be the person in the world most convinced that she was dead.

These photos were taken secretly, but that didn't mean the person who took them was him.

Someone else took them. Maybe it was people from the Filo family who had been watching her ever since she appeared as Mandy Pierce. They had probably taken the photos to find her weaknesses.

William must have collected these photos after she resurfaced.

It had to be that way.

After finding a reasonable explanation, Emelie felt much more at ease.

She exhaled deeply and continued flipping through the photos, finding that they were all just ordinary pictures of her daily life with nothing incriminating.

However, as she kept flipping, she found that the last photo was different from the others.

Frowning, Emelie took a closer look and eventually recognized it as a picture of her dancing at her high school's anniversary celebration.

The photo was of very low resolution and was clearly taken over a decade ago with one of those old button phones. Her face was somewhat blurred. If she didn't remember the clothes and the scene, Emelie wouldn't have recognized that it was her.

He had to have taken this one.

Emelie exited the folder, locked the phone screen, and set it aside. Then she turned to look at his peaceful sleeping face and suddenly recalled something.

Back then, Wesley had left for overseas without even taking the college entrance exam.

She was deeply attached to him, and being suddenly abandoned by him felt excruciating. To avoid drowning in her sorrow, she chose to bury herself in her studies.

She began to immerse herself in endless problem-solving and memorization. Even on weekends, she would spend all day in the school library, staying until it closed.

It was a day of light rain.

Raindrops trickled down the glass windows, leaving streaks. Watching them, she used an erasable marker to draw two stick figures on the glass. One tall and one short.

The tall one was Wesley, and the short one was her. Both were standing in the rain.

As she stared at the drawing, her eyes suddenly welled up. The emotions she had been suppressing for days finally broke through, and she buried her head in her arms while crying silently.

She cried so much that she eventually fell asleep.

In her half-asleep state, she felt someone approach her.

Her eyes were swollen from crying. The person seemed to want to touch her but then hesitated. He withdrew his hand with restraint

Emelie wanted to wake up, but her body was too exhausted from days of early mornings and late nights to open her eyes.

She vaguely heard the person say, "Do you really like him that much? Can't you choose someone else?" In the end, the person couldn't resist touching her cheek.

His hand was warm. Emelie thought it was Wesley who had returned and nuzzled against his hand. She barely opened her eyes and caught a blurry glimpse of his jaw before falling asleep again.

When she woke up, she was the only student left in the library.

A boy's school uniform jacket was draped over her. It was wide, large, and clean, without any dirt or unpleasant odors.

She didn't know whose it was, so she thought she'd hand it over to the librarian later. Then, she grabbed a wet wipe to erase the drawing on the glass.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

But when she looked at the drawing, she saw that someone had added a few strokes to it. The tall stick figure was now holding an umbrella over the short one.

Emelie was a little stunned. How strange.

She had drawn Wesley, but with the addition of the umbrella, it didn't seem like Wesley anymore. Looking back on it now, years later, Emelie realized that it might have been fate all along. After all, on one rainy night, she had indeed met William, who had been holding an umbrella with one hand at the time.