February 14th, Valentine's Day.
The weather is brutally cold, the blistering wind chilling to the bone, the sky dreary and bleak.
Despite the cold, there are still quite a few couples brazenly displaying their affection in public.
At the entrance of the Civil Affairs Bureau, a petite figure is looking around. Dressed in a puffed-up beige down jacket on top and black jeans paired with little boots at the bottom, her small face is red from the cold. Her hands keep rubbing together, but there's determination in her inkwell-black eyes.
She's not sure how many couples have come and gone. Janet bites her lips, finally pulls out her phone from the cross-body bag, and dials a number. Listening to the busy tone coming from the other end, Janet seems a bit bewildered.
"Yo, Janet, you really came, huh?" Just as she's about to try again, a man and a woman suddenly appear before her.
The man is wearing a blue v-neck sweater and black casual trousers, covered by a brown coat. His eyebrows are thick; his eyes big, and his features handsome. He's her boyfriend Jason. And there's a flash of glaring pink around his neck—not even a fool wouldn't know what that was.
The woman is in a red long dress paired with black flat shoes. She has the same brown coat, her makeup heavy, and her long, curly blonde hair hanging to her waist. Standing next to Jason, she gives off a delicate damsel-like impression. "Rita? How come the two of you are together?" Even though she already knows why in her heart, she can't help but ask.
"Haha, Janet, don't tell me you couldn't see this coming. There's a limit to how naive one can be, you know. Jason and I chose to get married today. Pretty good day, right?
Jason was just toying with you, and you took it seriously? Did you ever think, is there anything about you that Jason would like?
Actually, I'm not afraid to tell you, Jason has always liked me. If not because he was afraid it would hurt you, he would have broken up with you already..."
"Enough! Stop talking!" Jason, looking at Janet's tear-filled eyes, suddenly doesn't know what to do. She's always been so strong in front of him, never cried. Seeing this side of her today, Jason feels as if something is stinging his heart.
Janet knows she shouldn't just disregard Jason based on Rita's one-sided words. But when she recalls everything that happened over the past four years, she can't deny anything for Jason either. After all, this is not the first time she's seen Rita and Jason acting intimately.
In school, she would just laugh off rumors. Because she trusts Jason enough, but her trust has its limits. Some things won't not happen just because she wishes they wouldn't.
She looked at Jason, forcing herself to calm down, but her voice was somewhat shaky, "Is what she said true?"
Jason pursed his lips, "Jan, Rita can't live without me. You're different from her, even without me, you can still live well, but Rita can't."
Janet was so furious that she could almost laugh. She had actually failed to see that Jason was such a scum in the past four years.
Taking a deep breath, she said, "Jason, remember this, it's not you who dumped me, but I, Janet, who don't want you anymore. You're right, I, Janet, have never been the kind of person who can't live without someone else. You can both scram from my sight."
Rita clearly didn't want to say much to Janet, so she grabbed Jason and headed towards the Civil Affairs Bureau lobby.
Watching the two of them leave, Janet slowly crouched down, burying her head between her knees, unwilling to let others see her vulnerable side.
Four years of college, four years of dating Jason, yet, she fell out of love at the time of getting their marriage certificate, and the most ironic part was that she had always refused to face the truth.
The day she thought to be the most romantic was Valentine's Day, getting a marriage certificate with the one she loved. But now, the person she loved, loved someone else, and it wasn't her getting the marriage certificate with him, it was all just so laughable thinking about it.
Janet didn't know how long she'd been crouching, but her legs felt numb, and her ears were stinging from the cold. When she lifted her head from her knees, there was a handkerchief in front of her.