Goodbye, Mr. Regret

How could she possibly bear the weight of his deep affection?

"Little Mute," Herbert murmured her nickname softly. "Don't be sad. Honestly, being a doctor is a good profession. After I became one, I grew to love it. Helping people, seeing them recover-it's fulfilling, it gives me a sense ofnoveldrama

accomplishment. Maybe from now on, I'll always be a doctor."

But Jessica just kept repeating, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," over and over.

"It's my fault. Seven years ago..."

She couldn't hold back her tears. "Seven years ago, I saved Timothy from a fire. My phone was lost in the blaze, so I bought a new one, got a new number, and never recovered my old contacts. Soon after, I married Timothy, and all the ties I had to my past faded away. I never got in touch with you again... That's on me. You kept worrying about my mutism, even though I vanished from your life."

“It's alright,” Herbert said gently. "You got married, you focused on your family. That's normal. You saved Timothy's life seven years ago was that why he married you?"

Jessica shook her head. "No. He didn't know it was me. He thought it was Sheila."

There was a day when Timothy tried to explain his feelings for Sheila. He said it was because she had saved him from the fire all those years ago.

Jessica had been determined to get a divorce. She never told him the truth, and she didn't want to.

"He doesn't even know who saved his life?" Herbert was incredulous. How could there be a man like that?

"I don't know why he thinks Sheila was the one who saved him. But it doesn't matter anymore. We're getting divorced. There's no point telling him now. He's been refusing to sign the papers for so long-if he knew the truth, he'd be even less willing, and then it would just turn into a mess for me."

Herbert pressed his lips together. "At first, didn't you want a divorce because of him and Sheila? Don't you want to ask him—maybe he almost married Sheila because he thought she was his savior?"

"It's too late. I found out too late."

By the time she learned the truth, she no longer wanted to hold on to the marriage. All she wanted was to leave.

"Little Mute." Herbert's hands

clenched tightly. He was torn-he

f

desperately wanted her to get divorced, but he couldn't be that selfish "Are you sure you've really let him go? Can you honestly move on and forget him when this is over? If you can't, maybe you should tell him the truth. If his mistake-believing Sheila saved him-was the reason he treated her differently and caused a rift in your marriage, wouldn't it be a waste to divorce over something like this?"

If Herbert hadn't seen Jessica, after Timothy's surgery, carefully wiping the blood

from Timothy's lips, he might not have said any of this.

In that moment, he saw love. A love no one else could break through.

"You don't need to talk me out of it," Jessica said quietly. "Even if that's true, I still don't want to look back. What happened with Sheila was just the beginning. The truth is, Timothy and come from different worlds, we see things differently. I've spent seven years accommodating his family, keeping the peace, but I'm still a person-I have a heart, I have my own thoughts. I can't keep living a life where I have to erase myself."

Herbert looked at her steadily. "Are you really sure?"

"Yes."

Loving someone becomes a habit, she thought. Maybe Timothy still had a place in her heart, but she had already pressed the brakes. And inertia, once stopped, only fades away.