Chapter Eleven: A Bride Waiting in the Shadows

The few days leading up to the wedding passed painfully slowly.

As if time itself had decided to punish Lian with waiting.

Everything was ready.

The dress.

The wedding hall.

The invitations.

Even the words people would say about her had been prepared before her new life had even begun.

But the one thing that was missing...

was the groom.

There had been no word from Adam.

No message.

No phone call.

Not even a simple question about the wedding date.

At first, Lian tried to convince herself that he was busy.

That there was a reason she didn't know about.

That silence did not always mean hatred.

But people's words were harsher than her silence.

She heard one woman say:

“It seems he doesn't want her.”

Another replied:

“Perhaps he'll only come because his family forced him.”

Then the rumor reached her, breaking the last fragile piece of hope she had been holding onto.

They said Adam despised the marriage.

That he wouldn't attend the wedding.

And that she would be a bride standing alone before everyone.

She wasn't afraid of the absence of a man she had never known.

She was afraid of the looks.

The whispers.

Of becoming, in a single night, the woman her husband had rejected before their marriage had even begun.

That evening, Lian closed the door to her room.

She left the sounds of the preparations behind her.

Alone, she sat with a pile of books in front of her.

She read often whenever life became too heavy.

Books never asked her who she was.

They didn't judge her because of her family name.

And they didn't care whether the man she was supposed to marry was there or not.

She turned the pages slowly, but her eyes weren't truly reading.

She was only running away.

After midnight, she entered her small studio.

It was the only place that felt like her.

The scent of paint.

The scattered brushes.

And the paintings no one had ever seen.

She turned on the light and looked around the walls.

There were many paintings.

But most of them had remained hidden.

Rejected.

Forgotten.

Just like her.

She picked up a brush and stood before a blank canvas.

She tried to paint.

But her hand stopped.

She didn't know what to paint.

Should she paint a sad bride?

Or a girl trying to find herself before others decided her fate for her?

She placed a dark color on the canvas.

Then another.

Until the image became filled with contradictions.

One part was dark.

Another seemed to be trying to break free from the darkness.

She stared at it for a long time.

Then whispered:

“Even I... don't know who I am.”

She sat on the floor among the books and paintings.

For the first time, she wasn't crying because of Adam.

She was crying because of her entire life.

She hadn't chosen this marriage.

She hadn't chosen to become an object of pity.

And she hadn't chosen to wait for someone whose face she didn't even know.

Yet deep inside her, there was a small question that refused to die:

What if there was something she didn't know yet?

Something behind this silence...

And behind this marriage that had begun as a deal.

Something that could change everything.

Lian was still standing before the painting when the studio door opened quietly.

She didn't turn around.

She knew who it was from the sound of the footsteps.

It was her friend.

Her friend approached without saying anything.

She didn't try to comfort her with the usual words, nor did she tell her that everything would be fine, because she knew that some wounds could not be healed by a short sentence.

She simply sat beside her.

She looked at the painting.

Then at Lian.

“It’s sad,” she said quietly.

Lian looked at the colors blending together.

“I didn't paint a face.”

Her friend smiled sadly.

“But I saw one.”

Lian fell silent.

She knew what she meant.

The painting wasn't about some unknown woman.

It was about her.

About a girl standing before a door without knowing what lay beyond it, while everyone demanded that she walk through with her eyes closed.

Her friend placed her hand over the one holding the brush.

“Don't let them make you believe that you have no worth.”

Lian gave a faint smile.

“But everyone thinks that.”

“Everyone doesn't know you.”

Her friend looked at her.

“But I do.”

Lian didn't answer.

But she didn't pull her hand away.

That was enough.

On the other side of the house, Lian's mother was sitting alone.

She could hear the sounds of the wedding preparations in the distance.

The workers.

The women.

The conversations about the dress and the guests.

But she heard none of it.

She was thinking only about her daughter.

About the little girl who had once run through the house with innocent joy, and who was now preparing to enter a life she knew nothing about.

She placed a hand over her face.

And silently, the tears fell.

She wasn't crying because the marriage was going to happen.

She was crying because she felt helpless.

She was a mother...

yet she couldn't protect her daughter from the decision the adults had made.

In another room, Lian's father was fighting a different kind of war.

Papers were scattered across his desk.

Receipts.

Debts.

Accumulated bills.

Endless numbers.

He rubbed a tired hand over his face.

He could see three paths before him.

The first: collapse.

Lose everything and leave his family to face disgrace and poverty.

The second: choose only himself and run from the problem.

And the third...

push his daughter into this marriage.

He knew the decision was cruel.

He even knew it resembled a prison.

But he convinced himself that it was a golden prison.

A grand mansion.

A powerful name.

A life without the fear of debt.

He couldn't see, in that moment, that the mansion might become a prison greater than poverty itself.

He looked at the photograph of his daughter lying on the desk.

He stared at it for a long moment.

A flicker of weakness appeared in his eyes.

Then he quickly hid it.

“I have no choice,” he told himself.

But deep inside, he knew the truth he had been trying to escape:

He wasn't saving his daughter...

He was trading her freedom for his own salvation.

And that night, there were three people who couldn't sleep.

Lian, afraid of an unknown future.

Her mother, crying for her daughter.

And her father, convincing himself that a cage could be protection.

And somewhere far away...

Adam was writing the first steps of his new life, unaware that there was a woman carrying his name, waiting for a man she knew nothing about.