Leaving At The Start Of Spring

After Summer Blossom said that, she squatted down and massaged his calves. She changed the subject. “How are you feeling today? Are your legs bothering you?”

Because she was putting in a lot of strength as she massaged, her slender hands turned red. Veins started protruding on the back of her hands, and they caught his eyes.

She was very skilled in massaging, yet Jude Brown could not feel anything.

When he did not respond, Summer looked up. She wanted to ask him something, but her phone started ringing.

She took her phone out. When she saw the caller ID, a bright smile

immediately appeared on her face.

She had forgotten what she was about to say. She stood up and excused herself before hurrying to the study.

“Jude, I have some work to do. I’ll continue the massage after a while.”

Jude did not say a single word as he watched her leave.

When she completely disappeared from his field of vision, her irrepressible smile a moment earlier replayed clearly in his mind.

Would she smile like that if it was work?

She had looked so genuinely happy. It was an expression she would have when facing someone she liked.

After all, he had seen that smile many times before.

Back when they were in high school, he would quickly finish his milk and rush downstairs every morning. The first thing he would see was Summer’s bright smile as she walked toward him to go to school together.

They were only eighteen back then, so young and energetic. All they cared about was each other.

They were childhood friends. As if they were living in a romance novel, they started to have feelings for each other.

They got together behind their parents’ backs, and they made a vow to go to the same university together and make their relationship public.

They motivated each other to improve, and both of them obtained good scores and went to a top university together.

That should have been their happy ending.

However, an accident happened.

A day before university started, they got into a car accident. At the very critical moment, Jude pushed Summer aside to protect her.

While Summer got away unscathed, he became paralyzed.

To make matters worse, his parents passed away from a plane crash in the same year. He could not take the series of unfortunate events, so he fell into a deep depression.

Summer felt really bad for him. She immediately proposed to him after she graduated from university.

She had made a promise to him that she would never let him down.

After three years of marriage, she had kept to her promise.

Two weeks ago, he discovered her journal.

It turned out that the woman who told him that she loved him every day had been ranting in her journal.

She wrote that she had only proposed to him due to social pressure. If she did not do that, she believed that everyone would blame her.

Every time she reached home, she felt suffocated by the tension at home. She felt that every single second spent next to Jude was torturous for her.

She wished that if she had the ability to go back to the past, she would not have wanted him to save her, even if she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. At least, she would not be burdened by such deep guilt.

She also wrote that she had fallen in love with another man without Jude’s knowing. Finn Anderson was a passionate and cheerful young man, just like Jude was before the accident.

The next day, Jude received a text message from Finn.

[Jude, I heard from Summer that your legs will stay like this for the rest of your life. Since you have already had her for so many years, why can’t you let her go?]

[I bet you don’t know that she’s in deep suffering because of you every single day. She even hoped to die, but she could not even kill herself because she had to take care of you with a smile every day.]

[It’s such a pathetic life. If it weren’t for me, she would’ve already gone crazy. Don’t you feel guilty at all? I feel really bad for her. She’s in love with me now.

[I hope you don’t hold her back anymore. Just get a divorce and give us your blessings, alright?]

Then, he sent a dozen of photos to Jude.

Summer was the subject of all photos.

She was smiling as she made coffee. When she saw that Finn was taking a selfie, she immediately got into the frame with a bright smile.

She peeled a huge plate of shrimps and passed it to Finn. Then, she wiped the gravy off Finn’s fingers for him.

In one photo, she was stepping on Finn’s footprints on the beach. Then, she showed him all the seashells she had collected with a huge grin.

As Jude flipped through all the photos, he felt breathless from the pain. It was excruciating.

However, there were no tears left for him to cry. He just felt numb.

He did not reply to these text messages, but Finn was very insistent.

From that day onward, Finn would send Jude a lot of daily updates. Each photo would have timestamps on them.

On 21 November, Finn and Summer were taking a stroll in the park under the sunset.

On 26 November, they went to a pottery workshop and made a vase together.

They went to a musical show on 1 December, and they talked a lot about music and their future.

Every photo had a corresponding timestamp, and it lined up with all the times Summer told Jude that she was working overtime.

It was just like his birthday the day before. Jude had waited the entire day at home, yet she did not come back.

The actual reason for her absence was because she had been watching fireworks with Finn.

Jude stared at the photo Finn sent. At that moment, he started laughing so hard that tears trickled down his cheeks.

Eighteen-year-old Summer had been deeply in love with eighteen-year-old Jude.

Yet, twenty-five-year-old Summer no longer loved twenty-five-year-old Jude.

That night, he sat before the window for the entire night. The next day, he submitted a euthanasia request to an overseas euthanasia center.

There was nothing else left in his life except Summer.

If Summer felt that Jude was bringing her so much pain, Jude chose to let her go.

He chose to let himself go too.