Lahat ng Kabanata ng I'll Leave So You Can Be Happy: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 9

Late on the second night after graduation, bored and unable to sleep, I was scrolling through a college admissions subreddit when a popular post caught my eye.The title was blunt enough to sting: "If you could choose your life all over again, would you give up the person your parents saddled you with?"The poster's avatar was a faded blue electric guitar, and the username ended in ClaireHart. I knew it instantly. Claire had saved six months of allowance to buy that guitar when she was fifteen. Later, it had been dropped and the neck cracked, but she could not bear to replace either the guitar or the avatar.More than a thousand comments had already piled up beneath the post, and the thread was still climbing. I opened it and read.She wrote that years earlier her parents had taken in a boy. His parents had died saving her during a deadly wildfire evacuation. Afterward, he moved into her home, grew up beside her, and became the boy everyone assumed would one day be her fiance and, even

I did not sleep. I lay awake until the sky turned pale.At four in the morning, the account from ten years ahead was still online, the avatar gone gray but the status light steady. In the end, I could not hold back the question I feared most: "How did I die?"She was silent for a long time, long enough that I thought she would not answer. Just as I was about to give up, the messages came through one after another, like a final verdict handed down from the future, every word aimed at the heart.She wrote that at the engagement party, she admitted in front of everyone that the person she loved was Logan. She controlled the financial guarantee for my grandmother's surgery and used it to force me to end the engagement myself. With nowhere else to turn, I removed the ring and begged her not to withdraw the money keeping my grandmother alive.Afterward, Logan went alone to Margaret's assisted-living community with an engagement invitation. During their conversation, he brought up my split fr

By the time Claire reached Portland International Airport, the flight to Amsterdam was already in the air.She stood beneath the departures board and called me over and over. A recorded message told her the number had been disconnected. Her finger froze above the screen, and even breathing became difficult.In the next second, memories that were not hers slammed into her head.She saw our engagement party ten years in the future. She saw me kneeling among scattered paper flowers, pulling off the ring and begging her not to withdraw the financial guarantee for Margaret's surgery. She saw herself beside Logan, hearing every word and turning away anyway.Claire's legs gave out and she dropped to the floor.It was not a dream. It was the life she would have lived.In the old timeline I never went to Leiden. I stayed in Oregon, moved her into her dorm, fixed her broken desk lamp, and walked halfway across campus to buy her hot chocolate when she complained about the dining hall coffee.Clai

The first thing Claire did after waking was not go to the airport but find Logan.She asked him to meet at a coffee shop near campus. Logan came fast, as if he had been waiting for her to reach out, and the moment he sat down he asked whether she was falling apart because Ethan had left so suddenly.Claire looked at the burn scar on his right hand, and images from the next ten years flashed through her mind."We're done," she said. "Don't contact me again."Logan's smile stalled for a moment, then his voice went gentle. "Claire, Ethan's gone. There's nobody left to perform for.""I'm not performing.""So you regret it?" He leaned back in his chair, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. "You said it yourself, being with him made you feel like you couldn't breathe."Claire did not explain. She got up and left, and blocked his number.A few days later, the photography club's welcome party went ahead as planned. Claire had not wanted to go, but she refused to surrender the rest o

After dinner, Claire stopped me at the living room door."Give me ten minutes," she said. "There are things I have to tell you myself."Ivy glanced at me and said quietly that she would go watch television with Margaret. She did not make the decision for me, and she did not use her own worry to pull me away.That left Claire and me alone in the living room.She started with the Reddit post ten years back, then the drink Logan had tampered with in the old timeline, then all the ways she had avoided, wavered, and let things slide. She did not skip the engagement party, and she did not call that shove in the parking lot an accident."I know he showed your grandmother that video, and I know you didn't simply lose your mind." Her voice shook. "But none of that erases what I did."When she finished, the tears finally came."In this life, I didn't have you committed, and I didn't cause your grandmother's death. Logan has been punished. Ethan, can we start over?"I looked at her and said nothi