If I Could Start Over, I'd Come to You

Today marks three months since Scott died, and I've started sorting through his things. Not because I've moved on. Because his coat is still hanging in the closet, his slippers are still by the door, and there's still a row of noodles he wrapped himself sitting in the freezer. Time never rushes me. It just reminds me, every single day, that there are things I need to deal with. I took his shirts down one by one, meaning to sort them by size and donate them, only to realize I didn't even know what size he wore. I turned back the collar label. Six-one, large. Three years of marriage. I knew he didn't eat organ meat, knew he checked the locks twice before bed, and I didn't know his shirt size. And every piece of clothing he ever bought for me, he always got the size right. That afternoon, Scott's assistant delivered his personal computer. “Mr. Farley left instructions. His private files are for you to handle.” I took the computer, meaning to ask when he'd left those instructions, but the words died on my tongue. Scott always planned for the worst outcome first. He'd even set up a procedure for his own death ahead of time. The computer needed a password. I tried his birthday, my birthday, our wedding date. None of them worked. Before my last attempt, a hint popped up on the screen. “The first time she asked if I'd eaten.” I sat there stunned for a long while, then dug out my old phone. My chat history with Scott was sparse. Mostly transfers, addresses, or won't be home for dinner tonight. I searched eaten. A record from seven years ago jumped up. It was before our third meeting, and I'd asked out of politeness. “Have you eaten?” “Not yet.” I didn't see it until two hours later, and then I never replied. I typed in the date from that day. The computer unlocked. The desktop was almost entirely work files. Only the D drive held a folder named “Don't Delete.” No photos inside. No inventory of assets. No farewell letter, the kind I'd assumed he would leave. Just one program. 《Perfect Life》. The creation date was three years ago, the day we got our marriage license. I double-clicked to open it. A loading animation crawled slowly to its end, and four words surfaced in the middle. Perfect Life. The next second, a familiar face appeared on the screen. Long hair, a pale blue dress, a very faint mole beneath the right eye. That was me. A line of text sat in the top-left corner. 【Pursuit Target: Miriam Jenner.】 【Current Progress: 20%.】 The game interface was simple. Vertical screen, a dialogue box, a character portrait on each side. The heroine was me. The hero was Scott. His portrait wore the black suit from our wedding day, his expression softened past how he really looked. Two buttons in the bottom-right corner. One a grayed-out Start Over, the other View Log. I opened the log, and the first entry jumped out. 【Day 1: She wore the blue dress I bought today. Beautiful! But I didn't dare say so. Afraid she'd think I was being forward. Progress +0.5%.】 I looked down at the loungewear I had on. That blue dress was still shoved to the very back of the closet. The second morning after we married, Scott saw me come out of the room wearing it, and all he said was: “It's colder out today. Put on a thicker coat.” I thought he didn't like how it looked, and I never wore it again after that. That day, when I went back to change out of the dress, I slammed the closet door on purpose, loud. Scott stayed in the living room. He didn't come in. At the time I took it for indifference. Only now do I understand that he probably hadn't dared to claim even the right to apologize.

The screen kept scrolling. 【Day 37: The new assistant is always making little digs at her. Transfer her out tomorrow. Progress -1%? She seems to think there's something going on between me and the assistant.】 That assistant. I remembered her. The first time she met me, she smiled and said, "Mr. Farley trusts me a lot. Today I even remade the bed in his lounge for him." No one else was allowed near Scott's desk, let alone his personal things. I didn't make a scene right there. On the drive home I only asked him, "Your assistant knows you very well." He gripped the wheel, silent for a few seconds, then said, "She's handling the admin handover." Then he added, "It's just work." The next day, the assistant was transferred out. Scott didn't explain, and I chalked the reassignment up to a guilty conscience being cleaned up. But attached after the log entry was a personnel note he'd never sent me. 【She deliberately offended Miriam. She can't stay near me. Change the reason for the transfer to a routine reassignment. Don't let Miriam become the subject of gossip.】 Now, with the attachment on the screen in front of me, I finally saw it. He had dealt with the person who insulted me, and dealt away his own explanation right along with her. Next entry. 【Day 128: Passed a bakery, saw her stare at the strawberry cake for three seconds. Bought 100 of them, put them everywhere she might pass. One of them's got to reach her, right? Progress +2%.】 I stared at that line for a long time without moving. That day, the same strawberry cake had turned up at the company front desk, in the underground parking garage, at the coffee shop I always went to, even at the security booth of my mother's building. I thought the bakery was running a promotion. I got one and passed it off to a coworker without a second thought. That evening, when Scott saw me come home empty-handed, he asked, "On the way today… did you see anything?" "No." He nodded and turned into the kitchen. There was one more line added to the log. 【She didn't get one. A hundred wasn't enough either. Somehow my effort always ends up far away from her.】 I raised a hand and pressed it over my mouth. The tears fell onto the keyboard anyway. I had always believed he didn't love me, that he had never once shown me any feeling. But it wasn't that Scott hadn't shown it. It was only that every time he showed it, he went around whatever way I could have understood. He didn't ask if I wanted the cake. He bought a hundred and played the odds. He didn't tell me why he transferred the assistant. He just wrote "not suited to the position" on the order. He thought saying the dress looked nice was too much of an intrusion, yet he made my photo into the heroine of a game and hid it on a drive no one knew about. I kept scrolling down. The progress rose very slowly. I asked him "have you eaten?" on my own once. Plus 0.3%. I didn't pull away from his embrace when he'd been drinking. Plus 1%. Once, when he had a fever, I left the medicine on the table and walked out without waiting for him to wake, and he logged three separate entries about it. By Day 301, the progress stopped at 20%. 【The company's cash flow is about to snap. If it can't be hidden, then we'll divorce. I can't drag her down with me.】 【Progress paused.】 The next attachment for that day was a divorce agreement. The name of the second party was mine. It wasn't my handwriting.

I'd seen that divorce agreement before. Two years ago it was tucked among the files in Scott's study. I only saw the first page before he pulled it out of my hands and closed the folder. I asked him if he wanted a divorce. He didn't deny it. He only said, "Signing now would be better for you." I slipped the ring off and threw it on the desk. "Then let's sign." He looked at the ring, and his face grew worse and worse. In the end he put the agreement away, and all he said was, "Don't sign yet." "We'll talk once the risk has passed." Later the agreement disappeared, and the company went back to normal. Neither of us ever brought it up again. I just assumed he'd weighed his interests and decided to keep the marriage for now. But the log said: 【Day 305: She saw the agreement. She said, then let's sign. So she really does want to leave.】 【Day 306: The asset separation is done. If the company doesn't make it, I can't let her be saddled with the debt.】 【Day 319: The funds came through. The agreement can be destroyed now. She never asked, and I didn't dare explain.】 There was a photo attached. The divorce agreement fed into a shredder, only the two broken characters of my name, Miriam, still left. I reached out and touched the screen, brushing his name. Then I touched my own ring finger. That day I'd taken the ring off so readily, like I'd finally caught the proof that he didn't love me. The proof was real. The conclusion was wrong. There were one thousand and ninety logs in all. I read from daybreak to dark. 【Day 856: After she fell asleep she leaned in a little. I didn't move, afraid I'd wake her. My shoulder was numb for three hours. Worth it.】 【Day 990: She said the house was too quiet. Ordered a speaker, then returned it. What she wants probably isn't sound.】 【Day 1036: The necklace is finished. Changed the engraving three times and it's still too blunt.】 The last entry was dated the day of the accident. 【Day 1090: Seven years since we met, three years married. Tonight I want to ask her whether she'd start over with me. She said she was in a meeting.】 Below it was one more line, added later in gray: 【Did I make her angry again today?】 I lay slumped over the desk and my heart clenched hard. For those three years, I'd kept waiting for Scott to admit he loved me. Waiting for him to explain that agreement, waiting for him to reach out and care first, but I never really opened the door either. Everything he did, I translated into the opposite meaning. The 20% on the screen wasn't that he only loved me 20%. It was the 20% he'd gathered over three years from the glances and greetings I gave without thinking. He'd treated those tiny responses like rewards and saved them into the game, so carefully. And I never once asked him what he was waiting for. After the last log vanished, a prompt appeared in the center of the screen. 【You have read all memories.】 【Do you choose to start over?】 【Note: This action will reset the timeline to seven years ago. You will keep all memories. The original timeline cannot be restored.】 Those words, the original timeline cannot be restored, glowed red. I looked toward the entryway. Scott's shoes weren't there. There was only one set of dishes on the table, and in my phone that missed call stayed frozen at 17:38 forever. I had nothing left to lose. I pressed "Yes." White light burst from the center of the screen, and the sound of a coffee machine came to my ears. The bitterness of an iced Americano spread across my tongue. I lifted my head and saw the Scott of seven years ago sitting across from me, his white shirt clean and pressed, the sugar packet in his hand torn in two out of nerves. His ears were red, and he called to me hesitantly. "Miss Jenner?"