The Memory of the Alps

Extra Chapter – Sebastian Silva’s Perspective

Lily Evans cruelly disappeared right at the moment my heart loved her the most passionately.

Without leaving a piece of paper or half a word of farewell.

Exactly the way that haughty miss suddenly barged into my impoverished life without any prior warning sign.

When she left, dusting her hands off, she didn’t leave a single trace to track.

Initially, when we lost contact, I naively thought she had a traffic accident or something happened on the road. Burning with anxiety, I ran around looking for her but had no doors to knock on for help. Looking around at that time, I bitterly realized how small, lowly, and useless my status was in this society.

But it wasn’t until many days later, when I secretly followed and saw her brother majestically arriving at the university to complete the procedures to reserve her studies and transfer her to study abroad, that I devastatingly learned the truth: she had gone abroad and returned to the US.

It turned out, a poor guy like me had been treated like a toy and thrown away.

I was truly very resentful, but I was even more stubbornly unwilling to accept it. I wanted to find her at all costs, force her to look me in the eye, and ask her why she cruelly treated and played with me like that.

I always felt inferior, knowing her family background was very good, overwhelmingly wealthy. The upper-class people in that tier treated all emotions as an entertaining game.

When she took the initiative to lower herself to pursue me, I frankly warned her that I didn’t have the free time to participate in the wealthy kids’ game of betting on love with her.

She looked at me, shedding tears, saying she was serious, so from the moment of the nod that we fell in love, I also gave my heart incredibly seriously.

No longer suppressing and hiding my feelings for her, I immersed myself in enjoying it, and even secretly swore a toxic oath to myself that I definitely must strive to become rich to be worthy of her.

Therefore, even though at that time I had to hear the disparaging words of the people around me calling me a toad clinging to a skirt demanding to eat swan meat no matter how terribly, I swallowed my resentment and didn’t care at all.

Because I had a blind, firm belief that as long as I worked hard, in the future I could stand at the pinnacle shoulder to shoulder with her.

But ironically, she didn’t give me enough time and opportunity for that.

“…”

I worked my life away for four whole years building a career. Thanks to my information network, I finally found the address of her villa in a wealthy neighborhood in New York.

I carried the fearful anxiety mixed with burning expectation, abandoning my work to go find her, only to face the price of despairingly realizing that beside her, there already arrogantly appeared the presence of a new person to replace me.

Luke Shaw, this name I knew too well.

Back when Lily Evans and I were still passionately in love, relying on his wealth, he had repeatedly blocked my way to provoke me, insulted my dignity, and uttered threats saying that my world and theirs would never be in the same class.

At that time, having her love as support, I looked down on him and spat in his face.

Looking at this scene from afar now, I truly was a dreaming clown and a joke.

I watched Lily Evans, dressed in designer clothes, smiling radiantly and shyly linking arms with Luke. I heard the passersby around gasping in admiration, saying Luke was her perfect fiancé, and she also smiled in acceptance without speaking up to deny it.

The last straw of hope was crushed. I couldn’t help but believe that the truth was I had been emotionally deceived and toyed with by the rich young lady.

Lily Evans, your acting is excellent…

“…”

I returned to Paris and threw myself into my startup work like a crazy machine, using busyness to force myself not to have free time to think about the name Lily Evans anymore.

Success came, but I still carried the unwillingness to accept it. I wanted to use my glamorous image to make her see and regret abandoning me.

A highly prestigious financial magazine in New York emailed an offer to interview me, and I agreed without hesitation.

Deep down, I didn’t hold any fragile hope that she would accidentally flip through and see that interview.

But right after I gloatingly did that childish act of revenge, like a slap in the face, news on online tabloids about the Evans family’s miss about to marry into the Shaw corporation spread across the world’s media.

I truly saw myself exactly like a pathetic clown jumping around ridiculously, directing and acting by myself in a hidden corner where she might not even know of my existence. No matter how famously I jumped around and performed, I didn’t have the qualifications to appear in front of her.

She really was about to become someone else’s wife.

After this milestone, I would no longer have any justifiable opportunity…

No, I absolutely won’t allow that to happen.

I went crazy staying up all night ordering my assistant to book a first-class flight ticket.

At that time, even my own mind didn’t know if I blindly booked a flight there to crash the wedding and steal the bride, or to do some other crazy act.

But I told myself I must go, because this unresolved past matter had severely and depressingly affected my work efficiency. I had to use the excuse of going to face and completely resolve it.

“…”

I carried my suitcase standing in the airport lobby. The girl who obsessively appeared countless times in my dreams every night, just like that realistically and unexpectedly struck my vision.

At that moment of encounter, behind the disguise of my calm, arrogant exterior, in the depths of my heart, a tsunami earthquake was crashing in.

But I had to suppress it, just standing still, rooted to the spot, acting cold so no one would know.

She looked at me with unfamiliar eyes, saying she had an accident and lost her memory. I felt insulted and very angry, but also crept in with a lot of fear.

Because of my suspicious nature, I didn’t dare to believe this trick.

If the hypothesis that she truly lost her memory was real, then that meant the hatred over the past seven years was just a bizarrely arranged misunderstanding. And because of my own cowardly pride, I cowardly didn’t dare to bravely step forward to meet and question her, indirectly leaving her like a foolish puppet manipulated beside someone else for seven whole years of her youth…

Her personality was still as stubborn as the old days, straightforward in love and hate, getting right to the point.

Being cornered, she immediately pulled out the medical records evidence and shoved it in my face for me to see.

It turned out the truth was she had unluckily gone through such a painful, near-death illness on the operating table, while I, her man, had no information or knowledge at all, and even sat there blaming and harboring resentment against her for changing her heart.

At the moment when she was most scared and in pain on the hospital bed, I – the one bearing the title of this boyfriend – was not present to help or comfort her at all.

The realization at that moment, an anger at myself and an inexplicable sense of loss surged up, overwhelming my reason.

And right at that moment, the stumbling block Luke arrogantly appeared to divide us.

After that, the two of them argued, not knowing what agreement they had reached. Lily changed her mind, doing a 180-degree turn, bluntly declaring that she wanted to return to New York to get married.

I went crazy mobilizing manpower to search for a whole day and night, turning the city upside down, but still found no news or trace of where that dog Luke had hidden her.

The feeling of helpless despair made my chest so tight it was hard to breathe. In extreme resentment with nowhere to vent, I lost control and smashed the mirror in the house to release my anger.

But I didn’t have time to clean up that mess.

Because the assistant’s phone rang, finally reporting that they had found out Lily’s flight number.

It was late, the intelligence came too late, the plane was about to take off.

I drove like a madman to the airport, not daring to harbor many fragile hopes of salvaging it.

I stood helplessly on the runway watching the private jet soaring arrogantly in the sky, decisively swiping my card to buy the next earliest commercial flight ticket to chase after her.

The inferiority of the past, when I didn’t have enough money and ability to buy a ticket to chase her all the way to New York, but now it was different; this time, at any cost, I could use money to buy it.

However, like a joke of fate, just as I was about to step through the boarding gate, I received a phone report from the security guard.

The foolish Lily Evans was sitting waiting for me in the company lobby all tired day today!

I was stunned, unable to believe my ears, and hurriedly abandoned the flight, driving straight to the company. The moment I saw her haggard appearance curled up on the sofa.

I threw away and didn’t care about any masculine pride or face, or the dignity of a chairman’s position in a crowded place anymore.

I rushed over, hugged her tightly, and softly choked out a promise from the bottom of my heart: “Lily Evans, I beg you, don’t go anywhere else, stay with me forever.”