When the Star and Moon No Longer Meet

I couldn’t sleep that night.

At some point, Ryan was standing by the bed, staring at the nightstand with a complicated look in his eyes.

All the knives had been thrown out.

And yet, sitting there was a neatly peeled apple.

The peel hadn’t broken. It curled in one long spiral.

That was the kind of patience only the sixteen-year-old Ryan had.

I thought maybe, while I was asleep, the boy had come to see me again.

I shot upright and threw my arms around the figure in front of me, burying my face in his suit.

“You peeled the apple and left. I thought… I thought you weren’t going to stay with me tonight.”

Ryan’s body went rigid. Like he didn’t know what to do with me.

After a long pause, he awkwardly patted my back.

The movement was stiff. Careful.

“Jane… are you having another nightmare?”

The moment I realized it was his voice, I screamed and shoved him away, scrambling to the corner of the bed.

“Go away. You’re not him.”

He stepped closer and dropped to one knee beside me.

He stared into my frightened eyes, his thumb brushing lightly against my cheek. His voice was unusually soft.

“There’s no one else here but me.

“I know you’re upset about the live stream today. I swear, once Wendy has the baby, I’ll come home and spend more time with you.

“Come with me to the family dinner tomorrow. Okay?”

His grip on my wrist loosened slightly, like he was waiting for my answer.

I looked up through blurred tears.

“Ryan… let’s get divorced.”

The warmth that had just started to return to his eyes vanished.

For a second, I felt his anger. Then it twisted into something else. Something almost possessive. Like he was terrified of losing something.

He pulled me into his arms, holding me tight.

I forgot to struggle.

Until a hot tear landed on the back of my hand.

Through my blurred vision, I thought I saw the sixteen-year-old Ryan crying for me, whispering that I wasn’t allowed to leave.

My hand trembled as I reached up and wiped away the tear.

My fingertips touched warm skin.

Like I was soothing something fragile.

“Okay… I won’t divorce. I’ll come with you.

“Ryan, don’t cry.”

The next day, he brought me to the family dinner.

The moment he turned away to greet someone, Wendy approached with a glass of wine in hand.

She deliberately rested a hand on her barely noticeable stomach. The other toyed with the star-and-moon necklace at her collarbone.

She leaned close to my ear and smiled openly.

“Honestly, I admire you,” she said. “Even crazy, you still get to live comfortably at home.

“Oh, and that useless foundation of yours? I didn’t even want it. Things left behind by dead people are bad luck.

“Mr. Spencer just didn’t want to deal with it. Said it annoyed him. So he handed it to me to take care of.”

I stared at her red lips as they moved.

The last thread of control I had snapped.

“Wendy, you’re shameless.”

Her smirk didn’t fade.

I reached out.

I barely used any force.

But Wendy let out a dramatic cry and fell backward.

Behind her, the champagne tower crashed to the floor.

Glass shattered like an explosion, echoing through the entire hall.

“Jane! Have you completely lost it?”

Before I could react, a furious hand struck my face.

The sound of the slap cut through the room.

Silence followed.

The hit was so hard I tasted blood instantly.

A thin line of red slid down from the corner of my mouth.

I fell among the shards of glass, my palms slicing open as I tried to steady myself.

I didn’t feel the pain.

Because at that very moment, Ryan was holding Wendy carefully in his arms, shielding her.

He didn’t look at me once.

In front of everyone.

The boy in the school uniform came running toward me again.

He stumbled and dropped to his knees beside me, desperately trying to pull me up.

But his fingers passed through me over and over again.

He was sobbing, his voice breaking through the murmurs in the room.

“Stop hitting her! Ryan, you bastard! Don’t touch her!

“Run, Jane!

“The Ryan you see now doesn’t love you anymore! You’re going to die!”

I listened to the boy.

Without a second of hesitation, I scrambled to my feet, pushing myself up off the floor.

Ignoring the gasps behind me, I ran out of the banquet hall like I’d lost my mind.

I didn’t know where I was going. I just kept running.

At some point, a stiff card had been pressed into my hand.

Under the dim streetlights, I saw what it was.

A one-way ticket to the south.

Departure time: two hours from now.

I clutched it like it was the only way out and made it to the boarding gate just before final call.

Then a warm hand clamped down hard on my shoulder.

“Jane!”

Ryan had caught up. Wendy was right behind him, breathing heavily.

I held up the ticket, tears streaming down my face.

“Ryan, let me go… please.

“If I don’t leave, I’ll die.”

He stared at the ticket, something like confusion flashing in his eyes.

Maybe it was how real the ticket looked.

Maybe it was how determined I must have seemed.

His grip loosened, just slightly.

For a split second, he looked like the boy who once cared about me.

“Fine. If you really want to go…”

Wendy noticed the hesitation immediately. She suddenly pressed a hand to her stomach, her voice trembling.

“She’s hallucinating now. If you let her run off and she comes back later, what if she hurts our baby?”

The moment the word “baby” left her mouth, the softness in his eyes vanished.

He stopped looking at me.

He snatched the ticket from my hand and tore it up right in front of me.

The scraps fell like snow.

His voice turned cold.

“With me here, you won’t die.”

…

The iron gates of the psychiatric hospital slammed shut in front of me.

Then I heard the lock click.

I looked straight at him through the small window.

“Ryan, I will die here,” I said again.

He stood outside the visiting window and didn’t even meet my eyes.

“After Wendy has the baby, I’ll come get you.”

His footsteps echoed down the empty hallway.

He didn’t look back.

I stopped crying. I stopped pounding on the door.

Because I knew the boy was right.

I was going to die here.

The motion-sensor lights in the corridor suddenly flickered violently. The air buzzed with electricity.

Ryan hadn’t made it far when a deafening crash shook the building.

The reinforced iron door to my room twisted inward, kicked out of shape from the inside.

A faint figure in a school uniform stepped through the warped doorway, carrying me in his arms.

Ryan turned around.

And in that instant, he saw the one thing he had always been most afraid of.