Ficorpio
Chapter 1
My girlfriend had posted a question from her secret alternate account on an anonymous Q&A site.
“Can a premarital health screening tell if someone has had an abortion?”
I froze.
We used protection every time. There was no way she could have gotten pregnant.
The question had been posted a few days earlier.
“I took emergency contraception right afterward, but I still ended up pregnant. I had a medication abortion as soon as I was a little over a month along. It’s been almost six months now. Will a premarital health screening be able to detect it?”
There were already more than a hundred replies.
Some people mocked her. Others made sarcastic comments or hurled insults.
A few answered seriously.
“Premarital health screenings are meant to check whether both parties are healthy and whether there’s a history of inherited conditions. What you’re describing generally isn’t something they test for.”
Chloe had replied to only that comment.
“Then I’m relieved.”
It felt as though lightning had struck me.
Chloe and I had been together for nearly five years, and both our families had been pushing us to get married.
So last week, I suggested that we get premarital health screenings first. Chloe had hesitated.
“What? Do we really have to do that?”
At the time, I hadn’t noticed anything strange about her reaction.
“The screening is free, and if we get it done, we’ll qualify for a few extra days of marriage leave. Don’t you want to go abroad for our honeymoon? The more time we have, the more we’ll be able to enjoy it.”
Water rushed behind the bathroom door. Chloe was in the shower.
When had she done all this behind my back?
I stared at the phone, my grip tightening as I noticed a detail I had overlooked.
Almost six months ago?
Then I remembered.
Chloe was a graduate student at a local art school. Six months earlier, the university had sent her away on an extended study program. She had been gone for more than a month.
So… had it happened then?
I clenched my teeth as anger surged through me.
At that moment, the bathroom door opened. I hurriedly switched away from the screen.
Chloe came out wearing a thin nightgown and coyly asked me to hold her.
Against my will, an image rose in my mind—Chloe beneath another man. They hadn’t even used protection.
My stomach lurched. I nearly threw up.
Somehow, I forced down the urge to confront her and faked a few coughs instead.
“Baby, I think I’m coming down with a cold. I don’t want you catching it.”
Chloe suspected nothing. She climbed into bed by herself and fell asleep with her back to me.
The smile vanished from my face.
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
The next morning, while my girlfriend was doing her makeup, I quietly slipped her tablet out of her bag.
She didn’t notice when she left. She simply grabbed the bag and walked out the door.
Chloe’s synced messaging account was still logged in on the tablet.
Chapter 2
I went through her contacts several times. Whenever I saw a man’s name, I opened the chat to take a look. But every conversation seemed perfectly normal. I couldn’t find a single suspicious person.
Then, a little after one in the afternoon, a new message came through on Chloe’s account.
“Chloe, you’ve eaten lunch, right? Come by my office.”
“Professor Sterling, now?”
“Yes. Now. Immediately.”
Up to that point, I hadn’t sensed anything wrong.
But the next exchange sent all the blood in my body rushing to my head.
“Didn’t I just come to your office yesterday afternoon?”
“You walk around in front of me looking that beautiful every day. What am I supposed to do? Don’t worry. I checked the dates. You’re in your safe window these days.”
“All right, then. I’m on my way~”
I stared at the screen, unable to believe my eyes.
My girlfriend… with her graduate adviser?
A man thirty years older than her?
Jesus Christ.
With mixed feelings, I started reading through their chat history from the beginning.
My girlfriend hadn’t deleted everything.
“Your boyfriend isn’t going to call you out of the blue again today, is he?”
“No. I told him I’d be home late tonight.”
“Professor Sterling, I still haven’t gotten my period this month. I’m a little worried…”
“Don’t panic. Buy a test and see what it says. If you really are pregnant, I’ll make arrangements. We’ll go to a hospital out of town.”
This was how Chloe talked about me to her graduate adviser:
“He treats me well, and he’s generous with his money. But I’m this pretty—of course he should worship the ground I walk on.”
“We’ve been together too long. There’s no passion left.”
And whenever that old man talked about me, his tone was dripping with contempt.
“A kid barely out of college. Other than giving you a dull marriage and a miserable life full of endless problems, what can he offer you? Does he understand art? Does he understand women? Does he understand you?”
“You’re my most promising student. I’d never let you waste your life cooking for some loser and having his children, only to end up a common, worn-out housewife.”
“Hee-hee, Professor Sterling. Then divorce the old woman at home. If you’re brave enough to leave her, I’ll break up with you.”
“Baby, don’t start. We have a good thing going like this.”
By the time I finished reading, my hands and feet were ice-cold. It felt as if I’d fallen into a frozen abyss.
Every word, every sentence, lashed across my body like a whip.
I never would have believed that the woman I’d loved for nearly five years had been deceiving me for so long.
Then I thought of that post on the anonymous Q&A account.
I was so furious I started shaking.
What the hell did she mean, “a little angel had visited”?
Chapter 3
My girlfriend’s adviser was Adrian Sterling. I’d met him two or three times.
He was in his fifties, but judging by his appearance alone, he was tall, polished, and refined. He certainly wasn’t some decrepit old man.
I’d heard that Adrian and his wife were deeply in love. They even had two daughters.
I’d looked over his résumé once.
That old bastard really had accomplished something. He’d won plenty of awards at home and abroad, and he had a formidable reputation in his field.
A happy family. A successful career. Students who adored him.
If there was such a thing as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it was a man like him.
Damn it.
Unless I exposed this hypocrite for what he really was and ruined his reputation, I would never let this go.
My girlfriend usually didn’t get home until seven or eight in the evening, but today she came back early.
The moment she walked through the door, she asked whether I’d seen her tablet.
I pretended not to know where it was and searched with her. In the end, we found it beneath the bench by the entryway.
She snatched the tablet out of my hand.
“At least it’s still in the house. I thought I’d lost it somewhere outside.”
Then she carried it into the bedroom.
I watched her in silence, my expression cold.
Why had she rushed home so early? To delete the chat logs between herself and that old bastard, of course.
When she finally came out of the bedroom, the tension had visibly drained from her body.
That evening, Adrian Sterling actually called her.
She answered openly, right in front of me.
“Professor Sterling? I’m home. What is it?”
“No, I’m not tired.”
“All right. When I get to campus tomorrow morning, I’ll come to your office and see you.”
She hung up and said to me as naturally as if nothing had happened, “I spent the whole afternoon helping my adviser organize files. He wants me to keep helping tomorrow, too. Honestly, being a graduate student just means doing your adviser’s work for him.”
Then she started ordering me around.
“Babe, I couldn’t say anything in front of my professor, but my arms are sore, my legs hurt, and even my knees ache. Come massage them for me.”
I almost lost it and started swearing at her.
Why was she sore?
And how did she have the nerve to order me around?
Massage you? Not a chance in hell.
I claimed I needed to use the bathroom and escaped inside.
If this had happened before, I would have believed every word she said without question.
But now I understood. The two of them were deliberately provoking me right in front of my face, enjoying the thrill of it.
Fine.
So they wanted to play games?