The final bell of the senior examinations echoed through the stone corridors like a funeral knell. Outside, the sky over Suzhou had turned a bruised purple, finally breaking into a torrential downpour that blurred the line between the canals and the streets.
Seo-yoon waited at the end of the hall. She was drenched, her hair clinging to her cheeks, but her eyes were burning. When Yan-chen finally emerged, his face was a mask of calculated indifference. He tried to walk past her, but she stepped into his path, her hand slamming against the cold locker door.
"Enough!" she screamed over the sound of the rain lashing against the windows. "You've spent three weeks treating me like a ghost. If you want to break up, have the courage to say it to my face. Don't freeze me out like a coward."
Yan-chen looked at her, and for a second, the 'Ice Prince' mask flickered. But then he remembered his father's letter. He remembered the threat to her visa, her house, and her future. If he stayed, he destroyed her. If he left with a 'see you soon,' she would wait for him, wasting her life on a man who was now a prisoner of a global firm.
He had to make her hate him. He had to burn the bridge so thoroughly that she wouldn't try to cross it.
"You want the truth?" Yan-chen said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm level. "Suzhou was an experiment. The project, the bridge, the 'soul' in the architecture... it was all just a thesis. And now, the thesis is finished."
Seo-yoon stepped back as if he had struck her. "An experiment? The night in Shenzhen... the way you held me... was that part of the data too?"
"Shenzhen was a moment of weakness," he lied, each word feeling like a needle in his throat. "I saw my father, and I realized who I actually am. I am a Li. I belong in skyscrapers and boardrooms, not in a drafty rented house in Pingjiang writing scripts about feelings. You were a distraction that helped me pass the time while I ran away from my real life. But I'm tired of playing pretend with you."
"You're lying," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I saw the way you looked at me. You love me."
"Love is a variable that doesn't hold weight, Seo-yoon," Yan-chen snapped, stepping closer, his shadow looming over her. "Look at us. You're a second-year student with nothing but a few scripts. I am an architect whose name is already on buildings in three countries. We don't speak the same language. I need someone who elevates my status, not someone who reminds me of a life I'm leaving behind."
He pushed past her, walking out into the heavy rain. Seo-yoon chased him, catching his arm in the middle of the courtyard. The water soaked them both instantly.
"If you walk away now," she cried, "I won't be here when you change your mind! I won't wait for you!"
Yan-chen stopped. He didn't turn around. He looked at the rain splashing against his boots, knowing that in forty-eight hours, he would be on a plane to London, and because of the legal contracts he'd signed, he would never be allowed to return to Suzhou. This was the last time he would ever see her face.
"That's the point, Seo-yoon," he said, his back turned to her. "I don't want you to wait. I want you to realize that you were just a chapter in a book I've already closed. Go back to Seoul. Or stay here. It doesn't matter to me. Just stay out of my life."
"I hate you, Li Yan-chen!" she sobbed, her voice breaking against the thunder. "I wish I had never met you! I wish I had never stepped onto that bridge!"
"Good," Yan-chen whispered, so softly she couldn't hear it over the storm. "Hate me. It's safer than loving me."
He walked away, his figure growing smaller in the gray curtain of rain. He didn't look back. He couldn't. He kept walking until he reached the gates, leaving her standing alone in the center of the courtyard—the girl who gave him a soul, and the girl he had just broken to save.
The 'Ice Prince' had returned to his castle of glass, and as the gates closed, the bridge between them vanished into the dark.