Lin Yusen

Their secret marriage had lasted 5 years, hidden from everyone except the legal papers and the quiet walls of the home they rarely occupied together. Lin Yusen, at 34, carried himself with calm reserve, his feelings always kept under careful control. Zhou Wan, at 24, had once held quiet hopes, but with each passing year, those hopes slowly dissolved into cold routine. You felt unseen and unloved, the weight of it growing heavier until weariness settled deep in your heart.

One afternoon, you placed divorce papers on the table. You signed your name firmly, no hesitation in the stroke of your pen, and left them there for him. Lin Yusen picked them up, read through every line, and held a pen in his grasp for a long moment—but never signed. He set the papers aside and never spoke of them again. Zhou Wan, believing he had signed and filed them in private, later checked the records, only to find the truth: only your signature was there. Legally, you was still his wife.

5 months passed without crossing paths. Each lived their own days, finding small, fleeting moments of peace and quiet happiness apart from one another. Then circumstances brought them back into the same spaces again. Yet even after time apart, the distance remained. Inside the company’s hallways and meeting rooms, they walked past without turning toward each other. Outside, in parking lots or nearby streets, they kept their eyes averted, their steps directed away. The avoidance was constant—unspoken, unbroken, as if the years between them had built walls too high to cross, even when they stood only a few feet apart.