After pondering for a while, she realized she couldn’t come up with any other meaningful numbers. With such a long and delicate history with Cristofer, she had spent nearly every significant day with him, making it hard to avoid his influence.
In the end, she decided not to change the password of her email, despite Cristofer’s suggestion. Instead, she logged out and began working on her designs, resting her head on her palm. She had thought it through. ‘If such a situation does arise, my legal department will help me. They’re highly competent, after all.’
Cristofer had been sitting at his computer for half an hour. He checked his watch every thirty seconds and felt like an eternity had passed. Finally, he mustered the courage to log out of Estelle’s email and tried to log in again. When he realized he could still access it using the old password, he felt so relieved that he nearly burst into laughter.
However, Cristofer began to feel more unsettled as time passed. He thought, ‘Perhaps Estelle kept her old password simply out of habit, not because she’s unable to move on. I used to believe I knew her better than anyone else. But now… I can’t be so sure. Maybe I no longer have the right to know her.’
He lowered his head and smiled when he thought of Yohan’s and Yvonne’s adorable faces. Despite his experiences in the world of business, Cristofer had never considered himself a virtuous man. Yet now, he genuinely wished he could be a better person and asked Estelle to stay for the sake of their children.
Gently looking at his computer screen, he let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in his chair. Out of curiosity, Cristofer reviewed Estelle’s email records as he helped her manage her emails.
Both of them had a tendency to hold on to old memories, so they still used the email account they had registered during their student days. Even after they entered the workforce, they continued to use it as their primary email address without worrying about any embarrassing records from their past.
After Estelle left with the children, Cristofer found himself dwelling more on the past. He placed Estelle’s diary from her student days beside his pillow and couldn’t even fall asleep without reading a few pages. At this point, he could practically recite all the contents by heart.
At that moment, the email saved him. It contained their old email exchanges and photos from their outings together years ago. As he organized them chronologically, it felt like a complete record of their relationship.
Cristofer began scrolling through them from the very beginning, and the first email he came across was the one where Estelle had urgently asked him for homework answers.
‘Hi! I need your help right now. It’s urgent! School starts tomorrow, but I haven’t finished my assignments yet. Could you please give me the answers? If you don’t help me, my teacher will scold me tomorrow! Please, please help me. I promise I’ll do it on my own next time!’
The email was short but conveyed Estelle’s anxiety clearly. Cristofer clicked on his reply email, and a faint smile appeared on his face. He couldn’t access the dozens of attached pictures, but he vividly remembered the busy afternoon when he had spent hours scanning her assignments so that Estelle wouldn’t get into trouble with her teacher.
As time passed, they learned their lesson and chose to work on their homework together instead of relying on emails. This not only made them more efficient but also allowed them to spend more time in each other’s company.
In the next email, Estelle told him to bring some night snacks for her when he came to pick her up. ‘My parents always tell me that the food sold on the street stands is not hygienic. But they are delicious. I told them that we would have a walk tonight. Can you buy some grilled squid for me before you come? There is one stand in the night market near the park. Remember to tell the cook to put more sauce on it. Love you!’
As time went on, they exchanged more and more emails, sometimes sending dozens in a single night. Love had a way of making people act a little foolishly. Cristofer and Estelle never imagined they’d use emails like text messages, typing more words to each other than they did in their academic theses. But that’s exactly what happened.
Cristofer absentmindedly reached out to touch the screen as if he could somehow travel back in time and touch the young Estelle of years past. Even though he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help but read the last painful emails they had exchanged. During that period, there had been some misunderstandings between them, causing them to email each other less frequently, and the emails were quite short.
He then opened a new webpage and logged into his email account to view these emails from both perspectives. As he did, he suddenly realized what he had done in the past. When he was an impulsive teenager, he deleted all the emails that contained any trace of their history, thinking he could erase his memories and love in the process.
“I can’t believe I was even more foolish back then,” he muttered, covering his face and closing the page with a bitter smile.
He had once discarded his memories about Estelle. His email inbox was almost full, even after expanding the storage twice, and he frequently received notifications of insufficient space. In this vast sea of information, he couldn’t find anything about her. Luckily, he now had the chance to look back. Summoning the courage, he opened the last emails that Estelle had sent him.
‘Cristofer, please respond to me. I can’t reach you by phone, and I desperately need another chance to explain something important to you. Please come home. I’ll wait for you until you return. I never imagined things would end up like this. Cristofer, even if you want to end our relationship, I still want to see you again.’
Cristofer had consistently ignored her emails, so she had added read receipts to ensure she knew when he opened them. However, he deleted those emails immediately upon receipt. At that time, Cristofer was too frustrated to read a single word of what Estelle had written, missing the email in which she begged for reconciliation with just four words: “Please. I’m begging you.”
****
The day had flown by, and soon, the weekend arrived, and Estelle woke up early to get her three kids ready.
Yvonne enjoyed dressing up on her own. After Aurora tied her hair into two ponytails, she asked, “Mom, can I wear both the bunny and strawberry hair clips? Is that okay?”
Aurora looked at the hair clips and smiled. “You can’t put two pairs of hair clips on two ponytails, Yvonne.”