The room suddenly became quiet.

Tham Mat Ly was still smiling.

“Sister, why did you two finally break up?”

I lifted my eyes from my phone.

Across the table, Chu Huc was looking at me.

For the first time that night, he was no longer calm.

His gaze moved from my face to the corner of my left eye.

Of course, there was nothing there anymore.

Before returning home, my father had personally arranged for the mole to be removed.

Just as he had asked.

Just as I had obeyed.

I answered lightly:

“He found someone more important.”

Tham Mat Ly laughed.

“Then he had terrible taste.”

Chu Huc’s fingers tightened around his glass.

I almost found it ironic.

Three years ago, he had been the one telling me I was only a replacement.

Now he was sitting beside the woman he had chosen instead of me, looking as though my answer had somehow hurt him.

Mat Ly continued enthusiastically:

“What kind of person was he?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Not even his name?”

“We used nicknames online.”

Chu Huc suddenly spoke.

“What nickname?”

His voice was too quick.

Everyone at the table looked at him.

Mat Ly blinked.

“Why are you so interested?”

He adjusted his glasses.

“Just curious.”

I looked directly at him.

Then smiled.

“I forgot.”

His face stiffened.

That was a lie.

Of course I remembered.

For an entire year, Chu Huc had called himself North Star.

And he had called me Little Moon.

He once said:

“If we ever meet, I’ll recognize you immediately.”

I had believed him.

How ridiculous.

He had recognized the wrong woman.

After dinner, I went outside to breathe.

The hotel garden was quiet.

I had barely reached the fountain when footsteps followed me.

“Tham Man.”

I stopped.

Chu Huc stood behind me.

His expression was completely different from the one he had worn inside.

“Where is your mole?”

There it was.

No greeting.

No polite question.

Just that.

I touched the corner of my left eye.

“Removed.”

“When?”

“Before I came back.”

“Why?”

I almost laughed.

“What does that have to do with you?”

He stared at me.

Then asked slowly:

“Which eye was it under?”

My heartbeat remained steady.

“Didn’t Mat Ly tell you?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

I looked at him for several seconds.

Then:

“Left.”

His face went white.

He took one step toward me.

“Left?”

“Yes.”

“What color?”

I frowned.

“Chu Huc, are you interrogating me?”

“Answer me.”

Something in his voice had begun to tremble.

I should have walked away.

Instead, I said:

“Red-brown. Smaller when I was young. It became darker later.”

He stopped breathing.

Then his hand suddenly reached for my wrist.

I pulled away immediately.

“Don’t touch me.”

He stared at his empty hand.

His voice was almost hoarse.

“Did we go to the same high school?”

“Yes.”

“Second High?”

“Yes.”

His pupils contracted.

“What happened behind the old laboratory building in our second year?”

Now I understood.

He was finally putting the pieces together.

Three years too late.

I answered calmly:

“A boy fell into the abandoned reservoir after climbing over the fence.”

Chu Huc’s face completely lost its color.

I continued:

“It had rained. The ground was slippery.”

His lips moved.

“And?”

“I pulled him toward the concrete edge.”

My voice became quieter.

“He was heavier than me. I cut my palm on a broken metal rail.”

Chu Huc stared at my right hand.

There was still a faint white scar near my thumb.

His entire body froze.

That day, years ago, the boy had been half-conscious.

He only saw my face for a few seconds.

I remembered him asking:

“What’s your name?”

Before I could answer, teachers arrived.

I never knew who he was.

Apparently, Chu Huc had spent years searching for me.

And somehow he found my sister instead.

His voice cracked.

“It was you.”

I said nothing.

“It was you.”

This time it wasn’t a question.

I looked at him calmly.

“So?”

His eyes reddened.

“So?”

He laughed once, almost breathlessly.

“Tham Man, do you know how many years I searched for you?”

“No.”

“Seven.”

I nodded.

“Congratulations. You found someone.”

His expression twisted.

“The mole…”

“Was on the wrong side.”

He closed his eyes.

Just for a second.

Then suddenly:

“Why didn’t you tell me three years ago?”

That question actually made me laugh.

“Tell you what?”

“That you were the one who saved me!”

“I didn’t know.”

“You saw Mat Ly’s picture!”

“Yes.”

“And you saw the mole!”

“Yes.”

“You knew you had one too!”

I looked at him.

Then asked:

“And what exactly was I supposed to say?”

He froze.

I repeated the words he had sent me three years earlier.

“‘She’s the one who saved my life.’”

His expression changed.

“‘I only agreed to be with you because I thought I’d never find her.’”

His hands slowly clenched.

I continued:

“‘Now that she’s back, you don’t want me to keep treating you as a replacement, right?’”

Every sentence returned to him exactly as he had written it.

“I remember all of it, Chu Huc.”

He looked devastated.

I smiled faintly.

“You made the decision very clearly.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Neither did I.”

“You could have asked!”

“Why?”

My voice remained quiet.

“You had already told me exactly what I was worth to you.”

Silence.

“A substitute.”

He stepped backward as though I had struck him.

I continued:

“And then you gave me five hundred thousand yuan to disappear.”

His face changed again.

“You accepted it.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

This time I smiled genuinely.

“Because it paid my tuition.”

He stared at me.

“I used it for my master’s degree.”

Then I added:

“It was the best breakup gift I’ve ever received.”

I walked past him.

He caught up.

“Tham Man.”

I stopped but didn’t turn.

His voice lowered.

“Was Little Moon you?”

There was no reason to lie anymore.

“Yes.”

Behind me, I heard his breathing stop.

For one year, he had told Little Moon everything.

His insomnia.

His fear of thunderstorms after the accident.

His complicated relationship with his father.

His dream of establishing his own investment company.

He had even once written:

“If we meet someday, don’t dislike me for being boring.”

I had answered:

“I won’t.”

But we never met.

Because one day, three days before our planned meeting, he sent me my sister’s photograph.

And ended everything.

I turned around.

Chu Huc looked as though his entire world had collapsed in less than ten minutes.

“Now you know.”

Then I walked away.

The next morning, Mat Ly came into my room without knocking.

She threw her phone onto my bed.

“What did you say to Chu Huc?”

I continued packing documents for work.

“Ask him.”

“He canceled today’s engagement photo session!”

I paused.

That was faster than I expected.

Mat Ly’s eyes were red.

“He kept asking me about the reservoir.”

I looked at her.

She immediately looked away.

Interesting.

“You know about it?”

“No.”

Too fast.

I closed the folder.

“Mat Ly.”

She snapped:

“What?”

“How did Chu Huc decide you saved him?”

Her lips tightened.

“He recognized me.”

“From one mole?”

“He remembered my face.”

“You and I look almost identical.”

She became angry.

“So what are you trying to say?”

I watched her quietly.

Then suddenly remembered something.

Three years ago, after Chu Huc sent me Mat Ly’s photograph, I had returned home briefly before leaving the country.

Mat Ly had asked strange questions.

Whether I had ever rescued anyone in high school.

Whether the scar on my palm came from a fall.

I hadn’t thought much of it.

Now I understood.

“You knew.”

Her face changed.

I stood.

“You knew I was the person from the reservoir.”

“No.”

“You knew.”

“I said no!”

Her voice became sharp.

Then the bedroom door opened.

Chu Huc stood outside.

Mat Ly froze.

He held an old envelope.

Inside was a photograph from our high school volunteer club.

I was standing in the second row.

Seventeen years old.

Long hair.

No makeup.

And at the corner of my left eye was the mole.

Clear.

Impossible to mistake.

Chu Huc looked at Mat Ly.

“Your mole didn’t exist in high school.”

She went completely pale.

I looked at the photograph.

Then at her right eye.

The realization came slowly.

“That mole…”

Mat Ly covered it instinctively.

Chu Huc’s voice was ice cold.

“You had it tattooed.”

Silence.

My sister began crying.

“Chu Huc, listen to me.”

“When?”

She shook her head.

“When did you have it done?”

“Three years ago.”

Exactly when he began searching publicly for the girl who had saved him.

My stomach turned cold.

Chu Huc asked:

“How did you know which mark I remembered?”

Mat Ly didn’t answer.

I did.

“She saw my messages.”

Her head snapped toward me.

I remembered leaving my old tablet at home during university.

My WeChat had still been logged in.

“You read my chats with him.”

“No!”

“You knew North Star was looking for a girl with a mole.”

Her tears came faster.

“I only looked once!”

One time was enough.

She had realized the mysterious online man I was dating was Chu Huc.

She knew he came from an influential family.

She knew he was searching for his childhood rescuer.

And she knew I was planning to meet him.

So she created the exact detail he remembered.

Then she placed herself in front of him first.

Chu Huc stood completely motionless.

“Did you know Tham Man was Little Moon?”

Mat Ly cried harder.

“Yes.”

The room became silent.

Even I hadn’t expected her to admit it.

She rushed toward him.

“But I really fell in love with you!”

He stepped back.

“You knew.”

“I was afraid!”

“Of what?”

“That once you met her, you’d never look at me!”

She pointed at me.

“Everyone always says we’re alike! Since childhood, everything she had eventually became mine anyway!”

I stared at her.

That sentence hurt more than I expected.

Because it was true.

Clothes.

Birthdays.

Our parents’ attention.

University choices.

Every time Mat Ly wanted something, I had been told:

“You’re the older sister. Give in.”

And I always did.

Chu Huc looked at me.

Perhaps he finally understood why, three years ago, I hadn’t fought.

I had spent my entire life being trained to step aside.

Except this time, stepping aside had saved me.

The engagement was canceled that afternoon.

My father was furious.

Not with Mat Ly.

With me.

“Why did you have to come back and create chaos?”

I laughed.

For the first time in my life, I laughed in his face.

“I didn’t create anything.”

“If you had stayed abroad—”

“She would still be lying?”

He slammed his hand on the table.

“She is your younger sister!”

I nodded.

“And I’m your daughter.”

He had no answer.

So I moved out that same week.

My new company had already provided temporary housing.

The position I had supposedly obtained through “ordinary overseas studies” was actually leading an international research division.

Within six months, I became project director.

As for Chu Huc, he tried everything.

Messages.

Flowers.

Apologies.

He returned the old five hundred thousand yuan transfer with interest.

I sent it back.

He waited outside my office once.

I walked past him.

Finally, he asked:

“Was there ever a chance for us?”

I stopped.

Three years earlier, that question would have destroyed me.

Now I could answer calmly.

“Yes.”

Hope appeared in his eyes.

I continued:

“Three years ago.”

It disappeared.

“You loved Little Moon,” I said.

“You loved the girl who saved you.”

“You even loved an imagined version of Mat Ly.”

I looked directly at him.

“But when you believed I was simply an ordinary woman who had no special meaning to your past, you discarded me without meeting me once.”

He whispered:

“I was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t I make it right?”

I shook my head.

“Some mistakes can be corrected.”

Then I smiled faintly.

“Some simply reveal who you were when you thought there was nothing to lose.”

A year later, I heard Mat Ly had left the entertainment industry temporarily.

Our relationship never recovered.

My parents called sometimes.

I answered when I wanted.

For the first time, being the older daughter no longer meant surrendering whatever everyone else desired.

And Chu Huc?

He never got engaged.

Once, at a business conference, I saw him across the lobby.

He was standing beneath bright lights surrounded by investors.

Someone beside me whispered:

“That’s Chu Huc. Apparently he spent years looking for the girl who once saved his life.”

I looked at him.

At almost the same moment, he saw me.

His gaze automatically moved to the corner of my left eye.

There was no mole anymore.

Only smooth skin.

He smiled bitterly.

I nodded politely.

Then walked away.

Because in the end, the most ironic part wasn’t that Chu Huc had mistaken my sister for me.

It was that he had already found the real girl long before he recognized her.

He had spoken to me every night.

Shared his secrets with me.

Waited for my messages.

Loved the version of me behind a screen.

And then, when he believed someone more important had appeared…

he paid me five hundred thousand yuan to disappear.

The money bought my education.

The breakup gave me distance.

And his mistake gave me something I had never possessed in my own family.

The courage to stop begging people to choose me.

Three years later, Chu Huc finally recognized the girl who had saved his life.

Unfortunately for him…

by then, she had already learned how to save herself.