At that thought, her tears fell again. She pulled off her hairband, letting her long hair fall into her face and hide it from view, then opened the door and left. She ran to the top of the rocky hill via a shortcut, stumbling on exposed rocks and nearly falling because of her blurred vision.
Yet, no matter how much she cried, she couldn’t let out the pain she felt. It must’ve all been one big joke from God. She hated her actions even more now, feeling guilty whenever she thought of Annie. Even now, she could clearly remember Annie’s excited voice on the phone.
“Angie, do you know what the man I’m going to be engaged to looks like? Oh my, he looks so handsome. He’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen! I’m very satisfied with this arrangement.”
“Angie, we’re getting engaged tomorrow. Would you be able to come?”
Angela closed her eyes in pain and leaned against a rock. Her mind was swirling as Annie’s voice and memories of the blossoming relationship between her and Richard replayed in her mind. She felt that she was to blame for everything. After all, she shouldn’t have become interested in this man, nor seduced him in different ways. This was all her fault.
Angela cried as the wind blew against her face. The mountaintop was windy, not to mention she was sitting in a deserted area. The chilly wind of early winter made her face cold and pale. She hugged her knees, feeling like her heart was covered in snow too.
All she wanted was to go back to the first time she had met Richard and do everything over again. This way, she could prevent herself from being entangled in a love triangle. She would not look twice at him, instead giving her blessings to Annie and feeling happy for
her since she had found such a great man. As the cold air surrounded her, he suppressed her sobs and felt herself breaking down all over again.
At that moment, Richard entered the base via the main entrance. He had been planning to go to the meeting room, but his feet intuitively took him toward his room instead. When he arrived, he did not knock but opened the door immediately. Since Angela loved sleeping on his couch so much, she might already be asleep and he did not want to wake her.
But when he entered, he discovered that there was no one on the couch or the room itself. Angela had already left, making him feel a stab of
disappointment. Just as he was about to leave, he immediately zeroed in on the balled-up pieces of tissue on the table, as well as another on the floor. He walked over at once and picked them up to take a closer look.
They were all wet, but it didn’t seem to be from wiping up spilled water. In fact, the tissues were wet in the middle and dry around the edges, as if someone had used them to wipe their tears.
His heart quickened. What happened to her? He immediately turned and walked out, going toward her room and knocking on the door. No one answered, which meant she wasn’t there. When he returned to the meeting room to ask Trevor and the rest, they all said that she had never been there.
“What has happened to Miss Meyers, Richard?”
“She has vanished. Go look for her,” Richard ordered in a low voice, for the damp pieces of tissue paper made him extremely worried. All four of them immediately put their work aside and exited the base, going in different directions to find Angela.
He thought deeply for a while, mentally going through the places she always frequented -beside the waterfall, the top of the rocky mountain, and around the field. He eventually settled on the second option as if his intuition was leading him toward it.
Angela had been sitting in the cold wind for half an hour, her face now pale and hair tousled. Even her red lips had lost their color, which made her look really weak. Her body shivered with the cold, but she refused to go back. She just wanted to stay here.
