Chapter 1
As a girl weighing nearly 200 pounds, I splurged on concert tickets for me and my handsome boyfriend.
During the show, the camera randomly landed on us for the big screen.
He firmly held up a single finger to the camera, completely ignoring my frantic attempts to correct him beside him.
The clip later went viral online. Netizens mockingly dubbed us the "gender-swapped version of the 'simp' and the pretty girl."
Panicked by the backlash, my boyfriend went live to deny everything.
"That's just our live-in maid," he claimed. "The ticket was originally my sister's, but it went missing. I only found out at the concert that she had stolen it."
Later, after I successfully lost all the weight, he came crawling back, begging for another chance.
I just smiled and asked, "Aren't I just your family's maid?"
*****
On my boyfriend’s birthday, his idol for the past ten years, Sofia, happened to be holding a concert in Yuohs City.
The bad news: neither of us had managed to get tickets.
This was the first stop of her tour, and the lineup was rumored to be incredible.
Ethan Gomez had been staring blankly at the "Sold Out" page for a long time.
I knew how much he wanted to go, so I suggested buying resale tickets at a higher price.
"Forget it, baby. We'll try again next time. I know you work hard for your money," he said.
I checked online. The resale prices were indeed insane, marked up over ten times. But it was still within my budget.
"Alright, we'll celebrate your birthday another way then," I said, pretending to agree while secretly making plans.
But that night, he posted on his Instagram: [So desperate to see my idol's concert that even my girlfriend's 200-pound face is starting to look like her.]
I zoomed in on the profile picture three times before accepting it was really Ethan.
Scrolling down, I saw his so-called friends mocking me in the comments.
[You must really be delirious, Ethan. If your idol's a goddess, then your girlfriend's a whole sow.]
[How do you even look at Scarlett's greasy, chubby face without gagging?]
My hands trembled as I scrolled to the latest comment.
[Hey, stop hyping him up. Ethan, it's fine if you're delusional, but don't forget to block your girlfriend.]
The next second, the post disappeared.
Either he’d deleted it, or he’d just remembered to block me.
Staring at the blank, glowing screen, I felt dazed.
Had I imagined the whole thing?
The water in the bathroom stopped, and Ethan came out wrapped in a towel.
He looked panicked and uneasy.
"Scarlett, you haven’t been scrolling through Instagram, have you?"
I quickly flipped my phone face-down, feigning calm.
"No, I was watching videos. Why?"
His relief was visible. He ducked back into the bathroom, saying, "Nothing important. Just some drunk nonsense from the guys. Didn’t want you to see it."
Though the post felt like a thorn in my heart for days, I loved him.
So I bought two tickets for over 7,000 dollars.
What made me even more willing to spend was the concert’s new "Couples’ Section", and our seats were right there.
But when I handed him the tickets, his joy was short-lived. "Scarlett, why did you have to get seats in the Couples’ Section? Don’t you know..."
He looked at my face and swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"Ethan, are you ashamed of me?" I finally asked the question that had been weighing on me.
"No, Scarlett. I just thought you might not like crowded places."
Since gaining weight from hormone medication, I had indeed avoided crowds out of insecurity.
I’d even skipped my company’s product launch.
"Don’t worry. As long as I’m with you, I can handle anywhere," I replied softly.
But I missed the way his knuckles turned white as he gripped the tickets.