Marriage Named Hatred Chapter 08
Bastian didn’t know how he had driven back from the Vasquez’s estate.
The stack of letters sat on the passenger seat. Every time he stopped at a red light, he reached out to touch them, making sure they were still there.
When he returned to the villa, he went straight into the study and placed the metal box on his desk.
He sat there for a long time, staring at it, before finally making a decision.
Early the next morning, instead of going to the office, he drove to his old high school.
The campus looked much the same as before, except the main gate had been renovated, and the sign at the entrance had been replaced with something more imposing.
The security guards had long since changed. They didn’t recognize Bastian and questioned him for quite a while before finally letting him in.
He found the administration building, walked up floor by floor, and stopped at the door of the records room.
A woman in her 50s was organizing documents. Hearing the knock, she turned around.
“Excuse me, who are you looking for?”
“I’d like to check records from a school activity years ago,” Bastian said, giving details. “A pen pal program, about 12 years ago.”
The woman thought for a moment. “The pen pal program? Oh, that… Were you a student from that year?”
“Yes.”
“Wait here, I’ll go look.”
She went deeper into the records room, searching through rows of cabinets.
Bastian stood at the doorway, his fingers tapping unconsciously against the doorframe.
More than ten minutes later, the woman came back holding a thick binder.
“Found it. This is everything.” She set it down on the table. “It was voluntary. Students used pen names when writing letters, and class codes were written on the envelopes, as for who ended up paired with whom, only they would know. We only recorded the registration list. There’s no record of the actual pairings.”
Bastian opened the binder and flipped through it page by page.
The list was long, densely packed with names.
He found his own name, Class 11-B, Bastian Ryland.
The pen name column was blank. He didn’t remember ever filling one in.
He kept flipping and found Celestine’s name. Her pen name was listed as “Cee.”
Bastian went through it again but couldn’t find Annelise’s name.
“This list…” He looked up, urgency in his voice. “Does it include everyone who signed up?”
“In theory, yes. Anyone who participated should be listed.” The woman leaned over to take a look. “But it’s possible someone was missed. Everything was handwritten back then, so mistakes could happen.”
Bastian fell silent for a few seconds, then closed the binder. “Thank you.”
He walked out of the administration building and stood on the field, looking at the familiar yet strangely distant surroundings.
The pen pal program. Pen names. Class codes.
He remembered that he had written some random code at the time, though he could no longer recall what it was.
In those letters, he had never mentioned his real name, and the other person had never asked.
They had simply written to each other about music, about dreams, about all the thoughts of youth that had nowhere else to go.
In the final letter, he had asked her to meet him. On the night after the SATs, in the small garden behind the school.
The one who had shown up was Celestine.
And she…
When he got home, Bastian began searching through everything.
The study, the bedroom, the living room, every place where Annelise’s belongings might have been, he left nothing untouched.
In five years of marriage, she had left behind very little trace of herself.
Her clothes were still in the closet, neatly hung, some with the tags still attached.
Her skincare products were still on the vanity, covered with a thin layer of dust.
Her toothbrush was still in the bathroom, placed side by side with his in the same cup.
But the things that truly belonged to her, her sheet music, her notebooks, the notes she scribbled casually, were almost nowhere to be found.
He searched the study for a long time. Finally, in the corner of a drawer, he found a stack of sticky notes.
They were written by Annelise.