She didn't go home.
She didn't go back to the mansion, to marble floors and watchful walls and people who would pretend not to see her break.
Ling drove until the city thinned out, until buildings gave way to open darkness, until the sound of waves began to bleed through the silence of the car.
The beach was empty.
Of course it was. Past midnight, cold wind, no witnesses.
Perfect.
She parked carelessly for once, not aligning the car, not checking mirrors. The engine cut off, leaving only the distant roar of the sea. For a few seconds she stayed inside, forehead resting against the steering wheel, breathing shallowly like she'd run too far without stopping.
Then she opened the door.
Cold air slapped her face, sharp and honest. She stepped out, heels sinking slightly into sand already damp with tide. Without thinking, she bent down and slipped off her shoes, one after the other, leaving them where they fell.
They didn't matter.
Nothing did.
She shrugged her shoulders hard, ripping the blazer off her body like it was burning her skin. The expensive fabric slid down her arms, pooled at her feet.
That damn blazer.
The one she had worn only for Rhea.
Tailored perfectly.
Soft on the inside.
And stitched, hidden along the lapel seam—
Rhea's name.
Ling stared at it for a long second, chest tightening again. Then, with a sharp flick of her wrist, she threw it aside.
It landed crookedly on the sand, the dark fabric already catching grains, already being claimed by the night.
"Pathetic," Ling muttered, but there was no bite left in it.
She walked forward slowly, each step deliberate, grounding. The sand was cold under her bare feet, rough and uneven, real in a way nothing else had been tonight. When the water reached her toes, she stopped.
The sea was freezing.
She welcomed it.
Ling lowered herself down and sat, knees bent, feet submerged as waves rolled in and out, brushing her skin like they didn't care who she was. The heiress. The predator. The controlled one.
Out here, she was just a woman sitting alone in the dark.
Her shoulders finally slumped.
Tears came quietly this time.
Not the violent kind from the car. Not the furious kind she hated.
These just… fell.
One after another, slipping down her cheeks, dropping into the sand, disappearing immediately like they had never existed. Her hands rested uselessly in her lap, fingers trembling faintly from cold—or emotion, she didn't know anymore.
Rhea's face surfaced again, uninvited.
Laughing in the hall with the cake.
Standing barefoot outside the mansion.
Pulling Ling's bleeding hand closer instead of pushing her away.
"You don't know anything except violence."
Ling let out a shaky breath that turned into something close to a sob. She bowed her head, hair falling forward, hiding her face from even the empty beach.
"I tried," she whispered hoarsely. "I really did."
The waves answered, indifferent.
"I waited. I stopped. I walked away," she continued, voice cracking.
Her jaw clenched, throat burning.
"I only ever hurt you differently."
She dug her toes into the wet sand, grounding herself as another wave washed over her feet, colder than the last. Her tears mixed with seawater now, impossible to tell apart.
She lifted her head slightly, staring out at the dark horizon where sea met sky, where everything blurred into one endless nothing.
"I don't want to love you like a cage," she said quietly. "But I don't know how to love you any other way."
Her laugh came out small, broken, nothing like the one from the car. "Look at me," she murmured. "Trillionaire heiress. Can buy anything. Except softness."
The wind tugged at her shirt. The water numbed her feet. The blazer lay abandoned behind her, already half-buried in sand.
Ling sat there for a long time.
Crying without destroying anything.
Hurting without lashing out.
Letting the night see her exactly as she was.
And for the first time since she'd known Rhea, she didn't plan, didn't calculate, didn't prepare a move.
She just stayed.
Cold.
Barefoot.
In love.
And finally—utterly—unguarded.
She didn't stop crying.
Not the controlled kind. Not the quiet kind meant to pass.
This was the kind that came from finally understanding something that had already happened.
She stared at the black water in front of her, eyes unfocused, lashes wet and heavy, and the thought settled in her chest with terrifying calm:
I already lost her.
Not tonight.
Not at the café.
Not when she drove away.
She had lost Rhea long before.
"I'm just… late to it," Ling whispered, a hollow breath slipping out with the words.
Another wave washed over her feet, colder than the last, and she didn't flinch. She deserved the numbness.
Her mind betrayed her again, but differently this time.
Not images—conclusions.
Roin sitting beside Rhea in class.
Rhea leaving with him.
Rhea cutting cake with him.
Maybe he didn't need to steal anything.
Maybe Ling had handed it over herself.
A sharp, bitter laugh tore out of her chest, echoing uselessly into the open night.
"Congratulations," she muttered to herself. "You won."
She shook her head, laughter breaking apart into something ugly and self-mocking. "All that control… all that power… and you still lost to a man who just waits."
Her throat tightened painfully.
"And her mother," Ling added softly, eyes burning again. "She never wanted me there."
She could see it now with brutal clarity.
The cold looks.
The tests.
The way every mistake Ling made became proof.
"She hates the Kwongs," Ling whispered, lips curling into a humorless smile. "Hates what we are. What I am."
And Rhea—
Rhea was always caught in the middle.
Ling pressed her palms into the sand, fingers digging in like she needed something solid to hold her together.
"She was never mine to fight for," Ling said quietly. "Not with her mother watching. Not with him waiting."
Another laugh escaped her, harsher this time, edged with disbelief.
"Trillionaire heiress," she scoffed, shaking her head. "Can buy cities. Can buy silence. Can buy protection."
Her voice dropped to almost nothing.
"But not permission to love."
Tears fell again, heavier now, blurring the horizon completely.
"I thought obsession meant devotion," she admitted to the sea. "I thought if I guarded you hard enough, the world wouldn't touch you."
Her chest hitched. "I didn't realize I was guarding myself."
The realization landed fully then—quiet, merciless.
Rhea hadn't chosen someone else yet.
But Ling had taught her how to leave.
She laughed again, breathless and broken, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. "You really are incredible, Ling Kwong. You build cages so beautiful people don't realize they're inside them until they want air."
The tide rolled in and out, uncaring.
Ling leaned back slightly, bracing herself on her hands, staring up at the dark sky.
"If this is losing," she whispered, voice empty, "then I've been winning the wrong way my whole life."
She stayed there, crying and laughing in turns, mocking herself until the words lost their edge and only the truth remained:
She didn't lose Rhea because she wasn't enough.
She lost her because she never learned how to be gentle.
And the ocean, vast and indifferent, kept every confession she made—
while Ling Kwong finally accepted that some losses don't announce themselves.
They simply wait until you're quiet enough to hear them.