"I am sorry, Mr. Belamour, but you are sterile."
Those were the words of the doctor to Joseph Belamour when he went to a hospital to get checked because of a series of headaches and stomach aches that had been going on for weeks now.
All the doctor was supposed to do was run some tests and tell him what was wrong.
But no.
What he got instead was a piece of information that made no sense, no matter how many times he tried to wrap his head around it.
He, Joseph Belamour, youngest CEO and owner of Belamour Scribe, was sterile.
And had been since birth.
But how was that possible?
Joseph Belamour had been married to a woman for seven years. And in those years of love, difficulty and compassion, he had been blessed with two children: a boy and a girl.
So how was he supposed to be sterile?
At that thought, Joseph could only think of two possibilities.
First, the doctor had made an error during the test.
The second was something Joseph couldn’t even bring himself to think about, let alone say aloud.
Yet as he stood in front of his wife, face aghast, he had no other choice but to accept the second option.
"I-I am sorry!" Jeanne cried out, kneeling on the ground and grabbing Joseph’s leg as he stood dazed, pinned in place by some mysterious force. "I didn’t want to do it, I swear! It was a mistake!"
"A mistake?" He echoed, looking down at her. "Twice? And you call it a mistake?"
His voice was flat, filled with so much pain that a stone would have cried at the sound of it.
"I...I don’t understand, Jeanne. I truly don’t." He crouched down and forced her to look at him. "Why did you do this? If you knew about my sterility you should have told me and I would have accepted a divorce. What did I do to deserve this, Jeanne? What crime did I commit against you to make me love, raise and educate two children who are not mine for all these years? Tell me!"
He shouted, his black eyes burning with tears.
Jeanne shivered, retreating inside herself, looking like a frightened animal about to be slaughtered.
Her mind was blank, trying to find words to say. Nothing came.
"I am sorry. I am sorry. It was a mistake, Joe! I regret it and I have nightmares about it every single day." She pleaded, holding his hand tightly. "But they are your children, okay? You are their father, please don’t think otherwise! They only know you and they love you with everything. Joe, I beg you, don’t—!"
"What did I do wrong?" Joseph asked again, his black eyes lost. "I loved you, Jeanne. I never neglected you despite my busy schedule. I always made sure to take you on a date every week to keep our relationship alive. I gave you everything you asked for, and even more. Jeanne, I respected you and I bragged about you everywhere I went."
The more he spoke, the more Jeanne felt her heart shattering into pieces.
She sobbed and wailed, repeating ’I am sorry’ over and over again, her mind and heart no longer able to bear the sight of the man who had loved her and done everything for her, this broken.
If only it was possible to rewind time. If only she could undo every single mistake she had made all because she wanted children, all because she feared that a rich and successful man like Joseph would eventually tire of her and leave if there was nothing binding them together.
She had done the unthinkable because of that creeping fear.
Now here she was, the past coming to collect the consequences of her actions. And the consequences were unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Her world was crashing down.
And that feeling became more intense when Joseph opened his trembling lips and spoke words that would haunt Jeanne until her last breath.
"I am asking for a divorce."
The world seemed to stop for Jeanne.
She stood transfixed, watching Joseph rise from the ground and leave her sprawling below him.
Her mouth opened and closed in soundless attempts to say something — anything — to save her marriage. Nothing came.
So she sat there, watching as Joseph dragged himself out of the large, luxurious room.
"To the children, I am no longer here. I will go away." He said without turning to look at her. "Keep the house, Jeanne. I don’t need it."
"Ah...ah...n-no no!"
Those were the last words and the last time Jeanne saw Joseph Belamour.
"AHHHHHHH!"
And so she wailed, and Joseph hardened his heart to stop himself from looking back.
...
Three months had passed since that fateful day.
For Joseph, those three months were spent questioning over and over again where he had gone wrong.
Just where had he failed as a husband for his wife to feel the need to do something like that to him?
He had pondered again and again, letting himself get lost in alcohol and cigarettes, yet no answer came no matter how hard he tried.
His life began going downhill. He rarely went to his company, rarely even stepped outside the hotel he was staying in, and left his lawyer to handle all the divorce proceedings.
Since that day, he had not set foot in his own house. He had decided to leave it entirely to them, feeling no need to keep something that would remind him of a family he never truly had.
The children were old enough to figure out certain things. Joseph had lost count of how many voicemails Jeanne had left, telling him the children wanted to talk to him and begging him to call just once.
He never did. He couldn’t, even if he had wanted to with everything in him.
Because the only thing he would see in their faces and hear in their voices was his best friend.
Yes.
The man with whom his wife had those children was his best friend since college. The same man who had been there for him when he lost his whole family in a plane crash. The same man he had never worried about leaving alone with his wife because he trusted him completely.
Joseph wondered how he had failed to see all the signs that must have been so obvious.
But after three months, he understood how useless it was to keep swimming in bitterness and anger.
He might only be twenty-five years old, but he was old enough to know that staying in that state for too long would destroy everything his family had left behind, everything he had painstakingly preserved and built upon.
It was a legacy he had wanted to pass on to his children one day. Not anymore.
He had no one to pass it to.
But Joseph moved on, and decided to leave Paris and go somewhere else entirely for a change of air and to gather himself.
That was why he was sitting on his couch right now, looking at his phone.
"I have no one to ask, so why not ask an AI." He said to himself with a self-mocking smile, typing the question: where to go for a good visit and a breath of fresh air?
He waited a couple of seconds and received multiple options with their pros and cons.
The first on the list was, surprisingly, China.
"Hm... China, huh?" He whispered, then scrolled out to see the next flight to China.
Joseph didn’t know why, but something pulled him strangely toward China. And he had heard that their New Year celebrations were coming up soon.
So without telling anyone, Joseph booked a flight two hours later and landed in China, in Beijing, more precisely.
It was night, and the streets were fiercely decorated for the upcoming festivities.
But Joseph felt uncomfortable among the crowds. So he walked away from the famous spots, heading toward the less populated areas.
The first thing he did was find a small teahouse to finally experience what he had read about so many times in those cultivation novels he had devoured.
That simple, harmless thought made Joseph the witness of a ridiculous incident the moment he stepped inside a small, almost hidden teahouse.
"The money, old man. It’s been four months and we can’t wait any longer! Tonight you either pay up or you are dead! Choose!"
"I-I gave you everything I have! I have nothing left! Please, next month!"
"What is this?" Joseph muttered in quiet surprise, looking at two men in black clothes pinning an old man to the ground, knives drawn.
His presence was immediately noticed. One of the men turned toward him and moved faster than Joseph had expected.
He regretted instantly his loud mouth.
"Hey! Hey! I didn’t see anyth—!"
He barely had time to protest and take a step back before a knife pierced his stomach and a hand clamped tightly over his mouth.
Joseph’s eyes went wide with fear, tears welling and falling instantly, injustice and anger both surging inside him as he felt death approaching.
’N-No way...’
He tried to cough up blood but the hand over his mouth forced him to swallow it back.
"Unlucky man." The man whispered, and that was the last thing Joseph heard as his world was swallowed by darkness.
He crumpled to the ground, his last thoughts going unexpectedly to the family he had lost in a random plane crash.
To the children he had raised for years and loved with everything he had.
To the woman he had loved and given everything to.
To the man he had considered a brother.
And to the lies that had destroyed everything he thought he had.
Now here he was, dying in a random teahouse in the middle of the night, with no family to mourn him.
No matter how much money he had, Joseph Belamour died alone.
He died...
Thud!
...feeling like he had accomplished nothing.
—End of Chapter 1—