Sweet Romance10 min read
He Sent Fifty Thousand Too Much, Came to Shanghai, and Found Me
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I still remember the ping on my phone like a small, impossible bell. It was midnight, I had been on the subway for an hour after a long coding session, and I had just forwarded a crowdfunding link for a sick classmate. I leaned my head against the window and saw the transfer notification.
"Zander Girard transferred you 500,000.00."
I almost fell off my seat. My hands went numb. I tapped the notification and then the chat that followed.
"Which hospital? I'll come stay with you."
"?"
I typed, "What hospital?"
"Don't hide it from me. Use the best medicine. If it's not enough, I'll send my year-end bonus next month."
I stared at the words and the bold numbers like they'd been written in someone else's life. Zander had been my boyfriend once. We were explosive in private and dramatic in public, loud as thunder, childish as two runaway kites. We had split six months ago when work pulled me away to another city. We both promised to vanish neatly from the other's life. He did vanish, except now he had sent half a million into my bank and offered to visit my nonexistent hospital bed.
"You drunk?" I typed. "We broke up, Zander. Why are you cursing me with illness?"
He sent me a screenshot: my own post in my circle. The post was the fundraiser link and my dumb caption: "I hope none of you ever have to know what this medicine is." I had put a black-and-white photo of fries with a joke line about "Friday madness" to hide the worry—stupid, private humor.
"Click the link," I told him.
He checked. He didn't understand the page well, he thought the fundraiser was mine. Later he messaged, "Give me the money back." I laughed into my pillow. "Dream on." He threatened to call the cops. I rolled my eyes and turned off notifications. Then a few hours later he texted, "You're great."
I had blocked him on WeChat earlier that day. I had to have some dignity.
The next morning, a bouquet arrived at my desk: sunflowers and white roses, wet with dew. "From the neighbor, Mr. Easton," the receptionist said.
Easton Gustafsson was the man renting the office next to ours. He was calm in the way quiet men are—he listened, he arrived on time, he never raised his voice. He'd been kind to me half a dozen times since I moved to Shanghai: flowers after a late project, coffee when I'd been stuck on a bug. This time he left a note: "Don't be down. Friday is for good food."
That evening I was downstairs with the flowers when Zander stepped out of the crowd like a shadow that had learned to haunt. He looked skinnier, longer in the jaw. A few strands of hair fell over his eyes and he smiled the way he always used to—cocky and dangerous.
"Money's returned, check your bank message," he said before I could speak.
I fired back, "If you want to press charges for being ridden of your charity, be my guest."
He read the bouquet card. His expression tightened. "So this is him?"
"Who?" I asked.
"Mr. Easton."
"He's a colleague."
Zander's laugh was thin. "Of course. The man who sends flowers. Want to include me in today's show?"
"Spare me," I said.
Easton pulled up in his black SUV like he'd read the room. He smiled politely when he saw Zander. "Indiana, hop in. I can give you a ride."
Zander bristled. "Mind if I join?"
Easton kept a careful smile. "You're welcome. If you're new to Shanghai, I'll buy you dinner—it's a small courtesy."
I forced calm. "No thanks. I'll catch you later." I shouldn't have involved Easton at all, but Zander walked closer and muttered, "You really have nerve."
He followed me into the elevator and, in front of the glass, reached to touch my face. "Don't hide things from me."
"Step away," I said. "We broke up."
He pressed closer. He had the sudden old habit—the one that had pushed me and pulled me, the kisses like a dare.
"I don't like being left behind," he said, then, "I came to Shanghai for you."
I pulled away. Something in me softened and cracked. Maybe I had wanted him to come. Maybe I had wanted to be threatened with half a million and a midnight promise. Instead I said, "Don't. Just leave."
For a few days after that he hovered—texts, flowers, small gifts delivered to my apartment. He wanted me to put him back on his feet. I refused. He kept trying.
Then the company conference happened. I had been slated to attend as part of the team; we hired a whole hall and invited clients. I arrived feeling brittle. I recognized a figure across the room: Zander, now apparently a senior engineer in a new company. He was next to an intern—bright, open, with loose curls. When she bumped his shoulder and giggled, I felt a twist of something like jealousy.
"Indiana!" the intern sang when she saw me. "You came!"
She was almost too eager—Kaydence Wagner, bright-eyed and sweet. She was the sort of person who made people warm; she smiled like sunlight sliding across a worktop.
Zander smiled and his face changed when he saw me. "Speaking of old friends."
Kaydence skittered into the space between us, slightly stumbling. She wore the look of someone who wanted to belong. She posted a photo of Zander working on a machine, and by dinner that photo was everywhere. Her caption read, "So lucky to learn from such a talented mentor!" It should have been innocent. I couldn't help how my chest tightened.
Later that night, when I went to the restroom, a man with wild eyes and a knife burst into the elevator. I don't remember the seconds; I remember warm metal at the base of my throat, a man's voice like a broken horn saying, "Bring out the doctor. If he doesn't come, I'll kill her."
The world narrowed to the cold steel and the smell of disinfectant. People were screaming. Someone shoved me forward to the ground. I tasted blood. I heard Zander's voice like a broken radio.
"Hands off her!" he shouted, and then he was a blur. He threw himself between me and the man, he wrestled, he bled. The knife slid. The man collapsed. Security came. The doctor came. For a moment the whole hospital was a stage lit for two people.
Later, stitched and bandaged, I watched the sun through the window and Zander sat with his arm in a sling. His voice broke.
"Indiana, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I was an idiot. I came here because I—" he swallowed, "I wanted to prove I could change."
I looked at him and felt the memory of classrooms, of late-night debugging, of stolen fries, of a thousand small ways two people had broken each other's patience. "We both were stubborn," I said. "We have to admit we're not good at giving in."
He lowered his head, fingers tracing the bandage. "So this is it? After all that, you still want to leave?"
"I..." I paused, the truth a small glowing thing. "We can't keep doing the same dance."
Around us the hospital hall hummed with gossip. A young intern limped past to get a chair for a doctor. I saw Kaydence watching, eyes huge. A part of me, raw with fear and adrenaline, felt furious. I felt foolish that the sight of her leaning into him would hurt me so much when I had nearly lost my life.
A week later, rumors spread through the alumni chat. Someone had seen my medical notes. Someone had said I was loose with men; someone said I had an abortion in college. The rumor had the cold, spreading taste of poisoning.
It took me a full minute to realize where the thread began. Kaydence had been too sweet. She had been overly helpful. She had been the one who offered a "friend with a doctor" to get me in. She was the one whose social circle overlapped with alumni and HR, and now she was the center of a whisper campaign.
I confronted her at a small cafeteria outside the hospital. Her face was bruised from the scuffle; she looked frightened but pulled herself together with a practiced smile.
"Why?" I asked. "Why spread this?"
She blinked, then eyes filled with contrition. "I didn't mean to— I only wanted to help. I didn't realize—"
"You sat in your dorm room and took screenshots of my post. Then you wrote to your friend, and your friend showed another friend the file. You sold pieces of my privacy like gossip. Do you know how low that is?"
She flinched and started to apologize, voice small. "I—I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
I slapped her then, a clean, sharp sound. It echoed in the cafeteria like a verdict.
"That slap is for every small, cruel thing that pretends to be care but is poison," I said. People around us turned. Kaydence clutched her cheek, shocked.
"Please," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to—I'll take it back. I'll tell everyone it was a mistake."
Her reaction moved like a map: first surprise, then denial, then fear, then pleading. Bystanders murmured. Someone recorded. I didn't care. The slap was real and public and it landed.
But that slap couldn't be the end. The rules I'd been handed by reality and by the particular hunger of revenge said: if someone hurts you publicly, there must be a public unravelling.
A week later, at a mid-sized tech awards ceremony hosted at a glass atrium in the convention center, I found Kaydence on stage receiving a small "promising intern" mention. The room was filled with people: HR directors, recruiters, clients, press. Zander was there, quiet in the crowd. Easton sat to one side with a calm smile. I had not planned to go, but Easton slipped my hand into his and said, "Let's clear the air."
When Kaydence accepted the microphone, she shone like a carefully placed light. "Thank you," she said. "And thanks especially to my mentor, Zander Girard."
Applause. Cameras shifted. She was used to that light.
I waited until the small talk concluded. Then I strode to the stage with Easton at my side. The host blinked, surprised, but the mic was live.
"Kaydence," I said. "You did a lovely job."
She smiled, bright as a fresh payment confirmation.
"There are a few things people here should know," I said, and voices murmured. "You helped me when I needed a doctor. You were kind after the attack. Thank you. But you also took private medical information, misrepresented it to your contacts, and started a rumor campaign about me. You invited people to believe a lie that cost me my dignity."
Her smile faltered. A ripple ran through the audience.
She lifted her chin. "I don't—"
"I have screenshots," I said. "One chat where you shared my records with a friend, another where you joked about 'taking advantage' of situations to gain favor with mentors—"
"That's not—" Kaydence started.
"You told people that I had an abortion and that Zander didn't want to take responsibility. You helped spread a narrative that destroyed opportunities. People in this room, who run departments and who have hired interns, the ones who decide where you can work next, heard those lies. I came here tonight because the lies deserve to be answered here, where they were spread."
The auditorium went still like a held breath. Cameras pivoted, interest like birds settling.
Kaydence's expression crumbled. Her voice, once syrup-sweet, grew thin. "I— I thought it was a rumor. I forwarded it. I—"
"My medical records were shared without my consent," I said. "You did that. It is not a rumor when you make it one, Kaydence. It is a choice."
She tried to speak, then collapsed into silence as people began to murmur indignantly. A senior HR director in the front row stood. "Is this true?"
"Yes," I said, and then offered the screen of my phone to the host. "Here are the messages. Here is where she admits she forwarded it. Here is where she made the joke about using rumors as leverage."
The host scrolled. Eyes widened. A few people whispered. Kaydence started to cry, a hot, embarrassed sound.
"I didn't mean to hurt Indiana," she sobbed. "I just... I liked Zander. I wanted to help. I thought if I was important, maybe I'd be seen."
"That's not the same as stealing someone's privacy," Easton said sharply. He had not spoken until then. People turned.
Kaydence's reaction slid through stages right there on the stage: first proud, then startled, then desperate, then utterly exposed. Phones rose all around, the lights flashed. Someone in the crowd said, "You mean she weaponized medical records?"
"They can report this to HR," a woman said. "To our firms. You can't just do this."
By the end of ten minutes, Kaydence had no allies. The host asked her to step off the stage while legal counsel was contacted. Zander, who had stayed silent until then, walked up and looked at the messages.
"You forwarded it?" he asked, voice low.
"I sent one message," she whimpered.
"One message cost someone their reputation in five minutes," he said. Then he did something I didn't expect: he turned to the audience. "This is not who I want to learn from. Integrity matters. If you think taking advantage of private pain makes you a better intern, think again."
People started clapping—not the polite applause of awards but the release of shared outrage. Kaydence slumped, face in her hands.
Outside the hall, recruiters were already murmuring about rescinding references. The HR director promised to block her from a group-of-company internships network. Within hours, screenshots of her messages spread across private channels with commentary. Her LinkedIn comments filled with cautious distancing notes. An influential blogger wrote a piece titled "Privacy, Power, and the Intern Who Broke Both," and it trended.
The punishment wasn't a single act. It was a thousand small, public rejections: lost references, doors closed, an entire room turning its back. Kaydence's proud, warm smile had become the face of a cautionary tale.
She collapsed into the arms of someone from her own company, sobbing. "I didn't mean—" she said over and over. The crowd's reaction was mixed—some hardened, some pitying. A few people recorded, but many did not clap; they stepped away.
It wasn't revenge for revenge's sake. It was a public unmasking of harm she had enjoyed as gossip. The stage was the right place for that unmasking. People watched her fall from center to the margins and felt the clarity of rules enforced by social consequence.
"You're still mine in a way," Zander said quietly to me later as we walked into the rain, watching the city wash itself clean. He wrapped his jacket over my shoulders. "I came here because I thought proving myself would win you back. Now I'm here because you were in danger."
I looked up at him. "You nearly brought yourself to danger too."
He laughed, a small, wet sound. "Worth it?"
I thought of that slap, of Kaydence's face in the hospital, of the echoing applause that pinned her like a butterfly. "It was necessary," I said slowly. "But it doesn't mean everything is fixed."
We walked home under Easton's car light. Easton waved from the curb and left. The city tasted like a promise and a wound. Zander took my hand before I could stop him.
"Do you still want us to try?" he asked.
"Not like before," I said. "No more power games. No more childish wagers with each other's hearts. If we try, it's different."
He looked at me like a man learning a language one word at a time. "I'll learn," he breathed. "I'll try. I don't want you to push me away again."
"Then show me," I said. "Show me in small ways. Not in money, not in drama, but in mornings and glitches and the boring stuff."
He smiled, real and a little sheepish. "Boring sounds good."
That night, I brewed tea and watched the city blink. My phone lit with messages from friends who had seen the fallout; some were outraged, some sympathetic. Easton sent a simple text: "Dinner Sunday?" Zander, after much dithering, sent: "Can we try a walk this weekend? No grand gestures. Just a walk."
I typed, "Okay."
We had both been stubborn, and maybe stubbornness is like salt—too much spoils everything, but just the right amount can bring out the flavor. There would be no dramatic vows, no universal ending. There would be a thousand small tests.
But I had been given a kind of truth: people who pull private strings get pulled back by the public thread. People who nearly lose you can run back and save you and bleed doing it. And the man who quietly stood by with a cup of coffee, Easton, would be there as a steady shore if the storm flipped again.
"Don't try to be perfect," Zander whispered as we reached my building. "Just be honest."
"Fine," I said. "But if you bring fifty thousand to my bank again because you think I'm dying, I'm keeping it. You have to be honest by text before you get drunk generosity. Deal?"
He laughed, earnest. "Deal."
We paused beneath the building's dim light. Zander leaned close and kissed my forehead. It was small and clumsy and right.
I kept the bouquet Easton had sent in a jar by the windowsill. The sun shone on the petals and learned to be brave again.
The End
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