I'm Afraid I Won't Be Able to Leave

"Dad!"

"Honey!"

First Aunt Sinclair, Jack Sinclair, and Jason Sinclair cried out, but they were all held down firmly in their chairs.

"Leah, all these years... I’ve been in the wrong. When you were a child and they beat you, I did try to tell them to stop. You were so small... But I was useless."

Whether it was a final pang of conscience or a memory of little Leah after a beating—her face full of grievances, wanting to cry but not daring to, still having to call him ’First Uncle’ when she saw him—First Uncle Sinclair ultimately signed his name and pressed his thumbprint.

Leah silently took back the booklet and handed it to the village chief.

The village chief took out his reading glasses and examined it carefully. He then signed his name and added his thumbprint in the witness section before handing the booklet back to Leah. "Leah, you’re finally... Sigh. Don’t come back here again. You’ve suffered so much all these years."

After speaking, the village chief stood up. His wife stood up as well, glanced at Leah, sighed silently, and followed him out.

Leah let out a heavy sigh of relief. It was finally over. She gathered her things, stood up, and took Asher Keating’s hand. "Asher, let’s go home."

"Mm, I’ll take you home."

Leah hadn’t brought anything with her, and she wasn’t taking anything from this place. The group left quickly, leaving the members of the Sinclair family staring at each other in bewilderment. They couldn’t even process what had just happened, what had transpired over the past few days. It all felt like a dream.

Sheila Hughes went with Ethan Shaw and the others to get their luggage. Asher Keating accompanied Leah to the police station to have her removed from her family’s household registration. Once it was done, Leah received a new household registration booklet with only her name on it.

She clutched the booklet tightly, her eyes red-rimmed. Asher led her back to the car, then pulled her close and gently kissed the corners of her eyes. The tears slowly receded. ’Thankfully, I have Asher now. I’m not alone anymore.’

On the way back to Riverfall, Sheila Hughes rode in Asher Keating’s car so she could talk with Leah. The two of them sat in the back. Leah was exhausted; she hadn’t eaten or slept well for days. Now, on the long drive, the warmth inside the car made her feel drowsy.

Leah leaned her head on Sheila’s shoulder and murmured softly, "Sheila, it’s so good to have you all here."

Sheila raised a hand to stroke her face. "We’ll always be here, Leah. Don’t be afraid."

"Mm." Leah slowly closed her eyes as a single tear escaped and slid into her hair.

After a long while, Sheila sighed softly. Asher glanced at them in the rearview mirror, adjusted the climate control, and then asked, "Should you stay at Leah’s place for the next few days? I can stay somewhere else."

"No, no, Mr. Keating, I can just get a hotel. I’m sure what Leah wants most right now is to have you with her." Sheila quickly refused. ’I’m not going to be that tactless.’

"I’ll arrange it, then. I’ll have you taken there directly."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Keating."

The car was quiet for a moment before Asher spoke again. "You mentioned earlier that she worked a lot of part-time jobs in college?"

"Yeah."

Sheila looked out the window at the passing scenery and began to speak softly. "Leah... it was really hard for her back then. Mr. Keating, you see her now, all beautiful and put-together, but you can’t imagine what she was like when we first met her. To put it bluntly, she was a total country bumpkin. I’d never seen anyone so unsophisticated in my life."

Through Sheila’s story, a portrait of Leah Sinclair—freshly an adult, arriving alone in Riverfall for college—slowly took shape before Asher Keating’s eyes.

Sheila told him that when they first saw Leah, she had short hair, not much longer than Ethan Shaw’s. She was very thin and looked malnourished. Many of their classmates used to whisper behind her back, calling her a tomboy.

When Sheila and their friends asked her why she kept her hair so short, Leah’s answer was that washing long hair wasted both water and time. She said she’d rather use the time it took to dry her hair to read a book instead.

Leah was also quite tall, and with her neat short hair, there were even a few times when girls from other classes and departments mistook her for a boy and confessed their feelings to her. After being startled by this, she speechlessly began to grow her hair out.

Hearing this, Asher raised an eyebrow in surprise. He couldn’t picture what Leah would look like with short hair.

Sheila thought for a moment and said, "Well... I don’t know if you watch variety shows, Mr. Keating, but she looked like those boys who were popular for a while—the melancholic, almost sickly-looking ones who look like girls."

"..."

Asher didn’t watch variety shows, but he occasionally came across clips of them. He knew about the new generation of young male celebrities—clearly men, but dressed in a very effeminate way. He couldn’t understand the appeal of that style, but the thought of Leah back then, with her short hair, being mistaken for a boy and receiving love confessions... it made him smile.

Seeing his interest, Sheila continued to share more stories about Leah at school. As she spoke, her voice grew softer.

"Mr. Keating, Leah is a really good person. Even though she’s an orphan, she’s truly wonderful. Back in our sophomore year, a few guys from another class in our department were mocking the female students, saying we were wasting resources by studying architecture. The girls in our department got into an argument with them."

"As you know, there aren’t many women in our major. They kept mocking us, saying that women couldn’t compare to men in terms of physical strength or endurance. When Leah found out, she made a bet with them to climb Southmount. You must know of Southmount, President Keating... In the end, those guys either gave up halfway or couldn’t make it two-thirds of the way up."

"Only Leah pushed through and made it to the top. Even though she was laid up in bed for a whole day recovering after she came down, she became a hero to all the girls in our department!"

As she said this, Sheila’s voice choked with emotion. After a long silence, Asher finally spoke. "I know."

"Thank you for standing up for Leah this time, Mr. Keating. I hope you’ll always be this good to her. The first twenty-some years of her life were just too hard." Sheila wiped away a tear.

"I will."

When Leah woke up, she was already in her bed at home. She didn’t know how long she had slept, but she seemed to have a vague memory of Asher carrying her out of the car.

But Asher didn’t seem to be there. She felt for her phone and found a message from him: "I’m making a trip to the old family estate. When you wake up, go meet Sheila for dinner. The restaurant is at her hotel. I’ve already made reservations."

Leah messaged him back to say she was awake, then told Sheila she would meet her soon. After that, she took a shower. She hadn’t bathed in days, and as the hot water cascaded over her, she finally felt like she had come back to life.