Wendy felt it was heavy for no reason as she placed the stack of A4 papers on the dark desk.

Her intuition was telling her that what had been printed on the papers was about her brother's life, the life of a man whom she had never met.

She knew nothing about her brother. However, she could easily learn about his life through those papers, which had recorded his experiences of more than 20 years in a foreign land.

Wendy hesitated for a while before she reached out her hands and opened the documents.

She saw Gavin's photo as soon as she read the first page.

Wendy's hands trembled violently.

She subconsciously stared at the photo for a long time and found that she hadn't misread it.

It was Gavin.

She was sure that it was Gavin.

Wendy shook her head while repeatedly thinking to herself, "That's impossible. It couldn't be him."

"How could Gavin be my half-brother? Maybe my mom asked someone to investigate him because she was suspicious of him after I told her that I loved him."

"But... if that's the case, there shouldn't be so many pages."

She remembered that Gavin had grown up in an orphanage in the United States. By coincidence, it was the same with her brother.

She nearly figured out the truth.

However, Wendy didn't dare to face it.

She closed the documents as fast as she could and tried to put it back into the packet with her trembling hands.

However, before she could do that, a voice within her said, "It turns out to be truth when you have a bad feeling about something. You can't change the fact even if you put the documents back."

"You'd better face the reality yourself rather than waiting for your mom to tell you about it."

Wendy squeezed her eyes shut, opened the documents again, and began to read the second page.

She was right. The stack of papers was about Gavin's life.

The details about how he was sent to an orphanage, his experiences there, and his life out of the orphanage after he met Brian were all recorded in the documents.

In addition, there were some photos attached, most of which were taken when Gavin was a child in the orphanage. However, a photo that had been marked with the word "evidence" drew Wendy's attention.

There was only a note in the photo. The note, which was in English, read as follows,"The boy was abandoned by his mother who was from Arlington. Kind man, could you please take him to an orphanage?"

Wendy's hope dissipated in smoke as if she had been struck by a lightning bolt out of the blue.

She could recognize the words on the note even if they had been smeared. It was Dolly's handwriting.

Wendy realized that fortune had turned its back on her. Dolly had been trying to find out if Gavin was the child she had abandoned other than simply investigating him.

The evidence in front of her eyes pointed to a fact-Gavin was Wendy's brother whom she thought she had never met.

Wendy was in a daze for a long time while all her memories came back in a rush while buzzing wildly in her mind and finally became a mess.

Wendy closed her eyes as she clasped her head in her hands. She forced herself to stay calm as if she was going to the operating room.

Fortune would continue embarrassing her regardless of her love for Gavin. She had to understand that he was her brother.

She finally figured it out why Dolly had behaved strangely those days.

Wendy remembered that Gavin had rushed to the hospital and helped her out when she, who had just begun working there, was surrounded by a patient's family members after they failed to save the patient. Not long after that, she received a call from Dolly.

Dolly was at the airport. She told her that she was flying to America.

Wendy knew that the Xiao Family had no business in the USA, so she asked Dolly what she was going to do there. Dolly told her that she would tell her about it in the future.

Dolly was going to America to look for Gavin back then. What she would tell her in the future was that she had a brother.

However, Dolly didn't find anything about Gavin because of Brian.

Dolly met Gavin for the first time at the airport when she returned to Arlington for Chris's wedding.

Wendy remembered that Dolly blurted out "dear child" as soon as she saw Gavin at the airport.

Wendy was curious about Dolly's strange expression at that time, without realizing that Dolly had never called her that way.

She thought to herself, "My mom may have been calling Gavin back then."

"Gavin must have inherited a lot of his father's features."

That was why Dolly had inquired into Gavin's family background to check whether or not he was her child.

The answer was obvious.

Wendy thought it over and realized that Dolly should have received the documents on the day of Chris's wedding. It was around this time, Dolly began to object her contact with Gavin, and she even arranged a blind date for her with Connell.

She picked up the courage to say that she loved Gavin back then. Dolly told her with a sad face that she would suffer a lot instead of finding happiness if she insisted on staying with him.

Wendy finally knew what Dolly meant.

Dolly didn't mean that Gavin couldn't make her daughter happy. She wanted to say that it was against social ethics for her daughter to be in love with him, and they would be universally condemned while suffering the consequences.

She and Gavin wouldn't be strong enough to bear all that.

Wendy held back her tears as she put the documents back into the packet and put it away as if she had never opened it.

Wendy found it hard to breathe as she felt a kind of tremendous pressure on her chest. She left the hotel in a daze. She was already on the pedestrian overpass by the time she came to her senses.

Young men and women in the evening rush hour walked across the pedestrian overpass in a hurry. Some of them were lovers snuggling up to each other while some walked alone with earphones on.

The wide road under the pedestrian overpass was filled up with bright headlights on its left and red taillights on its right. The vehicles whizzed in opposite directions; she didn't know where they were going.

Wendy rested her upper body on the railing of the pedestrian overpass. She failed to hold back her tears, which trickled down one drop after the other like a broken string of pearls and wet the railing.

Wendy had to admit that Dolly was right. It was excruciating.

She couldn't be more familiar with her heart. However, it was the first time that she had known what it was like to have a broken heart.

The pain kept stabbing at her as she breathed as if a needle had been stuck into her heart. She felt an intense pain throughout her body, but she could neither see nor feel where the wound was.

Wendy choked with sobs and finally wailed.

She had thought that "lovers turn out to be brother and sister" was a joke.

However, it happened to her. She couldn't tell anyone about it, not even Joanne who was closest to her.

Wendy felt lonely for the first time in Arlington.

Conor had told Wendy that Arlington was a big city where she would have to make new friends and adapt herself to a new environment when she planned to study as an exchange student at Arlington University. He asked her, "You'll feel lonely for a long time. Are you sure you can bear it?"

Wendy still remembered that she had said to Conor with confidence, "Young people like me will never feel lonely in a big city, as long as they have dreams!"

Wendy didn't think about love at that time, nor did she know that she would fall in love with a man in Arlington.

The man was none other than her half-brother.

She had lived a happy life for more than 20 years. "Maybe God thinks it's unfair, so it made fun of me," she thought to herself.

Wendy crossed her arms on the railing and buried her head in them. She could no longer hold back her tears, because of which her arms became wet soon.

Her shoulders twitched as she checked her sobs in the dim streetlights. Those who walked past her simply took a quick glance at her and hurried on with their journey.

Nobody had the time to care about a stranger in the city with a busy tempo of life.

After a while, Wendy looked up. There were still many people crossing the pedestrian overpass, under which there was still a lot of traffic on the road.

The city, along with the world, remained the same regardless of her sadness.

It was the same as with the fact that Gavin was her half-brother. She could do nothing about it.

"But it can be a good thing for me the other way around, right?" she wondered.

She had once thought that she wouldn't be in a relationship with Gavin because she thought that he didn't fancy her. However, she could stay with him in a different way from now on.

Because she was his sister, she could act like a spoiled child in front of him, learn about his life, pick on his girlfriends, and ask him to spoil her and take care of her, although she couldn't hug or kiss him as other lovers did.

She even had a reason to visit him at any time.

But she could never talk about the romantic moments when they were together, as if nothing had happened between them.

She didn't know when she could forget all about that while she thought that a playboy like Gavin must have forgotten what he had done to her already.

"That's not bad. I like Gavin, and it's my business. I'll keep what happened between us in mind as long as he's happy," she told herself.

Wendy straightened up as she wiped away her tears, then she walked away and drifted among the crowd.

She thought that she would leave her sorrows and hardships behind as long as she kept moving forward without looking back.

She thought that she would forget Gavin and find true love one day.

However, it would happen far in the future. She still couldn't convince herself to forget him for the time being, although she knew that he was her brother.

After all, she did love Gavin.