After the divorce, I found a diary at home. It was the one Aiden Blackwood had shoved into my hands back in high school. It was filled with trivial little things about my day-to-day life. We were so young then, so perfectly in sync, never imagining that ten years later we’d be tearing each other to shreds. I picked up a pen and wrote: "Carol, don’t fall in love with Aiden Blackwood." Suddenly, new words bloomed on the page. "Who are you? What gives you the right to say that!" It was the handwriting of seventeen-year-old Aiden. 1 The hand holding the pen hovered in midair, my mind a complete blank. The tears that had been streaming down my face a second ago stopped. A cold wind swept across my tear-streaked cheeks, the icy touch yanking me back to reality. I stared at the diary, my hand trembling as I wrote. "Are you the seventeen-year-old Aiden?" An instant reply. "My name's Aiden Blackwood, and I don't change it for anyone. Now what kind of freak are you, and why would you say that!?" Shock and disbelief warred within me. I took several deep breaths before my shaking hand steadied. I wiped my eyes and wrote slowly, deliberately: "You will make her miserable." He immediately crossed out my words and wrote with absolute certainty: "I will only ever love Carol! I could never hurt her!" Reading those words, I felt a bitter laugh bubble up inside me. "Only love Carol? Is that why, ten years from now, you’ll cheat on her with her best friend?" "Never hurt her? Is that why, ten years from now, you’ll force her into a divorce?" "Aiden Blackwood, stay away from her." The words that had been furiously appearing on the page finally stopped. I closed the diary and let out a long, shuddering breath. 2 There were once two incredibly important people in my world. One was Lila Miller, my best friend, who transferred to our school in our senior year. At the time, she was living with her grandmother, a woman who made no secret of her preference for grandsons. Lila was withdrawn, introverted, and painfully shy. I was the one who pulled her into my circle, forcibly inserting her into the rest of my life. The other was Aiden Blackwood. To this day, I remember the day after our high school graduation. He stood in the ivy-covered walkway, handed me the diary with a look like he was facing a firing squad, and said, the tips of his ears bright red: "Carol, will you be my girlfriend?" The sun was perfect that day. We were surrounded by a crowd of cheering classmates. Lila was among them, her arm linked with mine, smiling even wider than I was. After that, Aiden and I started dating, and eventually, we got married. It all felt so natural. I truly believed it would be forever. Until the day I saw him at the hospital with Lila for her prenatal check-up. The ginkgo leaves had blanketed the streets in gold that day. Aiden had told me early that morning he was going upstate for a business trip. I, on the other hand, had gone to the hospital on the north side of town for a blood test because of a persistent low-grade fever and nausea. I saw them the moment I walked out of the lab. Aiden, his arm wrapped intimately around Lila’s waist, stood by the entrance to the obstetrics department. A nurse called out, "Lila Miller, 12-week prenatal report." My brain, fogged by the flu, couldn't process the overload of information. I even started making excuses for them. When Aiden saw me, he snatched his hand back. Lila quickly hid behind him. "What are you doing here?" he asked. As if I hadn’t told him that very morning I was so sick I had to go to the hospital. I wanted to smile and ask them what was going on, but my lips wouldn't move. Tears instantly welled up in Lila’s eyes. She said nothing, just clung to Aiden’s hand. I suddenly remembered the earrings—the ones I had given her—that I’d found in our bed a few months ago. I remembered Aiden’s explanation: "She fell asleep while waiting for you." And Lila’s excuse: "I wanted to surprise you, but I nodded off." And I, like an idiot, had lived in the web of lies they wove around me. I fought to stay calm, but my voice trembled as I demanded to know when it had started. They didn’t answer. Aiden just shielded Lila, his voice cold and flat. "Carol, don’t make a scene." A scene? I reached out, trying to pull Lila out from behind him. I wanted to ask her why. I needed an answer. Lila clutched her stomach, struggling and crying out in fear. Aiden grabbed my hand, prying my fingers off Lila’s arm, one by one, his knuckles white with effort. All my pent-up grief and anger exploded in that moment, burning my reason to ash. I raised my hand, blind with rage. But I never touched Lila. Aiden shoved me, hard. I lost my balance and nearly fell to the ground. A crowd gathered around us, just like the day he’d asked me out. Through the ringing in my ears, I finally heard Lila’s sobs. "Carol, I'm so sorry… but we're really in love… I just want to keep this baby…" My head was spinning, a deafening buzz drowning out everything else. I could barely stand. Aiden carefully helped Lila up, then turned to me, his voice calm. "Just look at the state you’re in." "Carol, what do you have that she doesn't?" I stared at him, watching him protect another woman. The fire inside me suddenly went out, leaving only a cold, dead emptiness. The sun began to set, the sky darkening around us. Looking at the closed diary, I subconsciously rested a hand on my stomach. There was a baby here. A baby I had been so excited for. Aiden’s baby. I had imagined his reaction to the news a thousand times. But on the day it was finally real, he was celebrating another child. 3 I tossed the diary into a corner of my desk, determined not to touch it again. But the next day, my chunky ginger cat knocked it to the floor. I meant to just put it back, but once it was in my hands, I opened it, as if compelled by some unseen force. In just one day, the pages were filled with blue ink. After all the frantic arguments, there was a new, determined line: "I'll prove it to you!" From that point on, the diary became a chronicle of Aiden's day-to-day courtship. He wrote about the mechanical pencil we’d traded ten years ago, the carton of strawberry milk he’d secretly left in my desk, the smiles I had given him over the years. Every line overflowed with a joy he couldn’t contain, as if his entire world was filled with 'Carol'. A decade of memories flooded back with his words, a tight knot forming in my chest. I grabbed a pen and, with a kind of self-destructive malice, refuted every single one. The other side was silent for a long time before new words appeared. "You're not her. How would you know?" I gripped the pen, my knuckles white. The words "I am Carol" refused to form on the page. Frustrated, I decided to disguise myself as a 'System', even revealing a few of his well-kept secrets to sell the act. He was stunned. After a long pause, he asked in a pleading tone: "So… Mr. System, can you tell me what flavor of milk Carol likes?" Looking at his cautious question, I suddenly understood. In this diary, I didn't have to be the 27-year-old Carol. I could set aside my current pain and bitterness. I just had to be an observer called the 'System', watching his secret crush unfold from a god's-eye view. And just like that, I became seventeen-year-old Aiden's "Dating System." Every day was filled with endless happy things to say and see. Opening the diary became the thing I looked forward to most. Until one day, he suddenly told me: "System, I just told Carol about you, and she doesn't believe me!" The moment the last stroke of his writing appeared, a strange yet familiar memory surfaced in my mind. Sophomore year, Aiden had run up to me, his eyes wide with conspiracy. "I found a diary that lets me talk to a 'System from the future'." My fingers traced the words in the diary. I clung to them like a lifeline. An idea began to grow wildly in my mind—this diary could change the past! If it could really change the past, couldn't it change this miserable present? What if I had never approached Lila? What if we had never become friends? Would Aiden still be the same boy from seventeen, who loved me and only me? Would our child still have a father who loved him? The hand holding the pen trembled uncontrollably. There was only one thought in my head: I had to test it. "There's a hair clip shaped like a ginkgo leaf at the corner store. Carol really likes it." I scribbled the words, the pen tip tearing the paper. "Tell her to keep it safe." Almost instantly, the ginkgo leaf hair clip appeared on my desk. A large blank space appeared in the diary. One memory began to fade rapidly as a new, vivid one rushed in to take its place. A sunny afternoon. Aiden, drenched in sweat, ran up to me, holding the hair clip, his eyes shining. He said, "This! You have to keep it safe!" I slumped over my desk, laughing and crying at the same time. There was still time. Everything could still be fixed. 4 I started conducting more dangerous experiments. I had the Aiden from ten years ago give me small, insignificant things. A bag of fruit-flavored hard candies appeared in the early summer of my sophomore year. A small eraser, carved into the shape of a cat, lay in my pencil case during midterms that fall. Using my own memories as anchors, I began to map out the rules of time and space governed by this diary. My life, however, remained exactly the same. As the time in the diary approached the end of my sophomore year, the final week of my real-life divorce cooling-off period began. I looked at the pregnancy test report on my desk and finally sent Aiden a message: "Saturday, 2 PM. The usual café. We need to talk." He replied with a curt, "Okay." I stared at his profile picture. The photo I had taken of ginkgo leaves was gone, replaced by a stretched-out silhouette of him and Lila leaning against each other. In the diary, an oblivious seventeen-year-old Aiden was still writing excitedly: "Carol came to watch my game today! She even remembered to bring me water! Do you think she might like me a little bit too?" I silently closed the chat window. On Saturday, a light rain began to fall. I sat in our usual spot and opened the diary to chat with the eighteen-year-old Aiden. "System, I had a dream last night that Carol and I had a baby! I was so happy! I hope it’s a girl, so she can look just like her, with dimples when she smiles. But a boy would be fine too…" Reading his words, I touched my stomach and couldn't help but smile. The real Aiden was half an hour late. When he arrived, he looked tired and annoyed. "What…?" He didn’t finish his sentence. His eyes locked onto the diary in my hands, and he even reached for it. I quickly put the diary in my bag and took out the pregnancy report, pushing it towards him. "I thought you should know about this." His gaze was still fixed on my bag as he distractedly took the report. "Aiden!" Lila burst out of nowhere, snatched the report from his hand, and tore it to shreds. She was wearing the loungewear I’d given her last year, her belly swollen. The rain had plastered her hair to her face, making her look like an abandoned victim. "You promised you wouldn't see her again!" she screamed, crying. Aiden immediately stood up to comfort her, not even bothering to look at what I had given him. But Lila kept crying, her sobs wracking her body. She pointed an accusing finger at me. "Carol, you have everything… a perfect family, a perfect life… What about me? My family said I was useless! A disgrace!" Her voice suddenly rose to a shriek. "Aiden was the first person to ever tell me, 'I'll protect you.' You already have so much, why can't you just let me have him?!" The commotion drew the attention of everyone in the café. I could hear their whispers. Then, as if she’d gone mad, she ran to the edge of the café's balcony and yelled at me. "Carol! Promise me! Promise you'll never see him again for the rest of your life! Or I'll jump!" Everyone was looking at me, including Aiden. "Carol," Aiden said, "talk her down. Isn't she your best friend?" Someone in the crowd muttered, "Wow, the mistress is actually pushing the wife to this…" A profound sense of absurdity washed over me. "You want me, your legal wife, to go and talk down your mistress?" I tried to keep my voice steady, but it broke on the last word. Seeing that I wasn't moving, Lila scrambled onto the railing, half her body hanging over the edge. We were on the second floor. Aiden grabbed my arm and started dragging me violently towards the balcony. I struggled, but I couldn't break free. His voice was hoarse. "Just this once. I'm begging you. Get Lila back over here and tell her to her face that we'll never see each other again!" But as he pushed me closer, Lila suddenly reached out and yanked me forward with all her strength. Caught off guard, my stomach slammed hard against the balcony railing. She seemed to be cursing at me, but I couldn't hear a thing. An excruciating pain overwhelmed everything. I collapsed, curling into a ball on the ground. In my peripheral vision, I saw Aiden pull Lila back into his arms, frantically checking if she was hurt. "Blood!" someone in the crowd shrieked. I looked down. Blood was seeping from between my legs, staining my clothes. Aiden looked over, his face instantly turning a deathly white. I remembered then. I had come here today to tell Aiden. We were having a baby. 5 I sat on the hospital bed, staring out the window. The feeling of being hollowed out and the physical pain were a constant reminder. The baby was gone. The ginkgo leaves outside the window glistened in the rain. I remembered junior year, when Aiden had stood under that huge ginkgo tree, holding up two leaves to make a golden "leaf butterfly" to make me smile. He had said, "I swear, I'll never make Carol cry again!" But the Aiden standing at the foot of my bed now just looked exhausted. "Lila has been emotionally unstable since she got pregnant. Her grandmother found out she was pregnant out of wedlock and called her a disgrace, wouldn't even let her in the house… Don't blame her…" A massive, heavy weight of grief crushed my chest, making it hard to breathe. I grabbed my bag and threw it at him with all my might. "She killed my baby! She's a murderer!" He didn't move, letting the bag hit him squarely, its contents spilling onto the floor. Including the diary. The other people in the room had quietly slipped out. In the dead silence, he picked up the diary and asked softly, "Are you the System?" I froze. The grief and rage were pushed aside, replaced by a dizzying mix of shock and disbelief. I suddenly realized that Aiden was the one who had truly lived through this diary.
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "388271", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel