Chapter 177 Lewis Blocked Her
Lewis brought Josephine to the arcade once, and they got these dolls.
Looking at the photo, the blurry images in her mind regained clarity.
It was a sunny Friday afternoon.
Josephine waited for Lewis at his high school entrance. She waited for hours, but he was nowhere to be seen.
It was almost dark before the teenager walked out of the school entrance with his friends, wearing a white shirt, carrying his uniform and bag in one hand.
His friends saw her and joked, “Your betrothed is waiting for you.’
Teenage Lewis slapped the back of his friend’s head and abandoned them for her. He squatted before her, staring at her downcast expression, and asked with a laugh, “Have you been waiting?”
She was very innocent then. She honestly nodded and stretched out three fingers to tell him. she had been waiting for three hours.
He habitually carried her in his arms and gently pinched her face. “I’ll make
up
for it.”
He brought her to the arcade. Holding her hand, he pointed at the claw machines around them. and said, “Come, pick one, and I’ll get it for you.”
She chose the dolls sitting next to each other, one bigger than the other.
They looked alike except for their sizes. There was a fleeting instance when she thought they resembled her and Lewis.
The dolls she wanted were stuck in a corner, and it was almost impossible to capture them.
Lewis kept on trying until the arcade was about to close. He spent more than a thousand.
dollars but failed.
Eventually, they approached the owner and bought the dolls.
Although they acquired them through purchase, Josephine treasured them and wouldn’t stop hugging them.
She handed the bigger doll to Lewis. He accepted it and asked, smiling, “Are you giving this to me?”
She shook her head and pointed at the doll, signing, “This is you.”
“This is me?” He looked at the doll in her arms and continued, “Then, is this you?”
She nodded vigorously. Then, she took his doll back and sat it beside hers. She thought she
made her point clear.
But he commented, “Yes, they look like a brother and his sister indeed.”
She was still young and didn’t know better, but the moment she heard him, her adoration for the dolls decreased ever so slightly.
Ever since Daphne broke her doll, she had never played with them.
Unknowingly, the dolls appeared in Lewis’ profile picture.
He had been using this profile picture since she added him to her contacts and had never changed it all these years.
But she had never noticed it.
Josephine kept staring at the photo. She felt heavy-hearted, as if something was pressing
down on her and making it difficult for her to breathe.
When she came back to her senses, her vision was blurry.
She closed her eyes and wiped her tears. Then, she covered her eyes with her hand.
Her phone lay silently on her palm, and the dolls seemed to stare at her through the screen.
That night, Josephine couldn’t sleep.
She sat up in bed before dawn broke. She didn’t sleep all night, and her bed was cold. Her hands and feet were freezing too, and she developed a cough.
She had a cold again.
She looked out the window at the first glimmer of dawn. She pulled the covers aside and got out of bed. She saw her phone on the bedside. She couldn’t control herself. She picked it up and unlocked the screen. The enlarged photo was still there.
Josephine long-clicked the screen and saved the photo. Then, she returned it to its original size and its greyish appearance.
When she went to her conversation with Lewis, the status at the bottom of the screen showed that he was typing.
She held her breath and stared at his status.
It was still early. She wondered if he was going to text her.
But no message came in. She waited for so long that she almost forgot to breathe.
Two minutes later, the status was gone.
Josephine was about to exhale when it reappeared as “Lewis is typing…”.
Josephine’s face changed. What on earth was he doing? Perhaps he wasn’t texting her and was
chatting with someone else instead.
A while later, the status disappeared.
Less than two minutes later, it reappeared.
Josephine sighed and texted, “Are you typing a message to me?”
Nothing happened. The constantly shifting status remained the same the second she sent the message, as though someone had clicked the pause button.
Josephine asked again, “Is it to inform me to sign the papers?”
After she sent that message, a red exclamation mark appeared on the screen.
Josephine was stunned. She looked at the exclamation mark incredulously. She saw an error message below. It stated, “You and Lewis aren’t friends yet. Click this message to send him at
request.
Did he just block her?
Josephine typed a question mark to confirm her assumption and received the same response.
No doubt, Lewis had blocked her.
Josephine’s mind went blank. She didn’t know how to respond as it had never crossed her mind that Lewis would block her.
Did he hate her that much?
He prohibited her from taking her clothes, and now, he blocked her on social media.
She looked at the profile picture again and felt ironic.
He had snapped this photo years ago and must have thought changing it was unnecessary. The picture proved nothing.
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