@Tyramisu
Interesting story! If you don't mind, I'll be leaving my review here:

|| Spoiler Alert||

It was a refreshing read and I enjoyed it. I like the cover art, and I like how the story started off with a light tone. Due to it being a one-shot, I had a slight suspicion that it may result in a tragedy due to his coughing. I was off, but it wasn't bad. The character-to-character interactions were nice, and nothing too dramatic occurred!

Unfortunately, I read through the whole story in a light-hearted tone, not being carried away by the shock or awe that I was suppose to feel. Here are some notes on what I've noticed:


The first section

that truly took my attention away from your story was this following paragraph (which I'll break down):

He coughed a few times along the way.
But that didn't detract him from his good mood.
He reached the apartment building after fifteen minutes of walking.
He rode the elevator and pressed the fifth floor.
(After getting off the elevator) he walked towards their apartment unit.

He took his key from his pocket and opened the door.
He entered the apartment.

When I got to that paragraph, it sounded more like you were just listing down something instead of telling a story any more. This scene might not necessarily warrant a drawn-out detail of his walk back to his apartment, but if you want to, you should vary it a bit in the sentence structure. Don't constantly use "he did this, he did that". By doing this, any immersion that I had while imagining him happily walk back to his apartment is ruined by this "grocery-list" style of sentence.


the second part

is in regard to this:

she's a beautiful and sweet girl

You've been talking about her as if she was the man's wife. But then you resorted to referring her to a girl here. This imagery is too jarring, and doesn't fit well with the "wife vibe" that you've been setting up so far. Maybe

she's a beautiful and sweet lady


thirdly

This conversation felt particularly forced:

"No. Let's eat it together later. I want to go somewhere first."
"Where?"
"The place we first met."

You know how in some stories, the MC is struggling to achieve a goal, needing to get something done, and then, all of the sudden, the author writes down something to the effect of, "it magically appeared right before him", and he takes it and moves on? Like a magical plot armor? This part of your story here is almost like that: it seems like you're forcing the plot to move in that direction with this abrupt change. Like you just wanted an excuse to talk about how they first met. I can't tell you how to adjust it, because I'm not sure either, but it did felt rather forced to me and I thought I should make you aware of that.


Fourth

Your hints about the current situation between the husband and wife was very... not as apparent. To the point where they're not really like hints at all.

First you have the foreshadowing early on:

He usually went in this shop together with another woman. But for the past year, she hadn't seen him or the woman

That's great. But after that, the only real hint you gave out was this:

They talked and laughed. The people they passed by kept looking in their direction. But neither of them cared.

Because of that, when you finally decided to do your big reveal... it's not as impactful. It was too sudden, and seems almost unrelated to anything placed down so far. It's almost like this: "The MC went on a journey and boarded a ship on a cloudy day. On the second day, it got caught in a gigantic whirlpool and everyone died. The MC's dead."

That pretty much sums how impactful the reveal was. It came out of the left field, so to speak, with very little leading to it.

Some things that you could do is imagine what would be different in the house if there was no woman present? Yes, we'll be drawing onto some stereotypical woman roles here. We can look at the role of a woman as the cleaner of the house. We're drawing on stereotypes to fill in the background of our story. Yes, I know that guys clean too. Yes, I know that. But we're using the tool call "stereotype", and it'll help us set the "tone" of our story. There might be some dishes piling up in the sink. The floor might not have been vacuumed. The fridge might smell of sour milk. There might be overdue leftovers in the fridge. Incorporate some of those in to give the reader a view of the contradictory nature of his home: there's a stay-at-home wife, but no house work is done. Show that there's a female present, but there's no presence of a female.

For example, we can turn this:

His eyes softened. "Okay." He first put the box of cake in the fridge, then turned to his wife. "Let's go?"

Into something like this:

His eyes softened. "Okay," he replied, "let me just put the cake away first."
As he opened the fridge door, his nose was assaulted by the stench of sour milk. Huh, she hasn't thrown away the milk yet? That's not like her at all. I guess I'll take care of it later. I shouldn't spoil the mood right now.
Carefully placing the cake onto the top row, he closed the fridge and turned to his wife.
"Lets go?"

That's not the only place you can add slight details like that too. You can, for example, draw on the fact that the house has lots of dust (from lack of cleaning). You could mention that when he placed the cake on the table. You could talk about how dark the room was (even though the wife is at home) because the curtains weren't drawn open. There could be dirty linens/laundry laying over the floor. Show the lack of presence of a female despite there being a female present.

Other hints that you can make is to expand on the fact that, despite her being there, she's asking him to do everything for him (or he ends up doing it himself). He could walk out the door first, she follows saying "we need to lock the door", and he ends up turning back to lock it. Or he opens all the doors for her like white knight and a family, coming back from shopping, stares at him holding the door open. Or something. My point is, the hints aren't there. Try to incorporate a bit more hints there? Don't over do it, but do give some.


Fifth: The reveal

The reveal was... a whole spew of info dump. Some of these information could have been revealed slowly throughout the story:

He was constantly hospitalized last year. On the day of his wife's birthday, he was sent to the hospital again. He was saddened by the fact that he wouldn't be able to celebrate with his wife like a normal couple should. Instead, they had to spent it inside a hospital room. To cheer him up, his wife told him that no matter where they were, as long as they're together, that would be enough for her. But to have a more birthday-like atmosphere, she went out to buy a cake.

This section, in a sense, could have been incorporated into the conversation with the staff (at the cake store). Something along the lines of:

"Yeah, last year, I was constantly sick, so on her birthday, she came and got a cake for me here! It was decorated like a giraffe, and when she brought it to the hospital, we finished it all in one setting! it was delicious!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't remember having any giraffe-shaped cake here..."
"Hmm. That's weird. I clearly remember her bringing one over and claiming that she got it from here... but yes, this one is her favorite cake!"

Etc.


The closure

was really nice. It'd be neat if you can incorporate the same phrase, "You remembered" again upon him re-meeting her, marking the actual "remembrance" of his memories. But you don't have to do that--that's just something that you can try playing around with. Like, you know, she was constantly aware, and hoping all this time for him to recover that memory, but is still beside him regardless. That's another angle you can possibly throw in there.

To me, the dialogue at the end doesn't seem very necessary to evoke the feeling of "we're finally together". A bit overdone on the cheesy aspect, if you ask me (I know, you didn't). It's not bad, but its just not my cup of tea.


Thanks for the story! If you have the time too, please let me know what I can adjust on my one-shot story too!

    Nou whoa this is a very detailed review. Thank you for the effort. 😊 I'll try to read yours later. 😊

    • Nou replied to this.

      Nou you exist to splash, the water exists for life to splash, you are but one life in this big pool of ocean.
      Unless you evolve to Gyarados from Magikarp to make a bigger splash.

      • Nou replied to this.
        8 days later

        Enlightened_Being

        Na. Once I become a Gyrados, I would have ascended to the heavens. Why would I turn back to this mortal realm and make more splash?

        Tyramisu thanks for taking the time to read and thanks for leaving a review! I appreciate it!

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