[Ding—Mission accomplished. Would you like to extract from this world?] The moment the mechanical system voice chimed in my head, I had just stepped out of the prison gates. Today was my thirtieth birthday, and it was also the day I regained my freedom. Outside the heavy iron gates, three women were already waiting. Laura, Maria, and Sophie. Ten years ago, one swore she’d marry no one but me, another threatened to crash my wedding to steal me away, and the third promised to shield me from the world forever. Now, their eyes were icy, looking at me as if I were a piece of trash. “You paralyzed Julian. Did you really think serving two years in prison would wipe the slate clean?” Laura sneered. “Do you finally regret what you did?” Maria added. Julian. The little angel they kept close to their hearts. I smiled faintly, remaining silent. I bent down and rolled up my left pant leg. The metallic prosthetic leg gleamed coldly under the harsh afternoon sun. “I do,” I whispered. My only regret was being blind back then. My only regret was trusting them. What they didn’t know was that Julian’s legs didn’t even have a scratch on them. The one who had actually lost a leg, the one who had been tortured to the brink of death in prison for two years, was always me.
Before I was thrown into prison, I had shown them my prosthetic leg, just like I did today. But they didn’t believe me. “You’re a professional dancer, Davis. If you were really crippled, you’d rather die than live like this. Stop faking it,” Sophie had said back then. To avenge Julian, Laura used her family connections to make sure I was thrown into a cell block with the most violent offenders. Those inmates didn’t dare to kill me, but they found every possible way to break me. A dislocated jaw, a broken nose, parts of my scalp ripped off—that was my daily routine. The prison doctor would patch me up just enough to keep me alive, only to throw me back into the pit. Over and over again. Yet, the official reports sent to the guards always read: Inmate 44 is in perfect condition. Now, the fact that I was standing here, breathing the fresh air, was a miracle in itself. Suddenly, Maria grabbed me by my hair. Her fingers dug right into the spot where my scalp hadn’t fully healed. I clenched my jaw, breaking into a cold sweat from the blinding pain. Startled by my reaction, she quickly let go, but her brows immediately knitted into a frown of disgust. “Do you still think you’re some kind of prince, Davis? I barely touched your hair. Why the dramatic reaction? Is it really necessary?” I could feel warm blood slowly trickling down my scalp. The pain was numbing. I didn’t want to waste another second on them. I just wanted to find a cheap clinic, patch myself up, and use the system to leave this godforsaken world. I was a transmigrator, a soul traveling through parallel universes on love-conquest missions. And Laura, Maria, and Sophie were the most unusual targets I had ever encountered. I didn’t even have to try to win them over. The moment they met me, they did a complete u-turn and chased after me like crazy. Thinking back to those ridiculous memories, I let out a self-deprecating laugh. I had traveled through so many worlds and met people far better than them. How did I end up throwing my heart away on these three? But they obviously had no intention of letting me leave. Sophie grabbed my wrist. Her grip was tight, her eyes completely devoid of warmth. “Julian knows you’re getting out today, and he’s in a terrible mood. You’re coming with us to get on your knees and beg him for forgiveness. Make him feel better.” A sickening crack echoed in the quiet air. My wrist was broken. Again. Laura frowned slightly. “Sophie, watch your strength.” Sophie quickly pulled her hand back, looking at her palms in genuine confusion. “I barely touched him.” She was right. She didn’t use much force. But she didn’t know that the inmates in prison had broken my wrists so many times that the bones were fragile. They would snap at the slightest pressure. “Whatever. It’s just a fracture. It’ll heal. Let’s take him to Julian first,” Laura said, waving her hand dismissively. At that moment, Maria pulled out three envelopes from her purse. She took a quick glance at them, and after getting a nod from the other two, she tossed them straight into a nearby trash can. They were the love letters they had written to me years ago. Now, they found their own past words disgusting. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have wasted a single second on you, Davis. Only Julian deserves my love.” The blood from my scalp was still dripping, making my head spin. My vision started to blur. Sophie was the first to notice something was off. “Why is his forehead bleeding?” The blood dripped down my forehead, splashing onto the dusty pavement, blooming like tiny red flowers. My body swayed. I felt a strange sense of relief. Finally, they noticed. Maybe now they would take me to a clinic. Instead, Laura let out a cold, mocking laugh. “Playing the pity card? That trick doesn’t work twice, Davis.” “You weren’t like this when you were twenty.” “Over the years, under our protection, you didn’t keep your innocence. You just became more toxic and manipulative day by day.”
Laura mentioning my twenty-year-old self brought back a rush of memories. At twenty, I was the guy every boy in college wanted to be. I came from a wealthy Boston family and had the looks to match. More importantly, I had three stunning girls constantly by my side. Laura, Maria, and Sophie grew up together. Perhaps because their lives were so intertwined, their taste in men was identical. They all fell head over heels for me at the same time. However, they didn’t tear each other apart. Instead, they made a pact to compete fairly. They all had different ways of pursuing me. At twenty, I admired independent, confident women. I couldn’t resist Laura’s elegant, self-assured charm. So, I chose Laura. Everyone at school thought that once Laura and I got together, Maria and Sophie would move on. But they didn’t. They still put me above everything else. If Laura was even slightly neglectful as a girlfriend, they would call her out on my behalf before I could even say a word. Our dynamic was unconventional, but it worked. This lifestyle lasted until I turned twenty-six. That year, my family went bankrupt. My parents passed away shortly after, and I went from a wealthy heir to a nobody overnight. I refused their financial help. I wanted to stand on my own feet, so I got a job as a professional theater dancer. During a cast dinner one night, I ran into Julian, who was being severely bullied by some corporate sponsors. He was four years younger than me, a fresh graduate, looking completely helpless and terrified. I couldn’t stand bullies. Having been protected my whole life, I acted on impulse. I grabbed a beer bottle and smashed it over the bully’s head. The man let go of Julian, but his bodyguards immediately lunged at me. The restaurant turned into absolute chaos. Since I was outnumbered, I got beaten to a pulp. Fortunately, Laura and the girls arrived with their own security detail just in time. Their bodyguards pinned the fat, middle-aged bully to the floor, forcing him to beg for mercy before he was dragged away. Once the air cleared, Julian fell to his knees in front of me. His eyes were red as he cried, “I’m so sorry, Davis. This is all my fault.” I thought I would never see Julian again. But while I was recovering in the hospital, he showed up with a bag of cheap, bruised fruit. I was staying in a luxury VIP suite arranged by Laura, and Julian looked incredibly out of place. He rubbed his hands nervously. “Davis, if it weren’t for you that night, I don’t know what would have happened to me…” “I asked Laura, and she said you like exotic fruits. I bought these. I hope you recover soon.” The fruit he brought was actually half-rotten. But to spare his feelings, I ate it anyway. That night, I ended up with severe food poisoning, throwing up and suffering from acute gastroenteritis. Laura and the girls scolded me for being too naive, then went to confront Julian. Julian, who had never faced such fierce women, panicked. He apologized to me in tears while venting about how he had just been fired from his internship. Back then, I thought he was just a sweet, helpless kid. I felt sorry for him and wanted to help. So, I pulled some strings at the theater and hired Julian as my personal assistant. It was the single worst decision of my life.
“What are you zoning out for?” Laura’s voice snapped me back to reality as she shoved me into the back seat of the SUV. The four of us were sitting in the same car again, a setup that felt like a sick mockery of our past. I was exhausted. I leaned my head against the cold glass window, closing my eyes to endure the throbbing pain in my wrist and head. In the confined space of the car, the metallic scent of fresh blood quickly filled the air. Sophie frowned, sniffing the air. “Is that… blood?” Laura, who was driving, glanced at the rearview mirror with a deep scowl. “Ask him,” she snapped. Sophie nudged my shoulder. I forced my eyes open, looking at her with a dazed, empty stare. Sophie reached out and wiped a bit of the blood from my forehead with her fingertip. “Is special effects makeup really this realistic nowadays?” she asked, her voice laced with skepticism. Looking at her clueless face, the corner of my lip twitched into a bitter smile. “What’s so funny?” she demanded. I shook my head and closed my eyes again. I was laughing at how stupid they were. No, these three women were highly intelligent Ivy League graduates. They were just so blinded by their hatred for me that they refused to see the truth. Since I didn’t say anything, they stopped asking, assuming I was just playing a pathetic prank with fake blood. Soon, the car pulled up to a familiar luxury high-rise. Looking at the building, I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. Before my family went bankrupt, we owned the penthouse here. My parents had to sell it to pay off their debts. From the passenger seat, Maria spoke in a casual tone. “Don’t look so shocked. Julian said he loved this place, so the three of us bought it as a gift for him.” A wave of cold dread washed over me. Standing before the doors of my childhood home, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I stared at the three women who had once promised to stand by my side forever. “You knew I was saving every penny to buy this place back for my parents.” “Yet you bought it and gave it to Julian?” My parents loved this place. It held all our family memories. That was the whole reason I worked so hard as a dancer—I didn’t want to rely on these women’s money to buy it back. I was so close to having enough. Then, I was thrown into prison. And during those two years, they handed my home to Julian on a silver platter. My chest felt suffocatingly tight. The three of them exchanged glances, their expressions hardening. “Julian wanted it for his twenty-fourth birthday. Of course we were going to make his dream come true,” Laura said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. “There are plenty of other penthouses in this building. If you like it so much, buy a different one.” “Besides, you made Julian a cripple two years ago. What’s wrong with giving him this apartment?” Sophie added. “We’re just helping you pay for your sins, Davis.” Was I supposed to thank them for stealing my home to pay for a crime I didn’t commit? How pathetic. Just then, the front door opened, revealing a pale, handsome young man. He was wearing loose white sweatpants, sitting in a high-tech wheelchair. When he saw me, Julian let out a soft gasp and quickly shielded his face. “He… why did you bring him here…?” Tears instantly streamed down his face. Two years, and he was still a master of crying on cue. If I had known he was this good at acting, I would have introduced him to a Hollywood agent instead of making him my assistant. Julian’s sudden panic immediately triggered the protective instincts of the three women. They glared at me like lionesses, ready to pounce if I even breathed in Julian’s direction. My head throbbed violently from his crying. Staring at his “paralyzed” legs hidden beneath the loose fabric of his pants, I spoke quietly. “Why don’t you roll up your sweatpants, Julian? Show them your prosthetic leg.”
Before my voice could even fade, Laura’s hand whipped across my face. Slap! The force of the blow made my ears ring sharply. Laura looked at me with deep disappointment. “Do you have to keep tormenting him, Davis? How did you become so heartless?” It was almost comical. My ears were ringing so loudly that their shouting sounded like they were underwater. Julian didn’t have to do a thing. All he had to do was sit in that chair and cry, and these three powerful women would fight his battles for him. When Julian first became my assistant, he was like a shadow, following me twenty-four hours a day. Whenever I hung out with Laura and the girls, Julian was always there. The balance of our four-person group was completely shattered by his presence. My dancing career was taking off back then, and within a year, I was headlining solo tours. Because of this, I was barely in Boston. Julian always found excuses to stay behind instead of traveling with me. Though I wasn’t happy with his work ethic, I didn’t make a big deal out of it. But gradually, I noticed that our active group chat had gone completely dead. Soon, I found out why. Julian had created a separate group chat with the three of them. They were talking and laughing in their new group every single day, leaving me completely in the dark. I could accept Julian joining our circle, but I couldn’t accept being pushed out of my own life. Especially when one of those people was my girlfriend, Laura. I had a massive fight with Laura about it. In a desperate attempt to get her attention, I used fake blood to stage an accident. When she saw through it, her eyes were filled with disgust. “I never realized how crazy and manipulative you are, Davis.” That fight led to a cold war. I stopped talking to Laura, and I ignored Maria and Sophie too. Then came my next tour. Julian tried to back out again, but this time, I insisted he come with me. And during the dress rehearsal, disaster struck. The opening act required me to descend from a harness fifty feet in the air. When Julian was checking my harness, I felt something was loose. I repeatedly told him to double-check and tighten the straps. But he smiled and assured me everything was perfect. At that time, the rest of the crew had gone out for dinner. Only the two of us were in the arena. Julian said, “Davis, if you’re scared, I can put on a harness and go up with you.” But he only put on the gear; he didn’t actually rise with me. The moment I reached the highest point, the harness failed. The safety latch snapped, and I plummeted fifty feet, crashing brutally onto the wooden stage. That height was equivalent to a five-story building. I didn’t die, but my body felt like it had been shattered into a million pieces. My screams of agony echoed through the empty arena. Instead of calling an ambulance, Julian dragged my broken body into a taxi and took me to a remote, poorly equipped hospital hours away. Because of the delay in treatment, my legs couldn’t be saved. The day they amputated my leg was my twenty-eighth birthday. And the only person by my side was Julian. He told me Laura and the girls were too busy to come. Though my heart ached, the physical pain was so overwhelming that I couldn’t think straight. Two days before I was discharged, Julian disappeared. When I finally went home with my new prosthetic leg, the police were waiting for me. Laura, Maria, and Sophie had teamed up to put me behind bars. They claimed that out of jealousy, I had tried to murder Julian by rigging his harness, resulting in his permanent paralysis. I was too broken, both physically and mentally, to defend myself. Before they dragged me away, I tried to show them my prosthetic leg. But they looked at me with cold indifference, mocking my “disgusting lies.” I shook my head, trying to clear the fog in my brain. With the massive blood loss and my weakened state, my body finally gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor. Before darkness claimed me, I heard Laura’s cold, mocking voice.
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