A few days before All Souls’ Day, I was lying in bed binge-watching a show when my roommate suddenly lost her mind and bolted for the door. Terrified that something was wrong, I scrambled after her. “Trust me. Just follow me!” I barely caught up to her in the hallway. Before I could even ask what was going on, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me all the way out of the campus. My stomach was tied in knots of confusion. We crashed at a rundown motel on the edge of town for the night. The next morning, the university’s online forum exploded. [Hall 6 Girls’ Dorm. Everyone is dead!] [Rumor has it… two girls from Room 304 snuck out last night. They might be the only survivors…] My heart slammed against my ribs. My phone slipped from my trembling fingers and clattered onto the cheap carpet. I lived in Room 304. 1 I had been entirely absorbed in my show when Sandra suddenly scrambled out of the room like a maniac. It was past eleven at night. The dorm monitors had already locked the main gates. Where the hell was she going? I couldn’t just let her go alone, so I chased her down. “Sandra, what is going on?” When she turned to me, her face was completely drained of color. I had never seen such pure, unadulterated terror in her eyes. She gripped my hand so hard her nails dug into my skin. “If you trust me, you need to leave with me right now.” “What about the others? We’re just going to leave them?” She let out a guttural whisper. “If we worry about them, we die!” My eyes went wide. The rest of my words were snatched away by the chilling night wind. Sandra practically hauled me across the campus grounds. We ran so fast my lungs burned, gasping for air as I blindly followed her off the school premises. Just as we crossed the campus boundary, I started to turn my head to look back at the iron gates. “Don’t look back!” she screamed. She kept her eyes locked dead ahead. In the dim streetlights, her profile looked as cold as stone. “From this exact second forward, no matter what you hear or what you feel, you do not look back. If you do, I will leave you behind.” The sheer intensity of her threat sent a shiver down my spine. I nodded frantically. “Okay. I won’t look.” We found a cheap, cash-only motel near the edge of town and huddled together for the night. Whatever sleepiness I had back at the dorm was entirely gone. I lay there staring at the water-stained ceiling, my mind racing. After hesitating for what felt like hours, I finally whispered into the dark. “Sandra. What happened tonight?” Why did we have to run? And why couldn’t I look back? Her voice drifted over from the other bed, thick with dread. “Harper… we are hiding from It.” My chest tightened. “Who is… It?” “It is unnamable. Unseeable. Unspeakable.” Before I could press further, Sandra cut me off. “Stop asking questions. Try to sleep. We have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.” I opened my mouth to argue but eventually swallowed my words. A heavy, suffocating anxiety settled over me. Maybe my brain was overloaded, because the moment I finally drifted off, the nightmares began. In the dream, a grotesque, raspy voice kept whispering in my ear, urging me to return. “Go back to campus. Go back. Do not head west.” A blurred face materialized in the darkness. I stepped forward, curious, but just as the features were about to sharpen into focus, someone slapped my shoulder. I jolted awake. Sandra’s pale, exhausted face hovered over me. “Harper, get up. We need to leave. Now.” I threw on my clothes. I had nothing else to pack except my phone. “What’s wrong? Why the rush?” I asked. Sandra slung her backpack over her shoulder, not even glancing my way. “Something happened. We have to get out of Northwood immediately.” Before I could ask what happened, she was dragging me out the door, heading dead west. She rented a heavily modified motorcycle from a shady garage nearby. She revved the engine, and we tore down the highway at terrifying speeds. In just three hours, we reached the county line. She pulled over at a rundown gas station to buy some cheap snacks. Taking advantage of the break, I finally pulled out my phone and connected to the internet. The moment the university forum loaded, the blood in my veins turned to ice. [Hall 6 Girls’ Dorm. Everyone is dead!] [Rumor has it… two girls from Room 304 snuck out last night. They might be the only survivors…] I lived in Room 304. 2 I stood completely paralyzed, the screen glaring back at me. A delayed wave of sheer horror washed over my body. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what would have happened if I had stayed in my bed last night. I scrolled through the thread with trembling fingers. The comment section was a mess of wild theories. Serial killer, gas leak, a cult ritual… Hall 6 had six floors. Eight rooms per floor. Four girls to a room. Last night, over a hundred girls died. The sheer magnitude of the number crushed the air out of my lungs. I was drowning in a sickening mix of terror and grief. I didn’t even notice Sandra walking back until she tapped my head. “Why are you spacing out?” she frowned, looking at my frozen posture. I slowly turned the phone toward her, playing a video someone had uploaded to the forum. The footage was shaky. Hall 6 was surrounded by layers of yellow police tape. Medics and heavily armed police officers were rushing in and out, while crowds of sobbing students and staff stood on the periphery. As Sandra processed the headline and the video, her face went totally blank. It took a long time before she finally blinked. “We need to move. We have to find a place to lay low before the sun sets.” “Sandra… you knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” I asked, my voice shaking uncontrollably. She gave a stiff nod. Her face remained a mask of chalky white. “And if I did? Could I have stopped it?” I shook my head, desperately wanting to say she was wrong. “We could have called the police. They didn’t have to die for nothing.” A bitter, broken smile touched her lips. “The police? Do you think bullets work on It? Calling them would have just dragged us down into the slaughter. Stop being naive, Harper. We are running for our lives. You have no idea what is hunting us. We couldn’t save them. We can only try to save ourselves.” My shoulders shook as the tears finally spilled over. “Why is this happening? Everything was completely normal yesterday.” She pulled me into a tight hug, gently resting her chin on my head. “We aren’t saviors, Harper. Sometimes, you have to be selfish just to survive.” For the past three years, Sandra wasn’t just my roommate; she was my absolute best friend. When she watched that video, the agony in her eyes was just as intense as mine, but she buried it under a layer of cold survival instinct. After a brief, heavy silence, she pulled back and looked me in the eye. “We have to reach Westbridge as fast as humanly possible. It’s the only place we might actually stand a chance.” “Do you trust me? Are you coming with me?” I wiped my eyes and nodded. “I trust you.” I shoved my swirling questions to the back of my mind. Just as we were about to get back on the bike, my phone started buzzing. Unknown caller. Sandra snatched it from my hand and answered it. She didn’t say a single word. She just listened to whatever was on the other end. A moment later, she ended the call. Her expression had darkened considerably. I watched her take a deep, steadying breath. “Let’s go. We can’t afford to stop anymore.” I nodded, reaching for my phone, but she pulled it away. Right in front of my eyes, she popped the SIM cards out of both our phones, snapped them in half, and hurled the devices deep into the overgrown ditch by the road. She didn’t even look at me as she explained, anticipating my panic. “Phones carry our traces. It uses them to pinpoint our location. And we’re going to have to lose a lot more than just our phones.” Her words made sense an hour later. We stopped at an independent thrift store miles away from Northwood. We bought entirely new outfits and tossed our old clothes directly into a dumpster behind a diner. Shoes, jackets, backpacks, everything was replaced. Sandra even ditched her leather wallet, stuffing the loose cash into her new pockets. I climbed back onto the motorcycle, wrapping my arms around her waist. “If we change our stuff, will It lose our scent?” I yelled over the engine. “For a little while,” she shouted back. “We broke out of Its domain. It can’t track us perfectly outside of it.” I understood what she wasn’t saying. This blind spot wouldn’t last forever. Every second It spent searching for us was precious time we had to use to cover ground. Time was bleeding away. We were locked in a literal race against death. 3 I still had no idea what this Entity actually was. But anything that could wipe out an entire dormitory in a single night and force us into a desperate cross-country run had to be something out of a nightmare. I remembered what Sandra had said. Unnamable. Unseeable. Unspeakable. My heart skipped a beat. Just as the thought crossed my mind, that disgusting, raspy voice from my dream hissed right into my ear. “Come back. Do not go west. Come back. Come back right now…” It felt like needles driving into my brain. I buried my face into the back of Sandra’s jacket, clamping my eyes shut and trying to drown out the noise. I lost track of time. It wasn’t until Sandra finally killed the engine that the whispers slowly dissolved into the wind. She grabbed her new bag and turned to me. “We’re on foot from here on out.” I looked around. We were standing on the edge of an abandoned industrial refinery. Ahead of us was a murky creek, flanked by thick, overgrown wildgrass. I didn’t argue. Any questions I had would have to wait until we were safe. I trudged behind Sandra for what felt like miles. We only stopped once to choke down some dry granola bars and gulp warm water. Thank god I used to jog every morning before classes. If I didn’t have that stamina, I would have collapsed in the dirt hours ago. The further we walked, the sparser the vegetation became. Nestled against a cluster of jagged boulders, I spotted a crude, makeshift shelter built out of dried sagebrush and woven branches. It was primitive, but it was our safe house for the night. The moment we stepped inside, the rigid tension in Sandra’s shoulders finally dropped. A thin layer of cold sweat coated her forehead. I handed her a tissue to wipe her face as I inspected the hut. There were no beds, just piles of dried straw on the dirt floor. To me, it looked like a five-star hotel. I collapsed onto the straw, chewed on a piece of stale bread, and finally asked, “Sandra, what exactly are we running from?” A shadow of pure terror flickered in her eyes at the mention of It. She took a tiny bite of her food, chewing slowly, buying time. “It’s not something bound by the laws of science or nature.” I nodded, urging her to keep going. “This shelter… the herbs used to weave these walls were brought in from Westbridge. They mask our presence. Harper, I can’t give you a scientific breakdown of what It is.” “All you need to know is that we cannot look back. We cannot actively think about It. We cannot describe It. If we do, we establish a connection. We act as a beacon.” I swallowed hard, my throat sandpaper-dry. “Then… how did It kill all those girls?” “Because It possesses a domain,” Sandra said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “Once Its domain is cast, everything inside belongs to It. That’s why we had to run. Harper, inside Its domain, It is a god. Snuffing out a hundred lives is as easy as breathing.” A domain. I stared into the dark. The way she described it… It sounded like some ancient, eldritch deity. A heavy sigh broke the silence. “I don’t know who on the sixth floor summoned It. By the time I felt the shift in the air, the only thing I could do was grab you and run. Harper, It had already descended. The dorm became Its feeding ground. We are just human. We had no choice but to run. Please, stop blaming yourself.” She was trying to comfort me, knowing that the guilt of leaving the others behind was eating me alive. Her words managed to soothe the ache a little. I squeezed her hand. “I know. Thank you.” If Sandra hadn’t dragged me out of that room, I would be a corpse on a stretcher right now. But my mind kept spinning. How did Sandra know so much about It? Just as I opened my mouth to ask, a bizarre, sickeningly sweet voice echoed from right outside the woven walls. “Sandra? Harper? Come out, it’s time for class.” It was the voice of the girl who lived next door to us. Sandra’s hand turned instantly to ice. 4 We both stopped breathing. A million invisible spiders crawled up my spine. I forced down the scream building in my throat and locked eyes with Sandra. She gave me a microscopic shake of her head. Do not make a sound. The voice outside continued, upbeat and terribly normal. “Guys, seriously, why aren’t you coming out? We’re going to be late! The professor is going to dock our grades!” That girl was dead. I knew she was dead. So what the hell was standing on the other side of that door? But the voice wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that the crude wooden door of the shelter was slowly creaking open. An unnatural, freezing wind pushed against the wood. I sat completely paralyzed as the crack widened… and widened… The door was fully open. I could almost see the silhouette of the “student” standing in the gloom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the silhouette’s mouth stretching into a horribly wide, impossible smile. Smack! Right before I could look directly at the thing, Sandra slammed her hand against the side of my head, forcing my face down. She breathed into my ear, “Do not look up. Do not look at It.” My heart felt like it was going to explode. How did It find us so fast? Because we didn’t answer, the thing outside shifted tactics. The voice warped, melting into the whiny, playful tone of a freshman who lived below us. “Harper, can I borrow your black dress? I really, really love it.” “Harper, why are you ignoring me? I brought you cupcakes. Come out and get them.” “Harper, let’s go downtown to take photos! Just look up at me. Just look at me!” Line after line. It was wearing the voices of my dead friends like cheap Halloween masks, trying to bait me into acknowledging it. Every word It spoke only solidified the horrific reality that my friends had been slaughtered. I clamped my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut. I only had one thought left in my head. I have to live. I have to survive this. The voices kept going for hours, but for some reason, the thing never crossed the threshold. It was as if an invisible barrier kept It at bay. It wasn’t until dawn, when the first slivers of morning light pierced the shelter, that the voices finally evaporated. We had stayed awake all night. When I finally spoke, my voice was cracked and raw. “It’s… gone.” Sandra lifted her head. Her exhausted eyes were fixed on the bottom frame of the doorway. Over the course of a single night, the woven herbs at the threshold had completely rotted away, turned to black ash. “The ward is broken. It’s useless now,” Sandra said, scrambling to her feet. “We have to leave. Right now.” Our safe house had lasted less than twelve hours. We moved with practiced efficiency. Within minutes, we were back on the road. We had barely covered a few miles when a massive explosion ripped through the air behind us. I instinctively threw myself into the dirt. Sandra dropped beside me, her whole body shaking violently. Through chattering teeth, she whispered, “They… they’re here too.” I looked back. The shelter we had just slept in was nothing but a crater of roaring flames and thick black smoke. Besides the Entity, there was another group hunting us? My brain scrambled to put the pieces together, but survival overrode logic. “Run!” We screamed it at the exact same time and scrambled to our feet, sprinting wildly into the brush. We broke through the tall grass and found ourselves staring at an abandoned, rusted oil pipeline cutting through the landscape. “Follow me. Stay close to the pipe,” Sandra commanded. She took the lead, and I trailed closely behind, scanning our surroundings. If we took a bus or a train from Northwood to Westbridge, it would be a two-day trip at most. On foot, through the wilderness, it would take at least a week. And that was assuming we barely slept. I tried to visualize the map in my head. If we followed this pipeline and crossed the rolling hills ahead, we would hit the Westbridge county line. While I was doing the math, an unnatural screeching wind filled my ears. Ahead of me, Sandra’s jacket whipped violently in the gale. My survival instinct flared. “Sandra, get down!” A terrifying gust of wind roared up from behind us. We flattened ourselves against the cold steel of the pipeline, feeling an immense, crushing pressure wash over our bodies.

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1 To save me from terminal cancer, my best friend Sophie and I bound ourselves to the Twin-Destiny System. We successfully captured the hearts of the two Sinclair brothers, becoming the envy of high society. But seven years later, I was left discarded and despised by both my husband and my own son. Meanwhile, Sophie was sent to prison simply for ‘bullying’ her husband’s precious childhood sweetheart. On the day of her release, she looked at me with hollow eyes. “Take care of yourself, Diana.” Then, she sprinted directly into the chaotic traffic. In a heartbeat, a speeding freight truck crushed her delicate frame into a million pieces. … Sophie left this world without a single hesitation. The sheer weight of the agony shattered my mind. The moment I saw her body torn apart on the asphalt, my heart seized, and the world went black. When I finally opened my eyes, the man sitting beside my hospital bed was my workaholic husband. Alexander Sinclair, the untouchable CEO of the Sinclair Empire. It was the first time I had seen him in two months. He shot me a cold, emotionless glance. “You’re awake.” I ignored him entirely, ripping the IV from my arm and stumbling toward the door. In the hallway lounge, his younger brother Sebastian was gently holding a photograph of his childhood sweetheart, his adopted sister Bella. A sickeningly tender smile graced his lips. Seeing their nauseating display of affection brought Sophie’s despair-filled eyes flashing back into my mind. In that instant, every ounce of my rationality burned to ash. I charged forward like a wild animal, lunging at Sebastian and slapping him across the face with everything I had. Bella screamed, jumping to her feet. “Diana! What gives you the right to hit Sebastian?” I answered by driving my palm into her cheek, sending her tumbling onto the leather sofa. “Don’t worry, you little bitch. Your turn is next.” Bella looked up at Sebastian with tear-filled eyes. Her porcelain face was twisted into a mask of pure, pitiful grievance. She whimpered softly. “Sebastian…” Sebastian instantly stepped in front of her, glaring at me. “Diana, have you completely lost your mind? I get it. This is Sophie’s doing. That toxic woman must have poisoned your head with lies again!” That bastard. Protecting his mistress was one thing, but using this moment to trample on Sophie’s name was unforgivable. I swung at him again, landing blow after blow as I screamed, “You drove her to her death, and you still have the nerve to blame her? You murderer! Sophie’s only mistake was not dragging you two vile pieces of trash to hell with her!” Sebastian froze, his face draining of color. “What… what did you just say? Sophie is dead?” Of course. They didn’t know yet. Today was supposed to be the day she left prison, signed the divorce papers, and started a brand new life far away from the Sinclairs. But Bella had deliberately gone to the prison gates to torment her, pushing Sophie into taking that final, fatal step. Alexander grabbed my wrist from behind, his brows knitting in sharp displeasure. “Diana, stop this! Are you insane?” I twisted out of his grip and slapped him squarely across the jaw. In his shocked eyes, I saw the reflection of my own deranged, tear-streaked face. “What? I hit your precious brother, and suddenly you know how to intervene? Where were you when they were teaming up to torture my Sophie? Were you deaf, or just dead?” Alexander’s expression turned glacial. “If she hadn’t used underhanded tactics to drug Sebastian and force him into bed, he never would have looked twice at her. She calculated every step just to climb the social ladder into the Sinclair family. Now that she finally secured her spot as a Sinclair wife, why would she ever kill herself? Diana, stop letting her manipulate you.” Bella chimed in from the sofa. “He’s right. I even heard someone say they saw Sophie walking down the street earlier today. Diana, she’s playing you. You care about her so much, but she’s just using you to tear our family apart. Her intentions are malicious.” A flicker of relief passed through Sebastian’s eyes as he readily swallowed their lies. His anger returned in full force. “I never realized just how deeply manipulative Sophie truly is. Diana, you tell her this for me. If she tries to drive another wedge between us, I will divorce her for real!” Looking at the absolute hypocrisy of these three, a roaring fire consumed my chest. Yes, Sophie had taken advantage of a chaotic situation to accelerate the marriage. But she wasn’t the one who drugged him that night. She offered herself to Sebastian solely to complete the System’s mission faster, desperate to save my life. She only cared about keeping me breathing. She never gave a damn about the Sinclair fortune. But the foolish girl had accidentally fallen in love with a monster. I remembered her blushing face as she once told me, “Diana, marrying Sebastian is the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m going to give him a house full of kids and love him until our hair turns gray!” And in the end? All she got was a heartless betrayal and hair matted with her own blood on the pavement. The pain in my chest was so sharp I could barely breathe. I slapped Alexander one more time, my voice trembling with raw hatred. “If you insult Sophie one more time, I will kill you.” Before the words fully left my mouth, a small shadow launched itself at me like a cannonball, knocking me hard against the floor. It was my seven-year-old son, Oliver. He glared at me with pure venom. “Don’t you dare hit my dad! Get out! We don’t want you here!” 2 Seeing Oliver look at me with the fierce hatred of an enemy felt like a sledgehammer crushing my ribs. Truthfully, Alexander and I never had a grand, sweeping romance. From the very beginning, I knew he didn’t marry me out of love. He only used me to rebel against his controlling mother. And I willingly became his pawn just to secure the life points I needed to survive my cancer. But before we had a child, we actually shared a quiet, respectful life. There were moments of genuine warmth. I had foolishly believed we might grow old together like a normal couple. Everything changed the day Oliver was born. Alexander’s mother took my baby away from me. She claimed a woman of my background was unfit to raise a Sinclair heir. She moved Oliver into the main estate and hired an elite live-in nanny. I was only allowed to visit my own son during strictly scheduled appointments. I begged Alexander, crying until my voice broke, asking him to bring Oliver home. His family only mocked me. I thought my husband would stand up for me. Instead, he looked at me with cold incomprehension. “Do you honestly believe you can provide a better upbringing for him than my parents can?” In his eyes, his son was destined to be molded into a corporate titan, a flawless machine just like him. He never felt that a child needed a mother’s warmth. Nor did he care that a mother needed her child. That was the exact day whatever small affection I had for Alexander Sinclair was completely extinguished. Oliver’s growing coldness and disgust toward me finally erased any reason I had left to stay in this house. If it weren’t for staying close to Sophie, I would have escaped this gilded cage years ago. And now, she was gone. It was time for me to leave the Sinclairs and this house full of monsters behind. Once my mind was made up, I cut all contact with the family. I went straight to the funeral home to handle Sophie’s arrangements. Her body was too shattered to be pieced completely back together. Thankfully, this foolish girl who always loved looking pretty had managed to keep her face relatively intact. After the mortician’s careful work, she looked beautiful and peaceful once again. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks as I stood by her casket. “I’m so sorry, Sophie. If you didn’t have to keep me alive, you never would have married that bastard… Dammit… it should have been me!” That same afternoon, Sophie was moved to the incinerator. I paid the staff extra to let me stay and watch her final moments in this world. I thought I had accepted her death. But watching the roaring flames consume her, a visceral, tearing pain ripped through my soul. Thirty years of memories flashed before my eyes. I saw her smiling face. I heard her sweet, teasing voice. “You’re going to be my best friend forever, right, Diana?” In a split second, something completely snapped inside me. I stood up, stepping toward the raging fire. “I’m right here, Sophie. I’ll come with you.” I lunged toward the incinerator doors, but a strong pair of arms yanked me backward. It was an older staff member. He held me back with a desperate grip. “Don’t do it, kid! Your friend wouldn’t want you throwing your life away like this!” The shock of his voice pulled me back to reality. I raised my hand and slapped myself hard across the face. What the hell was I doing? Sophie’s murderers were still living comfortably. How could I die before making them pay? An hour later, I walked numbly through the corridors of the funeral home, clutching Sophie’s urn to my chest. Suddenly, a sickeningly familiar, melodramatic crying echoed from down the hall. I turned my head and saw Alexander, Sebastian, and Bella standing in a mourning parlor right next to Sophie’s. Bella was weeping hysterically. Sebastian had his arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders, whispering sweet comforts into her ear. So they finally believed Sophie was dead. But to bring his mistress to the funeral home? Did Sebastian want Sophie’s soul to know no peace? I stormed into the parlor, my voice trembling with rage. “Sebastian, you brought this whore here? Do you have no conscience left?” But as I stepped closer, the words died in my throat. They weren’t here for Sophie. In the center of the parlor, surrounded by lavish white flowers, was a framed photograph of a small pet turtle. Bella was cradling a tiny, custom-made urn, crying as if her world had ended. She looked like a fragile, heartbroken victim. Alexander stepped forward, his voice a low, warning growl. “Diana, what kind of psychotic episode are you having now?” His eyes dropped to the black urn pressed tightly against my chest. His brow furrowed. “Why are you here? And what… what is that in your hands?” I let out a bitter, hollow laugh. “What does it look like? Your mother’s ashes?” Alexander was stunned by the venom in my voice. Before he could snap back, Bella sniffled and looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “Diana, why are you doing this? Don’t tell me you’re still trying to push that lie about Sophie being dead. Nobody here is going to believe you. Just leave. I don’t want strangers ruining Tommy the Turtle’s funeral.” Sebastian immediately chimed in. “She’s right. Diana, get out.” 3 A blinding rage overtook me. I surged forward, slapping the tiny urn right out of Bella’s hands. It shattered on the marble floor. “Your actual wife dies, and you don’t even bat an eye! You mock her! But a damn turtle dies, and you book a luxury parlor and mourn it like it’s your flesh and blood? Sebastian, you make me sick!” Bella let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Ah! Tommy! My Tommy! Diana, why are you so evil?!” I sneered. “I’m evil? Your turtle dying is karma! The ones who deserve to be in these urns are you two!” To my shock, Oliver charged at me, his small face flushed with anger. “You bad woman! Don’t you dare yell at my uncle and Bella! She loves her turtle like family because she has a kind heart! You have no right to be mean to her!” I ground my teeth together. “Shut your mouth, you foolish little brat! Aunt Sophie loved you! She treated you like gold! And you repay her by defending these monsters? You’re just as blind and ungrateful as the rest of this rotten family!” Bella immediately stepped in, playing the saint. “Diana, please, don’t yell at Oliver. I know you hate me. But you can’t help who you fall in love with!” She suddenly stepped closer, grabbing my forearm in a desperate, pleading grip. “I know you resent me, but please, leave us alone! The baby in my womb is innocent. Stop this… I’ll leave Sebastian. I’ll disappear forever.” Alarm bells rang in my head. I tried to yank my arm away, but before I could even apply force, Bella threw herself backward, putting on a pathetic display of being violently shoved. Sebastian’s face went white. He dove forward, catching her before she hit the floor. “Bella!” he screamed in panic. Alexander erupted. He lunged at me, his fingers digging painfully into my arm. “Don’t touch me!” I thrashed against him. Seeing me protect the urn, Alexander’s eyes narrowed in disgust. He forcefully ripped the black box from my grasp. “Even now, you’re still putting on this sick play!” My heart stopped. Before I could scream, I watched helplessly as Alexander hurled Sophie’s urn against the hard floor. The ceramic shattered. The gray ashes spilled across the polished marble. “Alexander, I’ll kill you!” I shrieked, my voice tearing my throat. I dropped to my knees, frantically trying to scoop the dust into my hands. But Oliver ran over and viciously kicked the broken pieces of the urn, scattering Sophie’s ashes even further across the room. All logic vanished. I lunged at the boy, my fingers wrapping tightly around his throat. He stared up at me, his eyes wide with genuine terror as he saw the murderous hatred on my face. Alexander grabbed my wrists, twisting them painfully until I let go. He hauled me up from the floor by my collar. His dark eyes boiled with a lethal fury. “Diana, you laid hands on your own son. You really have gone completely insane. Today, I am going to teach you a lesson you will never forget.” He dragged me forcefully out of the room and shoved me into the dark, silent parlor next door. But as he stepped inside and looked at the empty, shadowy room, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. His grip on my shoulder was bone-crushing. My arm felt like it was being ripped from the socket. Alexander looked at me like I was the most vile creature on earth, pinning me against the wall to force an apology for Bella. “This is your last warning, Diana. If you don’t apologize to Bella right now, I am filing for divorce.” A second later, Sebastian walked into the parlor, carrying a weeping Bella in his arms. He looked down at me like a god showing mercy to a peasant. “Diana, no matter what twisted games Sophie played, she is still technically my wife. If you just get on your knees and sincerely apologize to Bella…” My body shook with absolute fury. I leaned forward and sank my teeth deeply into Alexander’s wrist. He grunted in pain and released me. I darted toward the altar table at the front of the room. I grabbed the black cloth covering the center frame and ripped it away. With a scream, I threw the heavy wooden portrait directly at Sebastian’s face. “You all deserve to die! Every single one of you!” The portrait struck Sebastian hard. “You think I’m lying? Open your damn eyes and look at whose funeral this is!” Blood immediately began to trickle down Sebastian’s forehead. The portrait clattered to the floor, landing face up. Staring back at them was the beautiful, tragic face of Sophie. 4 Sebastian stood frozen, looking as if he had been struck by lightning. His trembling hands slowly reached down to pick up the photograph. “No… no, it’s impossible. How could she be dead? She was only sentenced to three months… I just wanted to teach her a lesson…” Alexander’s expression shifted into profound shock and regret. He looked at me, his mouth opening, but no words came out. Suddenly, Sebastian’s eyes snapped toward the hallway. Pure horror contorted his features. “The urn… the ashes…” I pushed past them, dropping to the floor in the hallway, painstakingly scooping the scattered gray dust back into the broken remnants of the box. Sebastian rushed over, dropping to his knees to help me. I shoved him backward with all my strength. “Get off! You have no right to touch her!” Sebastian stayed kneeling on the marble floor, tears finally spilling down his cheeks. “I’m sorry… God, I’m so sorry…” Just then, Bella clutched her stomach, her face twisting in agony. “Sebastian… my stomach hurts so much… The baby… I think something is wrong with the baby.” Sebastian froze. He looked at me, torn. But after only a second of hesitation, he stood up and lifted Bella into his arms. Look at that. Even knowing Sophie had been burned to ash, he still chose Bella. Bella sobbed against his chest, playing the understanding martyr. “Sebastian, just call an ambulance… I can go to the hospital alone. You… you should stay here with Sophie.” “No,” Sebastian said, his voice tight with worry. “Right now, you are the most important thing.” He shot me a deeply guilty look. “Diana, I’ll take her to the emergency room and come right back.” I didn’t even lift my head. My eyes remained dead and vacant as I continued sweeping the dust into my hands. But as I heard his footsteps fading down the hall, a bitter sorrow washed over me. Sophie gave everything for this man. This was the man she loved. A moment later, Alexander marched Oliver back into the hallway. He forced the boy to his knees in front of me. Oliver seemed to finally realize the gravity of what he had done. He kneeled quietly, his head bowed. I didn’t want to look at either of them. Alexander frowned, his voice stiff and awkward. “I… I didn’t know Sophie was actually… But if she hadn’t tormented Bella in the past, we wouldn’t have assumed she was lying.” I looked up at him. This man, whom time and wealth had treated so kindly, was the same man who once made my heart race. Now, he looked as repulsive as a rat crawling out of a sewer. My voice was dead calm. “Let’s get a divorce.” Alexander flinched. “Are you crazy?” I let out a dry laugh. “You’re the crazy one. What makes you think I’d stay married to you after watching you desecrate Sophie’s remains?” He gestured toward the boy on the floor. “What about Oliver? He’s your son. I thought all you ever wanted was to bring him home and raise him yourself.” I stared at Oliver with absolute disgust. “I don’t want him anymore. He’s nothing but the toxic byproduct of Sinclair genetics.” The cemetery staff finally arrived. I ignored Alexander entirely and followed them to the burial grounds. After Sophie’s plot was sealed, I stood there tracing the outline of her photograph on the cold stone. Remembering the thirty years of laughter we shared, the grief finally swallowed me whole. As I walked out of the cemetery gates, Alexander’s car pulled up. He looked exhausted. He stared at me, his brow heavily furrowed. There was a trace of pity in his eyes, but his words remained clinical. “I understand you are grieving. But Sophie chose to end her own life. You shouldn’t take your anger out on an innocent child. And you shoved Bella. She almost suffered a miscarriage. She’s in the hospital right now trying to save the pregnancy.” I looked at him with ice in my veins. “Did you rush all the way out here just to demand justice for her?” Alexander looked genuinely stung by my tone. “Do you have to speak to me like that? Do you have any idea what my mother would do to you if I hadn’t stepped in to protect you?” Of course. The entire Sinclair family adored Bella. She was the daughter of his mother’s late best friend, the adopted golden child of the estate. And now she was carrying a Sinclair heir. “Are you done?” I asked coldly. “If you’re done, get the hell out of my sight.” I walked past him. He grabbed my arm, pulling me forcefully against his chest. His eyes softened with frustration and helplessness. “Diana, please stop this tantrum. Come home. “I know losing Sophie hurts. But the living are more important than the dead. Don’t you realize I haven’t slept a wink since you left? Oliver regrets what he did. He’s been crying, asking for his mother. “Come home. We will stay by your side. We can heal from this together.” Hearing those words, I actually laughed out loud. I laughed until the tears started falling again. I shoved him away with violent force. “Alexander, what gave you the arrogant delusion that you and your son could ever compare to my Sophie? “Let me tell you the truth. I only married you to stay alive. I never loved you. I certainly don’t love your son. Everything about the Sinclair family makes me physically sick!” Alexander stared at me, completely paralyzed. “What… what did you say?” I turned away. “Go tell your pathetic brother to wait. When his precious baby is finally born, I’ll be sure to deliver a spectacular gift.”

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Every Christmas since we married, Declan booked three international plane tickets. They were for him, his daughter Daisy, and his ex-wife. It was a tradition that started before I came into his life, and it continued year after year. When his phone rang with the special tone he had set for them, he answered right away. Daisy wanted to go to Switzerland this year, to the place where he and her mother once planned to marry. “She keeps asking what I would look like in a wedding dress there,” his ex said, her voice bright and amused. Declan did not hesitate. He began making arrangements for a bridal gown fitting for Daisy. His ex-wife paused, then asked, “But what about Vivian?” “Vivian understands,” Declan replied, not lowering his voice even though I was sitting beside him. “She would not be upset with a child. I promised Daisy she would be my only child. It is only a dress. Her happiness comes first.” My hand closed around the ultrasound report in my pocket. I smoothed the paper gently, then released it. All right, Declan. If your promise is to have only one child, then my child and I will help you keep that promise. 1 Declan flew back to Boston right on our wedding anniversary. The moment he walked through the door, he pulled a signature orange designer box from behind his back. But before he could even hand it to me, that familiar music box melody chimed again. He froze for a second, then answered it anyway. “I am busy right now.” On the other end of the line, his ex-wife Vanessa spoke through thick, theatrical sobs. “I know you are busy. But Daisy just got home and she has been crying hysterically for you.” Declan’s posture instantly went rigid. “Did you tell her I didn’t want her again?” He hung up the phone and looked at me, his eyes swimming with genuine guilt. He lowered his voice, adopting that soft, placating tone I knew too well. “You have been mentioning how much you love this bag. Look, I really need to check on Daisy. Vanessa cannot handle her alone…” Before I could say a word, he turned around and walked right back out the door. I was already used to it. As long as his ex-wife and daughter needed something, I would forever be second place. By ten o’clock that night, Declan still had not returned. My phone vibrated on the nightstand. Declan’s voice sounded heavy with exhaustion. “I won’t be able to come home for the next couple of days.” “Vanessa’s mother has terminal cancer. We have been keeping our divorce a secret from her so she doesn’t lose hope. I need to go back to their hometown with them and stay for a few days…” Listening to the hum of the highway tires through the receiver, a hollow laugh escaped my lips. “So your perfect family of three is already on the road, and you are only telling me now?” My chest felt incredibly tight. I pressed end before he could utter another excuse. 2 Declan returned to the city three days later. The very first thing he did was rush to his office to put out corporate fires. By the time he finally got home, the sun was setting. I was just walking through the front door myself. He reached out tentatively, trying to pull me into a hug. Even his embrace felt drained and obligatory. “Thank you for holding the fort these past few days, honey.” I shifted the heavy bags of groceries in my hands, forcing a faint smile. “I have something to tell you. But you look dead on your feet. Go get some sleep first.” Seeing that I wasn’t throwing a tantrum, his shoulders finally dropped. He slipped off his jacket and collapsed into the sofa. “Okay. Whatever my wife is cooking, I am eating every last bite.” He was fast asleep before he even finished the sentence. Playing the devoted son-in-law to a dying woman while taking care of his ex-wife and child must have been truly exhausting. I stood there in the quiet living room, gripping my medical report. I squeezed the paper several times, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to wake him. The next day was Saturday. I had lost all appetite for cooking, so I told Declan to take me out. Knowing he was in the wrong, he canceled a string of morning meetings, kept his phone on silent, and spent the entire car ride carefully making small talk. I picked a quiet, upscale sushi lounge. As I set the menu aside, he slid a velvet jewelry box across the table. Inside was a stunning, custom engraved gold bangle. The exact one I had liked on Instagram just yesterday. I snapped the box shut and looked up at him. He didn’t say anything. He just watched me with a soft, indulgent smile. The warm amber lighting of the restaurant softened the sharp angles of his face, making him look incredibly tender. For a fleeting second, my anger began to melt. Maybe it was time to tell him. I pulled my lips into a small smile. “So, I wanted to tell you…” Before the words fully left my mouth, Declan’s eyes darted to his phone screen lighting up on the table. The tenderness vanished, replaced by a flash of annoyance, quickly followed by deep anxiety. “Vanessa has called twenty times. I am worried something happened to Daisy. Let me just step outside and call her back, okay?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He grabbed his phone, pushed his chair back, and hurried out of the private dining room. When he returned, he wore an expression I had memorized by heart. A thin layer of guilt masking a total mental absence. I looked at him standing there, struggling to find the right excuse. I suddenly felt so incredibly tired. “Declan. If you walk out of here today, I promise you will regret it.” “Vivian.” His tone dropped, laced with clear displeasure. “Don’t do this right now. Daisy had a severe allergic reaction and is in the emergency room. Vanessa simply cannot handle this by herself.” A bitter scoff clawed its way out of my throat. “She has no friends? No family? She can’t afford to hire a private nurse?” The guilt in Declan’s eyes evaporated, replaced entirely by cold anger. “I am Daisy’s father! You…” He turned around and walked out to get his coat. He didn’t finish his sentence, but I heard it loud and clear in my head. [She isn’t your kid, so of course your heart doesn’t ache for her.] There was a hierarchy to emergencies in his life. And my matters would never, ever reach the top of his list. A few moments later, the waitress gently opened the sliding door. Seeing that I was completely alone, she pressed her lips together and asked softly, “Miss, would you like boxes for the rest of this? Are you about finished?” I looked up at her. I couldn’t tell if my vision was blurred from the steam of the green tea or the tears welling in my eyes. I gave a slow nod. “Yes. I am about finished.” 3 Later that evening, I called Declan’s number. His ex-wife answered the phone. “Her dad just fell asleep next to Daisy. I will go wake him up.” “Don’t bother. It isn’t important.” Vanessa ignored my dismissal, continuing in a sickeningly sweet tone. “Her dad is just like this. He promised Daisy she would be the only child he ever has, so he spoils her rotten.” Listening to her gloat, my fingers dug into the edge of my pregnancy report. If Daisy was his only child, then what the hell was growing inside my stomach? The very next afternoon, Vanessa showed up at my front door. When I opened it, she gave me a polite, practiced nod. But her eyes immediately darted over my shoulder, critically assessing the house. It was a beautiful two-story brick colonial we had purchased after our wedding. I had designed and decorated every single inch of it myself. Clearly, it wasn’t to her taste. But right now, the only thing I found distasteful was her uninvited presence. “Can I help you?” She pulled her gaze back and offered a thin, calculated smile. “Daisy’s dad is going to wait until her fever breaks before coming home. I came to pack a few changes of clothes for him.” I didn’t blink. I turned my head and called out to my housekeeper. “Martha. Please grab the black duffel bag from his side of the walk-in closet.” When Martha brought it down, I pushed the heavy bag toward Vanessa. “There is enough in there to last him a while.” Vanessa took the handles, eyeing Martha before looking back at me with a complicated expression. “Right.” I reached out to shut the door, but she quickly wedged her hand against the frame. She bit her lower lip, forcing out a quiet, hesitant sentence. “You know, back when we first got married, he promised to build me a little garden just like the one you have out front.” I had no idea why she was telling me this. Did she honestly think I, the woman who met Declan two full years after their divorce, would feel guilty? Martha stepped forward, her face stern. “Mrs. Wright needs to rest now.” Without another word, Martha firmly shut the door in Vanessa’s face. I let out a tired laugh. “Martha, have you been watching too many soap operas? Since when do you call me Mrs. Wright?” Martha had been working for me since before I even got married. She looked at me with deep, protective frustration. “Vivian, you are just too soft! His ex-wife comes marching up to your doorstep. Do you really not see what she is trying to do?” I offered a bitter smile. Of course I saw it. Vanessa using her daughter’s health to blur the boundaries and hint at a reconciliation wasn’t anything new. She had done it dozens of times. “The problem isn’t her.” The problem was Declan. Martha poured me a glass of warm milk. Her eyes drifted down to my flat stomach. She looked completely heartbroken. “You still haven’t told Mr. Wright?” I shook my head. “You stubborn girl.” That night, Declan finally called to ask if I was asleep. “Where are you right now?” I asked quietly. “I am at a hotel near Vanessa’s place. Work has been a nightmare lately, and every time Daisy wakes up and doesn’t see me, she starts crying. I really can’t pull myself away.” His exhausted voice was laced with a desperate need for me to yield. “I know I was in the wrong at the restaurant the other day. I am so sorry. Did you see the transfer I sent you?” I had. That afternoon, a massive sum of money had hit my bank account. It was his classic playbook for buying forgiveness. A lump formed in my throat, choking off my air. “Declan, can you please just come home? I…” He cut me off. His tone was gentle, but the underlying impatience was impossible to miss. “You have always been the understanding one. Just give me a few more days, alright? Go to sleep.” The dial tone echoed in my ear. He had chosen someone else. Again. From the day we started dating, I had been constantly forced to be “understanding.” That single word was a physical weight crushing the breath out of my lungs. To the outside world, Declan was the ultimate catch. Even as a divorced man, he was wealthy, handsome, and fiercely responsible to his child. To me, he was generous and attentive. Our life looked absolutely flawless on paper. Only I knew that beneath the beautiful facade, this marriage was riddled with bullet holes. 4 Declan finally came home at dawn, two days later. I had been working brutal overtime hours, so I took the morning off to catch up on sleep. When I opened my eyes, I found him kneeling beside the bed. One of his hands was wrapped tightly around my wrist, his forehead resting against the mattress. The moment I tried to pull my hand away, he woke up. Declan gently pressed me back down, brushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His voice was thick with sleep. “You’re awake? Are you feeling sick? What do you want to eat?” I didn’t want to talk to him. I just wanted to get out of bed. He let out a heavy sigh. He stayed on his knees, shifting closer to press a soft kiss to the back of my hand. His eyes were rimmed with red, though I couldn’t tell if it was from exhaustion or crying. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Martha must have lost her patience and told him herself. “I only found out recently myself. Let me up.” He quickly stood to help me sit up against the headboard, his hands lingering carefully on my shoulders. “What are you craving? Martha cooks a bit too salty, so I already hired a specialized maternity nutritionist. Martha will stay on just to keep you company. I also hired a landscaping crew so you don’t have to bend over to prune your flowers anymore. Your job is too stressful. Why don’t you quit and come work at my company?” He kept rambling, listing off arrangements. The crushing fatigue of the past few days seemed completely washed away by the news. He was genuinely happy. But every single arrangement he made was flawlessly efficient. Practiced. Because this wasn’t his first time doing this. A sharp, acidic bitterness pooled in my stomach. Sensing my dark mood, Declan stopped talking. He leaned in, trying to kiss me. When I turned my face away, he grabbed my hand tighter. He placed his other, perfectly warm palm flat against my lower abdomen. His eyes were filled with desperate sincerity. “I know I made you miserable these past few days. But I swear to you…” “I will treat this baby just as well as I treat Daisy.” There was a rare, pleading vulnerability in his gaze. “Please don’t be angry anymore, okay? It isn’t good for your body. You can punish me however you want. Anything you ask, I will do it.” I slowly pulled my hand out of his grip and looked him dead in the eye. “So, are you going to tell Vanessa and Daisy?” The light in his eyes instantly dimmed. His heavy hesitation gave me all the answers I needed. The bitterness in my heart bled into a mocking, frozen smile on my lips. “What? Is our child a dirty secret? Or do you expect me to keep being ‘understanding’?” “Understanding that you will only ever acknowledge Daisy as your child in public?” He panicked, cutting me off. “What do you mean, a secret? The entire company has known you are my wife since the day we got engaged!” I shoved his hand away. He had to grip my shoulders to force me to look at him. “Just wait until the baby is a little older. Maybe one or two years old. When Daisy actually sees her little brother or sister, she will naturally accept them.” My nails dug so hard into my palms they drew blood. I finally screamed at him. “Why the hell should they have to wait?!” Why does a child, born perfectly legally into our marriage, have to wait in the shadows for someone else’s permission to exist? Why do I, a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong, have to constantly pay the emotional tax for his failed marriage? Declan’s eyes turned cold. He tightened his grip on my shoulders, using the same commanding stare he used to subjugate board members at his company. Then, he finally said the words I knew he had been holding in his chest for years. “You knew exactly what my situation was before you married me, Vivian. I never lied to you.” 5 That screaming match ended with us sleeping in separate rooms. It marked the beginning of a suffocating, icy cold war. Between the crushing fatigue of my first trimester and my high-pressure job, I was passing out the second my head hit the pillow every night. But at midnight, the ringtone echoing from the guest room down the hall still woke me up. Even with my door shut tight and the blankets pulled over my head, Vanessa’s drunken, sobbing voice slithered through the cracks. I was used to this too. On my birthday, our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or Thanksgiving, she always, without fail, found a reason to stage a crisis. I was just about to pull the duvet back over my head when my bedroom door slowly clicked open. Declan stepped quietly into the room, clearly checking to see if I was awake. I sat straight up and stared at him. By some sick coincidence, we were both wearing the matching silk pajamas we bought on our honeymoon. Staring at each other in the dark room, it felt unbelievably pathetic. “Vanessa drank too much again,” he said, breaking the heavy silence. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Daisy is home alone with her. I need to go check on them. I will be back soon.” I looked at the heavy wool coat already draped over his arm. “You know this is going to make me angry, right?” He pressed his lips into a hard line. The days of cold war had left him looking absolutely drained, yet his attitude remained gentle but unyielding. “Don’t overthink this. Daisy is just a little kid. I will be back before you know it. You are pregnant. Just get some rest.” I walked out to the second-floor landing. I gripped the wooden railing and watched the little glass suncatcher hanging by the front door sway gently as he closed the heavy oak door behind him. We had bought that suncatcher on our very first vacation together. Under a sky full of fireworks, he had smiled at me and promised that every single day of our future would be filled with sunlight. But the sun wasn’t going to shine anymore. The next time we stood face to face, I was going to ask for a divorce. 6 Two days later, I finally saw Declan again. Inside a hospital room. And Vanessa was there too. My hospital visit wasn’t a major crisis. I had been rear-ended on my way to work. The doctor simply recommended I stay for a 48-hour observation due to the pregnancy. When Declan burst into my hospital room, the sheer, frantic terror on his face and the explosive rage he unleashed on the poor driver who hit me almost made me forget we were in the middle of a cold war. “I am so sorry.” The driver stood there, looking completely miserable. “I just zoned out for a second. I will cover all the medical bills.” “Who gives a damn about your money?!” Declan practically snarled, cutting the man off. He stared at me with agonizing relief before whipping his head back to the driver. “If anything happens to my wife or my baby, I will destroy your life.” Seeing him play the fiercely protective husband was a jarring, ironic contrast to the sight of his back walking out on me two nights ago. I let out a soft laugh and told the driver he could leave. “The doctor said I am perfectly fine. Besides… Mr. Wright is a very busy man. Who disturbed you enough to bring you all the way down here?” My sarcastic jab made the veins in the back of his hand bulge. “Your dashcam is linked to my cloud account. Vivian, can we please stop fighting?” He opened the thermos of warm soup he had brought with him, pushing it toward me with a pleading look. “You practically scared me to death today.” I was just about to answer when someone knocked on the door. The knock and the door swinging open happened almost simultaneously. It was Vanessa. She also had access to Declan’s vehicle tracking. Because Daisy was “used to her father’s car,” Vanessa borrowed his spare SUV all the time. “Phew, I tracked your car’s GPS all the way here. I had to ask four different nurses to find the right room.” Vanessa panted slightly, pushing the door shut behind her. “Vivian, are you feeling any better?” Declan frowned. He instinctively stepped in front of my bed, shielding me. “What are you doing here?” Vanessa immediately slipped into the tone of a complaining, exasperated wife. “What do you think? You weren’t answering your phone, so I had to track you down. Daisy’s parent-teacher conference is in an hour. You promised her you would go. Did you completely forget?” Realization dawned on Declan’s face. He subconsciously glanced back at me. I let out a sharp, mocking laugh. Hearing that, he pulled back his gaze and shook his head slightly at Vanessa. “You go this time.” Vanessa’s friendly smile vanished. She shot me a dirty look, and her eyes instantly filled with tears of betrayal. “Excuse me? Declan, just because you have a new baby on the way, you are completely abandoning Daisy?!” Before Declan could even open his mouth to defend himself, she steamrolled right over him, playing the fierce protector of her child. “Daisy talks about how much she loves Auntie Vivian every single day! And this is how you two repay her? By pushing her aside like garbage?!” “That is enough!” Declan’s brow furrowed deeply. “My wife was just in a car accident and is under medical observation. Can’t you handle one school meeting by yourself?” “I don’t care!” Vanessa glared at me, her voice breaking into a dramatic sob. “Daisy still doesn’t know you are having a new baby. If you don’t show up today, I am telling her the truth. It is exactly like they say. A stepmother makes a stepfather.” “Get out.” I cut her off with a voice made of pure ice. I clutched my stomach, fighting back a wave of nausea. “Get out of my room.” Vanessa froze. She clearly hadn’t expected me to drop all pretense of politeness. She immediately looked at Declan for backup. Seeing that Declan was already reaching for the nurse call button to have her removed, Vanessa’s face flushed with fury. “Fine! I am leaving. Enjoy your precious bed rest.” The door slammed shut with a deafening crack. I closed my eyes, my voice hollow. “If you want to go with her, go.” Declan grabbed my shoulders, his eyes searching my face desperately. “I will only be gone for two hours, max. If anything hurts, anything at all, you call me immediately. Okay?” He pushed the bowl of soup aside. “This is already cold. I will have them make a fresh batch. Wait for me.” The door clicked shut again. The exact second Declan’s shadow disappeared from the frosted glass window, my phone buzzed. A text message popped up on the screen. [Your appointment for the medical termination has been confirmed.] Declan. This time, no one is going to wait for you.

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I rescued a little cat who could turn into a boy. To thank me, he offered to set me up with his uncle. Things heated up, and one thing led to another. As the passion peaked, he whispered in my ear. “A leopard’s… equipped with barbs. Tell me if it hurts.” Lost in the haze of desire, I heard those words and violently shoved him off me. “What leopard? Aren’t you a cute little kitty?” Professor Streep, now sprawled rather ungracefully on the floor, picked himself up. His brow was furrowed, his expression one you’d give a complete idiot. “Nora, you can’t tell the difference between a house cat and a leopard?” 1 “Miss, are you going to send me to a lab to be cut open?” I stared down at the little boy, my expression grave. “Please don’t send me away. Pip’s scared of pain. Pip doesn’t want to be a science experiment.” Before I could even respond, the boy, a fluffy tail swishing behind him, burst into tears. He looked so utterly pathetic that my heart melted on the spot. There was no room for hesitation now. I scooped him into my arms. “I’m not thinking that at all. Don’t cry, don’t cry. I was just wondering what exactly you… are.” The words died on my lips. That didn’t sound right. But I was genuinely at a loss. What kind of creature was he? A little cat-boy, with actual ears and a tail? “No, no, I’m not sending you to any lab,” I soothed. “But you have to tell me… what’s the deal with…” I gestured toward the tail behind his back and the furry ears atop his head. “Is this for some kindergarten play or something?” Though, I knew no costume prop could ever be this realistic. When I’d accidentally brushed against it earlier, I could have sworn I felt the warmth of his tail. Sniffling, the little cat-boy pulled away from my hug. 2 Though his face was streaked with tears, he managed to reach up and touch his ears and tail. “These?” “Yes.” “Everyone in my family has them! Don’t you, miss? Oh, wait. A grown-up like you should be able to hide your tail really well.” He added, “Mommy says I’m still little, so my control is not so good.” My brain short-circuited. Everyone in his family… so… He wasn’t the only cat-person out there? Had the world gone mad? Or was it me? Before I could fully process this new reality, Pip patted his small stomach. “Miss, I’m hungry.” I sighed. Fine. Human or cat, a hungry belly was a hungry belly. I wasn’t sure what Pip could eat in human form, so I avoided anything that might upset a feline stomach. Watching the little cat-boy happily munching away, I felt a wave of helplessness wash over me. What was I even doing? I’d found Pip in a back alley. I was just passing by when the heavens opened up, a torrential downpour. A strange noise from the alley had caught my attention, and when I went to investigate, I saw Pip, his little cat ears and tail peeking out. So how was I supposed to contact his family now? Surely his kind had a way of finding each other, right? “Miss, are you single?” Pip suddenly leaned in close, his beautiful eyes fixed on me. “S-single, yes. Why?” “To repay you for saving my life, I want to introduce you to my uncle! What do you think?” “Huh?” Kid, you can’t even fend for yourself right now, and you’re already worried about your uncle’s love life? 3 I placed a hand on Pip’s forehead and gently pushed him back. “You just focus on your dinner. I’ll figure out how to get you home later.” “Oh, okay. But my uncle is really handsome.” “Right.” “And he’s rich! Not stingy at all! He’s the most generous person in our whole family!” “Zip it.” “You really don’t want to meet him?” “Tuck your tail in.” He finally quieted down, and I could think. Just as I swatted away Pip’s tail from my ankle for what felt like the tenth time, the doorbell rang. I had no idea who was outside, but one thing was certain: no one could see Pip like this. I wouldn’t turn him over to a lab, but that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t. I grabbed a blanket and draped it over Pip from behind, completely hiding him from view. “Be a good boy. Don’t take this off, or I’ll be very cross.” “Okay!” Once he was hidden, I went to answer the door. The moment I opened it, I was completely intimidated by the man standing there. He was imposingly tall; I had to crane my neck just to look at the buttons on his chest. His gaze was unnerving. He had the aura of… my old high school principal. I instinctively took a step back, putting some distance between us. “Hello, can I help you?” The man’s gaze swept over me, cold and indifferent, before landing on the spot right behind me. His voice was firm, a statement, not a question. “You found a child today.” His tone made me feel guilty, as if I’d stolen the kid instead of rescuing him. But I quickly composed myself. 4 “Who are you?” His eyes returned to me. He wore a khaki trench coat over a neatly pressed white shirt and dress pants. A look that was formal yet with a touch of casualness. But the longer I looked, the more my own confidence seemed to shrink. “That’s none of your concern.” Hey! What did he mean, ‘none of my concern’? I was the one who found the kid. I couldn’t just hand him over to some stranger without knowing who he was. What if something happened? It would be my responsibility. I stepped forward, blocking his path. “If you don’t explain yourself, I’m calling the police.” The man seemed surprised by my assertiveness. He glanced at his wristwatch, a flicker of impatience on his face. “Pip Lowell. If you don’t come out now, you can forget about ever leaving the house by yourself again.” Before I could make sense of his words, a small figure scurried past me, clinging to my leg and looking up at the man. “Uncle!” Un… cle? My astonished gaze shot to the man’s face, but he only gave me a fleeting, dismissive glance. Then he knelt down to the little cat-boy’s level. He ruffled the blanket-covered head without trying to look underneath. His tone was a mixture of sternness, threat, and a strange hint of gloating. “You got caught, didn’t you? When we get back, your mother is going to ground you for a month.” Pip’s face fell instantly. He pouted. “Can’t you not tell Mommy, Uncle?” “And what’s in it for me if I don’t?” Pip, still clutching my hand, darted his eyes around before they landed on me. He tugged excitedly at the man’s coat. “Uncle! I found you a wife!” The boy’s declaration plunged the hallway into a sudden, icy silence. The man on the floor slowly rose to his feet. His perpetually frosty expression finally cracked, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “My wife?” 5 I held the little cat-boy’s hand, grinding my back teeth. If his guardian weren’t standing right here, I’d be giving this kid a serious talking-to. And him! What was he smiling about? Was this funny to him? So what if he was handsome? “Haha, he’s just kidding. I’m not.” The man, whose name I still didn’t know, just nodded, his expression unreadable. “Alistair Streep. I’m Pip’s uncle.” I nodded back. “Nora Hayes. I’m…” The words “your wife” almost slipped out. Thankfully, I caught myself in time. But I had a sneaking suspicion Alistair knew exactly what I was about to say. Well, if he didn’t call me out on it, it meant he didn’t know. Yep. He definitely didn’t know. “I found Pip in an alley near the university. Don’t worry, no one else saw him. You can take him home now.” I gently nudged Pip toward Alistair, then ruffled his little head. Even though we’d only known each other for an hour, I’d grown quite fond of the little guy. But given our circumstances, this was probably the last time we’d ever see each other. Alistair took Pip’s hand but didn’t leave. Instead, he turned his gaze back to me. “If you have a moment, I’d like to discuss what happened with Pip. I hope I’m not imposing.” It clicked. I understood what he wanted to talk about. It had to be about keeping their secret. I stepped aside, holding the door open. “Come in. Don’t worry about your shoes. It’ll only take a minute.” I saw Alistair hesitate for a second. 6 In the end, he decided to take my advice and walked in with his shoes on. I gestured for the two of them to sit on the sofa. My apartment wasn’t very big, and suddenly having two extra people in it felt a bit strange. The sofa was now completely occupied. Fortunately, I didn’t mind. I pulled up a chair and sat opposite them. “Don’t worry. About Pip,” I glanced at Alistair, “and your family’s situation, I’ll keep it a complete secret. I promise I won’t tell a soul.” Hearing this, Alistair pinched Pip’s cheek. “You told her?” Pip gave a sheepish, guilty little smile. “Nora’s a good person! I knew she wouldn’t tell. And Uncle, please don’t tell Mommy.” Alistair ignored Pip’s plea, tapping him on the head. “No negotiation. Do you have any idea how serious this was? Go home and accept your punishment.” Watching them interact, I suddenly felt that Alistair wasn’t as unapproachable as he’d seemed at first. A small smile touched my lips. The next second, my eyes met Alistair’s. I quickly wiped the smile off my face. “I do trust you, Miss Hayes. But as you can imagine, a family like ours has… a great deal to worry about. Forgive me for asking, but did you happen to take any photos of Pip?” I shook my head. As shocking as the whole thing was, I never once considered telling anyone. So, taking pictures had never crossed my mind. Fearing he wouldn’t believe me, I unlocked my phone and opened my photo gallery, placing it in front of him. “You can check for yourself.” Alistair didn’t even glance at it, pushing the phone back to me. 7 “If you say you didn’t take any, then you didn’t. I believe you.” I nodded and put my phone away. So, what now? Alistair didn’t seem inclined to speak, so I hesitated for a moment before asking, “Can I ask you a few questions? They might be a bit… personal.” Alistair nodded. “You can ask. If it’s something I can’t answer, I simply won’t.” I was a bit taken aback. Professor Streep was certainly direct. But direct was good; it made communication easier. I pointed at Pip. “So, people like you… non-humans… I guess that’s the right term? Can you live among regular humans?” Alistair rested his hands on his knees, his posture impeccably elegant. He made my cheap sofa look like a luxury item. “There are more of us in this world than you might think. You just don’t know it. We all hide our true nature when living in human society. We also have our own governing bodies. If there’s an accident, or if someone uses their abilities to harm a human, they are punished. So you have nothing to worry about.” I felt like my brain was overloading with new information. But then again, it’s a wide, weird world. It was plausible. But… if Pip said his whole family was like him, then… My gaze drifted to the top of Alistair’s head. So, was Alistair a kitty-cat too? Did his tail wag when he was happy, just like Pip’s? Just picturing it, with Alistair’s stern face, I knew I had to stop. Any further and I’d turn into a total creep. “Oh, I see.” 8 “Do you age like humans?” “Yes. Our lifespans are similar to humans. We get sick, and we die. Aside from occasionally reverting to our true forms and retaining some of our original traits, there’s no difference.” Hearing him say that, my curiosity spiked. I hadn’t noticed any feline characteristics on him. Was he secretly obsessed with catnip? Did he love having his hair stroked? “So what are your traits?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. The next moment, I felt like I was falling into the world of his eyes. They were stunning, sparkling with light. His true form must be a beautiful cat. Suddenly, a teasing glint appeared in their depths. “If they’re hidden traits, then naturally, I can’t just tell anyone.” I felt a pang of disappointment. “Oh. Okay.” “But I hope one day you’ll be the one to discover them.” I highly doubted that. What were the chances of running into so many non-humans in one lifetime? Still, I nodded. “We’ll see.” After a few more minutes of conversation, Alistair’s phone rang. He got up, ready to take Pip home. As they were leaving, he tried to give me back the blanket from Pip’s head. I stopped him. “Let him keep it on. My neighborhood is pretty busy.” Alistair gave me a long, deep look, then nodded. I watched him carry Pip toward the elevator, about to head back inside. But before I took a step, I heard Pip’s loud voice echo down the hall. “Uncle, you didn’t get your wife’s number! How are you going to talk to her later if you don’t get her number? Go back and get it!” At his words, I turned my head and met Alistair’s slightly embarrassed gaze. Then I watched, stunned, as the man walked back to me and held out his phone. “Shall we? We shouldn’t let the kid’s efforts go to waste.” “…Okay.” 9 It was only after he’d left that I realized how foolish I’d just been. And Alistair’s words… they sounded a bit ambiguous, didn’t they? The kid’s efforts. Looking at the new contact on my phone, I had to admit, it was all thanks to the little cat-boy’s efforts. Next time I saw him, I’d have to thank him properly. Though, I figured the chances of anything happening between me and Alistair were slim to none. We weren’t even the same species! After tidying up, I fell into bed. I thought I’d be too wired to sleep, but I was out like a light. After that day, I heard nothing from Pip or Alistair. Although we had each other’s contact information, it didn’t seem to matter much. I didn’t dare to text him first, and he never texted me. It was like we were both playing a game of chicken, too reserved to make the first move. So much for the handsome mystery man. Life, however, had to go on. My company recently started a collaboration with a professor from the local university. “Heard you’re going to meet Professor Streep?” I was packing my bag, getting ready to head out, when my colleague, Sarah, sidled up to my desk. I’d known her long enough to recognize that tone. She was up to something. I checked the time. It was still early, so I sat back down. “Yeah. What’s up?” “Nothing with me. But you’re about to have something up.” “Is he a nightmare to work with?” “Nope. He’s ridiculously handsome. I bet you’ll see him and fall in love at first sight.” I scoffed. I’d seen my fair share of handsome men over the years. 10 Love at first sight? Not likely. That’s what I thought before I met him. After I met him, I had to admit, sometimes Sarah was spot on. Because the professor we were collaborating with was none other than Alistair Streep. He was a university professor! No wonder. No wonder when I first saw him, he reminded me of my high school principal. It all made sense now. “What a coincidence, Miss Hayes.” I managed a tight smile. “It really is. I never expected the person my company was working with would be you.” Alistair poured me a glass of water and gestured for me to sit. He wasn’t as icy as our first meeting, but he still had an intimidating presence. Clutching the glass, my mind raced, desperately searching for something to talk about. What should I say? “Pip was just talking about you the other day.” “Oh? Really? Well, you can bring him over to play sometime.” Alistair took off the glasses perched on his nose. “That might not be possible for a while.” “Huh?” “My sister has him grounded. He’s not allowed out to play. I trust you understand?” I thought back to our last encounter and nodded vigorously. I got it. I thought the punishment was just an empty threat, but it was real. Their family must be very strict. “By the way, Miss Hayes…” “Please, call me Nora. Miss Hayes sounds so formal.” A flicker of surprise crossed Alistair’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. “Alright, Nora. I was wondering if you’re free sometime soon. My sister would like to treat you to dinner, to thank you in person for what you did for Pip.” I hadn’t expected his sister to be so formal about it. I quickly waved my hands. 11 “Oh, no, that’s not necessary. I really didn’t do much.” Alistair didn’t say anything, just looked at me. But from his gaze, I could read a clear message: refusal was not an option. But having dinner with Alistair’s sister? I really wasn’t up for it. My social anxiety was already kicking in. So I pivoted, changing the subject back to work. “Professor Streep, if you really want to thank me, then I hope we can have a perfect collaboration. How does that sound?” Alistair smiled. “Even if you hadn’t said that, I would have cooperated fully. But since you’d rather not, I won’t insist. Perhaps some other time.” I breathed a sigh of relief. But I couldn’t help but think to myself, what, am I suddenly going to be an extrovert in the future? Whatever. I’d dodged it for now. My meeting with Alistair went smoothly. He was brilliant, and it was clear he’d done his homework on our company’s new product. There were virtually no gaps in his knowledge. Occasionally, one of his students would come in to see him. When they saw the two of us, they all had a strange look in their eyes. Having been a student myself, I knew that look. I knew exactly what they were thinking. I tried to step back, to create some distance between me and Alistair. But I hadn’t noticed the chair behind me. I lost my footing and started to fall backward. Alistair saw and lunged to catch me, but my momentum pulled him down with me. The result was an awkward, heart-stoppingly intimate pose. He was hovering over me, his hands braced on the chair next to my head, his gaze locked onto mine. “Professor Streep, I…” A knock came from the door. A student’s voice called out, only to die in his throat the moment he saw us. Awkward. So, so awkward. 12 “Sorry, sorry, Professor! I’ll come back later.” He even pulled the door shut on his way out. Oh, thank you so much for that. Alistair pushed himself up, his expression as calm and unruffled as ever. “Professor Streep, I think we’ve covered enough for today. I should get going. Goodbye.” I grabbed my things and practically fled. If I stayed a second longer, I was going to combust. After that day, the scene replayed itself in my dreams over and over. Because of it, I was almost afraid to contact Alistair. Every message was strictly professional. I avoided going to see him unless it was absolutely necessary. But this collaboration required me to see him. The next time I went to the university, the weather was not on my side. Just as I reached his office building, the sky opened up. It wasn’t just rain; it was a full-blown tempest. Damn it. I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I could only hope the storm would pass by the time I was done. I was running a little late, and the building was mostly empty, save for a few students I didn’t recognize. When I got to Alistair’s office, I knocked, but there was no answer. I tentatively tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I knew it was probably bad form, but waiting out here could take forever. I slowly pushed the door open just a crack. Peeking inside, I was suddenly yanked into the room. The door slammed shut, and I was pinned against it by a man’s body. The searing heat radiating from him told me something was terribly wrong. “Alistair… Professor Streep?” “It’s me.” Alistair seemed to be in agony, unable to support his own weight. He leaned heavily against me, his forehead resting on my shoulder. His breath, even through the fabric of my clothes, was scorching hot. And then came the final, fatal blow. I felt it. The same sensation as Pip’s tail. Only this time, it wasn’t at my ankle. It was higher, above my knee. A soft, furry tail coiled around my thigh. “Help me… I’m burning up.”

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1 At the awards ceremony for the parasports competition, my ex-girlfriend Seraphina and I stood facing each other in silence. As I accepted the trophy, her eyes fixed on my hand with its six remaining fingers. Her voice was laced with panic. “Rick, what happened to you?” She couldn’t imagine it. The former star student of the top university, now without even a whole body. “Why didn’t you call me when you got out early? Why didn’t you come home?” Her assistant chimed in, indignant. “The day you were released, Ms. Vance waited for you at the prison gates all morning, in her wedding dress! She loves you so deeply, and you just hid away in this backwater town, humiliating her!” Hearing this, I could only laugh. She wouldn’t marry anyone but me? If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have been forced into a marriage with that psycho mob boss’s daughter, wouldn’t have had my kidney torn out, my fingers and legs severed. And I certainly wouldn’t have been framed for murder and spent five years rotting in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. … Seraphina finally tore her eyes away from my disfigured face, her voice rising in anger. “No matter how angry you are, you can’t just abandon your family.” “Come on. We’re going home.” She angrily threw my crutch aside and bent down to help me up. Without the support, my body crashed heavily to the ground. The stump of my amputated leg, already swollen and throbbing from weeks of intense training, exploded in agony from the impact. The pain bleached all the color from my face. Seraphina stared at the empty, crumpled fabric of my pant leg, her hands frozen in mid-air. “Your leg… where’s your leg?” Just then, a man walked in, holding the hand of a five or six-year-old boy. Seeing the face that was once mine, it took me a moment to realize it was Finn. Seraphina had made me get plastic surgery to look like Finn. To protect him, she’d naturally had him altered to look like me. He glanced at Seraphina. “Seraphina, you practically turned this whole city upside down looking for him.” The little boy ran to Seraphina. “Mommy, I missed you so much.” Seraphina scooped him up effortlessly. “Mommy missed you too, Ian.” My voice was ice. “She was so busy looking for me, she still had time to have a kid with you?” Seraphina’s expression stiffened. I ignored her, propping myself up on my remaining crutch to stand. She saw me struggling and put the child down to help. “Let me help you.” I swung the crutch, knocking her hand away. “Get lost.” Seraphina’s face darkened. I struggled to my feet. Finn came over, holding the boy. “Ian, hurry up and say hi to your uncle.” “Rick, take off that mask. Let us see you.” Before I could stop him, my grotesque, scarred face was exposed to everyone. “Ah! Mommy, a monster! I’m scared!” The little boy buried his face in Finn’s chest, wailing and begging to go home. My mother’s voice was a harsh command. “Cover up that hideous face, now!” My father threw a wad of cash at my chest. “Take this and get surgery. Don’t you dare scare my grandson again.” “Refusing to come home, and now you’re in this pathetic competition? Are you trying to make us the laughingstock of the town on purpose?” The sharp edge of a new bill sliced across a scar, drawing a thin line of blood. The money scattered at my feet. My trembling, pale knuckles betrayed the rage I was barely containing. I bowed to them, a smile plastered on my face. “Thank you. You’re all such good people. I wish you a long, long life.” My father heard the sarcasm in my voice. Seeing that I hadn’t even called them ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad,’ he gritted his teeth and spat, “Ungrateful bastard.” My mother told me to get my act together, then left with Finn and the crying child. I leaned on my crutch and bent to pick up the money. Seraphina, as if she couldn’t bear to watch, pressed her hand on mine. “What happened back then… I owe you.” “I’ll marry you. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.” 2 My hand paused, a storm of hatred brewing in my eyes. “Fine. Just as soon as I’m done with a few things.” Seraphina wanted to come with me to my place to pack, but just then, Finn called her. “Seraphina, Ian won’t stop crying. He wants you.” I smirked. “Go on. I don’t have any legs. It’s not like I can run very far.” Seraphina left her number, telling me to call anytime. The second she was gone, I blocked her and called a ride-share. I got in touch with an old cellmate and crashed at his rental. When I heard no news of Seraphina looking for me, I finally started to relax. I found a spot in a corner of the local market, shining shoes, hemming pants, and fixing zippers. Just as I was about to rent my own place and settle down, Seraphina found me. “Come on, be good. Come home with me.” When I refused, she turned to the market vendors for help. “Could you please help me convince him? I really want to marry him, to take care of him for the rest of his life!” Many of them had seen her pull up in a Rolls-Royce. They all started trying to persuade me. “You’ve got a girlfriend that beautiful and rich, what are you shining shoes for?” “She doesn’t mind your face or that you’re missing fingers and a leg. What are you throwing a tantrum for?” “Stop being difficult! Just go back with her!” I gritted my teeth in fury but tried not to show it. I made an excuse to say goodbye to my friend and, with his help, I slipped away again. This time, it took me five days of travel to reach a small southern town, two thousand kilometers away. Because of my missing fingers and leg, it took me forever to find a job as a butcher’s assistant. But before I could even enjoy a moment of peace, Seraphina found me again. “Rick, you can’t run from me.” The butcher’s voice was dripping with envy. “You’ve got a rich girlfriend who wants to marry and take care of you. Why are you out here suffering? Go home and enjoy the good life!” I shot a mocking look at Seraphina. “The good life?” Days of exhaustion and a deep-seated hatred finally made my control snap. “Seraphina, why are you haunting me? You’ve already turned me into this… this thing, not quite human, not quite a ghost. Can’t you just leave me alone?” Seraphina’s face hardened, her eyes filled with confusion. “Marrying you is what you need most right now. It’s also the promise I made to you. I’m trying to help you!” I laughed bitterly. “Help me? By getting my fingers and legs cut off? By sending me to prison? It was Finn who pissed off that psycho, but you killed our child with your own hands, you plotted to have our faces swapped, and you threw me to her, letting her chop off my fingers and legs and frame me for a crime that sent me to prison for five years. In all that time, did either of you ever have a single nightmare?” Seraphina sighed, her face a mask of pain. “What’s done is done. There’s no point in dwelling on it. I already said, I will marry you.” I shot back, a cold sneer on my lips, “You’ll marry me? What about Finn? What about your son?” A flicker of guilt crossed her eyes. “Ian was an accident. As for Finn, I’ll compensate him in other ways.” Seeing her certainty, my voice dripped with scorn. “And what’s your compensation plan? I get you Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he gets Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays?” Her guilty expression told me I’d hit the nail on the head. A wave of nausea washed over me. “Seraphina, in your dreams!” Seraphina’s patience wore thin. Her voice was sharp. “Rick, a marriage certificate is the most dignity I can offer you.” I refused coldly. “I don’t need that dignity. Give it to him. All I want is for you to stay the hell away from me.” I turned to leave on my crutch. Seraphina’s voice was a chilling warning from behind me. “Rick, if you keep fighting me on this, those old prison buddies of yours might find their quiet lives aren’t so quiet anymore.” I froze. Gritting my teeth, I turned to face her. “Seraphina, you are utterly disgusting.” 3 The journey to the small town took me five days by bus. The flight back to the city took only five hours. I arrived home just in time for the welcome party my family was throwing for me. Finn, dressed in a tailored suit, looked like a groom, or rather, the man of the house. My father snorted. “Ungrateful bastard. You finally decided to come back.” My mother sighed. “Thank god Ian isn’t related to you by blood. This would have affected his future prospects.” Then, “Go step over the fire pit. Don’t bring your bad luck and filth into this house.” Neighbors saw me, masked and on a crutch, and started whispering. “Why did they even bring him back? Isn’t he embarrassing enough?” “I heard that while he was with Seraphina, he cheated on her with some psycho gangster woman. He got plastic surgery for her and even forced Seraphina to have an abortion.” “If you ask me, getting his fingers and legs chopped off, his face slashed, his kidney taken, and going to prison… he deserved all of it.” Finn interrupted them. “Rick made a terrible mistake, but he’s already served five years. Not every dog refuses to change its ways. We believe Rick will never make the same mistakes again.” I looked at this kangaroo court, custom-designed just for me, and felt nothing but a cold, sickening disgust. Just then, Finn brought over the fire pit. He added fresh charcoal. “The stronger the fire, the stronger your future.” The new coals sparked and hissed, the heat palpable even from meters away. He looked at me with a provocative, wicked smile. “Cross it, and you can start a new life.” Before I could move, he grabbed me and dragged me toward the flames. I don’t know who did it, but a firm shove to my lower back sent me stumbling, my body pitching forward directly into the fire pit. I reacted instantly, pushing the basin away, but the overturned, glowing coals still scattered onto my clothes, the synthetic fabric catching fire immediately. “Ah!” I screamed for help, but no one dared to come near me. Finally, as Seraphina started ripping the burning fabric from my skin, Finn doused me with a bucket of cold water. My mask fell off. My hair was a mess, my clothes were torn, and the network of scars on my back was exposed for all to see. The grotesque scars on my face made everyone gasp. My father pointed at my half-naked form and yelled, “How long are you going to keep embarrassing us? Get back to your room!” Finn saw Seraphina about to fetch some clothes and shot me a cold smile. He quickly pulled a dirty blanket from under the dog in its kennel and threw it over me. “Cover yourself with this for now.” I tried to struggle, but Finn held me down firmly. I stopped fighting and just smiled. A custom-made humiliation party. This is what they wanted, wasn’t it? To see me debased. Only when I was sufficiently shamed would they leave me alone. I looked at Seraphina and asked with a smile, “Are you satisfied now?” Seraphina glanced at Finn, her eyes flickering. “A dog blanket is better than being stared at by everyone.” A triumphant look crossed Finn’s eyes as he pretended to help me up. I shook him off. “Don’t touch me with your filthy hands.” Ignoring my parents’ curses and the strange looks from the neighbors, I made my way inside on my crutch. Finn’s voice followed me. “Mom and Dad said any good room would be tainted by your bad luck. You’ll be staying… in the attic.” I struggled up the stairs. As I closed the door, my eyes burned with tears I refused to shed. I threw off the dog blanket. The mirror reflected a body covered in a web of scars and blistering, red burns. Wounds from that psycho woman, wounds from prison, every single one carved deep into my flesh. I hadn’t forgotten a single one. I was just waiting for my chance to pay them all back. That night, Seraphina knocked on my door. I didn’t open it. In the dead of night, I heard noises from the balcony below. “You bastard. You said tonight was our wedding night?” “Mmm. Did you like my groom’s suit today?” “I did. The first time I saw you, I wanted you to do this to me.” The sounds that followed were the unmistakable, intimate moans of a man and a woman… Only then did I understand. The festive red decorations all over the house weren’t to welcome me home. They were for their wedding. 4 The next morning, I came down for breakfast without my mask. Ian burst into tears at the sight of me. “You’re a monster! Get out of my house! Grandma, I’m scared.” My mother soothed the child, then roughly snatched the bowl and chopsticks from my hands. “From now on, you eat in your room. Don’t come out here and scare my grandson!” My father roared, “Get back to the attic!” The child shrieked at me, calling me a monster. My parents venomously told me to get lost. No one cared about the fresh burns on my body. No one asked about my five years of wrongful imprisonment. Even the child my cheating ex-girlfriend had with another man was treated like a treasure, while I, their own son, was told to die. The rage that had been simmering for over five years erupted. “Why?!” I roared. “What makes him your grandson? Whose blood runs in his veins?!” My voice shook with fury. “Why the hell would I get plastic surgery to look like another man and get rid of my own child to be with some psycho? Why would you believe two outsiders over your own son? Did it ever occur to you that I was framed?” My parents were stunned into silence. Even Ian stopped crying, startled by my outburst. My eyes burned, and I looked at them with utter despair. “Did you ever once think that maybe I was drugged, that I was tricked into surgery, that I was set up…” Just then, I heard two sets of footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Finn knelt to comfort the child, deliberately showing me the dense pattern of love bites on his neck and collarbone. “Ian, did you upset your uncle again?” Seraphina came to my side, her hand on my shoulder a silent, heavy warning. “What were you all talking about? Rick, your eyes are all red.” My father shot me a hateful glare. “Five years in prison didn’t teach him a thing. He’s still blaming everyone but himself! How did I raise such a spineless coward who can’t even own up to his mistakes?” My mother cradled Ian, patting his back. “If you ever try to drive a wedge between us and Seraphina’s family again, I’ll rip your mouth off!” Seraphina and Finn exchanged a look, both visibly relieved. Finn pretended to scold his son. “Ian, he’s your uncle. This is his home too.” The child wailed, “This is our home, not the monster’s home! Go away, monster! Get out of my house!” I watched this picture of a happy family and felt like the biggest joke in the world. Before coming back, I’d held onto a sliver of hope that my parents still had some love for me. Now I knew. There was no place for me in this home anymore. I skipped breakfast and went back to my room. Perhaps out of guilt, my mother knocked on my door later, saying we were all going shopping to buy me some new clothes. Finn helpfully pushed a wheelchair over. “This will be easier for you.” I saw the malicious glint in his eye and had a bad feeling. But the mall was crowded, so I let my guard down. My mother bought me a lot of clothes. But they were all styles that Finn had tried on first. All things he liked. I paid his provocations no mind. At the elevator, Finn pushed my wheelchair inside. Just as my mother was about to step in, Finn suddenly feigned remembrance. “Mom, I think I forgot something. Can you come with me to get it?” He repeatedly jabbed the ‘close door’ button, hissing with a vicious smile, “Go to hell!” By the time I realized it was a trap, it was too late. The elevator buttons went dead, and the car plummeted into the shaft below. Before I could even recover from the shock, a bag was thrown over my head and a rag was shoved into my mouth. “You piece of trash. We finally got you!” I was dragged into a van. Fists, feet, and curses rained down on me. Just like in prison, I curled into a ball, instinctively protecting my head. I didn’t cry or scream. Crying only made them hit harder. Half an hour later, I was kicked out of the van and dragged into a dilapidated factory. A group of burly men surrounded me, closing in. “You’re not getting out of here alive! Just in time for us to get some practice in!” Their fists hammered into me. I fought back desperately, but I was no match for their brute force. Giving up, I slammed my head against a nearby wall. Blood trickled into my eyes, blurring my vision. Just before darkness consumed me, a slender arm caught my collapsing body.

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The rich kid my cousin was dating, Trevor, suddenly showed up at my store with a high-end replica handbag, trying to get a refund for the authentic one he’d bought three days earlier. When the front desk called me, I was surprised, but I didn’t reveal who I was. I just told them to handle it by the book. I figured it was just another one of the countless little dramas that played out daily across my chain of luxury resale stores and promptly forgot about it. Until Christmas Eve, at the family dinner table, when my cousin Liz, with Trevor’s arm wrapped around her, slapped an identical replica bag down on the table. The sound wasn’t loud, but it was like a crack of thunder, instantly silencing the festive chaos of the room. “Look what Trevor got me for Christmas! It’s a limited-edition Chanel. There are only a handful of them in the world.” In an instant, the table erupted in a chorus of flattery and awe. My own mother nudged me discreetly. “You’re so clueless all the time. A girl’s best bet is still to marry a rich man.” I just smiled. A bag of that quality? A “clueless” girl like me would normally just toss it in the trash. Only they would treat it like a treasure. 1 Liz’s voice was dripping with a poorly suppressed smugness. Her eyes scanned every relative at the table before finally landing on me, a faint glint of challenge in them. My mom immediately leaned in, picking up the bag and examining it from every angle. “Wow, this leather, this shine! You can just tell it’s expensive,” she marveled. “Liz, you are so lucky! Trevor treats you so well!” My aunt, Liz’s mother, was beaming. She clapped Trevor on the shoulder. “Of course, he does. Our Liz deserves the best! Trevor, you’re a good man. Capable and doting.” Trevor feigned modesty, waving a hand dismissively while pulling Liz closer by the waist, his chin held high. “She deserves it. As long as Liz is happy. It wasn’t that much, only about thirty-two thousand. The real trouble was getting a friend to source it from overseas.” Thirty-two thousand dollars. The number hung in the air, followed by a collective intake of breath around the table. My other aunt dropped her fork. “Thirty-two thousand? My god, that’s a down payment on a house back home! Trevor, you’re really going places!” “Liz, you better hold on to him! A catch like that is one in a million!” “Exactly! Not like my layabout son who just plays video games all day. It drives me crazy!” The praise swelled, wave after wave, and the triumphant looks on Trevor and Liz’s faces were practically spilling over. My mom, basking in the reflected glory of her niece’s boyfriend, turned her educational lecture back to me. “Did you hear that, Anna? Your cousin is a year younger than you, and she’s already found such a wonderful future. And you? All you do is slave away at that little junk shop of yours. How much can that possibly make? No matter how successful a woman’s career is, it’s nothing compared to marrying well.” My so-called “little junk shop” is the leading nationwide trading platform for pre-owned luxury goods. We just closed our Series C funding last year with a valuation in the billions. Of course, I’d never told my family any of this. In their eyes, I ran a small second-hand store in another city, barely scraping by. I couldn’t be bothered to explain, so I just gave a noncommittal “Mm.” My lukewarm response clearly annoyed my mother; she felt I had embarrassed her in front of everyone. “What do you mean, ‘Mm’? I’m talking to you! You’re not getting any younger, and you don’t care at all about your personal life. Look at your cousin, then look at you! And what are you wearing? It’s so old and drab. Can’t you even afford to buy yourself a new outfit?” The seemingly plain cashmere sweater I was wearing was from Loro Piana. It cost six figures. But in their world, no big logo meant it was from a discount bin. Seeing my mom scolding me, Liz offered a phony attempt at peacemaking, though the glee in her eyes was impossible to hide. “Oh, Auntie, don’t be so hard on Anna. It’s not easy for her, trying to make it on her own. She’s probably saving up for a down payment on a house.” As she spoke, she deliberately flashed the massive diamond ring on her finger. “Anna, if you’re short on cash, just let me know. I can have Trevor set you up with some easy job, you know, ten or fifteen thousand a month. It’s got to be better than what you’re doing now.” Trevor immediately jumped in, his tone dripping with condescension. “Yeah, Anna, we’re family. Don’t be a stranger. My dad’s company needs an administrative assistant. If you’re interested, you can start after the holidays.” I almost laughed out loud. What kind of charity case did they take me for? Before I could speak, my aunt jumped in to express my “eternal gratitude” for me. “Oh, thank you so much, Trevor! Anna, did you hear that? What are you waiting for? Thank your cousin’s fiancé! This is a golden opportunity, a gift from heaven! You are so lucky!” Everyone at the table stared at me, waiting for me to burst into tears of gratitude and accept this magnificent “blessing.” I looked at the sickeningly smug faces of Liz and Trevor and slowly put down my fork. “Liz, that bag of yours is certainly… ‘limited,’” I said, putting a slight emphasis on the word. Liz, thinking I was complimenting her, grinned even wider. “Of course, it’s…” I cut her off, my gaze shifting to Trevor. I asked with a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes, “Mr. Kirby, where did you buy this bag? Would you mind sharing your source? I’d love to get one for my mom, make her happy too.” Trevor’s eyes flickered for a fraction of a second. “Oh, just a friend of mine in Europe who sources things for me,” he said vaguely. “If you want one, I can ask him to keep an eye out for you.” “Is that so?” I drew out the words, picking up the fake bag from the table. My fingertip traced the logo lightly. “Because for some reason, this bag looks a little familiar, don’t you think?” 2 My words hung in the air, instantly freezing the atmosphere at the table. The smile on Liz’s face was frozen solid. “Anna, what are you trying to say? You’re not suggesting my bag is a fake, are you?” Her voice shot up, her expression one of utter insult. “I know what this is. You’re just jealous I found a great boyfriend! My mom was right, you can’t stand to see me happy! You’re just taking out your own failures on me!” My aunt immediately jumped to her defense, jabbing a finger in my direction. “Anna, what is wrong with you? Are you trying to cause trouble? Your cousin’s fiancé was kind enough to offer you a job, and this is how you repay him, by trying to ruin their happiness? What are your intentions?” My own mother’s face went pale with anger. She pinched my arm, hard. “Are you crazy? What nonsense are you spouting? Apologize to your cousin and her fiancé right now!” Trevor’s expression had turned thunderous. He stared at me coldly. “Anna, you can eat whatever you want, but you can’t say whatever you want. I may not be a billionaire, but I can certainly afford a thirty-thousand-dollar bag. Are you questioning my integrity?” He sounded so righteous, as if he were the victim of a terrible injustice. The relatives all turned on me. “Yeah, Anna’s being so immature!” “Just because she’s never seen anything nice, she assumes everyone else’s things are fake. What a petty mindset.” “Just apologize. It’s Christmas, don’t ruin it for everyone.” I looked at this room full of so-called family. Without a second thought, simply because Trevor looked rich, they had all decided I was the malicious one, the troublemaker. A chill went through me, but my face remained calm. “Whether I’m talking nonsense or not, I think Mr. Kirby knows best.” I met Trevor’s gaze and spoke, enunciating each word. “Three days ago, on December twenty-second, at 3:15 in the afternoon, a man wearing a black down jacket, khaki pants, and gold-rimmed glasses brought this exact bag into the flagship store of ‘The Vault’ downtown.” With every detail I revealed, another shade of color drained from Trevor’s face. “He claimed he’d bought the bag in the store three days prior for thirty-two thousand dollars and demanded a full refund because his girlfriend had changed her mind.” “Our in-house authenticator immediately identified it as a top-tier replica, what’s commonly known as a ‘superfake,’ and refused his request for a return.” “Mr. Kirby,” I said with a small, cold smile, “none of this sounds unfamiliar to you, does it?” The dining room fell into a dead silence. Every eye in the room darted between me and Trevor, their expressions shifting from accusation to stunned disbelief. Beads of sweat had formed on Trevor’s forehead. He tried to sound indignant, his voice cracking. “That’s a lie! I’ve never even heard of ‘The Vault’! I was in a meeting at my office that afternoon. My entire company can vouch for me!” “Is that so?” I calmly took out my phone and opened a security feed app. “Unfortunately for you, my store has high-definition cameras in every corner. With audio.” I turned the screen towards him. The image was crystal clear, showing Trevor’s face, etched with greed and anxiety. In the video, he was arguing animatedly with my sales associate. “…I don’t care! I bought it here! Here’s the receipt! You have to give me my money back today, or I’m calling the cops and reporting you for ripping me off!” “Sir, we have no record of your purchase in our system. And this receipt… it’s also a forgery.” “Bullshit! You’re just trying to get out of it! Get me your owner!” The voices from the video echoed clearly in the silent room, each word like a sharp slap across Trevor and Liz’s faces. All the blood had drained from Liz’s face. She stared at Trevor in disbelief, her lips trembling, unable to form a single word. My aunt was dumbstruck, her mouth hanging open. My mom was just as stunned, staring blankly from the phone in my hand to my face, her eyes filled with a look of utter confusion, as if seeing a stranger. 3 “Now, do you need me to play the rest of the video?” I asked softly, turning off the screen. Trevor’s composure completely shattered. He slumped into his chair with a thud, his face ashen. The con exposed, he couldn’t muster a single word of defense. Liz, after a moment of stunned silence, let out a piercing scream. “Trevor! You liar!” She snatched the fake bag from the table and brought it crashing down on his head. “You told me you were the son of some corporate giant! You said you loved me! And you used a fake bag to fool me? What do you take me for?” Trevor grunted from the blow, his own shame turning to fury. “I fooled you? Liz, you think you’re some kind of saint? You only liked me for my money! If I didn’t have any, would you have even given me the time of day? Stop pretending to be so innocent!” “You…” Liz was shaking with rage. She lunged at him, and the two of them began to brawl. The dinner table descended into chaos. Plates and glasses shattered on the floor. Relatives scrambled to pull them apart. Shouts, curses, and sobs filled the air. A perfect Christmas Eve dinner had become a complete and utter farce. My aunt watched her daughter and her “golden goose” tear each other apart, looking like she was about to have a heart attack. She pointed a trembling finger at me. “Anna! This is all your fault! You and your big mouth! If you hadn’t said anything, none of this would have happened! You’ve ruined your cousin’s life! Are you happy now?” I almost laughed at her twisted logic. “Auntie, are you saying I should have just watched my cousin get scammed by a con artist and applauded from the sidelines?” “What does it matter if he’s a con artist? He was good to Liz!” she shrieked, beyond reason. “So the bag was fake, his feelings for Liz were real! And now you’ve ruined everything!” My mom, having recovered from her shock, didn’t blame me outright, but her eyes were full of reproach. She tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “Anna, your aunt… she has a point. Look at this mess. How is your cousin supposed to face anyone after this?” I looked at my mother, and a profound sense of weariness washed over me. In their world, truth and dignity were worth far less than a man who seemed rich. Even if that man was a liar and a cheat. “Mom, Auntie, you’re missing the point,” I said, my voice as cold as ice. “I didn’t ruin her life. She chose this liar herself. And I’m afraid she’s not the only one who’s been deceived.” I paused, my gaze sweeping over Trevor and Liz, who had stopped fighting but were still glaring daggers at each other. “Mr. Kirby, this trick of swapping a fake bag for a real one… this wasn’t your first time, was it? I checked our industry’s internal alert system. In the last six months, in this city alone, at least five other luxury goods stores have been hit with the exact same scam, with total losses in the millions. And the suspect caught on every security camera looks an awful lot like you.” Trevor’s face went white, his eyes filled with terror. “Who… who are you?” he stammered. I didn’t answer him. I just turned to my mother and said calmly, “Mom, call the police. This man is a professional con artist.” 4 The police arrived quickly. As Trevor was being handcuffed, he looked like a marionette with its strings cut, all his earlier arrogance gone. Liz was collapsed on the floor, sobbing hysterically as if her world had ended. My aunt held her, weeping and cursing me, calling me cruel-hearted and jealous of their family’s good fortune. The Christmas dinner ended with a call to the police. All the relatives, feeling the evening was cursed, quickly made their excuses and left. Soon, it was just my parents and me, along with my distraught aunt and cousin. My mom sighed as she cleaned up the wreckage. My dad just sat in the corner, smoking silently. After a long while, my mom came over to me, her expression a mix of emotions. “Anna, that place, ‘The Vault’… is it really yours?” I nodded. “The one on your phone… it’s really a national chain?” “Yes.” “Then… then how much money do you actually have?” she asked, getting to the heart of the matter. I was quiet for a moment. “Enough for you and Dad to live comfortably for the rest of your lives, without ever having to answer to anyone.” My mother’s eyes lit up for a second, then dimmed again. She glanced at Liz, who was still weeping on the sofa, and seemed hesitant to speak. I had a good idea of what she wanted to say. Sure enough, once my aunt had cried herself out, she dragged Liz over to me and dropped to her knees with a thud. “Anna! I’m begging you! Please, save your cousin!” I was startled and quickly tried to pull her up. “Auntie, what are you doing? Get up!” “I won’t get up until you agree!” she wailed, clinging to my leg. “Trevor is a con artist, we get it! We were fools! But your cousin’s reputation is ruined! How will she ever get married now? You’re the successful one, you have connections! You have to help her!” Liz looked up, her eyes swollen and red, a pitiful expression on her face. “Anna… I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have looked down on you, I shouldn’t have shown off… Please, forgive me this one time? We’re family. You can’t just leave me to suffer…” They played their parts perfectly, a good cop/bad cop routine. My mom chimed in from the side. “She’s right, Anna. You’re family, blood is thicker than water. Your cousin is a victim in all this, she just suffered from being naive. You’re successful now, it’s only right that you give her a hand.” I looked at the three of them, and the irony was almost too much to bear. When they were mocking me, forcing me to apologize to a con man, not a single one of them stood up for me. Now that my value had been proven, they changed their tune completely, demanding that I “give them a hand” as if it were my duty. “How am I supposed to help?” I asked coldly. “Introduce her to a real rich heir so she can continue her dream of marrying into wealth?” “Anna, how can you say that about your cousin!” my aunt bristled. “She just wants a better life! What’s wrong with that?” “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a better life. But wanting to get it without working for it, using a man as a stepping stone to change your fate, that is fundamentally wrong,” I said, looking directly at Liz. “Cousin, you chose this path. Instead of sitting here crying and begging me, you should be thinking about how you’re going to live your life from now on.” “You…” Liz was stunned by my bluntness, her face flushing with anger. “So what if you have a little money? What’s so great about that? If you won’t help me, I can make it on my own!” With that, she pushed my aunt aside and ran out of the house in tears. My aunt, after a moment of shock, ran after her, shouting insults at me over her shoulder, calling me an ungrateful wolf. The living room was quiet again, just the three of us. My mom looked at me and sighed deeply. “Anna, was that really necessary? How are we ever going to face your aunt and cousin again?” “Mom,” I said, leaning back on the sofa, exhausted. “For years, you’ve valued keeping the peace with relatives, always letting them have their way. And what did it get us? Did they ever respect our family? Deep down, they’ve always looked down on us.” “I didn’t have the power to do anything about it before, so I endured it. But I’m not going to endure it anymore.” My dad, who had been silent this whole time, stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. He walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder, his voice a little hoarse. “My daughter did the right thing. We don’t owe them anything.” In that moment, a lump formed in my throat, and I had to fight back tears. For the first time in all these years, my father was standing firmly on my side.

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Things with Lionel got intense. So intense that he slammed his head against the nightstand and passed out cold. When he woke up, something was… off. He stopped clinging to me, treating me like a cat he suddenly discovered he was allergic to. A few words from me and his ears would turn crimson before he’d bristle and bolt. After two weeks of being sexually ghosted, I was sure he’d found someone new. I decided to end our contract early. But before I even reached his study, I heard him on the phone. “I went to sleep eighteen and woke up twenty-seven. That’s one hell of a long nap.” “I know I sound crazy, but the girl I was secretly in love with is suddenly my girlfriend. She asks me every night if I want to sleep with her. How is a guy supposed to handle that?” The girl he was in love with? Was he talking about me? I thought this was just a transaction. I stared down at the contract in my hands, my mind reeling. 1 Lionel had been acting strange lately. It started a week ago, the night he got back from a business trip. In the middle of a rather… enthusiastic reunion, his head connected with the solid oak of the nightstand, and he went out like a light. For a horrifying second, I thought he’d died of pleasure. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out it was just a concussion. But what followed was even stranger. It was like a completely different person woke up in that hospital bed. The moment he was conscious, I rushed over with a thermos of his favorite simple broth. But as I lifted the spoon to his lips, he flinched so hard he rolled right off the bed. The IV line ripped from his arm, his face flushed a furious red, and he just lay there, a tangled mess of limbs and sheets. It was chaos. A moment later, his assistant, Mr. Wright, stepped out of the room. “Miss Meryl,” he said, “Mr. Thorne would like you to go home. He’ll be back later.” Clutching the now-tepid thermos, I peeked into the room. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second before Lionel violently snapped his head away. A pained yelp was followed by a nurse’s shriek. “Sir, did you just sprain your neck again?!” I was worried about Lionel. More specifically, I was worried about Lionel’s… performance. This was my job, after all. If my benefactor wasn’t up to the task, my purpose here was pretty much nonexistent. The job market was a nightmare, and a benefactor as handsome, wealthy, and low-maintenance as Lionel was a rare find. So, I went home and put on my A-game. I pulled out all the stops, making myself look absolutely irresistible. But for two days, there was no sign of him. My calls went straight to voicemail. A knot of anxiety tightened in my stomach. Damn it, am I about to be unemployed? I switched tactics and called Mr. Wright. Bless that man. He patched me through to Lionel without a second thought. “Work’s been busy the last couple of days, I…” Before he could finish, I let a soft, shaky sob escape my lips. “I just wanted to see the wound on your head. I was so worried about you.” Silence on the other end. My damsel-in-distress act had never failed me with him. That evening, Lionel came home. But from the moment he walked in, his face was a stone mask. He’d always been a bit cold, but usually, there was a warmth in his eyes you couldn’t miss. Now, he just looked… tense. Deliberately so. “You must be exhausted from work,” I began, breaking the strange silence as I walked toward him, my hand outstretched. “Your head just healed, you shouldn’t overdo it…” Before my fingers could even brush his sleeve, he sidestepped me with flawless precision. I stumbled forward, my hand closing on empty air. I stood there for a moment, stunned, the feeling in my empty palm slowly turning to a cold dread in my gut. Our relationship was built on a transaction, yes, but his obsession and affection for me had always made me feel like the one in charge. The man used to be like velcro the second he saw me. He wouldn’t just let me touch him; he’d practically wanted me surgically attached to his hip to satisfy his insatiable appetite. And now… Alarm bells screamed in my head. It was over. My charm had worn off. Lionel looked deeply uncomfortable. “The wound’s almost healed,” he stammered. “Let’s… let’s eat first.” 2 I placed a freshly shucked oyster on Lionel’s plate. His hand trembled as he picked up the small fork. I watched him, my expression unreadable. His head was bowed, his focus entirely on the task of lifting the oyster. The fork slipped. The oyster fell back onto the plate. After two more failed attempts, the tips of his ears were burning a shade of crimson. Finally, with a shaky hand, he managed to get it into his mouth. A small sigh of relief escaped me. Okay, he’s still willing to eat what I give him. I haven’t been completely cast aside. But the rest of the meal was suffocating. Whatever I put on his plate, he ate, his eyes never leaving it. It wasn’t until the platters were nearly empty that I realized he was so full he looked like he was about to be sick. After dinner, I sent the housekeeper home. Taking a deep breath, I slipped into the sheer lavender nightgown. It was his favorite, the one I reserved for moments when I wanted a new designer bag. Tonight, I needed to know if he was still functional. Good news: He was. Bad news: He took one look at me, got a massive nosebleed, and ran away with a very obvious problem in his pants. I sat on the edge of the bed like a useless husband, listening to the roar of his sports car fading into the distance. Just moments ago, I’d emerged from the closet as he was walking into the bedroom. Our eyes met. His gaze was glued to my body; mine was glued to his crotch. Then, a line of crimson trickled from his nose. Our eyes widened in unison. “Lionel…” I scrambled for a tissue, but he was already in a full-blown panic. He clamped one hand over his nose and held the other up at me like a traffic cop. “Don’t come any closer!” His sudden shout made me freeze. He stumbled backward, still clutching his nose. “I just remembered I have something urgent at the office,” he said, his voice muffled. “You… you go to sleep.” 3 The sound of the car disappeared completely. I slumped, defeated, and peeled off the nightgown. As much as I hated to admit it, the truth was staring me in the face. Lionel had lost interest. Otherwise, knowing him, we’d be shaking the damn headboard off the bed by now. I pulled out my phone and opened a job search app. The first listing I saw was for three thousand a month, with no benefits. My vision went black for a second. Just as I was resigning myself to the fact that my life in a gilded cage was about to be traded for the rat race, Lionel came back. It was noon the next day. I’d given up and slept in until eleven. When I came downstairs, he was already sitting at the dining table. He looked up. I froze, my hair a certifiable bird’s nest. My brain short-circuited. I spun around and bolted back up the stairs. Damn it! He always gave me a heads-up before. In two years, I had never let him see me like this. It was always full makeup, perfect hair, my best self. And now, not only had I lost his favor, but he’d seen me at my absolute worst. I gave up, did a half-hearted tidy-up, and went back down. Lionel was still there. “Meryl. Good morning,” he said, his voice halting. I was too dejected to care anymore. I slumped into the chair beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at my eyes carefully. “I didn’t mean to just leave like that last night. Have you been crying?” I touched my eyelids, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It was my new “peach blossom” makeup, a soft, pinkish hue at the corners of my eyes meant to look alluringly fragile. He thought I’d cried my eyes out. I almost laughed out loud. Has he been replaced by an idiot? The real Lionel would never ask such a dumb question. When I didn’t answer, he produced a massive designer bag from behind his back. “Don’t be angry. This is for you.” My eyes lit up. I opened the bag and almost gasped. So many purses. Why was he being so generous? It wasn’t that he was usually cheap—he’d given me a supplementary credit card, after all—but he usually just wired me the money and let me buy things myself. I lovingly picked up each bag, one by one. Then, a wave of horror washed over the excitement. Was this… a golden parachute? A severance package? The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. The beautiful leather in my hands suddenly felt cold. Lionel watched my face. “You don’t like them?” he asked, his voice laced with caution. I forced a smile. “No, of course not. Are you… coming home to sleep tonight?” The question dropped the temperature in the room back to freezing. Lionel’s gaze darted away. “The office is really busy right now. I’ll probably have to stay there for a while…” My heart turned to ice. It was such a flimsy excuse, the kind of polite refusal adults use to soften the blow. So it was true. These ridiculously expensive bags were my goodbye present. For the next few days, Lionel made a point to come home for dinner. But that was it. Just dinner. Every time I tried to initiate any kind of physical contact, he would jump back like a spooked cat, his whole body on high alert. Staying the night was completely out of the question. After several failed attempts, I opened the job app again. I’d just managed to negotiate that soul-crushing three-thousand-a-month job up to thirty-two hundred when Lionel showed up again. I put my phone down, deciding to give it one last shot. If he pushed me away this time, I was done. “Do you like them?” He’d brought a bouquet of brilliant yellow roses. Yellow roses. A symbol of parting and goodbyes. I sighed. I didn’t even have the energy to take off my coat and reveal the lingerie I was wearing underneath. He was practically screaming at me to get the hint and leave. What was I even fighting for? Lionel had a huge appetite. For the past two years, I’d woken up nearly every morning with my legs feeling like jelly as he carried me to the shower. But he hadn’t touched me in weeks, yet he looked more vibrant than ever, like he’d shed ten years. He must be getting his fill elsewhere. He’d found a new canary, one he liked more, one he was obsessed with. That’s why he wouldn’t touch me, why he was dropping all these hints for me to leave. I took the flowers, managing a weak smile. “I love them.” Then I turned, mumbled something about changing, and went to my room. I took off the tempting lingerie and pulled our contract from the nightstand drawer. We’d signed it two years ago, renewable annually. It was set to expire next month. I’d planned on renewing it after his trip, but now… there was no point. A bitter smile touched my lips as I unfolded the document. Honestly, I was going to miss this. I had no real feelings for Lionel, but a man that handsome who was also a walking ATM, great in bed, and completely discreet? He was a unicorn. I took a deep breath and walked toward the study with the contract in hand. I may have sold my time and my body, but I still had my pride. The contract was clear: if either party wanted to end the relationship or found another partner, the agreement was void. I was ending it. Time to start my new life at thirty-two hundred a month. Lionel wasn’t in the living room. I checked the driveway from the window; his car was still there. Where could he be? Just as I was wondering, I heard his voice, tinged with frustration, coming from around the corner, from the study. “How’s it going with that neurosurgeon in Europe? Did you get me an appointment?” “I know he’s hard to book, but you can’t just let your friend live like this, completely out of his mind, can you?” I went to sleep eighteen and woke up twenty-seven. All the memories in between are just… gone. Wiped clean.” “The company stuff is the least of my worries. I can figure out the paperwork if I try hard enough. The real problem is my girlfriend.” My hand, the one holding the contract, trembled. A woman’s intuition is never wrong. Especially a beautiful woman’s intuition. Lionel really did have a new girlfriend. But what did he mean, eighteen to twenty-seven? Before I could puzzle it out, I heard my own name. “When did I start dating her? Haven’t I told you? It’s Meryl. Yeah, Meryl. I probably kept it from you because I was afraid you’d try to steal her.” He sighed. “Now my girlfriend asks me every night if I want to sleep with her.” “I know, it should be a dream come true. The girl I’ve been secretly in love with is my girlfriend. But I’m terrified I’ll blow my cover. I’m so wound up I feel like I’m going to explode, but I don’t dare touch her.” I was completely bewildered. Secretly in love? With me? What was he talking about? I couldn’t make sense of any of it. He was still complaining, his voice thick with misery. “You think I’m crazy too, right? I do. You have no idea what it’s like, watching her walk around all day, looking so damn cute. She even gets all dolled up just to seduce me. I can’t take it. That’s why I can’t even come home most nights.” “I’m just telling you, don’t you dare picture it.” I stared at the contract in my hand, a wild thought taking root. Wait a second. If what Lionel was saying was true… Then I wasn’t about to be unemployed. I was about to get a promotion. “You have to find a way. I need to get my memory back, fast. If Meryl finds out and breaks up with me, I’ll hang myself from your front door the next day.” The call ended. His footsteps grew closer. I clutched the contract and scurried back to my room. Once inside, I shoved the contract back into the drawer, my thoughts a tangled mess. Lionel and I had never met before our arrangement, at least not in my memory. The first time was at a café where my boss was tearing into me for dropping a tray of glasses. Lionel appeared out of nowhere, his broad back shielding me from the verbal assault, and pulled me out of that miserable life. When he offered to cover all of my dog’s vet bills, I didn’t hesitate. I went online and printed out a standard sugar-baby contract template. He barely blinked before signing his name. My dog, my only family, didn’t make it in the end. But my arrangement with Lionel continued, undefined and strange. Sometimes, when he’d take me to galas, other women would tell me with envy in their eyes how much he clearly adored me. I never believed them. I always thought he was just infatuated with my body. But now… I opened my closet, his words echoing in my head. An eighteen-year-old Lionel, in love with me. What would he like? I decided to test his story myself. My eyes landed on a schoolgirl outfit. I thought back to my own eighteenth year and pulled my hair into a high, neat ponytail. “Meryl, lunch is ready…” Just as I finished changing, Lionel’s voice came from outside the door. I glanced in the mirror. My face was bare, and the uniform made me look like I’d stepped back in time. My heart hammered against my ribs. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

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When I was twenty-five, I had a child with Karl Hosein, the scion of a powerful family. Our vastly different worlds meant we had no future, so I took the money and resources his family offered and broke it off. It wasn’t until five years later, during a break on a film set, that a boy eerily similar to Karl approached me. His little mouth was downturned, a mix of hurt and childish arrogance. “My dad is Karl Hosein,” he said. “And you’re my mom.” I looked at him and simply hummed a soft, “Mhm.” He quickly pulled a thick wad of cash from his backpack, his eyes filled with a desperate plea. “I’ll hire you for one day. Please, will you come to my parent-teacher conference?” 1 I stared at the child holding the cash, momentarily speechless. I pressed my lips together and gently pushed his hand back. “I don’t want your money.” His eyes immediately welled up, and his voice grew softer and softer. “Grandma said you really like money, so I saved for a very, very long time to come find you.” He sniffed. “All the kids at kindergarten say I’m an orphan because I don’t have a mom… I always tell them I do, that my mom is a big movie star. But they always say I’m lying.” He looked down, his voice barely a whisper. “Even though you left me, I wasn’t lying. But they just don’t believe me…” He stood there, head bowed, his small body shaking with suppressed sobs. He wiped away a tear with his sleeve. I knelt down, cupped his face in my hands, and wiped his tears away. “I don’t want your money, but I can come.” His head shot up, his eyes bright. Incredulity warred with barely contained joy. He threw himself into my arms, burying his round head in the crook of my neck, and burst into fresh sobs, as if all the world’s injustices had suddenly come crashing down on him. I gently patted his back, trying to soothe him. When he’d finally cried himself out, he looked up, meeting my gaze. His cheeks flushed crimson, and he quickly averted his eyes, muttering awkwardly, “I don’t usually cry. I’m a big boy. I… I just couldn’t help it.” Watching him, I shook my head with a smile. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.” He smiled, a small, shy curve of his lips, and grabbed my hand. “My name is Henry Hosein,” he announced with enthusiasm. “My nickname is ‘Buzz.’ You can call me Buzz.” I smiled, gently smoothing his bangs. “I know.” He nodded, his round eyes sparkling. “You know my name?” I nodded again, affirming it. “I know.” His given name, Henry, had been chosen by Karl’s father. But “Buzz” was the nickname I’d given him. How could I not know? 2 I led him to my RV. My assistants, Sally and Mia, were inside, and their eyes lit up when they saw me with such a handsome child. “Sophie, where did you find this adorable kid?” Sally asked. I squeezed Buzz’s hand and said, with a nonchalant shrug, “He’s my son.” The smiles on their faces instantly froze. Panic flickered in their eyes. “What? Oh my goodness! Were we caught on camera?!” “If this gets out, it’s over!” Buzz, seeing my assistants’ distress, tugged anxiously at my sleeve. “Am I causing trouble for you?” At his words, Sally and Mia’s worried expressions melted into looks of remorse. I smiled, stroking Buzz’s soft hair. “Buzz isn’t trouble.” Sally and Mia quickly waved their hands. “No, no, we were just being silly, honey.” Buzz looked at me, then at the two assistants, and set his small backpack on the floor. He knelt, emptying the contents onto the floor: pajamas, a yellow cartoon umbrella, a water bottle, even his toothbrush, and the wad of cash. He’d clearly planned this. Then he rummaged back into his backpack and pulled out two cheese sticks, offering them to Sally and Mia. He looked up at them sweetly. “Here, sisters, for you.” The two assistants’ hearts melted. They gushed, their voices high with affection. “Oh, baby, you’re so sweet!” “Auntie loves cheese sticks!” Buzz beamed, then pulled out several more from his bag. “Then you can have all of Buzz’s cheese sticks.” After filming wrapped, I took Buzz back to my hotel room. It was then that I finally got the full story. This little guy had packed his backpack that morning and taken a taxi all the way from New York to Los Angeles. The driver had initially wanted to call the police, but Buzz had offered so much money that he’d eventually accepted the fare. Buzz had actually arrived that morning, but seeing how busy I was, he’d waited with my fans until I finished work. He’d waited all day, until evening. When the fans dispersed, he’d secretly waited by my RV. He was shoveling food into his mouth, clearly starving. My heart ached at the sight. I wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t imagine how a child, all by himself, found the courage to take a taxi all that way. Three or four hours in a car—I couldn’t even begin to guess how anxious he must have been. My voice caught in my throat. “What if you’d gotten lost?” Buzz, his mouth full of rice, pointed to the smartwatch on his wrist, his voice muffled. He looked up at me, smiling. “I wouldn’t get lost! When I got in the car, I took a picture of the license plate with my smartwatch and sent it to Amy.” “And I kept calling Amy on my smart-toy watch.” Not only that, but he’d brought a power bank, just in case his smart-toy watch ran out of battery. The more nonchalantly he spoke, the more my heart twisted. He’d planned this so meticulously; his journey to find me must have been months in the making. He puffed out his chest proudly and started chattering about his best friend. “Amy is my deskmate at kindergarten. We’re best friends. I’m going to marry her when I grow up!” At that, I finally broke into a smile. “Next time you want to come find me, you can call me, and I’ll come pick you up.” I paused, then added, “If your dad agrees.” He nodded eagerly, humming a happy “Mhm.” 3 After dinner, I took him to the bathroom. Seeing me follow him inside, he tugged at his pants, his face flushing crimson. He mumbled and stammered, unable to form a complete sentence. I knew he was shy. I shook my head, amused. “I won’t watch you shower. Here’s your body wash, shampoo, and toothpaste. Can you wash yourself?” He nodded vigorously. “I can! I always shower by myself at home.” I stroked his hair. “Such a good boy.” Stepping out of the bathroom, I pulled out my phone and found a long-unused contact. [Buzz is with me.] A moment later, the reply came. [I know. He told me on his smartwatch.] Seeing the indifferent tone, my hands trembled with anger. But I had no right to scold him. [When are you coming to pick him up?] [I’m busy with meetings. Let him stay with you for a couple of days.] I bit my lip, taking a deep breath. My child was so unimportant to him. I had just typed out a furious retort when the bathroom door opened. Buzz, clutching his dirty clothes, scurried toward me. “Mommy, I’m all clean and sweet-smelling.” I deleted the unsent message and put away my phone. I picked up the hairdryer and started drying his hair. The little boy in the mirror squinted, a soft smile on his lips, his small legs dangling from the stool, looking utterly content. I smiled and ruffled his hair. After his hair was dry, I led him to the bed and kissed his forehead. “Alright, time to sleep. I’m going to go get ready for bed.” The duvet covered most of his face, only his bright, watery eyes visible. He nodded. When I finished my routine and came out, the small figure on the bed was happily rolling around, wrapped in the blanket. Seeing me, he quickly settled down, lying properly and patting the space beside him. I understood. I climbed into bed and pulled him into my arms. His little body felt so soft in my embrace. For some reason, this small child brought me an immense sense of satisfaction and happiness. I pulled the covers up around us and gently patted his back. As I patted, the little one in my arms quietly began to cry, his small hands gripping my nightgown tightly, as if afraid I’d disappear the next second. 4 A child’s sleepiness comes quickly. After crying in my arms, Buzz was asleep in no time. But I couldn’t sleep at all that night. My thoughts drifted back to many years ago. When I met Karl Hosein, I was a junior in film school, hustling for small roles, showing up at endless parties. My agent at the time offered me a shortcut. He said the company CEO was interested in me, willing to promote me, and asked if I was interested. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and everyone knew the catch. But back then, I was young, full of pride, and naturally refused. That led to a quiet blacklisting. I couldn’t act in my company’s productions, and with my contract, I couldn’t act in anyone else’s either. But the five-million-dollar breach of contract fee was impossible for my family to pay, even if we sold everything. They cut off all my paths. My only option was to wait it out, because in their eyes, my youth was worthless. Then I met Karl Hosein. I was in the restroom, throwing up alcohol, feeling utterly miserable. He handed me a tissue and asked, “If you can’t take it anymore, you can come with me. I can give you everything you want.” I still refused. He just smiled, placing a business card in my hand. “If you change your mind, you can find me. At least I’m younger and better-looking than them, right? You wouldn’t be losing anything.” The turning point came when my father was in a car accident, injuring his leg so badly it had to be amputated. The pillar of our family had collapsed. I was sobbing uncontrollably in the hospital stairwell. That’s when Karl appeared again. He quietly lit a cigarette beside me. “Sophie,” he said, his voice flat. “Your pride isn’t worth much.” He was right. My pride wasn’t worth much. I ended up going with Karl. He paid my termination fee, placed me in a friend’s entertainment company, and found me the most professional agent in the industry. From then on, I was like a sparrow transformed into a phoenix. Gigs rolled in, high-fashion gowns became my everyday wear, and famous directors cast me without question. Those years, Sophie Vance was unstoppable. When our passion was at its peak, I once asked Karl why he chose me. He laughed, unrestrained, and said without hesitation, “Pure infatuation.” “I’m used to getting what I want. If I see something I like, I have to have it.” A simple reason: desire demanded possession. I knew clearly that Karl, born into wealth, was from a world entirely separate from mine. We each got what we needed; there was no right or wrong. So I desperately used his influence to climb higher. When love clouds judgment, I also once fantasized that maybe one day I would be worthy of standing beside him. But everything changed the day I found out I was pregnant. I joyfully told Karl the news. But his brow furrowed deeply. “Sophie,” he said, “I can’t give you a legal status.” “If you want to have the child, have it. I’ll be responsible for the child. If you don’t want to, you can terminate the pregnancy.” His words plunged me into an icy abyss. I did consider termination, but the bond of blood is a strange and powerful thing. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After I gave birth, Karl’s mother, Mrs. Hosein, sought me out. She made it very clear that I had no place in Karl’s future. Knowing when to quit was the wisest choice. She sent my father to the best rehabilitation center abroad and gave me a blank check. She also offered me the lead role in a film by a renowned director, a man who wouldn’t ordinarily grant favors to Karl, but would to Mrs. Hosein. It was a world I could never have entered on my own. Betting on a future that had no future, versus accepting this tangible success—it was hard to refuse. But I didn’t say yes. The final blow in what I thought was my redemption came when I learned Karl was getting engaged. He never hid it from me. I asked him, “What about me, then?” He thought for a whole night, but gave me no answer. But I knew his answer. I could love money, but my principles wouldn’t allow me to be the other woman. So I broke up with him, taking everything Mrs. Hosein offered and cutting all ties with Karl Hosein. At the time, Karl asked, “I can give you what you want too. Why do it this way?” I smiled and told him, “You can’t give me what I want.” He lowered his head in silence.

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Five years after I faked my death, I was dying of cancer. I heard that Rocky Boyce, the cool and aloof heir of the Boyce fortune, was about to get engaged. The woman was someone he’d loved for many years. To celebrate, a company under Boyce Enterprises posted a giveaway: a random lucky winner would receive a million dollars. After much hesitation, I quietly commented. [Happy engagement. Wishing you happiness.] An hour later. As water overflowed from the bathtub, the phone rang. “Congratulations! You’ve won!” 1 I didn’t die. That phone call saved me. On the other end, the staff member was still cheerfully congratulating me. “You’re truly very lucky!” Lucky… Me? I struggled to sit up in the bathtub. The cut on my wrist was a bit deep; the entire tub was stained a pale red. “Please provide your bank details, and we’ll transfer the prize money to you within a month. Additionally, you’ll enjoy a year of discounts at all Boyce Enterprises establishments!” I should have smiled. But when I spoke, my voice was terribly weak. “Thank you, but I probably won’t need it…” The other end of the line was silent for two seconds, then the woman cautiously asked, “Are you alright? Do you need any help?” My brain, lightheaded from blood loss, felt dizzy. I pushed myself out of the tub, blood splattering on the floor. “I’m sorry… Could you please call 911 for me?” The ambulance arrived quickly. I had just returned from the hospital that morning and was back again that night. The doctor in charge, initially disapproving of my disregard for life, fell silent after pulling up my medical records. “Miss Vance,” she sighed. “I know you must be in a lot of pain right now, but… please, just hold on a little longer.” I stared at her blankly. Suddenly, I remembered someone else saying that to me once. But I was in such a bad place then, barely able to cope myself. In the end, I had chosen to flee. My younger sister, Anna, rushed over. When she saw me in the hospital bed, her eyes instantly reddened. “Sarah, are you trying to scare me to death?!” Just that morning, when we’d parted, I had promised her I would diligently undergo treatment. Even though our family’s situation meant we couldn’t afford the expensive medical bills. Anna’s parents had passed away in an earthquake five years ago. For years, we’d relied on each other, using our meager savings to open a flower shop, just barely making ends meet. When she learned of my illness, Anna cried. Then she wiped away her tears and said she would apply for a leave of absence from college and find a part-time job to take care of me. But how could I burden her? She was so young; she should be enjoying her youth at college, not being dragged down by me. “I’m sorry,” I apologized to her. “I’m just so tired.” Anna cried again. Just then, a sudden commotion erupted outside the emergency room. It sounded like there had been a car accident somewhere, and the injured were being brought to this nearest hospital. A nurse came to inform me that my room was ready. As I passed through the lobby, the news was playing on a large screen. Rocky Boyce, the Boyce heir, had spared no expense, set to hold his engagement party on a small island in the Caribbean in two months. In the interview, a reporter asked him why he chose that specific time and location. The usually cool and taciturn man gave a rare, soft chuckle. “Because she likes it.” Because she likes it. I pressed my lips together, remembering the phone call from a short while ago. The staff member’s voice had been lovely, and she had been very kind. When she realized I had cut my wrists, she’d briefly panicked before calling 911 for me. The phone hadn’t been hung up on the way to the hospital. She kept repeating in my ear, “Please don’t die! If you die, what about the million dollars?” “You’re the luckiest person I’ve ever met; I’m sure you’ll continue to be just as lucky!” I had wanted to thank her, to say, “Your company is so generous.” But then I remembered who her boss was, and the words caught in my throat. An engagement party on a tropical island, a random giveaway of a million dollars… Rocky Boyce, you really are as extravagant as ever. 2 From childhood to adulthood, I’ve always been unlucky. As a child, a fortune-teller said my life would be full of hardship, and my family ties would be thin. At my tenth birthday party, I accidentally fell into the cake, creating my first memorable social faux pas. During my high school entrance exams, I suffered from severe menstrual cramps on the last day, performed poorly, and failed to get into my dream prep school. It seemed like every crucial moment in my life, I stumbled. I didn’t inherit my mother’s striking beauty, nor my father’s sharp intellect. Back then, when people spoke of me, there was usually a prefix: “Ah, Rocky Boyce’s childhood friend.” Rocky’s name always shone brightly. We were childhood sweethearts, and our relationship was always strong. The day we announced our relationship caused quite a stir on social media. Besides personal factors, our families were old friends, a seemingly perfect match. It wasn’t until the year I graduated from college that I was exposed as a fake heiress. Two pregnant women had given birth at the same time, and a nurse’s mistake led to the babies being switched. The real heiress and my biological parents had already died in a car accident. From that moment on, my world changed irrevocably. My adoptive mother wept daily. In moments of emotional breakdown, she would blurt out, “Why wasn’t it you who died?” My adoptive father would sigh whenever he saw me, gently suggesting I move out for a while. The gossip of neighbors, the strange looks from the household staff… everything weighed down on me, suffocating me. At that time, my only solace was Rocky. He didn’t scorn my identity, nor did he care about the rumors. He defended me several times in public. Stream after stream of valuable gifts were sent to me, as if to tell everyone that he still stood by me. I once chided him for being extravagant. But Rocky just held me, burying his head in the crook of my neck, nuzzling. “I don’t care. Let’s see who dares to speak ill of you now.” We were so young then. Naively believing that love could overcome all obstacles. Until the Boyce family began to exert pressure, forcing him to break up with me. Rocky had just graduated college then, and had little say. He was constantly busy during that period. He followed his family’s arrangements and entered the company, desperate to prove himself, to earn their approval and his freedom to marry whom he chose. Several times, he would arrive late to our dates, looking utterly exhausted. I saw how tired he was, so during dinner, I tried every trick to cheer him up. But after I painstakingly concocted a joke and looked up, Rocky was already asleep in his chair across from me, exhausted. Rocky got busier and busier. Our conversations became fewer and farther between. He still sent me good morning and good night texts, asking if I had eaten properly. But I started to grow silent. After being openly ridiculed and subtly insulted at another party, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I hid in the restroom and called him. But after he answered, before I could even speak, I heard Rocky’s tired but gentle voice. “What a coincidence, I was just about to call you.” He said the project he was leading had finally signed the contract today. It was his first major project since joining the company, and he had worked overtime for a month straight for it. After the successful signing, his father praised him for the first time in a long while, and his mother finally softened her stance. Noticing my prolonged silence, he suddenly paused. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” “Nothing…” I tried very, very hard to suppress the torrent of grievances. I had wanted to say that those people’s words were truly awful. Those veiled, contemptuous glances felt like damp, heavy towels clinging to me, cold and suffocating. I wanted to say that I felt like I was losing the will to go on. But when I finally spoke, it was in a light, cheerful tone: “What could be wrong with me? I just miss you.” How could I burden him with my worries again? He was already working so hard to be with me. And I, I couldn’t help him at all. After that day, I refused all social engagements. For a time, I hated leaving the house. I started to fear other people’s stares. I drew all the curtains in the house. My appetite dwindled. In just two months, I lost over ten pounds. By the time Rocky finally realized something was wrong and rushed to my house, pulling me out of bed, I suddenly remembered that we hadn’t seen each other in over a week. “Did you eat dinner?” Rocky asked me. I thought about it. “No.” “Lunch?” “…No.” “What about breakfast?” Seeing me about to shake my head again, his face darkened. “When was the last time you ate?” I struggled to remember. “I think… last night? Or maybe noon…” I really couldn’t recall. Lately, my memory had been terrible. I’d forgotten to eat, forgotten to wash, forgotten to reply to Rocky’s messages. Even though I just lay in bed doing nothing, I felt incredibly tired. Rocky carried me to the bathroom and personally helped me wash up. Then he supervised me eating. “Chew properly, don’t just swallow.” But I was truly so tired. One meal took an hour to finish. After eating, I started to feel sleepy again. This time, Rocky didn’t leave. He slept beside me. In a state between waking and sleeping, I felt him holding me, whispering in my ear, “Just give me a little more time…” “I know you’re tired, but can you wait for me a little longer…?” From that day on, Rocky moved into my house. The apartment, a two-bedroom, one-bath, wasn’t large; I’d bought it in college. After Rocky arrived, my life began to regain its rhythm. Every day before work, he would prepare breakfast and lunch for me, making sure I ate on time. Every evening after work, he would rush back to have dinner with me, then drag me out for a walk. My physical condition visibly improved. But Rocky grew more and more exhausted. Until one day, during a meeting, he collapsed from low blood sugar. When I rushed to the hospital, Rocky’s mother was already there. When she saw me, her brow furrowed. I froze in place, awkward and helpless. “Hello, Mrs. Boyce…” She didn’t say anything unkind to me. She simply handed me a folder. Inside were profiles of potential marriage candidates she approved of, meticulously detailing their backgrounds and the family connections they could provide. She had, after all, watched me grow up, so she didn’t say anything too directly. But I understood her meaning. What do you have? I had nothing left. While waiting for Rocky to wake up, I thought about many things. For example, the apartment I bought in college—would I lose money if I sold it now? For example, my adoptive parents had raised me for years. Although they were currently struggling with the loss of their biological daughter, would they be sad if I left? And then, Rocky had already made so much effort for me. If I were to break up with him now, would I seem heartless? How… how would I even break up with him? Time seemed to stretch endlessly in that moment. By the time Rocky woke up, I had thought of everything. The first second his eyes opened and he saw me, before he could even offer a smile, I spoke. “Rocky, let’s break up.” 3 A profound silence filled the hospital room. After a long moment, Rocky slowly propped himself up and sat up in bed. “Take that back now, and I can pretend I never heard it.” I shook my head. “Rocky, let’s break up.” “…” Another long silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. Thinking he must be thirsty after just waking, I poured him a glass of water. After placing the glass on his bedside table, I turned to leave, but he caught my hand. From behind me, Rocky quietly asked, “Has being with me… made you so miserable?” I remained silent. When Rocky finally looked up again, his eyes were red-rimmed. His voice was almost a plea. “Can’t you… hold on a little longer?” Can’t you hold on a little longer? Just for him, can’t you hold on a little longer? “Rocky…” I sighed. His grip on my hand was tight, yet I pushed him away with surprising ease. “Just let me go.” Let me go, and let yourself go too. I’ve always been an unlucky person. After losing my adoptive parents, I lost Rocky. In the period immediately after our breakup, Rocky was constantly worried about me. When he saw things I liked, he would still buy them and have them sent to me. When I asked him about it, he’d say, “Can’t ordinary friends send gifts to each other?” Yes. Of course. I turned around and sold everything. I realized this couldn’t go on. So I signed up for a rural teaching program, hoping a change of scenery would help me clear my head. A few months after arriving, there was an earthquake, and I nearly lost my life. Many people died in that earthquake. In the rubble, I found Anna, whose parents and relatives had all perished. She was eight years younger than me and needed a guardian. So, I, the survivor, took on the identity of Anna’s older sister. I was no longer Sarah Vance; I was just Anna. But even with a new name, bad luck clung to me like a shadow. At twenty-seven, I was diagnosed with cancer, my time running out. Yet now, someone was telling me I was the luckiest person she had ever met. 4 A million dollars. Yes, I was certainly lucky. When Anna heard about it, she was overjoyed, tears streaming down her face. “We have money for your treatment!” Yes, how wonderful. Just when I needed money, someone came and gave it to me. The room next door was occupied by a car accident victim. I saw medical staff going in and out, suggesting the patient was someone important. After two days of recovery, the doctor finally allowed me to leave. Before I left, though, she earnestly urged me to continue treatment. My flower shop had been closed for two days, missing several pre-orders. I apologized to each customer, promising free flowers on their next visit. The flower shop was just across the street from the hospital, so many visitors would stop by to buy flowers. The moment I opened the shop today, I received a large order. The flowers requested were the most expensive, and a high delivery fee was paid. The destination was a specific room in the hospital. I glanced at it, and it turned out to be the one right next to mine. Rushing to package everything, the sky was already dimming. When I reached the hospital room door, two bodyguards stood outside. After a quick check, they let me in. Pushing the door open, I saw the patient on the bed reading. Hearing the door, he looked up at me. The moment our eyes met, I froze, awkward and helpless, just like I had years ago. I hadn’t expected to see Rocky Boyce here. This was our first meeting in five years. But Rocky seemed not to recognize me. He merely glanced at me indifferently, then returned his gaze to his book, turning a page. “Just put the flowers over there.” Seeing me still staring foolishly, he seemed to remember something. “Oh, thank you.” His tone was gentle. “You must be tired.” It wasn’t until I left the room that I realized I had unconsciously bitten my lower lip. A faint, sweet, metallic taste filled my mouth. Just then, someone came to visit Rocky. As we brushed past each other, I heard her cheerfully ask, “How are you doing today? Feeling better?” Rocky finally put down his book and looked up at her, smiling. “No, I still can’t remember.” “Then what about the engagement party in two months?” The hospital room door closed, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying inside. I just thought to myself, What a beautiful girl. She’s even prettier in person than in photos. She must be his fiancée… As I left the hospital, I overheard the nurses at the station discussing it. The patient in room 416, they said, was very wealthy, admitted after a car accident. During the accident, he had hit his head, causing a blood clot that pressed on a nerve, resulting in partial memory loss. He’d forgotten many people and events. After a brief shock, I felt a little lost. So he hadn’t deliberately ignored me… Rocky… he had really forgotten me. I lowered my eyes. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. 5 After that day, the flower shop’s business suddenly boomed. It seemed like ever since my cancer diagnosis, my luck had turned. On the winter solstice, I received several large orders. By the time I finished, it was already dark. Anna was staying at her college dorm and wouldn’t be home tonight. After tidying up and closing the shop, I hesitated for a moment, then decided to buy a cake. My birthday was on the winter solstice. In the past, when we were dating, Rocky used to joke that the first snowfall of the year told him my birthday was near. This year was no different. By the time I reached the cake shop, it was almost closing time. The clerk looked apologetic, saying the last cake had just been sold. I was disappointed but nodded. As I turned to leave, the clerk suddenly answered her phone, then quickly called me back. “Please wait!” I turned, puzzled. Then I heard her say that a customer who had pre-ordered a cake had just called, saying something came up and they couldn’t pick it up. It was a four-inch strawberry chocolate birthday cake. Not too big, not too small, just enough for one person. “You’re really lucky,” the clerk smiled at me. I looked at the neatly packaged cake, feeling that this sudden stroke of luck was a little surreal. Leaving the cake shop, a car passed on the opposite side of the road, its window slowly rising. I unintentionally glanced at it, paused for half a second, then instinctively chased after it. I accidentally bumped into someone on the way and quickly apologized. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…” But my steps didn’t stop. I didn’t even notice the cake was getting squashed. Just then, the traffic light ahead turned red, and the car stopped. After seeing the license plate, I abruptly halted. It wasn’t that number. I was panting heavily. It wasn’t him… The spot where I had bumped into someone suddenly started to hurt. Tears welled up for no reason. Just then, the girl I had bumped into caught up to me, startled. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding!” I instinctively looked down. It was my old wound, reopened. No wonder it hurt so much. The girl insisted on taking me to the hospital. Fearing she’d think I was faking an injury for money, I quickly told her she didn’t need to pay my medical bills. The nearest hospital was the one where Rocky was staying. At the hospital, the doctor, seeing me again, was at her wit’s end. I was still carrying the squashed cake, feeling a little embarrassed. This birthday was turning out to be quite eventful. When I came out after getting my wound re-bandaged, an unexpected figure appeared outside the emergency room. It was Rocky. Our eyes met, I froze for a second, then instinctively looked down to avoid his gaze. I wondered what he was doing downstairs so late. The girl who bumped into me went to pay the bill. I found a chair and sat down, intending to wait for her to return and transfer her the money. Before long, a shadow fell over me. A tall figure sat down beside me. My body stiffened. The hospital lobby was still bustling with people, even at night. But I felt like I was sitting on pins and needles. Until the person beside me suddenly spoke. “The cake…” “Huh?” I quickly looked up. Rocky reached out and pointed at the cake box in my hand. “Why did it collapse?” he asked, his tone almost regretful. “Oh…” I licked my lips, feeling a little flustered. “I bumped into something.” The person beside me was silent for two seconds. Then he spoke again. “Is today your birthday?” “Yes.” I nodded slightly. “Happy birthday.” “Thank you.” He wished me happy birthday, just like he would a stranger. Just then, the girl who had gone to pay the bill returned. I quickly pulled her aside and transferred the medical expenses to her. When I turned back, I saw Rocky’s fiancée, Iris Miller, coming down. “Rocky, do you have any sense of being a patient? What are you wandering around for?” I didn’t dare listen anymore, ready to flee in embarrassment. But then I suddenly heard someone call out— “Sarah.” 6 Time seemed to freeze at that moment. A flurry of thoughts flashed through my mind. I stiffly turned around and looked at Rocky. “This, is this yours?” Rocky’s expression remained calm. He pointed to the payment slip left on the seat and smiled at me. “It has your name on it, Sarah.” I bit my lip, walked over, and picked up the payment slip. I looked down and said, “Thank you for the reminder.” I didn’t dare look at him again. When I left the hospital, the snow outside was falling harder. By the time I got home, my shoe soles were soaked, and my socks clung to my feet. I lowered my head and changed my shoes. Anna’s call came in as I was lighting the candles on the cake. The cake had collapsed, looking a bit ugly, but it was still edible. Anna keenly noticed something was off. “What’s wrong with your voice? Why do you sound so stuffy?” “Nothing,” I sniffled. “I just feel so cold. On the way home earlier… it was really cold.” Anna didn’t ask further, just told me to wear more layers so I wouldn’t catch a cold. After lighting the candles, she put her phone on speaker, and she and her roommates loudly sang “Happy Birthday” to me. “Thank you, everyone,” I smiled. Outside, fireworks suddenly burst into the sky. I took a slice of cake and walked out to watch. Hearing the commotion, Anna asked, puzzled, “It’s not a holiday, and isn’t it illegal to set off fireworks in the city?” I watched the dazzling fireworks filling the sky, digging a large spoonful of cake into my mouth. “Mhm… maybe some rich young master is surprising his sweetheart.” Anna chuckled softly. “That sounds incredibly romantic.”

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1 Inside the equestrian center, the adopted younger brother, Ken, was clinging precariously, almost thrown from the horse, his life hanging by a thread. My birth parents rushed to me, their voices raw with panic. “Go save him! Only you can calm that horse!” I pulled back the thin blanket covering my legs, revealing the heavy cast beneath. “Save him with what?” I asked, my voice disturbingly calm. “With this leg, the one you personally broke?” … A thud. My birth parents, Ashton and Sarah, fell to their knees before me, perfectly synchronized. “Adrian! Please, son! I’m begging you!” Sarah’s voice was choked with tears. “Please save Ken, he’s barely holding on!” “Just save Ken, and your father will grant you anything you ask!” Ashton’s arrogant pride crumbled, his forehead pressed against the ground, his voice trembling. They would go to such lengths for an adopted son, someone who shared no blood with them. To kneel before their own flesh and blood… the irony was a bitter taste in my mouth. In the two years since they’d “found” me, had they ever truly treated me as their son? Ken and I shared the same birthday, but they found me coarse and feared I’d embarrass them, forbidding me from attending the party. I didn’t push it, only asking if they could come home early to share a birthday cake with me. They promised. Instead, they flew Ken to Paris, throwing him a lavish birthday bash beneath the Eiffel Tower. I, meanwhile, waited alone in the sprawling mansion until midnight. The noodles turned to mush, and I never even got a “Happy Birthday” from them. When they returned, seeing my hurt, Sarah even scolded me: “Why are you so insensitive? Can’t you be more considerate of your brother?” “Ken has always been delicate; isn’t it natural for us to dote on him more?” Yes, of course. Because I was their biological son, I was destined to be sacrificed, neglected, and merely a prop for Ken. “Adrian! You’re being absolutely ridiculous!” A sharp, angry female voice cut through the air. It was my fiancée, Cassy. She strode toward me, her gaze imperious, and pointed an accusing finger. “Your aunt and uncle are on their knees! How can you be so heartless? Aren’t you afraid of shortening your own life?” Her beautiful face was etched with disappointment and scorn, as if I’d committed some unforgivable sin. Sarah immediately seized the chance, weeping as she spoke: “Cassy, don’t blame Adrian, it’s all our fault, we wronged him, it’s understandable he’s angry…” Her words sounded like a defense, but in reality, they placed me on an impossible moral high ground. It was as if she were saying: See, we’ve knelt and admitted our wrongs, yet you still refuse to help; you’re simply unfilial and wicked. The surrounding relatives immediately began whispering and pointing. “What kind of child is he? So cold-blooded.” “Exactly, they’re his own parents, after all. There’s no grudge that can’t be forgotten.” “Ken is such a sweet boy, how could he be so cruel…” I watched the unfolding drama with detached eyes, my heart unmoving. “Ah! Help!” In the center of the arena, Ken’s screams grew more desperate, his body swaying precariously, as if he’d be thrown and trampled to death at any second. The sound struck Ashton and Sarah like a heavy hammer. They abandoned all pretense of dignity, frantically bowing their heads to me. “Adrian! Please, son, I beg you! Save Ken!” “I’m bowing to you! Have some mercy!” Cassy was thoroughly enraged by the sight. She stepped forward, gripping my shoulder, and snarled in a commanding tone: “Adrian! I told you to go save him! Did you hear me?” I slowly lifted my eyes, my icy gaze piercing her like a blade. “If you want to save him, go yourself. I won’t.” Cassy recoiled, startled by my stare, and instinctively released her grip. I turned my head, my gaze falling upon the two pathetic figures on the ground, a faint curve playing on my lips. “If you want me to save him, fine.” 2 In an instant, all eyes were fixed on me. Ashton and Sarah jolted their heads up, as if clutching a last straw of hope. “Tell us! Anything! We’ll agree to any condition if you save Ken!” Slowly, I articulated my terms: “First, all shares of the Gosling Corporation will be immediately transferred to my name.” “Second, Ken will be removed from the Gosling family registry.” “From this day forward, you will never acknowledge him again.” My words hung in the air, plunging the entire scene into an oppressive silence. Everyone stared at me as if I were a madman. They hadn’t expected such greed, such utter ruthlessness. The hope on Ashton and Sarah’s faces froze, replaced by shock and disbelief. “You… what did you say?” Sarah’s voice trembled. “Adrian! So, you are after the Gosling family fortune!” Cassy was the first to react, pointing a finger at my nose, her face contorted with scorn and fury. “I never realized until now that you were such a materialistic man!” She seemed to think she had caught me, her voice laced with menace. “Go save Ken right now, and I can pretend none of this happened.” “Otherwise, we’ll break off our engagement immediately!” She truly believed I still cared about that ridiculous engagement. I looked at her and suddenly chuckled. “Alright.” I answered crisply. “We’ll break off the engagement.” The triumphant smirk on Cassy’s face stiffened; she couldn’t believe her ears. “You… what did you say? Adrian, have you been wanting to break up with me for a long time?” My smile widened. “Congratulations, you got it right.” Her face instantly flushed, her body trembling with rage. “Ah—!” Ken, on the horse’s back, let out a final, desperate shriek, his body tilting precariously, on the verge of falling. “Ken!” Sarah cried out hysterically, nearly fainting. Ashton’s psychological defenses completely shattered. He gritted his teeth, forcing out words as if through a vice. “Fine! I agree! I’ll agree to anything!” I smiled, satisfied. From a nearby saddlebag, I produced the pre-prepared share transfer agreement and a declaration of disinheritance. “Words are worthless. Sign them now.” Everyone was shocked anew by my foresight. Seeing my preparations, Sarah pointed at me, too furious to speak. “Adrian! You… you’re utterly heartless!” “Sign it.” I waved the documents and pen in my hand, urging them. “Any later, and I can’t guarantee he’ll still be alive.” The two exchanged glances, seeing the struggle and pain in each other’s eyes. Ultimately, their affection for their adopted son won out. Their hands trembling, they took the documents and pen, and under everyone’s gaze, signed their names. Each stroke seemed to drain them of all their strength. I took the papers, carefully checking the signatures and fingerprints. Once confirmed, I tucked them away with a satisfied air. Three copies: one for me, one for them, and one notarized by a lawyer. Completely foolproof. “Alright, now can we go save him?” Cassy glared at me, seething, as if she wanted to devour me whole. Ashton and Sarah, too, had risen from the ground, their eyes fixed on me with hopeful anticipation. “Of course.” I smiled, placing my hands on the armrests, making a motion to stand. Everyone held their breath. And in that moment, I pulled back the thin blanket covering my legs, revealing the heavily bandaged cast in its entirety to everyone. Then, I offered them an apologetic, innocent smile. “My apologies.” “My leg is injured. I can’t save him.” 3 Time seemed to freeze. Everyone’s expressions were etched into masks of disbelief. “Adrian! You tricked us!” Cassy was the first to react, lunging forward and swiftly snatching the signed agreement from my hand. She glanced down at its contents, a twisted, triumphant smile spreading across her face. “Adrian, you are utterly despicable! For money, you’d abandon your own brother’s life!” She held the document aloft, shouting to everyone: “Look, everyone, this is the true face of the Gosling family’s biological son!” “He never intended to save anyone; he was just blackmailing his own parents!” With that, she crumpled the document savagely and stuffed it into her pocket. Then, she turned, displaying her agile figure, and rushed into the equestrian center without hesitation. “Ken, don’t be scared! I’m coming to save you!” Facing the frenzied horse, she remained fearless, even demonstrating remarkable horsemanship. To protect Ken, her arm was grazed by a hoof, leaving a bloody mark. She successfully reined in the horse, helping the thoroughly shaken Ken down from its back. A classic damsel-saves-distressed-man scenario, and the entire arena erupted in thunderous applause and admiration. “Miss Cassy is amazing!” “So brave! Now that’s a true heroine!” “Compared to a certain heartless man, it’s like night and day!” The applause and praise felt like stinging slaps across my face. Then came a real, solid slap. Ashton stood up, walked to me, and with all his might, delivered a blow to my cheek. It left me dizzy, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of my mouth. “You ungrateful wretch! You viper!” He pointed a trembling finger at my nose, enraged. “How could the Gosling family produce something so utterly heartless!” Sarah rushed over, her eyes burning with venom. “Adrian, I truly regret taking you back! You don’t deserve to be my son!” They all swarmed around Ken and Cassy, fussing over the hero and the pretty boy. Cassy supported Ken, basking in the crowd’s adoration. Ken leaned into her arms, looking utterly pitiful, tears streaking his pale face, a picture of vulnerability. “Brother…” He looked at me, his voice as soft as a feather. “Brother, we’re family, how could you be so cruel, watching me on the brink of death and refusing to help…” He paused, then added, with deliberate implication, “This horse, I remember you always trained it, brother.” “It’s usually so gentle; why would it suddenly act like this today? Brother, were you trying to hurt me on purpose?” 4 His vague, manipulative words instantly ignited everyone’s fury. “My God! So, he was behind it all!” “How devious! He’s a modern-day villain!” “To steal the inheritance, he’d even harm his own brother!” I became the target of all their scorn. Seeing her objective achieved, Cassy dropped her pretense. She embraced Ken, her gaze triumphant, and announced loudly: “Everyone, I officially announce today that I am breaking off my engagement with Adrian!” “A man as venomous and materialistic as him is unworthy to be my husband, Cassy Stratt, and certainly unworthy to be a Gosling!” She turned to Ashton and Sarah, speaking with deep affection: “Ashton, Sarah, Ken and I are truly in love.” “Before, due to the engagement, we had to keep our feelings hidden. Now, I hope you can bless our union!” Ken bashfully lowered his head, his cheeks flushed, tacitly agreeing to everything. What a performance of undying love. Ashton and Sarah, after a brief moment of shock, immediately concurred. “Yes! Yes! Cassy, we bless you both!” Sarah, her voice brimming with emotion, took Cassy’s hand. “It’s Ken’s blessing to be with you!” Ashton looked at me with an expression of utter disappointment. “Adrian, you have disappointed us beyond measure! You conspired against us, you tried to harm your brother; you don’t deserve the Gosling name!” “From today on, I, Ashton Gosling, have no son named Adrian! Get out of this house!” They spoke in unison, eager to cast me out and make room for the loving couple. The surrounding guests also cheered them on. I watched the entire charade with cold detachment, waiting until their performance concluded before slowly smiling. “What’s the rush? The one who should be leaving the Gosling family isn’t me, it’s Ken!” My voice was soft, yet it instantly silenced the noisy scene. I let out a whistle, and the “mad” horse obediently walked towards me. Everyone gasped and recoiled several steps. Black Beauty affectionately nudged my palm with its head, emitting a contented rumble. I stroked its glossy black mane and spoke leisurely. “Doesn’t anyone find it strange?” “Why did this horse, which was supposedly ‘frenzied,’ immediately become so docile after Ken was rescued?” “And my dear brother, after being dragged around by a wild horse for so long, didn’t even get a scratch.” “Could it be… that you, too, brother, possess hidden talents and are a horse whisperer?” I fixed my gaze on Cassy’s rigid face. “Cassy, you clearly had the ability to subdue the horse immediately. Why did you wait until my parents signed the agreement before intervening?” “And why did you insist on forcing a man with a broken leg to rescue someone?” My string of rhetorical questions were like pebbles thrown into a calm lake, stirring ripples. The people present weren’t fools; their expressions began to shift to curiosity and suspicion. Ken and Cassy’s faces instantly turned ashen. “You, what nonsense are you spouting!” Cassy shouted, her voice laced with fear. “Nonsense?” I scoffed, pulling out my phone from my pocket. “This horse is my darling, my treasured companion since it was a foal. So, I specifically installed a 24-hour surveillance camera in its stable.” I pressed play, pointing the screen towards the crowd. A clear video appeared before everyone.

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