Chapter 5
“You used her,” I said.
My voice came out flat.
Dana touched the corner of my eye with one finger.
“She can’t compare to you.”
“You don’t even like her.”
“I won’t let her appear in front of you again.”
I let out a short laugh.
So that was it.
Dana knew from the start that my sweetness was fake.
So she had given me exactly what I wanted to see.
A girl in a situation similar to the one I had once been in. A potential replacement. A reason for me to believe I had become old news. A perfect opening for escape.
She had sat back and watched me perform.
Watched me trust the illusion.
Waited for the moment I finally ran, just so she could drag me back and prove that no matter what I did, I would never leave her.
Bianca had played her role.
Now Dana could discard her without a second thought.
Dana pressed a kiss to the outer corner of my eye.
“Did it hurt,” she asked softly, “when I left you at the gala last night?”
I laughed coldly.
“What do you think?”
“You weren’t hurt,” she said. “You were happy.”
Then her hand tightened painfully around my jaw.
“But I was hurt, Yuanyuan. I wanted you to be hurt because I left. I wanted you to be miserable because of me.”
I looked at her reddened eyes and asked, very quietly, “Are you sure what you feel is love?”
Her smile deepened.
“Of course it is. I love you.”
I held her gaze.
“Is there really not even a little hate inside that love?”
Dana looked straight at me, unblinking.
“And in your hatred for me, is there truly not even a little love?”
I went still.
Then I smiled.
“No.”
She brushed the hair back from my face.
“Then my answer is the same,” she said.
Silence filled the room.
Sunlight spilled through the dirty window. Somewhere outside, birds were singing.
I looked away and said, “You knew all my obedience was fake.”
“Yes.”
“And you still played along?”
“Yes.”
“And afterward, you can still say you love me?”
Dana smiled faintly.
“If one day it became real,” she said, “I could die without regret.”
I shook my head.
That wasn’t love.
It was obsession.
Possession.
A wound she had turned into faith.
Maybe there was no real difference to her.
Maybe there never would be.
That night, back at the villa, Dana went into the bathroom to shower.
I sat on the edge of the bed in silk sleepwear and called for the system.
It answered with unusual hesitation.
“I’m sorry, host. I didn’t expect the mission to become this difficult.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “If not for you, I would have died in the sea for real the first time.”
The system fell quiet.
A few minutes later, it returned.
“I requested special authorization from above. I checked the location of your documents. Your ID and passport are in the safe inside the cabinet to the left of her bookshelf. The password is your birthday.”
I sat up at once.
Then something appeared in my hand.
A small packet of pale powder.
Just like the poison it had given me in the past.
Except this time the system said, “It’s a sedative. It won’t kill her. If you can get her to drink it and get on a plane, I can help hide you so she’ll never find you again.”
My whole body went cold, then hot.
I stood so quickly the bed creaked beneath me.
This was it.
This was the real chance.
I hurried to the kitchen, heated milk, and dissolved the powder into it.
When Dana came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel around her waist, I was already waiting with the glass in my hands and a smile on my face.
Her expression didn’t change.
She sat beside me.
I offered her the milk.
“It helps you sleep.”
Dana’s lips curved faintly.
“Yuanyuan.”
I paused for just a second, then understood.
She wanted a reward first.
So I leaned in and kissed her.
Just like the times in earlier lives when I’d smiled and coaxed her into drinking poison.
Dana pressed one hand to the back of my head and deepened the kiss.
Then she took the glass and drank every drop.
Her voice turned low and rough.
“Yuanyuan…”
She thought I had poisoned her again.
I could tell.
But there was no poison this time.
Only sleep.
When her eyes finally closed, I stood immediately.
I changed clothes, went to her study, found the safe, keyed in my birthday, and took everything I needed.
ID. Passport. Bank cards I wouldn’t use. A little cash.
Then I booked the first possible international flight.
The system kept telling me to move faster.
No one stopped me on the way out.
No one blocked the gate.
The system said it had been granted temporary privileges because the mission difficulty had far exceeded normal parameters.
Those privileges would only last until my plane took off.
Even after I boarded, I still couldn’t breathe properly.
Only when the plane was finally in the air did the system say, “Congratulations, host. I’ll erase any trace she follows.”
I nearly laughed from relief.
“You had this kind of ability and didn’t tell me before?”
“It was approved only because of repeated failure and prolonged emotional strain.”
I leaned back in my seat, exhausted.
Once I landed on the other side of the world, I still couldn’t fully relax.
Dana’s shadow was inside me now.
Every stranger on the street made me wonder if she had somehow found me again.
Every black car made my pulse jump.
The system reassured me again and again.
“She won’t find you. Every time she gets close, we’ll erase the trail.”
Eventually, I saw a news photo of Dana online.
She stood backstage at some corporate event, thinner than before, exhaustion under her eyes, people bustling around her while she stared somewhere beyond the camera with the look of a woman who had lost something she could no longer name.
I remembered Evan.
“Did she do anything worse to him?”
The system answered, “No. He was only beaten once.”
I let out a breath.
That, at least, counted as mercy in Dana’s world.
I closed the article and walked down to the beach.
Sunlight spilled over the water.
For the first time, I let myself lie back in a chair and feel it.
I had done it.
Yes, the system had intervened at the end.
Yes, it had given me privileges I hadn’t earned alone.
But the mission was complete.
I was free.
The reward money was enough for me to live well, maybe extravagantly, for the rest of my life.
Over the next few days, I recovered faster than I expected.
The system kept an eye on Dana remotely, reporting back to me when I wanted to know and staying quiet when I didn’t.
It told me she stopped sleeping.
That she gripped the silk nightdress I’d left behind the night I escaped until the fabric wrinkled in her fists.
That she burned through connection after connection trying to locate me and found nothing every time.
That eventually she understood what had happened.
I was gone.
Truly gone.
And this time, no matter how badly she wanted it, she would never drag me back again.
That knowledge filled me with such dizzy relief that I almost felt drunk on air.
Sometimes I sat on the beach and watched beautiful women walk past in the sun.
Sometimes I drank soda and listened to the waves.
Sometimes I did absolutely nothing except enjoy the fact that every second belonged to me.
At last, after four lives, I had my freedom.
Dana Cenyue and I would never see each other again.
Not in life.
Not in death.