Chapter 2
The police pulled me away from her body and put me in the back of a patrol car.
On the drive to the hospital morgue, I used Serena’s phone to call Ethan over and over again.
At first, the calls rang unanswered.
Then his phone shut off entirely.
Serena had told me today was Vivian’s birthday. Ethan would stay by that woman’s side the whole time. Nobody could drag him away from the female lead on her special day.
I wiped my tears, lowered the phone, and followed the police through the formalities.
At the morgue, one officer asked me, “What was your relationship to the deceased?”
“She was my best friend.”
“Contact her family.”
“She doesn’t have one,” I said.
At least, not in this world.
Her biological parents were overseas and hadn’t cared about her in years.
As for Ethan, he had never treated her as anything more than a convenient body to warm his bed.
Serena’s phone automatically recorded calls. I played our final conversation for the police.
“She left instructions,” I said. “I’m handling everything.”
That was enough.
I signed the forms. Closed out her identity. Claimed her body. Arranged the funeral home.
When the mortician was finished, I sat beside her for a full day and night.
She wore the newest dress from Rotta House.
Her makeup was flawless.
She looked so beautiful and still that if I let my eyes blur, I could almost pretend she was sleeping.
But her skin was cold.
Too cold.
I personally sent her into the cremation chamber.
Through the narrow glass, I watched the flames consume her until all that was left was a white porcelain urn with blue flowers painted on the side.
That was the moment my tears came again.
“Serena,” I whispered to the urn in my arms, “how did you become this light?”
Later, at the riverbank, I scattered her ashes into the water exactly the way she had asked.
The current seized them all at once.
Just like that, every trace of her vanished.
I held the empty urn and stared at the river for a long time.
“Wait for me,” I murmured. “I’ll be there soon.”
When I finally turned back toward the city, Serena’s phone vibrated in my bag.
A new message.
Come to my place tonight.
I nearly laughed.
Even now, Ethan still thought Serena would come running the moment he called.
To him, she had always been something to summon.
A release valve. A warm body. A woman who would always wait.
He could ignore her for days, but she was supposed to stay on standby every hour of the day.
Why?
Just because she loved him?
Did that automatically make her the lesser one?
I didn’t answer.
I turned Serena’s phone off.
He had missed his chance to hear her voice one last time.
Now he could miss it forever.
I stayed by the river with her for another day and only went back after dark.
At the Hillcrest estate, Ethan’s counterpart in my story—my adoptive brother, Adrian—was there in the living room with Vivian.
I hadn’t slept properly in days.
My eyes were bloodshot. My hair was a mess. I looked like a ghost.
Vivian grabbed my hand the second she saw me.
“Candy, where have you been? Adrian and I were so worried.”
I shook her off and headed for the stairs.
Adrian caught my arm.
“Vivian was worried about you. Since when did you become this rude?”
I didn’t even look at him.
At that moment, there was no one in the house I wanted to speak to.
Not one of them.
I went upstairs to my room and shut the door.
Most of my things had already been packed, thrown out, or quietly sorted away earlier in the week.
Now the room looked almost empty.
Good.
Empty was good.
Empty meant I wouldn’t leave much behind.
A moment later, Adrian came in after me.
“Candy, what’s wrong with you? Where have you been? Why do you look like this?”
I didn’t want to explain.
Didn’t want to reopen the wound and let him inspect it.
“I went on a trip,” I said.
His brows tightened.
“With your friend again? Stay away from Serena. Every time you’re with her, you come back looking like a disaster.”
The second he said her name, the emotions I’d been crushing down rose up all over again.
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t talk about her.”
He paused, surprised.
Maybe it was the first time he had ever heard me use that tone with him.
Then he looked more closely at me.
“These past few days, Mom and Dad have been worried. You disappearing overnight damages your reputation too.”
I let out a quiet laugh.
Then, before I could stop myself, I asked, “What about you? Were you worried?”
He went still.
Then he smiled the way he always did when he wanted distance without looking cruel.
“As long as you carry our family name, of course I worry. I’m your brother.”
Brother.
The word hit something raw in me.
Because I knew I would be gone soon.
And because the original girl whose place I had taken had spent eighteen years loving a man who only ever called her sister when it was convenient.
So I asked one more question.
“If one day I disappeared forever,” I said, “if I left this family and left you, and you searched the whole world but could never find me… what would you do?”
He frowned immediately.
“What kind of question is that?”
When I didn’t answer, he caught my wrist and tried to press the issue.
Before he could, a crash sounded downstairs, followed by Vivian’s startled cry.
Adrian’s face changed instantly.
He released me at once and turned for the door.
Watching him rush away, I felt something in me go quiet and cold.
I finally understood a little more of what Serena had meant on the phone that night.
No matter when or where, men like Ethan and Adrian always had the same gaze.
If Vivian needed them, nothing else in the world existed.
I was so tired.
Bone-tired. Heart-tired. Soul-tired.
The system had forced me to maintain the original story’s obsessive, unstable, lovesick persona for three years.
In those three years, I had tasted everything bitter in the human heart.
But not once had I tasted sweetness.
I had buried my best friend.
Now it was time to leave too.
I picked up the fruit knife from my desk and held it against the left side of my chest.
I tried once.
Twice.
Then lowered it.
Adrian hated me enough already.
If I died in his house, he’d probably only think it unlucky.
He had always said I was unlucky.
That I didn’t deserve the family name.
That my birth itself was bad luck because I had been abandoned by my biological parents.
But abandonment had never been my fault.
No child chose how they entered the world.
No child chose who discarded them.
No child chose to be written into a story that wasn’t theirs.
Tears slipped down my face before I even realized I was crying.
I wiped them away and collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to sleep, too empty to keep standing.
That night, the system finally called me in my dreams.
“Candy,” it said. “You’ve accumulated enough points. The return channel is ready. Tomorrow is your final deadline. Are you prepared?”
In the darkness of that half-dream, I nodded hard.
“Yes.”
My throat tightened.
“I want to go home.”
And for the first time in a very long while, I slept peacefully.