Day – Hours A

shaking fingers and unshed tears clouding her vision: "I know what you did." She never received a reply. Not even a read receipt. Her phone, still glowing dimly with the unopened messag

d had collapsed in one night. Her boyfriend's betrayal with her own flesh and blood. The lies. The humiliation. The sickening, silent betray

rney. Akiko's body-limp, broken, smeared with glass and red-was wheeled through the ER as nurses shouted orders over the storm's echo. Her wall

expression she wore-tight-jawed and half-smiling in unconsciousness-looked accidental. She had gone down fighting. Teeth clenched, heart shredded, resolve like iron. Somewhere inside tha

sband followed quietly, but his silence was laced with dread. The doctor who approached them had that practiced look of restrained sympathy, but it wasn't enough to hide the truth. "She was found unresponsive. There's significant trauma. She hasn't regained consciousne

ticed her, she rushed over and wrapped her in an embrace, whispering, "Thank God you're here. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you, too." Mika blinked, nodded, and managed a theatrical sniffle. Of course, she cried, she thought. She always cried too easily. But insid

She grabbed his hands, eyes filled with misplaced warmth. "Renji, thank God you're here. You've always been like a son to us." Mika watched, smug behind her mask. No one suspected a thing. Not about the nights she spent in his bed. Not about the message Akiko had sent her just hours before the crash. "I know what you did." Mika ne

*

an, Pre

umb and uncooperative. When she tried to stand, her knees buckled under the weight-not just of the body, but of everything it had endured. Still, she rose. Shuffling forward, every step a nego

wilted roses, and hair blacker than a raven's wing. But the eyes... they weren't hers. They were haunted. Older. Deeper. Eyes that had seen seduction turn to su

ow if it was true. But her body remembered things her mind did not. When she moved her fingers, they curled into gestures of obedience. When she spoke, the words were old, dusted with the dialect of a vanished empire. Even her heartbeat felt misplaced, as if it marched to a

?" one voice whispered,

. She should'

er soul that returne

King-and lived. Tha

ered, voice dripping with disdain. Not with breath in her lungs and that face still untouched. He discards them, shames them, ruins them, erases them. But her? The spea

syllable of gossip clawed at her ears like a verdict. She wasn't wanted here. She wasn't even feared. She was resented. The maid who entered later to clear her un

ver have awake

orld-and buried it in this beautiful corpse like a blade slipped between ribs. Who? Why? Was it vengeance? A curse? A test? She didn't know. But she intended to find out. She closed her eyes, not to

arm ministers and silence maids-lingered like a blade's edge, ghosting her reflection in the moonlit mirror. She hadn't simply returned from the brink; she had defied something deeper, darker-somethin

ved... when she w

and punishment, had she done to earn t