The Villain's Sister - Chapter 115

“Wow….”

Blue City was damn beautiful.

Maybe it was a matter of latitude and longitude, but even the color of the sea was different from Mist Island’s.

I kicked off my shoes in the middle of the white sand, tossed my bag aside, and ran toward the sea.

The wind snatched my hat away, but I didn’t care.

“Ugh!”

It was winter, and the seawater was so cold that the moment my feet sank in, the chill shot up my spine and made the hair on my head stand on end.

The sparkling ripples reflecting the sunlight dazzled my eyes.

The whooshing sound of waves rolling in made my chest itch just listening to it.

I walked along the boundary of the wet sand.

Soft grains crumbled beneath my toes.

The winter wind made my heart feel wide open, so even though I wasn’t in the mountains, I tried shouting anyway.

“Long live Jean Anderson—!”

I left all the suffocating things behind.

To do that, I threw everything away.

Family, friends, my name.

I’m not ashamed of running away.

A fierce confidence welled up in me, the kind that says I’ll live this new life well.

As if it were a good sign, I even picked up a perfectly intact seashell from the ground.

Thinking it might become a lucky charm, I wiped it clean with a tissue and tucked it into my bag.

“Alright. Then let’s go look for a job now.”

I got up, recalling the help-wanted sign I’d seen on the way.

***

Johan toyed with the bracelet around his wrist with his fingertips.

Even though it was just a common bracelet made from purple string, it once gave him the joy of gaining the whole world.

Because Giselle made it, and Giselle gave it to him.

That was why he let his guard down.

“Ha….”

The man named Johan was absurdly naïve.

He wanted to excuse it by saying that love, confessions, everything was his first time and he was clumsy at it, but with Giselle gone, it was nothing but an excuse.

― I don’t want to drag anyone else into my life. I’m sorry.

She’d already been tangled up in his life long ago, yet she ran away alone. How cowardly.

Stress made the corner of his eye twitch.

He didn’t know when he’d last slept. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.

‘Where is she?’

Is she really hiding properly? She wasn’t dragged off by another organization, was she?

He hoped she hadn’t run into danger and gotten herself into trouble.

No, rather, he hoped she had gotten into trouble.

As punishment for abandoning him.

That her luggage was heavy and she struggled up the stairs.

That she was so tense worrying about getting her money stolen that she lost the truly important things, like her train ticket or bus pass.

That she had no one to talk to all day and felt lonely….

Instead of being hurt, that she felt empty because he wasn’t there.

And if her heart ached on top of that, even better.

“There really is no bigger idiot.”

If someone other than Giselle had betrayed him, he would’ve hunted them down and slit their throat on the spot.

Johan let his shoulders slump weakly.

The rough texture unique to the string under his fingertips felt like sandpaper scraping at his worn-down heart.

He tore the bracelet off his wrist.

Every time the purple string came into view, his nerves burned raw.

Thud.

He tossed the bracelet onto the glass table and stood, intending to head back out into the city.

But he couldn’t go anywhere. Every moment felt like his nerves were about to burn to ash….

“Damn it!”

After kicking the sofa, Johan put the bracelet back on his wrist.

It was something she gave him.

Something Giselle made with her own hands and gave to him.

No matter how much it hurt, there was no way he could tear a gift like that off his body.

Even if his nerves dried up and died, he wanted to keep wearing it.

He resented her and hated her so much he felt like he could kill her, yet beyond that, a suffocating longing consumed him.

Johan steadied his ragged breathing.

He missed Giselle.

If he could just check her face and see that she was doing well, he felt like he could breathe again.

He missed her voice.

He missed her long, slender fingers.

He missed her blue eyes.

Every moment was desperate.

Her existence, the person that was her….

As he grimaced at the tearing pain in his heart, the ability Giselle possessed, dormant within Johan, stirred.

‘Why is this….’

For an instant, his vision blurred. A scene from a movie he’d seen in Giselle’s inner world appeared.

A funeral under drizzling rain.

The moment he pressed his fingers to his head, the dizziness and the vision vanished like a lie.

Maybe not eating or sleeping had finally driven him insane.

Thinking it was nothing serious, Johan moved outside.

“Hey. You’re here.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Nothing. Even Raphael doesn’t know.”

Black Pistols answered in a voice thick with exhaustion.

He’d heard the man had something going on, but he didn’t know what it was.

He had neither the will nor the energy to care.

“No guesses at all?”

“None. Have you eaten? Get some sleep before you head out. You look like a corpse that just crawled out of a grave.”

He ignored Black Pistols’ words.

“I made some food for you. You haven’t touched it at all. You need strength if you’re going to keep looking for her. You last slept three days ago. You’ll collapse at this rate, idiot.”

“Leave it. How far did you search?”

“Raphael searched the entire east side of Mist Island. I checked the taxi network too.”

“There’s nothing on buses or trains either.”

There were no traces.

None anywhere, enough to drive him mad.

Was she still somewhere on Mist Island?

‘What went wrong?’

Was it begging her to love him?

Forcing his feelings on her and burdening her?

Treating her roughly in the inner world?

He didn’t know.

Everything he’d said and done so far felt like a mistake.

“Wear a mask. You stand out too much right now.”

Without answering, Johan moved on.

Since Raphael searched the east, he planned to search the south.

It was the moment he stepped out of the alley.

Bang!

A bullet flying in from somewhere was blocked by Johan’s mana and dropped uselessly to the ground.

“Mr. Raphael, why are you stopping me! I’m going to kill that bastard! I can do it!”

“Liam. Lower the gun.”

“If that bastard had protected Deva properly, she wouldn’t have been caught by Red Shadow and disappeared!”

“It’s better to track Deva than waste time killing him.”

“Mr. Raphael!”

It hadn’t even been a week since he escaped the transport vehicle, yet Raphael was driving around perfectly fine.

Did he know who they were?

Tristan Lindbergh wasn’t the kind of person who’d casually leak secrets to others.

“You there. You really are looking for Giselle, right?”

When Johan nodded slightly, Liam ground his teeth.

“You find anything?”

“No.”

“Insolent bastard.”

Liam disengaged the safety again.

“Liam. If you have energy to wrestle with him, use it to ask around more.”

Raphael stepped in and physically took the gun away.

Raphael sized Johan up like he was pricing meat.

When he saw eyes that resembled Giselle’s, his throat went dry.

“If you find Giselle, come to me. I’m her ‘older brother.’”

Raphael left without waiting for an answer.

Liam glared at Johan like he wanted to kill him right up until the moment the car drove off.

***

“Do you have any experience working at a restaurant?”

“I don’t have experience, but I’m confident I can do well.”

The owner thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “We’re short-handed in the afternoon. Can you work from four to ten p.m.?”

“Yes. That works!”

“The hourly pay is this much.”

The amount the owner wrote on the notepad was below Mist Island’s average hourly wage.

But Blue City was known for low labor costs compared to its living expenses.

I’d already braced myself, so I nodded.

For someone like me with no proper experience, even that was more than enough.

“My name’s Laura.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Laura.”

I found a job and signed a lease in the blink of an eye.

It was a tiny one-room place tucked into a corner of a three-story building.

By the time I ordered a mattress and bedding to sleep on the floor and got back, it was almost seven in the evening.

When I crawled under the hotel’s white blanket, a groan slipped out on its own.

“Ughhh.”

My body felt unbearably heavy with exhaustion, but I didn’t hate it.

I was looking forward to this new beginning.

Even though it was a fake identity, I imagined the life I’d live as Jean Anderson.

Working nonstop five days a week, paying rent and buying food with the money I earned myself.

Saving up little by little to buy a small used car, then going for night drives to clear my head.

In that life, I wouldn’t feel guilty about eating, wearing clothes, or sleeping.

Even if it was poor, it wouldn’t be a life I feared or felt ashamed of.

“Not bad.”

Even if some days I regretted things, or cried because I missed Maria, the vanished Oscar, and Raphael I’d left behind, Jean Anderson’s life would keep moving forward.

‘Making new friends here, falling in love properly….’

I should forget Johan.

Once I forgot him, Johan would forget me too.

When I thought about him not wanting me anymore, a dull ache spread through my heart.

‘Is forgetting even possible?’

It was a pointless worry. Not something worth dwelling on.

I soothed myself and pulled the blanket up over my head.

The fatigue had piled up, and I fell asleep as if I’d passed out.