6
Damian took me back to his villa and locked me away. He gave me the finest food, the softest clothes, but he forbade me from setting foot outside the main gate.
Every night, he would hold me tightly as we slept, as if that was the only he
stomach. “I’ll raise this child as my own,” he’d whisper. “Just stay, Nina. Plot Could find any peace. He would rest his hand on my
,י
stay by my side. Never leave me again.”
I ignored his pleas, treating his words as if they were wind. The System told me it
A month. I could endure it.
Every day, Damian would bring me
thinking it would win me over.
take a month to repair the world’s barrier.
a
bouquet
of sunflowers. I had once told him they
were my favorite flower. He remembered,
I never even glanced at them.
“You know why I like sunflowers, Damian?” I asked one day, my voice dripping with scorn. “It’s because Jean and I first met in a field of them. Are you trying to help me commemorate my love for him?”
His face contorted in a mask of rage. He swept the vase off the table, the sunflowers.ng across the floor. That day, he dest-
royed nearly everything in the living room. I sat calmly in the courtyard, and he stood on the other side of the glass door, watching
me in silence, all through the night.
I was exhausted, trapped in his house, praying for the day my child ever saw to be anyone other than his father.
I could go
home. I caressed
my growing belly. I didn’t want the first man
Damian, however, was growing more and more erratic. He tightened his watch over me until I was under his supervision every sec-
waist from behind and murmur into my ond of every day. He would often wrap his arms around
my
hair.
“I’ll even take your fake love. Nina, can’t you just keep pretending? Please? I only want you. I only need
“I loved you long ago,” he confessed, his voice ragged. “But I needed time to be sure of your love. H when I couldn’t live without you? Why can’t you just forgive me once?”
you.”
could you abandon me right
I couldn’t help but laugh, a cold, bitter sound. “Why should I forgive you, Damian? To be loved by you is the cruelest fate in the world. You push people away, you torture them, and then you expect them to come back and hold you even tighter. But you’ve given noth- ing, Damian. Absolutely nothing. Why do you deserve anything? People like you don’t deserve to be loved. Every second I spent with you was an act. Every time I said ‘I love you,‘ I felt sick to my stomach. You, Damian Koepp, deserve to die alone. No one will ever
truly love you!”
な
He didn’t get angry. In fact, he seemed pleased that I was saying so much to him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, a desperate hope in his eyes. “As long as I love you, that’s enough. You will stay with me forever. That’s enough. I only need you.”
I felt a wave of nausea and tried to push him away. But just then, a soft pop sounded from the lawn outside.
Jean. He was standing there.
My heart leaped. I tried to shove Damian away, to run to Jean, but Damian’s arms clamped around me like a vice.
“Nina, let’s go home,” Jean called out.
“Who the hell do you think you are,” Damian snarled, his voice a low growl, “trying to take what’s mine?” He ordered his guards to hold me back, his dangerous gaze fixed on Jean. I knew with chilling certainty that this time, Damian truly intended to kill him.
Jean, run!” I screamed.
Chapter 2
“Jean, run!” I screamed.
Damian lunged, his fist connecting with Jean’s jaw. “If I kill you,” he spat, “Nina will finally stop thinking about you.”
But Jean was no pushover. He fought back, and soon the two of them were locked in a brutal exchange.
“She suffered so much because of you!” Jean roared.
I watched in a panic, held fast by the guards, unable to move.
And then, finally, the System’s voice returned.
[World barrier fortified. Transporting Nina and Jean back to the prime reality now.]
I saw Jean, mid–punch, vanish into thin air. A moment later, I felt a weightless sensation wash over me.
Damian must have sensed it. He spun around, lunging for me, his arms closing around empty air as I began to fade.
His voice cracked, thick with desperation and terror. “Please, don’t leave me. You’re all I have. You’re all I have left.”
07:45
I shook my head. “No, Damian,” I said, my voice the last thing he would ever hear from me. “You were wrong. From the very beginn- ing, you had nothing at all. I never loved you.”
The System pulled me away. Damian collapsed to his knees, clutching at the empty space where I had been, a hollow, broken man.
I reappeared in our home, in our world. Jean was there. We looked at each other and smiled.
From now on, nothing and no one would ever stand in the way of our happiness.
Epilogue (Damian’s Perspective)
The first time Nina saw me, she told me she loved me.
I scoffed. In my world, there was no such thing as pure, unconditional love. She was just another pawn sent by one of my business
rivals.
Fine. If she wanted to play, I would play along.
She cared for me with a devotion that defied logic. It didn’t matter how I humiliated her, she never faltered. I mentioned I liked a certain soup, and she brought it to me every day, rain or shine. I was afraid of thunderstorms, and she would sit with me, covering my ears with her hands.
Her voice was so gentle back then. “Damian,” she’d said, “all the love you’ve been missing, I’ll give it all to you.”
That was the first time I thought that maybe, just maybe, Nina was different. Her world seemed to revolve around me. She told me it was her life’s mission to love me.
I knew she was a Tasker, that she couldn’t truly die. So I began to test her, again and again.
I couldn’t accept a shallow affection. I needed a love that was violent and absolute, a love that would shatter itself for me.
I used Sarah to test her. I lavished Sarah with affection, used her to humiliate Nina time and time again. But no matter what I did, Nina always came back to me. She would always look at me with those soft, gentle eyes and tell me that she loved me.
I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I could believe in her love.
So, on the one–hundredth time, I decided to try. To accept her.
I told her we would get married. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining a future together. A life with someone who truly loved me… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
But Nina just smiled that soft smile and walked into that room without a moment’s hesitation.
A sudden panic gripped me. When I saw her fall, that panic became a screaming terror in my soul.
A sudden panic gripped me. When I saw her fall, that panic became a screaming terror in my soul.
I called her name, over and over, but this time was different. This time, Nina didn’t wake up.
She was dead.
She had left me.
My world shattered.
I became a madman, refusing to accept the truth. I took my revenge on everyone who had ever hurt her, thinking it would bring her
back. My emotional instability became so extreme that it attracted a thing called a System.
It told me the truth.
It was all a lie. Nina had never loved me.
She came to my world only to save him. Her true love.
Ost in t
I broke. The person I thought loved me world was actually the person who hated me most.
I demanded the System bring her back. And it did.
he returned.
I was ecstatic and tormented all at once. I locked her away, held her close, tried to win her over with everything I had.
It’s fine, I told myself. It doesn’t matter if Nina doesn’t love me. As long as I love her, that’s enough.
But she still left. Right in front of my eyes, she disappeared, reaching for the man she truly loved.
My world became a barren wasteland once more.
I became a walking corpse. I abandoned everything and locked myself away in Nina’s small apartment, the one she’d lived in when she was mine.
Nina.
I called her name every day.
But the System never came back. And Nina never came back.
I started to lose my grip, the line between reality and nightmare blurring into nothing.
So I drowned myself in alcohol. I felt the warm blood trickle from my wrist, down my arm.
Nina, I thought, a strange calm settling over me. It’s alright. I’m coming to see you.
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