Three years after my death, Chris, the man I’d driven away, finally returned to Auden City. Isabelle was still by his side. He held her umbrella, carried her handbag, his devotion evident in every small gesture. The story’s ending remained unchanged: the hero and heroine lived happily ever after. The only one who met a tragic end was me, the villainess who had dared to covet the hero. They were here to visit his mother’s grave, and I was buried just a short distance behind hers. I floated nearby, watching them. Everyone always said they were a perfect match. When the incense had burned to ash, Chris made an excuse and walked away from Isabelle. He came to my tombstone and stood there in silence for a long, long time. So long that I thought he was trying to choose the right words to curse me with. Instead, Chris let out a soft laugh. His fingers traced the outline of my photograph as he whispered, “Nora, why haven’t you come to my dreams yet?” Because I’m not your Isabelle, I thought. My dreams could never reach your distant shores. … 1 Before I died, Chris had cut all ties with me and fled the country, desperate to stop me from hurting Isabelle. On my deathbed, I clung to a small box meant for him, my life sustained by a single, stubborn breath. I waited for him, but he never came. All I got was a single, relayed message. “If she’s dead,” he had said, “call the funeral home, not me.” After the call ended, my mother collapsed onto my bed, sobbing like a child who had lost everything. My last thread of hope snapped, and I died with a heart full of bitterness. Perhaps that bitterness was strong enough to anchor me here, waiting for him. I watched as my mother pulled the weeds from my grave, again and again, as three years slipped by. My obsession began to fade with the silvering of her hair. Just as I felt my form growing transparent, my earthly attachment dissolving, Chris returned. He had become gentler, more considerate, taking meticulous care of Isabelle. Without my interference, their love story was even more perfect. I laughed at myself. Even if I wanted to, I could no longer do anything to be hated. The smoke from the incense twisted in the wind. I just watched them, my ghostly form still. When they lit the incense for his mother, I crouched nearby, thinking he must have forgotten me completely by now. But after the incense burned out, he lied to Isabelle. As she walked down the mountain path, he came to my grave, my own spectral eyes wide with disbelief. He stared at my headstone for an eternity. I was sure he was deciding on the perfect insult. Slut? Bitch? The wind picked up. He gave that soft, low laugh again, his hand resting on the cold stone. “Nora, why haven’t you come to my dreams yet?” His voice was so quiet, so gentle, I almost believed that ghosts could dream. Chris pulled a wrinkled caramel chew from his pocket and bent down to place it before my grave. Then he turned and left. I stared at the candy. But Chris, I thought, I don’t like sweets anymore. I reached out to brush it away, but my hand passed straight through it. I shook my head with a sad smile and sat down on the hillside. The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and violet. I used to love watching sunsets. But now, my eyes were fixed on that single piece of candy. I thought a ghost’s heart couldn’t ache. But Nora’s could. I’m done, I decided. I’m done with the bitterness. I’m done with Chris. I would no longer hide from my fate. I had one last thing to do, and then I would move on, find my peace, and be reborn. This life was over. I floated down the mountain and settled into Chris’s car. Isabelle was in the back seat, so the passenger seat was empty. I sat there, finally able to look at him without hiding. As the story’s hero, he was, of course, devastatingly handsome. I couldn’t resist reaching out a translucent hand to trace the lines of his brow. There was a faint scar above his eyebrow—a mark left from when a seventeen-year-old Chris defied the will of the world to save a seventeen-year-old Nora. It was the mark I had once believed was proof of his undying love for me. My hand fell. I sat up straight. Chris drove with intense focus. The car was silent. I watched his hands on the steering wheel. As he turned, the cuff of his expensive suit slid back, revealing a sliver of his wrist. I froze. Tied around it was a cheap, simple red string bracelet. The one I had gotten for him, a token of safety and love. Once, he’d worn it proudly. Now, he had to keep it hidden. I couldn’t help but look at his face, at his thin lips. My mother used to say that men with thin lips were the most heartless. A low, bitter laugh escaped me, and I felt the phantom sting of tears. Even as a ghost, I was still so pathetic. The memories I had spent five years suppressing came rushing back in a tidal wave the moment I saw him again. It wasn’t time that had trapped me here. It was me, refusing to leave the memories of a younger Chris, a Chris who hadn’t yet met Isabelle, a Chris who hadn’t yet forgotten me. The city lights blurred past as the Maybach sped forward, but my thoughts were rewinding, racing back against the wind. Back to a time before Isabelle, when Chris still remembered me. 2 Once, Chris and I were known as the Twin Stars of Auden’s elite. One was a fiercely bright flame, the other a cold, isolated storm. We were complete opposites, yet we were childhood sweethearts. When I was five, I went with my father to visit the Cole family. I wandered off and found myself in a small, dusty attic. There, huddled in a corner, was Chris, covered in bruises. He snarled at me like a cornered animal, telling me to get out. Instead, I crouched in front of him, showed him my canines in a fierce grin, and grabbed his hand. “I’m getting you out of here,” I declared. I pulled him stumbling out of that dark little room and all the way back to my house. From that day on, we were inseparable. At school, I was always ranked first, and he was always second. He would intentionally score one point lower than me, just as he always seemed to yield to me in everything. Before we were eighteen, our worlds contained only each other. Our families were similar—loveless arranged marriages. But my mother was a powerhouse who cared only for her career. Chris’s father had a legion of illegitimate children, and Chris and his mother constantly had to endure the provocations of his many mistresses. His mother was hopelessly romantic and emotionally unstable, and she often took her frustrations out on Chris. One day, one of his father’s mistresses came to the house. His mother lost control and hurled a porcelain vase at Chris. He just stood there in his white shirt, looking broken, not even trying to move. I threw myself in front of him, taking the full force of the shattering vase on my back. The shards of porcelain felt like shrapnel. That day, Chris’s tears fell onto my heart like stones. It hurt, it hurt so much, but when I saw the dark, murderous look in his eyes, I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled against him. I gave him a pained, toothy grin. “Chris,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “It doesn’t hurt.” He hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe, his voice trembling with fear. “Nora, from now on, you only stand behind me.” My mother later told me that after I fell asleep, he’d driven back to his family home in a rage, smashed everything in sight, and gotten into a brutal fight with his father. He even warned his own mother to never touch him again. I knew none of that. All I knew was that when I opened my eyes, Chris was there. Later, in college, we finally made our relationship official. It was after a bizarre accident that we began to suspect the existence of a “World Will.” Through various experiments, we confirmed it: Chris was the story’s hero, and I, most likely, was not the heroine. My consciousness awakened. I was just cannon fodder, a villainess whose purpose was to highlight the epic love between the hero and heroine. But I refused to accept it. I clung to Chris, and he wanted only me in his world. For that, we were warned by the World Will. It tried everything to erase me, to force the plot back onto its predetermined course. At my eighteenth birthday party, the grand ballroom chandelier came crashing down, aimed directly at me. Chris threw himself over me without a second’s thought, shielding me with his body. The razor-sharp crystal shards rained down, one of them slicing open his brow. My ears were ringing, and I could only cling to his shirt in terror. He held me, murmuring over and over, “Nora, I’m here. It’s okay, Nora. Look at me. Look at me.” From that day on, Chris became even more possessive, more like a beautiful, dangerous madman. It seemed there was nothing he wouldn’t do to love me. But the hero’s destined love was still waiting. And she appeared right on schedule. During his graduate studies, a girl named Isabelle joined Chris’s research team. The first time I saw her, I knew. She was the one. Perhaps it was a rival’s intuition, but I disliked her instantly, for no reason at all. But she was so gentle, so kind, that I could find no excuse to lash out, no reason to demand that she stay away from him. Chris started spending more and more time with her. Their interactions were always perfectly appropriate, but my heart was sinking with a quiet panic I couldn’t control. One day, Chris mentioned her again, a casual anecdote, but the smile that touched his eyes was so unconsciously tender that the panic inside me became a tsunami. I lost control. “Enough!” I screamed, my voice raw with helplessness. “Can you please just stop talking about her? Don’t you see what’s happening, Chris? She’s getting into your heart!” He froze, a look of confusion, then dawning realization, in his eyes. His tightly pressed lips told me he knew it was true. Isabelle was like a spring rain, slowly seeping into the soil of his soul. While I wasn't looking, he grabbed a fruit knife and plunged it into his own thigh. The shock of pain seemed to clear his head. I screamed, trying to stop the bleeding with my hands. He just pulled me into his arms, promising, “Nora, it won’t happen again. I’ll keep my distance from her. I promise.” His fierce, desperate madness made me believe that we would never let each other go. And for a while, I never heard Isabelle’s name from his lips again. But destiny is a stubborn thing. Chris wouldn’t quit his research, and as a member of his team, Isabelle was a constant presence. They went on a research trip together. At the same time, my mother was hospitalized for exhaustion, and I went to take care of her. The next time I saw Chris, he was a different person. He was standing under a streetlight, holding Isabelle in his arms. The last thread of my sanity snapped. In that moment, I could almost hear the great clock of fate swinging back into its correct position. Like his mother before me, I went mad, rushing at them, trying to tear them apart. Chris, who had always protected me, who had cherished me, pushed me away. He pulled Isabelle behind him and shoved my shoulder. I stumbled and fell to the ground. “Nora, don’t be like this,” he said, his voice laced with tired frustration. Isabelle gently touched his arm. “Chris, don’t. She’s just a girl, like me.” He told her to go on ahead, then pulled me up and walked me home. “Chris,” I asked, my voice hollow. “Are you in love with her?” He looked momentarily lost. “Nora, don’t overthink it. Her grandmother just passed away. She was upset.” A wretched laugh escaped me, and I tore my hand from his. I was consumed by bitterness. I went to find Isabelle. “You know Chris and I are together,” I confronted her. “Why are you deliberately getting close to him?” Her usual gentle smile vanished. Her eyes were cold. “Because I’m the protagonist,” she said with a dismissive smirk. “He and I are destined for each other. And you are destined to love him and lose him.” Her words hit me like a physical blow. A ringing filled my ears, and I couldn't hear anything else. At nineteen, I was still the spoiled, hot-headed heiress. I hired people to corner Isabelle, to threaten her to leave. The first time, all I got was an annoyed warning from Chris. The second time, the love in his eyes was gone, replaced by an icy contempt. I had pushed Isabelle, and she’d scraped her knee. For that, Chris took a heavy cane and brought it down hard on my own kneecap. “Nora,” he said, his voice dripping with disgust. “This is your lesson.” His undisguised loathing was a thousand arrows in my heart. Our butler was the one who found me later, huddled in an alley. That night, drifting in a haze of pain, I thought I saw Chris sitting by my bed. He was frowning, but his hand reached out to gently touch my face. “Nora… this isn’t right… this isn’t right,” he whispered. But I was too exhausted to open my eyes. When I woke up, the room was empty. I told myself it was a dream. After that, I became a true monster. I was desperate to get my Chris back. I tried everything. But he only grew more distant, his memories of us fading like old photographs. He broke up with me. I threatened to kill myself. Chris, the boy who could never bear to see me hurt, handed me the knife himself. “Do it cleanly,” he said with a cruel smile. “And stay out of my and Isabelle’s sight.” I grabbed his hand, desperately reminding him of our promises, our past. He shook me off. “Disgusting,” he spat. Then he turned around and publicly announced his relationship with Isabelle. On his birthday, he invited his research team out to dinner. I went, carrying a cake I’d bought for him. I stood outside the door and listened. Someone was teasing him. “So, Chris, who’s better, Nora or Isabelle? You and Nora used to be so intense. Her temper is awful, how did you even put up with her for all those years…?” Someone coughed, cutting the speaker off. But Chris didn’t seem to care. He leaned back on the sofa, looking completely relaxed. “I forgot,” he said casually. “I can’t even remember why I liked someone like that. The person I like is…” He frowned, his sentence trailing off. For a split second, his eyes landed on Isabelle with a flash of something sharp, almost hostile. But she just smiled at him, and his expression softened. “The person I like is Isabelle,” he finished. I looked down at the cake in my hands. A bitter smile touched my lips, and I turned and walked away. The World Will was so powerful. It could make him forget me, even while I was still alive. On my way home, I was drugged and kidnapped. When I woke up, Isabelle was there with me. It was a classic plot device. Our kidnappers, old enemies of the Cole family, forced Chris to choose. The one he didn’t choose would have her legs broken. Chris arrived, a baseball bat in his hand, a conquering hero. He fought his way through them… and swept Isabelle into his arms. He walked right past me without a second glance. Isabelle shot me a triumphant smirk over his shoulder. I smiled back, a tear escaping the corner of my eye. The kidnappers didn't hesitate. I felt a sickening crunch as they shattered my kneecaps. When my parents and the police arrived, I was just lying there, my eyes vacant. Chris, it hurts. My legs were broken. So were my ribs. My heart was shattered. I was so, so tired. But I had to try one last time. I used my family’s influence to get Isabelle expelled, to halt their research project. The Coles put pressure on Chris. He stormed into my office and smashed everything in sight. He raised his hand to strike me, again, for another woman. I was too weary to fight. I just tilted my head back, a tear falling from my eye onto the hand that gripped my chin. “Chris,” I whispered, “you promised you would never leave me.” He scoffed and let go. “Nora, I don’t remember anything I said to you before. I don’t love you anymore. I don’t want you. Can you understand that? If you touch Isabelle again, I swear, it will be war between us.” I looked into his fierce eyes and knew he meant it. My shoulders slumped. I leaned back in my wheelchair and started to laugh, tears blurring my vision. “Chris,” I said, “the way you protect her… it’s exactly how you used to protect me.” He frowned, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. He subconsciously reached out to wipe away my tears, but I turned my head away. He dropped his hand and left without another word. I continued to pressure him, but I had forgotten one thing about Chris: once he set his mind on something, he never let go. He severed all ties with his family, took Isabelle’s hand, and left Auden City for good. I tried to follow him. There was a car accident. And as I lay dying, I received his final message. And now, here I was.
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