novelraw Chapter 137
Chapter 137
Chapter 137
It had been a long time since I last visited Chairman Aaron’s office.
What I found there was the figure of a girl who had left us without a word long ago… No, to be precise, it was a girl whom I had one-sidedly considered a friend.
“Serena…?”
“Iri.”
On the guest sofa.
Aaron sat at the head seat, and to his right, Serena was seated. The moment my eyes met hers, memories from the past surged forth.
How I had pulled her by the wrist, running away from this stinking world full of neon lights that she knew nothing about. How we had lain side by side, whispering our secret stories at night.
And the days I had wandered Sector E, weeping and searching everywhere for her, who had vanished as if she had evaporated.
‘Why did you suddenly disappear that day?’
My brother liked you too.
But how could someone so heartlessly leave without a word?
To you, were we…
Nothing at all?
Just as such words were about to spill from my lips, Serena hurriedly turned to Aaron, as if trying to change the subject.
“When shall we hold our wedding ceremony?”
In that instant, I realized something.
Serena leaned toward Aaron as though to subtly flaunt their relationship. And while doing so, she glanced at me from the corner of her eye.
“……”
Even though I had lived twenty years without romance, I wasn’t so oblivious as to fail to recognize the meaning of that gesture.
It was a kind of marking behavior.
This man is mine. So don’t covet him. I don’t want you to cross this line… That was the meaning.
‘She truly does like the Chairman.’
In Serena’s eyes burned an intense determination, as if declaring she would never let me take him away. It meant she was keenly conscious of me.
No, wait.
‘…Conscious? Of me? Why?’
Serena had to know.
That my relationship with Aaron was nothing more than that of benefactor and student. That there was no need for her to be wary, because between us lay an unbridgeable wall of status.
A small but unmistakable sense of discord.
And at the same time, I realized.
‘…Serena hasn’t forgotten me either.’
Marking was a social signal.
Beyond a selfish “This is mine!” it carried the nuance, “As long as you don’t touch this, we can still get along.”
That was why such subtle skirmishes sometimes broke out between women. When, in a gathering, someone said, “So-and-so is nice,” the hidden message was, “I’ve claimed him, so don’t lay a hand on him. Or our friendship ends.”
If Serena truly regarded me as “nothing at all,” she wouldn’t have reacted that way.
Just as one doesn’t bother warning the bugs at their feet with every step, someone from Elysium like Serena had no reason to be wary of someone from Fallen like me. She could have just crushed me without a thought.
But the fact she acted that way meant she saw me, at least to some extent, as an equal.
‘Serena…’
A sharp pang struck my chest.
To be honest, I had resented Serena all this time.
I thought I had been toyed with by a rich girl’s game of friendship, and that was unbearable. The reason I became so reluctant to give my heart to people—Serena was greatly responsible for that.
But what if, contrary to my assumptions, she also cherished our memories in her own way?
It would be impossible to return to how things were in the past, but there was no reason we couldn’t at least understand each other.
“Haa…”
I let out a short sigh.
Of course, it was true that I admired Aaron. But those feelings were not romantic between man and woman; they were closer to those of mentor and mentee.
Aaron was undoubtedly a man worthy of respect.
Frightening yet kind, strong yet gentle.
He stood above others, but did not trample them without reason.
A man merciless to his enemies.
I was simply striving to catch up to him in my own way. Even if Serena need not worry, Aaron himself would never think of me as more than a student anyway.
But how could I convey that fact to Serena effectively? While I was pondering…
‘H-huh…?’
My body began to move on its own.
Though my mind screamed that I mustn’t, a powerful impulse rising from my heart pulled my choice against reason.
When I came to, I had seated myself at Aaron’s left side, directly opposite Serena. Then I opened my mouth.
“Chairman. I have something I’d like to ask you regarding the documents.”
Even I was surprised at how calmly I spoke. Meanwhile, Serena glared at me, her eyes turning sharp as she growled lowly.
“…So you want to play this game?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Her warning meant nothing to someone like me, who had survived moving back and forth between Fallen and Sector E for so long.
The only issue was keeping my expression in check. Forcing my twitching facial muscles into composure, I turned to Raina, who had come with me.
“Raina. Hand over the documents.”
“Huh? Documents? Ah, right. Got it!”
Snapping out of her daze, Raina hastily placed the Databox in front of Aaron. I slid it across to him, all the while meeting Serena’s gaze as I spoke.
“If it’s not an important matter, could you postpone it for a bit? This one is rather important.”
“W-what? After all this time, you dare—!”
“Serena Beresford.”
“Y-yes…”
The moment Aaron called her name, Serena flinched and turned toward him. Though she wore a face full of grievance, Aaron’s response was firm.
“I’d like you to step out for a while.”
It seemed Aaron hadn’t noticed our little skirmish at all. Or perhaps he had, but chose to ignore it.
“Ugh… Fine.”
Reluctantly, Serena rose from her seat.
Inside, I exulted in victory, but at the same time, I felt something was going terribly wrong.
Why on earth had I done such a thing?
Somehow, the situation had slipped into an uncontrollable phase without my realizing it.
But now, whatever.
Let it be.
* * *
At the same time.
Lexus Bane was rummaging through the storage room of his office in Sector E.
He had been buried multiple times beneath piles of haphazardly stacked junk. After a struggle against the clouds of dust billowing up, he finally managed to find what he was looking for.
“Damn, I should’ve organized this better. Cough.”
He muttered such self-contradictory words without hesitation as he grasped what he had sought: a case file he had organized back when he was a police officer.
Its thick appearance resembled that of an old-fashioned album. In fact, tucked between the binders were a considerable number of photos and papers.
Rustle.
The long-forgotten sensation of paper.
These days, paper had become a rare commodity, but back in his police years, using paper files wasn’t considered eccentric.
He indulged in such thoughts only briefly before he began flipping through the file, skimming its contents.
Cases solved.
Cases left unsolved.
Cases where he had identified the culprit but had been ordered to bury them by his superiors. All the cases he had handled or had taken an interest in were compiled within.
He had originally wanted to review them earlier, but he had never found the time.
Living in the Academy building where food, shelter, and clothing were all provided, and dealing with brats every day, he had forgotten for a while.
It wasn’t until the second semester at the Academy began, leaving his schedule wide open, that he found the chance to dig this out.
Turning page after page, Lexus activated his brain and cybernetic devices to their maximum, trying to revive old memories.
“Twenty years ago… twenty years ago…”
Rustle. Rustle.
After combing through the files for quite a while, he realized belatedly.
“Ah, right. That kid was twenty years old, wasn’t he? Then it must’ve been after that incident.”
Damn it.
How could I forget something so basic?
Age never lies.
Even though he had undergone anti-aging surgeries to deal with outward appearances, he couldn’t turn back the already-aging brain.
“Let’s see…”
He picked up another binder and began leafing through it. He couldn’t recall the exact year the incident had taken place, so he searched through several more volumes before finally finding it.
“The Everheart Couple Mass Robbery and Murder Case…”
It was a late-night incident where thugs from the Fallen Sector had infiltrated residential blocks of Sector A, killed a couple, and stolen their valuables.
Violent crimes by Fallen-born criminals happened around Sector E as routinely as eating a meal, but this case was unusual in that they had expanded their reach into Sector A.
‘The victims were a famous retired couple.’
The husband, Lawrence Everheart, had been a successful stock market accountant, while the wife, Sylvia Everheart, had been a former actress.
In her mid-twenties.
At a surprisingly young age, Sylvia had suddenly announced her retirement, shocking the public. Her most famous work had been a noir film that enjoyed explosive popularity at the time.
Her acting skills had been average, but she was renowned for her beauty and for personally performing every action scene without a stunt double.
‘After retirement, she focused on charity work.’
The couple regularly crossed between Sector E and the Fallen Sector, engaging in charitable activities. They had won steady public admiration for offering basic education to residents and distributing meals.
‘And then they became targets.’
There was a ruthless gang who exploited the Everhearts’ goodwill. The culprits were a teenage gang from the area where the couple had done charity work. Normally, they survived by stealing in Sector E.
But then their eyes turned toward the Everhearts. They approached the couple with smiles, extracting information about them without difficulty.
Once they had a thorough grasp of their movements, they set their plan into motion. They used a stolen aerial vehicle to infiltrate the couple’s apartment in Sector A, aiming to crack open their safe.
‘And then, an impulsive murder.’
Naturally, security in Sector A was strict.
The alarm blared the moment they broke in, throwing the gang into a panic. Awakened by the noise, the couple tried to resist. Lawrence was shot in the confusion.
Blood sprayed across the bedroom, screams rang out, and the terrified boys killed Sylvia as well to eliminate witnesses. Grabbing their loot, they fled.
‘But they didn’t get far.’
The boys were caught by police at the border crossing from Sector D into Sector E. By the next morning, the news was flooded with the Everhearts’ deaths, and the public erupted in rage.
—Scum!
—Ungrateful bastards!
The fact that the culprits were Fallen-born teenagers, that they had once been helped by the couple’s charity work, and that the victim was a former actress—all these factors fueled the outrage.
Public demand for severe punishment grew impossible to ignore, and the court, unusually, sentenced them to 240 years in prison, an extraordinarily harsh penalty for teenagers.
Thus, it seemed the case was closed with the criminals’ punishment… but one piece remained unresolved.
‘There was one culprit who hadn’t been caught.’
According to the investigation, there was another participant who had not been arrested.
The youngest in the gang, a boy around six or seven years old. His real name was unknown. But everyone called him by one name.
“PJ.”
And the Everhearts had a daughter. At the time of the incident, she had been sleeping peacefully in a cradle at the far end of the couple’s bedroom. She was only eight months old.
Her name was—
Ariana Everheart.
But she disappeared right after the incident. It was believed that Peter Jones, the one who escaped capture, had kidnapped her.
The police launched a massive investigation, but they failed to find either “PJ” or “Ariana Everheart,” and the case was quietly buried as an unsolved mystery.
Twenty years had already passed…
In truth, Lexus had only barely remembered the name Everheart after reopening the file. It had become a forgotten tragedy to the public.
So why had Lexus dug up this faded memory? Because, after his conversation with Iri the other day, one particular suspicion had taken root in his mind.
“That girl’s brother. Peter Jones. PJ…”
There could be countless names that fit the initials PJ, and there was no certainty it referred to his real name.
But his long-honed instincts had sounded the alarm, and that was why he had finally retrieved this old cold case.
And his hunch was correct.
“Bingo.”
Sylvia Everheart.
In the film that had made her a star, the role she had played bore the name Elisbell.
Which meant—
“‘Iri Elisbell’ was ‘Ariana Everheart.’”
She believed her enemy to be her brother.