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[03]
OFFICIAL: ACCEPTANCE
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G6 strode down the polished hallway of the West Villa, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the garden. Her "perfect act" was over. Or so she thought.

Mid-stride, she paused. The gilded corridor looked unfamiliar.

Crap. Wrong way.

She glanced at Tina, who trailed behind in a state of shell-shocked awe, her face pale.

She looks like my brother when I totaled his Bugatti. (The truth: she had rammed it into a target's car during a chase. On purpose.)

G6 cleared her throat, summoning an unbothered queen's aura. "See? They wanted me to lose my cool." She shot Tina a look that said I am being bullied here.

Tina's only response was a slow, heavy sigh—the sound of a system rebooting.

Spotting an archway to a secluded courtyard, G6 veered off—a tactical diversion to avoid admitting she was lost. The courtyard was small, centered on a weathered marble fountain of a weeping goddess. A stone bench sat half-hidden in ivy. Quiet, save for the endless plink of water.

G6 did not sit. She leaned against the fountain's cold ledge, back to the water, and stared at a weed cracking through the flagstone. Tina stood a few paces back, a silent, judgmental statue.

Who would have thought I would find a quiet spot in this gilded maze?

"Out with it," G6 said, not turning. "I can hear you cursing me in your head."

"My lady… I mean, Lady Reise." Tina began. G6's mouth twitched—a quick, sharp acknowledgment of the correction. "That was…"

"Perfect?" G6 offered, trailing her fingers in the water.

"Yes—No! You disrespected the Prince. You left a royal tea party unfinished." Tina caught herself, flustered at her own near-agreement.

G6 laughed—a short, sharp sound that seemed alien in the quiet space. It was the first real, uncalculated sound she had made here.

"You just agreed with me," she said, a hint of a smirk in her voice. Manipulation 101: get them to nod along. "Would you rather I had stayed and flipped the table? Grabbed that woman's hair?"

Tina took three steps closer. "What is happening to you, Lady Reise?" Her tone was not servile. It was stripped of everything but worry.

G6 looked at her, then away, up at the sky. "I do not know either." The answer was not for Tina. It was for the hollow, echoing question in her own head: Why am I here?

Then Tina did the unexpected. She hugged her.

"You can always lean on me," she whispered, soft and certain. "I know you are not the person they think you are."

G6's world narrowed to a series of sharp, tactical inputs.

Physical contact. Initiated: Tina. Classification: Embrace. Threat level: Zero. Intent: Comfort.

Her body went statue-still. Not rigid, but poised—a predator assessing a novel stimulus. The sarcastic commentary in her mind shut off completely. Her eyes, which had been gazing upward, fixed blankly on the greenery ahead.

This was not an emotion. It was a data point. A conflicting, useless one.

Her life was a catalog of useful sensations: the grip of a pistol, the edge of a blade, a scope's crosshair. This… warmth… served no purpose. It was a vulnerability. A point where a knife could slide in.

After a long, motionless moment, she executed a response.

Slowly, as if moving someone else's limbs, her hands came up. They did not clutch. They rested lightly, uncertainly, against Tina's back. A scripted reply to vulnerability.

"You do not know that," G6 whispered, her voice raw and small. The edge was gone. It was a plea. A confession of her own terrifying uncertainty. "You cannot possibly know that."

The hug ended with a retreat. G6's arms fell to her sides, the ghost of warmth a persistent error on her skin. She took a sharp step back, re-establishing the perimeter.

"I should… rest," she said, the words sterile. The emotion felt gross. Out of character.

Tina, her own eyes glistening, simply nodded. She understood the dismissal. "Of course, Lady Reise. I will ensure you are not disturbed."

G6 turned and walked away. Not fleeing. A tactical withdrawal from an unsettling, non-hostile engagement.

The forgotten path to her room surfaced in her mind. Her brain, it seemed, had an emergency escape route pre-loaded.

「G6's BEDROOM」

The door clicked shut. The lock thudded. Silence. Isolation. Controllable variables.

That dream from last night felt intentional.

Now, let us search.

Her eyes, cold and methodical, swept the room. This was not a sanctuary. It was her new AO—Area of Operations.

She moved with a ghost's silence. Fingertips traced the doorframe for dust variance. She crouched, checking under the bed for pressure plates. She ran a hand along the wallpaper seams, searching for a hidden panel. Every book on the shelf was a hair's breadth out of alignment—a trap for the curious.

Nothing. The room was clean. Sterile. A gilded cage with no visible locks.

Too clean.

Her gaze landed on the ornate writing desk. The only piece that seemed genuinely used. Wear on the chair. A faint ink stain.

She emptied the unlocked drawers. Stationery, wax, parchment. Useless. Her hands, trained to feel the minutest imperfection, glided over the desk's surface, along its sides, under the lip.

There. A slight discrepancy in the grain on the right. A panel, nearly invisible. A locked drawer.

A ghost of her old self might have smirked. A challenge.

Her tools were improvised. A hairpin. A thin, sharp letter opener. Her hands worked with unconscious, lethal grace. This was a language she understood.

Apply tension. Manipulate tumbler one. Set. Tumbler two. Set…

A series of faint, satisfying clicks. A final, soft thud.

The hidden drawer slid open.

Inside: no weapon, no jewels. A single book, bound in soft, worn leather. It smelled of dried flowers and ink.

She lifted it out. Lighter than a gun, heavier than a life.

She opened it.

The Diary of Reise Worthon.

She sat on the floor by the balcony door. The early pages were a flood of elegant script—poems, observations, the chronicle of a caged spirit. A decade of love for Prince Dio, each entry a brushstroke in a portrait of profound loneliness. The words ached with a beauty G6 had never allowed herself.

Then, the final entry. The night before G6 arrived. The writing was frantic, desperate, the pen nearly tearing the page.

He is here.

Three years. Three winters bled into spring, and Prince Dio steps into the Annex as a guest. From my balcony, I steal one last look. A hunger I have fed for ten years, and still it starves.

And I saw him with her. Eliza.

On his face… a light I have never worn. Not once. Not in all the years I stood in his shadow, waiting for him to turn around.

I am the painting on his wall. She is the sun that makes the painting forget itself.

I am so tired of being looked at. Of being framed and hung and never touched. This gilded cage has no door—only walls I painted myself.

I would rather be no one. A blank page.

Oh, right. I am no one. A blank page.

So.

I have prepared the mixture. White droplet flowers. They say it quiets a heart that beats too loud in a room that never listens.

For my parents—so they do not mistake silence for their failure. Their love was enough. But love cannot teach lungs how to breathe in a place that was always meant to be a grave.

I leave a final letter hiding like it does not want to be read.

I cast this wish upon the stars:

Let no one mourn the leaving. Let a soul untouched by this sorrow find its way into what I leave behind. Let them take what I was too weak to hold.

Then, G6 turned the page.

Live what I was forced to leave.

G6 sat on the cold floor, the diary a lead weight. Her eyes were wide, unblinking.

She slumped, her head lolling back against the glass door. The diary burned against her chest—over Reise's heart. A heart deliberately stilled to make room for her own.

She was fucked.

And for a woman built on control, the refusal to admit it was the only thing holding her together. She just sat there, on a dead woman's floor, breathing air a ghost had willingly vacated.

"You fucking dare play games with me, you pitiful wretch?" G6's eyes shone like a predator disturbed by a useless insect that did not even deserve to be prey.

「WEST VILLA — ANNEX-UNO | COMMON ROOM」

The door slammed shut. Keith collapsed into an armchair with a low whistle. "Well. I do not even have a word for what happened earlier."

Prince Dio stood by the cold fireplace, his knuckles white on the mantle. The image of her back turning was burned into his mind.

"A performance," he stated, voice tight. "A new tactic. Indifference."

Earl, cleaning his glasses, did not look up. "Your thesis is flawed."

"Explain."

"If it was for you, she would have glanced back to gauge your reaction. She did not. Her exit was terminal. She assessed the situation, found it lacking value, and terminated participation. Efficiently." Earl put his glasses back on. "It was the behavioral equivalent of discarding trash."

Keith barked a laugh. "He has got you, Dio. She did not look back once. 'A future annoyance.' I am having that embroidered."

Prince Dio's jaw tightened. "Her opinion is irrelevant."

"Is it?" Keith leaned forward. "The Reise we knew would swallow live embers before implying you were less than the sun. That woman looked at you like inconvenient furniture. That is not a tactic. That is insult. Reise, the woman who used to swoon over you, insulted you."

"Way to rub it in his face," Earl answered, smirking.

"Three years is a long time," Earl mused. "Prolonged psychological stress can cause a break. A recalibration where survival overrides obsession."

"So I bored her into sanity?" Prince Dio's sarcasm was acid.

"I am saying she operates on a new set of directives. Pragmatic. To a terrifying degree. Did you see her hands? Steady as a rock. No tremors."

"Or you are just being a creep and nerd," Keith said, looking at Earl like he was some perv.

"Shut up, you dimwit," Earl shot back.

"Tsk. Well, back to my Reise." Keith crossed his arms, his voice turning uncharacteristically serious. "Her eyes when I taunted her about Eliza. Nothing. Like a stone in a deep well. It was… fascinating."

Prince Dio's eyes narrowed at the word. Fascinating.

"She is unwell," he declared, turning back to the fireplace. "The pressure has unhinged her. She will be back to simpering within a week."

But as he stared into the cold grate, Prince Dio knew he was lying. The silence she left was infuriating. It itched under his skin.

He was not waiting for the old Reise to return.

He was waiting for the new one's next move.

「G6'S ROOM | NIGHT」

The sun had already set; the darkness of night had claimed the sky.

The room was dark, lit only by moonlight bleeding through the glass doors. G6 sat against the doorframe, the diary heavy in her lap.

Live what I was forced to leave.

The words echoed.

G6 leaned her head back. The diary weighed a thousand pounds.

She had been a weapon. She had watched the light leave eyes, had caused it. But this was different. A slow suicide of the soul, documented in elegant, heartbreaking script.

Not that G6 knew what "heartbreaking" felt like.

A bitter taste filled her mouth. She had mocked Reise. Called her pathetic. This was the cry of someone systematically erased.

"What fancy words to say you fucking killed yourself," she murmured.

Her fingers traced the faint, rust-colored smudge on the page. Blood. Reise had not just died. She had erased herself. And her final wish was not for revenge.

It was for a replacement. Someone better.

The irony was a physical blow. The universe had sent an assassin. It had sent the Reaper.

A sharp knock shattered the silence.

G6 did not move.

Another knock, softer. "Lady Reise? It is late. May I enter?" Tina's voice, hesitant.

G6 closed her eyes. The compassion was for the girl in the diary. The girl who was gone. Guilt, cold and sharp, washed over her. She was a fraud in a dead woman's clothes.

She pushed up, crossed the room, and leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door.

"What is it, Tina?" Her voice was hollow, stripped.

A pause. "Your preference for dinner. The kitchen can prepare anything."

Food turned her stomach. How could she eat when the previous occupant had starved herself of everything?

"I am not hungry."

"You must eat. You have had a trying day." Gentle, but firm.

"I said I am not hungry." The words came out sharp—a sliver of the Reaper. She softened her tone. "Just… leave it."

A long, worried silence through the door.

Then the diary's line echoed again: I leave a final letter hiding like it does not want to be read.

G6's eyes changed. The depressive blankness vanished, replaced by sharp, analytical focus. A detective finding the missing piece.

She walked to the tea table, five steps from the balcony. Sat. Placed the diary down.

She dropped her head into her hands, fingers tangling in pink hair that felt like a cheap wig. A harsh, humorless sound escaped her—a mocking laugh.

Do not get me wrong.

You are still pathetic, Reise.

The insult echoed, now aimed at herself. She, G6, who prided herself on reading threats, had dismissed Reise as a two-dimensional fool. A lovesick girl.

But she was not. She was a person. Erased. Her only power left was the choice to stop her own heart.

Her eyes snapped open, zeroing on the diary. The letter. The poison. Reise left evidence.

It was not a search. It was an excavation.

A switch flipped. Grief and guilt crystallized into one razor imperative: Find it.

She moved.

(1/2)