Chapter 1.

In the eerie silence that pervaded the room, I slowly turned around. What greeted me was a knife. Directly below my chin, a very shallow cut was drawn out on my neck when I turned into it.

My eyes opened wide, I couldn’t accept what I’d seen. Rather than what, it was who that had me most shocked. A pair of serene eyes stared deep into my own. It was a pair of eyes I never imagined I’d see again so soon.

“Darling, did you miss me while I was away?”

Countless tiny electric shocks rippled across the surface of my skin in waves when I heard her voice.

It’s not her. It couldn’t be her. She’s in the hospital in a coma. Why? How could she possibly be here? It was impossible.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to me, Darling? I’ll have you know, I nearly died.”

My back straightened up instinctively, trying to pull away from the knife. Unfortunately, the knife moved along in perfect harmony like it had been glued in place. It never parted from my neck for even a second.

“This is impossible. Who are you really? You can’t be Adele. You’re completely uninjured. She fell off a building and was on the verge of death only a few short days ago.”

“And I survived and have already made a full recovery, Darling. Is it really that surprising? I was built pretty sturdy. Guess what, Darling, I also just so happen to remember everything. Everything that happened from when you carried me out of my family mansion, up until I fell off the balcony too. Yes… everything. As I thought, my Darling still cares about me so deeply. Even when I’d forgotten everything about him, he still displayed his boundless love and affection towards me. Even redeclaring his unwavering love in spite of getting coldly shot down.”

That was a mistake. It was true I still had some sort of feelings for her when she was in her innocent state, but in truth, I really wanted to dump you off and let you live a normal life with somebody else.

My foolish choice to help her back then had really come back to bite me in the end.

“If you had left me back there, I probably would have outright killed you after I recovered. Thankfully, my Darling’s love overcame our tragic parting.”

Ugh. Did my actions inadvertently save my own ass then?

I didn’t want to bear the responsibility of her blood on my hands though. It would weigh down on me for the rest of my life. 

Guilt. 

It wasn’t something easy to forget. Even when I wasn’t the one that directly tried to kill her, be it the time in the forest, or her balcony, I’d felt endless guilt towards her. Even before that, for as long as I could remember, I felt guilty for betraying her all those years ago regardless of how much fear I held towards her. She was by no means a good person, there were probably many people who wouldn’t care less if she died, but to me, she would always be my first love.

Seeing her return to innocence back in the mansion made me waver and think that perhaps even she could really change one day.

“Adele... if it really is you, how did you fall? Did somebody push you?”

“What are you talking about? Wasn’t it you who pushed me off, hoping that I’d return back to normal after the fall?”

“Me? How could I push you? I was in the balcony beside you at the time. There was also no footage of you falling from your balcony to begin with. Did you really fall from your balcony? Was I just seeing things?”

“No footage of me falling? What do you mean there was no footage? Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah, there was really no footage. The only thing in the footage was me collapsing on the ground in the balcony beside yours for no apparent reason.”

Swish.

“Ehem.”

Both of our eyes shot to the side when we heard someone clear their throat. Everything in my body tingled uncontrollably. What I saw was the splitting image of myself.

“Who are you!”

“Really, I took a small nap waiting for my precious Dio to return, and instead of a touching reunion between us, I found him together with one of his nuisance exes when I woke up. Tsk. The same one I thought I’d gotten rid of as well. It looks like one of my cousins must have interfered quite a bit in this matter.”

The voice that came out of my look-alike’s mouth sent chills down my back. It was a feminine voice, one that I knew all too well. 

They lifted their hand up slowly and pulled up at the skin like material covering their face. Revealed beneath was the fair white skin of a woman ingrained into my memories. It was truly my worst nightmare come true. A sudden confrontation. A clash of the exes.

“M-M-Maria! W-Why… why are you here?”

“Oh? Darling… you were cheating on me while I was in the hospital?” Adele immediately chimed in when she heard my question.

Adele had first sized up Maria when she appeared, but her gaze returned to me with silent rage in her eyes when Maria’s face was revealed beneath the mask. Adele’s eyes spoke of conviction, I was a dead man to her. It really felt like I’d been caught red-handed in an adulterous relationship with another woman.

“Yes, I do have my own questions as well. Dio, just what is the meaning behind all this? Shouldn’t you already be dead? Just why did you fake your death?”

With the dangerous ambience in the room growing exponentially larger by the second, I felt like jumping off the balcony to flee from it all. At the very least, if I did that, I would have a shot at a much easier death than the one slowly closing in to claim my life. 

With two ferocious grim reapers standing before me, both equally as terrifying for their own respective reasons, I came to realize that I’d turned into a sheep on the chopping block. If I was teamed up on by this unusual duo, I’d undoubtedly face something far worse than death.

But wait, didn’t Maria just say she’d gotten rid of Adele? That was it! That was exactly what I needed! If anyone had the ability or resources to doctor that footage perfectly, it had to be her. Her mask explained everything I’d seen and also why Adele thought it was me who pushed her off the balcony. She was a woman meticulous in everything she did. Privacy was of her utmost concern. Eliminating unpredictable variables was among her field of expertise.

I had to pit them against each other if I wanted to live through this. That was my best bet to survive through this deadly ordeal. For this conflict approaching the destructive might of matter-antimatter collisions, the victor would be hard to determine. If I faced the combined ire of the two of them all by myself, I’d immediately be burned alive at the stake.

“Maria, you’re the one who pushed Adele off the balcony? Then, the reason it was so easy to get a hold of the video was because you were prepared in advance to leak the doctored footage?”

“Yes, my cousins had both become vaguely aware that I’d recently grown suspicious of whether you were truly dead. As such, I hatched up a plan to snatch you away from under their noses in the event you were still alive.”

“When my people finally pinpointed your most likely location, I acted. To allude their eyes, I gained access to your room in a rather unconventional manner. Initially, I wanted to take you right away, but the building was under constant surveillance by my cousin’s people. She was constantly around you as well.”

“I wanted to leave no evidence behind that it was me responsible for your future disappearance, so I stayed hidden inside your exes room in secret for the last two weeks. It was a good thing for me that this ex of yours had turned into a fragile sheep.”

“If it was her now, I’d have been easily caught by her animalistic instincts immediately. Even with her sheep like nature, I stayed cautious and only chose to eliminate her when I could make it look most natural. I disguised as you and pushed her off. It was a real pain for me that you just happened to be outside at that time.”

“Because of that I had to doctor that footage. I wanted to make it look like you’d killed your ex and then fled for your life. That was the plan. My cousins would assume your disappearance was completely unrelated to me that way.”

“If only she didn’t show up here today, everything would have gone through perfectly without a hitch. Well, I suppose it still can as long as she’s eliminated here.”

“You think you can kill me?”

As soon as the words left Maria’s lips, Adele, like a provoked animal, tossed the knife in her hand directly at Maria’s neck. Adele rushed forward in her direction and moved her hand behind her bottom. From my angle, I noticed two sheathed knives forming an X on her rear. Without any prior warning things were already heating up and heading in a direction far beyond my control.

Bang.

Out of nowhere, a loud gunshot resounded, immediately followed by a strong gust of wind which brushed over my right shoulder.