- 5.
“You gotta be kidding me?”
At first, Chris refused to believe it.
In his mind, I could talk my way out of
anything. He even thought I could sweet talk
the police.
But dead was dead. Whether he believed it or
not, it wasn’t going to change.
The cops got fed up with his denial and
dragged him down to the morgue to identify
the body.
L
Even then, the only sign of emotion he
showed was a slight tremor when his fingers
brushed against the white sheet.
I couldn’t imagine how upset he really was.
The things he’d said to me in the last few
days kept replaying in my head, stabbing at
my brain and forcing me to accept that he
didn’t love me anymore.
I even wondered if he felt relieved?
Then, in one swift motion, he yanked the
sheet off my face.
No hesitation, no lingering.
He just glanced at me, and then quickly pulled
the sheet back up.
The whole thing happened so fast, it was like
he was just looking at a stranger.
“You saw enough?”
“Yeah.”
He took a deep breath, his handsome face
completely devoid of sadness.
“So, what’s the procedure? She doesn’t have
any family left. I’ll take care of everything.”
Chris really knew how to be cold.
I followed him around as he calmly took care
of all the arrangements, even choosing the
cremation and the plot in the cemetery with a
straight face.
As we were leaving, I overheard one of the
cops saying, “That guy’s a real piece of work.
Looks good on the outside, but he doesn’t
have a decent bone in his body.”
I heard it, grinned, and suddenly didn’t feel so
bad anymore.
I couldn’t figure out why I was so hung up on
someone like that. He was just a heartless,
two–faced jerk who treated love like it was
nothing.
His actions never matched the love he was
always talking about.
Maybe he thought my death was bad luck,
because he didn’t even go back to our place.
People around him were clueless. They’d joke,
<
“Hey Chris, how long has it been since you
were home? It’s weird, Riley hasn’t come
looking for you. Usually, she’d be tearing up
the town to find you.”
Clang-
A wine glass shattered on the floor.
Everyone froze, but Chris acted like nothing happened. He just kicked the shards of glass
out of the way.
“It’s fine if she doesn’t look for me.”
You really couldn’t trust love.
All those sweet words and promises used to
make me believe I was so important to him.
But after I died, I realized I was just a
passerby.
He didn’t announce my death to anyone, not
even a funeral.
On the day my ashes were buried, he didn’t
even show up. He left the whole thing to his
assistant.
People were about to say something, but
Ashley, wearing a fancy rose hairpin, came
running over.
She looped her arm through Chris’s.
I’d seen it so many times that I could stay
calm. Chris, though, looked like he’d been
startled. He suddenly pushed her away.
“What’s wrong?”
Ashley looked confused, and then looked
down to see if something was wrong.
Chris stared at the hairpin in her hair. “Don’t
wear that.”
He reached out and yanked the hairpin out,
pulling some of Ashley’s hair with it.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
Someone gasped. “Wait a minute, that hairpin
looks familiar. Didn’t Chris give one like that
to Riley when he was trying to win her over?”
Ashley’s eyes turned even redder. “So, just
because she had one, I can’t have one?”
L
Chris clutched the hairpin, his palm getting
pricked by the sharp edges. He didn’t give it
back.
“Hey, that thing looks cheap. You can pick
out something better. I’ll pay for whatever you
want.”
One sentence from him made Ashley light up.
I stood apart from the crowd, hugging myself
tighter.
They didn’t understand, but I did.
He thought I was bad luck because I was
dead. He didn’t want his precious Ashley to
use something that a dead person had used.
<
But…
“If you hate me so much, why did you get
together with me in the first place? Why did
you make me think you were really going to
love me forever? If you didn’t like me, you
should have told me earlier. That way, when
the system found me and asked me to pick a
target, I wouldn’t have picked you.”
“Chris, you lied to me!”
The tears that had been building up for so
long finally overflowed and streamed down
my cheeks.
My body started to fade.
The system appeared again. [System 003 has
used points to alter the agreement for the
<
host. Congratulations, host. Your difficulty
score has been met. You are exempt from
annihilation and will enter reincarnation.]
Reincarnation…?
What an unreal word.
I took one last look at the popular guy in the
center of the crowd.
He was just as handsome as he always was.
But if there really was a next life, I just hoped
I wouldn’t run into him again.
He couldn’t even keep his promise to love me
forever. I wasn’t going to keep my promise to
meet again in every life.
Loving Chris was too exhausting. In the next
life, I just wanted to love myself…
