Chapter 552: Extra Chapter 4: With or Without Feelings 6-2

She paused, her voice hardening. “I don’t want to live for anyone else anymore. I don’t want to compromise, or play along, or walk on eggshells. And I don’t want anyone to do that for me, because I don’t have the energy to carry the weight of their emotions.”

“Claire Chapman, do you understand?”

Once Maisie Joyce’s voice faded, the room fell silent.

A long, long silence followed…

That night, Claire Chapman didn’t stay at Maisie Joyce’s place.

Because he couldn’t lie to her and say he didn’t understand.

He understood all too well. That was how he knew Maisie Joyce was serious—she truly didn’t want to deal with anything related to emotions ever again.

When two people are together, no matter how in sync they are, they’re still not a single person.

Both partners always have to make concessions and compromises for each other.

If there’s love between them, then none of that is a big deal.

Because knowing that yielding a little will make the other person happy makes even the burdens feel sweet.

But if there’s no love…

Then all that’s left is pain, resentment, and endurance.

Maisie Joyce had suffered more than enough. The treatments she’d undergone these past two years alone were often so agonizing they made her body convulse even while unconscious… and that wasn’t even counting the mental and physical torment Leo Joyce had inflicted on her before…

Most importantly, he, Claire Chapman, wasn’t that shameless.

‘Force her into it just because he wanted to be with her?’

He couldn’t bring himself to do something like that!

But to give up…

He couldn’t do that either.

Lying on the bed, Claire Chapman let out a heavy sigh.

He hadn’t figured out a solution, but the next morning, he still felt the familiar, habitual urge to see Maisie Joyce.

But instead…

All he found was an empty house and a note.

“I’ve left. We won’t be meeting again.”

Maisie Joyce was gone. She had left Bloodfall’s main city overnight.

She wanted to go much farther, but the outside world was still dangerous for ordinary people. So she didn’t leave Concordia, instead moving to another small base.

The base wasn’t large, but since it had joined Concordia, it was well-managed, and its residents lived decent lives. Concordia had designated it as part of a food production zone, so the primary occupation for the residents was making various kinds of canned goods.

Maisie Joyce had some Credit Points on her Identity Card, so she easily found a place to live and secured a job at a canning factory.

The factories now lacked sufficient machinery. Aside from the automated sealing process, most of the work had to be done by hand.

The work wasn’t strenuous, and the pay wasn’t high, but it was enough to support herself.

Maisie Joyce was content.

She also found it surprisingly interesting.

‘She’d never imagined she could do something like this.’ In fact, watching the finished cans roll off the line, each one able to fill a hungry stomach, she even felt a small sense of accomplishment!

She knew she couldn’t hide her whereabouts from Claire Chapman, but she also believed he wouldn’t come after her.

After all, at his core, Claire Chapman was an incredibly proud man.

‘She hadn’t just rejected him time and again, she’d also turned tail and run… For a man like him, that had to be humiliating, right?’

There was a little flicker of disappointment.

But it was quickly washed away by her new, peaceful life.

Maisie Joyce felt that this was a good way to live.

This continued until a month later, when she realized she seemed to have a new neighbor.

A new neighbor who never showed their face, but was exceptionally good at being neighborly.

It started when she accepted a small bundle of fresh vegetables left at her door as a gift and returned the favor with a small jar of pickles. After that, it became a regular occurrence.

From time to time, she would come home from work to find little things by her door.

Sometimes it was vegetables, sometimes meat, other times rice or flour. The portions were always small, enough for one or two meals at most.

But no matter how small the portions, they added up over time.

She tried knocking on her neighbor’s door to return the items, but no one ever answered.

Not wanting to be wasteful, she had no choice but to eat the food and leave a return gift in kind. Her own gifts would, without fail, disappear sometime when she wasn’t looking.

After this happened a few times, she knew something was off.

‘Claire Chapman?’

‘But would he really do something so ridiculous?!’

She mulled it over for a moment, then shrugged and let it go.

‘If it really is Claire Chapman, he’s bound to show himself sooner or later.’

‘After all, the gift exchange was just a pretext. He wanted more than that.’

But to her surprise, the little gift exchange went on for an entire year. In all that time, she never once saw this “Good Astorian Neighbor,” and so, she was never able to confirm his identity.

She began to doubt her own suspicions.

And then, just as suddenly as they had begun, the small gifts inexplicably stopped.

For more than ten days, nothing appeared at her door.

Maisie Joyce found it puzzling and… unsettling. She couldn’t get used to it. She even started pacing around her home, wondering,

‘Why did they stop?’

‘Was it really him?’

‘If it was, did something happen to him? Is he okay?’

‘And if it wasn’t, then who in the world was it?’

‘But the chance of it being someone else seemed incredibly small.’

…Then, when she realized how seriously she was considering all this, she was horrified!

Maisie Joyce had an embarrassing realization. ‘Some things are just like that. You can guess that someone has an ulterior motive, that they’re trying to slowly worm their way into your life, but you fall for it anyway without even noticing!’

Then she realized she didn’t actually mind this subtle approach, this small show of concern, because it didn’t make her feel burdened.

Another month passed, and then the gifts reappeared.

Only this time, they weren’t left on her doorstep. They were held in the hands of the man standing there.

He was much thinner and tanner.

He looked at her, his expression calm, but his eyes held a glimmer of joy and longing, as well as a hint of apprehension.

He said, “This last mission was a bit tricky, so I was gone longer than expected.”

Somehow, Maisie Joyce felt something in a corner of her heart suddenly go *click*, as if a weight had finally dropped.

She blinked. After a long moment, she took the small pot of newly bloomed flowers from him and said, with a hint of mock disdain, “I still prefer things I can eat.”