Chapter 48: Hana’s Pain

Chapter 48: Chapter 48: Hana’s Pain

Mira’s eyes fluttered, dragging themselves barely open.

Her wrists were tied behind her back. She tried to apply what little strength she could summon, but the rope bit into her skin, her ankles were tied just as tight.

Everything felt heavy, slow, wrong. She tried to form words and nothing came out but a dry, useless rasp.

"Tobi, why? Why...?" Her heart ached.

Her beloved, the man she loved and was to marry, had done something so cruel to her.

Painful tears fell the side of her eyes.

Across the room, Tobi paced, phone pressed to his ear. His voice was pitched low and urgent.

"Yes... yes, I did it. Just like you said." A pause. "She’s here. They’re both here. I drugged them both."

Silence, then his voice cracked slightly. "There was a mishap. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but I couldn’t let the chance pass, so I just... I did it anyway. Both of them."

Another pause, longer this time.

"So you’ll keep your promise? You’ll help with the gambling debt?"

The answer that came through the phone made his shoulders sag with relief.

"Yes, I’ll wait for you here."

Mira’s eyes slipped shut again, as the drug dragged her back under before she could make sense of anything.

When she surfaced again, someone else was in the room.

It was familiar shape, standing near the door in a plain dress, a suitcase in both hands.

"Hana?"

Relief flickered through Mira’s drugged haze for half a second. But then it washed away.

Why?

Because something about the way Hana stood there felt wrong.

Tobi dropped to his knees in front of Hana. "I did everything you asked," he said, voice cracking. "Exactly like you said. Please... you promised. The debt, it’s ten million gil, the bank’s coming for my family’s house I used as collateral. My own father won’t even speak to me anymore. You said if I got back with her... I ... I even proposed to make it more believable. and did this one thing like you asked..."

"I remember what I promised." Hana’s voice was light, almost sweet. But her gaze on Tobi was cold. "Rest now. FOOL."

She reached out and touched two fingers to his forehead.

He crumpled to the floor, unconscious before he finished falling.

She turned to Victor passed out and tied on the ground in a corner, "such a pity you had to be dragged into this." Then she walked up to him, peeled an eye open. The rim of his eye was purple. "Poor baby... I told you Rankers were Creeps and weirdos, still, you just had to get too close. But don’t worry, I still remember what you did for me."

And then she stood up and gently walked, one domineering heel at a time, toward Mira.

The smile on Hana’s face wasn’t anything Mira had ever seen on this sweet, easy mischievous friend before.

This... it was something colder, sharper, worn like a mask Hana finally allowed to slip.

She crouched down, gripping Mira’s chin between two fingers, tilting her face up.

"Mira. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this."

Mira tried to pull away. But her body barely responded.

"Do you know what it’s like?" Hana continued, voice almost gentle, almost conversational, it was like she was discussing the weather.

"...Trying your whole life to be seen. In College—in every room I walked into. I worked myself half to death trying to get anyone to look at me the way they looked at you." Her grip tightened slightly.

"Mira with the perfect skin. Mira with the perfect body." She ripped apart Mira’s dress, exposing her skin, and lingerie underneath.

"They sang your praises. Mira is the beautiful class president, Mira is talented, Mira is cute Mira is an Awakened... Mira, Mira, Mira. Nobody ever looked at me. Not even HIM."

Something unhinged flickered behind her eyes, a crack running clean through the calm.

"Not anymore, though." She straightened up, brushing invisible dust off her dress, that same too-sweet smile returning. "After tonight, there’s only going to be me."

Her phone buzzed. She answered it without hesitation, her voice instantly shifted back into the warm and pleasant calm a priest should have.

"Yes baby... Come on up," she said. "I’ve got a gift for you."

—

The door swung open, and Paul froze the second he stepped inside.

The room had been transformed.

There were candles everywhere, deep red fabric draped over every surface, rose petals scattered across the floor like something out of someone’s twisted idea of romance.

Victor who was tied, sat slumped in one corner. Tobi lay unconscious next to him.

And in the center of it all, Mira lay motionless on the floor, wrists and ankles bound to the chairs.

She was spread out in her lingerie like a science experiment about to be dissected.

"Hana." Paul’s voice came out low, and dangerous. "What is this? What did you do?"

Hana turned toward him, and the smile on her face was soft, pleased, possessive and, just... entirely wrong.

"I fixed it," she said simply. "All of it. Finally."

"Fixed what? Hana, untie her. Right now."

"You don’t understand yet." She stepped closer, reaching up to touch his jaw, and he flinched back before she made contact.

Her expression didn’t change. "Do you know what it’s like, loving someone for years and watching them only ever have eyes for someone else? Every time we were together, and we would make love, you’d say her name"

Her voice dropped, "...every SINGLE TIME."

Paul’s stomach dropped.

"I thought once you finally came to me, after college, that maybe I’d finally won. But I was never anything but her replacement.

You only agreed to go out with me because I was a priest and Mira wanted a priest’s influence on her team.

I could still manage that... I did not mind. But then after every raid, You’d come back, and spend it in my bed, my body, but your heart was never mine." By now, something raw had began bleeding in through the calm.

A drop of tear fell.

Paul wanted to say something, but his voice seized in his throat.