Flower Garden Entertainnt Agency.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down Plotter’s forehead. His face turned pale as he glanced toward the lounge entrance.
In that area, a completely nacing figure stood.
The Director, with her fiery eyes, glared at him and the glowing teleportation portal at the entrance.
"What the hell is happening?!" she demanded.
Plotter instinctively stepped back but restrained himself from hiding behind the staff mbers, who were also panicking over the situation.
The chanism was supposed to work like this: once participants exited through the door, they would be transported outside the entrance of a simple-looking building that was a discreet property used as a front by Flower Garden. There were staff mbers waiting in each location to receive them.
They waited for anyone to show up, but no one did.
Not hearing anything from anyone outside confirming the arrival of the participants, staff mbers inside the agency also went out to confirm the situation. However, they found no one but the impatient staff mbers. Not a single participant was in sight.
Suddenly, they’d just lost connection with an entire group of participants!
Confused and alard, the staff mbers hurriedly re-entered the agency through the building’s front door and reported the news. Upon hearing it, Plotter was stunned, and the Director beca enraged.
Now... standing before the Binders’ Overseer, Director, no one dared to make a sound.
’This is bad. This is bad.’
Plotter squeezed his eyes shut, trying to sense the faint wisp of connection he had placed in Rayen’s system. Yet no matter how he searched, sothing blocked him from reaching it, as if an invisible wall was standing between him and mini Propagator.
’This...’ Plotter felt alarms ringing in his mind.
"Were they sent to the wrong place?" Director asked, almost shouting.
Plotter opened his eyes, his expression grave as he looked at Director.
"I don’t know!" he exclaid.
"Could it be a tangling of fate?" Director muttered, her gaze towards Plotter was full of accusation.
"I already resolved that when I grafted their identities," Plotter quickly defended himself. "It shouldn’t cause a conflict. There were no loose connections with those Life Books. So of those were even from hundreds of years ago!"
Director sighed, her glare softening slightly. "Are you sure?"
Plotter nodded urgently. "Yes, I made sure."
He had been thorough about it. The Life Books he’d stolen from the Library were specifically written by him, so he knew the details of those books like the back of his hand.
Even the recent additions had been carefully selected. The previous owners either didn’t have connections with soone still alive, or they could be considered strays whom no one would care about even if they disappear.
There shouldn’t have been any tangling of fate. Nothing like the disaster years ago, when two binders accidentally mixed pages from different Life Books, causing chaos for two living people.
"I didn’t feel any shift in fate this ti," Plotter murmured.
"What about the system?" the Director asked, worry creeping into her voice. "Have you tried establishing a connection?"
"I’m trying!" Plotter replied.
Just then, Plotter’s eyes widened. He just felt a spark.
The faint connection he’d left in Rayen’s system was back!
He latched onto it imdiately before it could slip away again. Then, without warning, he disappeared with a snap of his fingers.
...
Rayen couldn’t look away.
The sight of the shoeless feet swaying from the ceiling was horrifying to the three people in the room. Slowly, he raised his gaze to the hanged person’s face, but the rotted flesh made it unrecognizable.
The corpse hung conspicuously near the entrance, tied to a thick beam that was barely reachable by jumping. It seed an odd place for suicide — like it was deliberately waiting to be discovered the first ti sobody entered the unit.
Behind the body, the apartnt was in complete disarray, as if a fight had broken out. A pang of emotion hit his chest as Jared’s words earlier echoed in his mind.
Trying to disperse the mory in his head, Rayen quickly focused on scanning the entire place. But no matter how hard Rayen looked, he couldn’t find what he was searching for.
Suddenly, he felt the warmth of Adrian’s hand on his shoulder. Rayen glanced back at Adrian with a blank expression.
"Stop looking," Adrian urged, though he also struggled to tear his eyes away from the rotting corpse.
However, Rayen muttered sothing unexpected, "That’s not ..."
Adrian blinked in confusion, his gaze shifting from the corpse to Rayen.
"What do you an?" he asked, his voice low, so that Jared wouldn’t hear.
Rayen shook his head before walking out of the room, pausing briefly to glance at the stunned Jared a few steps away.
His throat felt tight. The sll was too powerful, and it was getting harder to breathe inside the room.
Adrian reluctantly followed him.
"What do you an?" Adrian asked again, his steps quick to catch up.
"I know it’s not ," Rayen said, his voice steady. "I didn’t die by hanging."
Confusion growing, Adrian frowned. "I thought you couldn’t rember?"
"I don’t know the details," Rayen admitted. "But I rember the sound of a gunshot... and I read the last passage of my original Life Book."
"You an..." Adrian’s voice trailed off.
"If that’s not , then it’s probably him."
Liam.
Could Liam have led them here on purpose, knowing this would be discovered? If the body on his apartnt was really Liam, that ant he knew.
A dark thought crossed Rayen’s mind, one he desperately tried to suppress.
’Was he the one who killed ?’
Rayen descended the apartnt building without using the elevator. Using the stairs might possibly ease the stuffiness in his chest. When they reached the building’s gate, Rayen was still staring at the ground, dazed.
As the only one with a semblance of clarity left in his mind, Adrian spoke to the guards. "Can you please call the police? There’s... a corpse in unit 307."
Visibly shocked, the guards scrambled to make the call. Adrian watched them before turning and jogging after Rayen.
By the ti they arrived at the place where the taxi was supposed to be waiting for them, the two of them stopped in their tracks. They gazed around the entire area but... it’s gone.
The taxi was gone.
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