After Eleanor left, I suddenly remembered and asked the system.
"At the beginning, you said that the main characters were going mad, but now it seems they are fine."
"The emotional data back then indicated that", the system replied honestly. "Perhaps they have recovered by now."
They had recovered from my death and moved on with their lives.
Time healed all wounds. People eventually emerge from the grief of losing a loved one.
— But Lucas remained trapped in that black hole, unable to find a way out.
His core was too fragile, too sensitive, far from the resolute nature of Alexander and Eleanor.
When I arrived, he was already sixteen.
The first sixteen years of his life were filled with shadows, pain, and torment.
Perhaps the roots of his extreme personality could be traced back to those years.
I left with a blank mind.
Lucas was sitting on the couch, staring down at a string of white beads, absently running them through his fingers.
"What is this?"
I sat down beside him.
His hand, which had been polishing the beads, paused for a moment. After a long hesitation, he finally told me.
"A tracker."
I instantly understood what he wanted to do: "Are you giving this to me?"
He nodded slightly, extending his arm to try to grab my wrist.
I pulled away.
I stared at him, "What if I don't want it?"
Lucas remained silent.
His deep eyes fixed on me, swirling with an intense turbulence—roaring with pain and rage.
"I'm just this kind of person," he said. "Selfish, suspicious, sensitive, very annoying."
"Seraphine, do you know? Today when you went out, I kept thinking about it in the office, I couldn't calm down at all."
"With your bodyguard's updates every minute, I still felt it wasn't enough. I kept thinking you could fly, run, and get to a place where I could never find you."
His voice even started to tremble.
"Seraphine, pity me. I know I'm wrong, but I really can't help it."
"Just wear it. I'll always be watching you. I'll be fine, please..."
"Will that really be enough?"
I looked at him expressionlessly and repeated the question.
"Lucas, are you sure that the tracker is the end of your insecurity and not just the beginning?"
Today it's a tracker, tomorrow it will be a listening device, surveillance, maybe even confinement... People are always insatiable. Once they get something, they greedily reach for the next.
I couldn't bear to watch him fall deeper into this obsessive black hole.
I took the bracelet from his hand, placed it on the coffee table, and shook my head firmly.
"Lucas, this line cannot be crossed."
Sadness flashed in his eyes.
"But what can I do? Seraphine, I'm hurting. When you're not with me, I feel like I'm going to die."
I froze.
"Why is it so serious?"
Even though he hadn't returned to the refined young master he once was, he shouldn't be this panicked, desperate, like he's terrified to the extreme.
I softly asked.
"Lucas, what exactly are you afraid of?"
