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✙◇ Chapter 3 -: ✧ :-゜・．

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ { Tuesday — May 07, 2019 } ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Sixty years before the world ended. Right on the day of someone’s birthday. Heavy, tall buildings stood all over the city. Birds were still chirping, though. Somewhere up high, an eagle kept watch. Just watching.

A girl stood right on the edge of the bridge. Absolute desperation on her face, her hands shaking hard against the cold iron railing. Her mind was a total fog, ears ringing with loud chaos—even though the road tonight was dead quiet. No traffic.

No signs of life at all, except for the town lamps glowing in the dark.

"I... I'm tired... So tired... Just end this, please... please..."

"I'm sorry, Father..." she whispered. Her legs shook as she pulled her weight up and over the metal bar.

A sudden, sharp wind cut past. The soft fabric of her dress snapped in the breeze. Her face looked completely empty. Dead. Worn out. Dark, heavy bags under her eyes told the whole story of what she’d been through.

Slowly. No rush at all. She lifted her toes off the edge. Her vision was blurry; she wasn't thinking straight anymore. Scars and old wounds covered her skin, her hair dry and ruined.

One last breath. Heavy. Then, she let go, dropping straight down.

Across the bridge, hidden back in the trees, a woman stood. Watching. Just like that eagle. Her eyes tracked the girl's falling body from the second she left the railing until she hit the dark below.

A hard fall. A brutal impact. Splash. The body broke into the water under the bridge.

Silence came back. The woman’s footsteps made no sound in the dark as she moved down the path.

The exact moment the body hit the water, the woman was already standing right at the edge of the riverbank. She didn't jump in to save her. Didn't even touch the water.

Instead, she dragged a machine forward. A tool built to haul things up from the deep water. Before a single drop of blood or river water could fall back down, the girl's lifeless body was shoved hard into a thick plastic bag. Sealed tight with heavy tape. The inside walls were slick, coated in a thick, oily liquid.

She had a plan. A clean, cold plan.

No rush. Only a calm, slow movement to her hands.

Under the moonlight, the river water began to shift. The bacteria, the shedding DNA from the body—completely gone.

The woman used a liquid that worked to erase every single trace. Not a single strand of hair stayed caught in the current. The blood vanished into the water so cleanly that nobody would ever notice a thing.

Even carrying that heavy plastic bag up from the bridge, her breathing stayed even. Ninety steps back to her car. Every single step was counted out on purpose.

No footprints left behind. None. She moved like a ghost.

Exactly ninety steps from the water, she swung the bag over her shoulder. But she left a mark on purpose. A distinct drag trail on the dirt for those ninety steps. And it wasn't just the outline of a bag—it was the head. She purposely dragged the body upside down, letting the skull scrape the ground to leave a specific trail before she finally used her strength to lift it.

She walked back up the exact path she used. Stepping right into her own previous tracks. She wore heels heavily modified with tape, the soles topped with a piece shaped exactly like a cat's paw. The entire time, she had been walking weirdly—never letting the main sole touch the ground, balancing entirely on her heel bone.

An awkward, limping stride all the way to her car.

She threw the body into the back seat. Behind her, sitting right on top of the bridge railing, a pair of glowing eyes cut through the dark. A black cat. Watching her in dead silence, its tail swaying slowly.

Meow~

Without waiting, she got into the driver's seat and drove off. The night wind whipped past the car as it glinted under the moon. Everything inside that vehicle was full of mystery. Just like the woman behind the wheel.

Lavender eyes. Cold. Holding absolutely nothing for the world to see.

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