I Chose To Disappear From Their Lives Chapter 05

I Chose To Disappear From Their Lives Chapter 05

The group chat went silent. After a long while, Marcus and Noah finally sent a message.

[Did Claire get in the car last night?]

[I forgot. I didn’t notice.]

By then,

Ethan was already in the car, staring at the messages with trembling breaths.

He had forgotten too. He hadn’t noticed at all!

The moment he saw the mudslide report that morning, an uneasy dread had settled in his chest.

He had called Claire three times, but she hadn’t answered.

Before this,

that had never happened.

He squeezed his eyes shut. His tightly pressed lips gave away his panic.

Then,

his gaze landed on the car’s security camera.

He immediately pulled up the footage from the night before.

The footage showed Marcus and Noah getting Lily into the car through the storm, while Claire’s slight figure

remained outside because of him.

Ethan stopped breathing.

He had actually…

left Claire behind!

The car radio continued broadcasting the latest mudslide reports, shredding what remained of his

composure.

If…

If she was really inside, how was he supposed to go on living?

For the first time, Ethan seemed to realize what he’d done.

He also realized

that he was losing something precious.

When he floored the gas and raced toward the estate from the day before, Marcus and Noah arrived right

behind him.

Both of them were deathly pale.

“Claire didn’t get in the car last night… did she?”

Ethan’s entire body went rigid.

He slowly nodded.

The other two exchanged a look. Their pupils contracted as they saw the same terrible realization in each

other’s eyes.

The estate that had been warm and cheerful the day before was chaos now.

Firefighters, doctors, and reporters crowded the grounds.

Ethan remembered Claire’s pale face on the security footage and lost control.

He tried to charge inside.

A firefighter stopped him just in time. “You can’t go in! It’s too dangerous!”

His eyes were red.

“My girlfriend is in there! I have to save her!”

The firefighter froze for a moment, then shook his head.

“We’ll do everything we can to rescue anyone trapped inside. But there’s a serious risk of a secondary collapse. You can’t go in.”

Then he pulled the safety tape across the entrance.

Ethan’s hands hung at his sides, clenched into fists and shaking uncontrollably.

He slammed one fist into the car door.

His knuckles split open.

He had actually…

left her in there!

“Ethan!”

Lily hurried over from nearby. Her heart ached when she saw his injured hand.

“Don’t hurt yourself like this! Let’s go to the hospital first!”

He turned toward her.

He yanked his hand away and asked, utterly baffled,

“Your best friend may be trapped in there, and you haven’t even asked if she’s okay?”

Lily’s face went stiff.

She bit her lip and made that same wounded expression.

But this time, Marcus and Noah didn’t immediately rush to defend her.

Lily noticed it too.

Panic stirred inside her.

No.

She had worked so hard to enter their wealthy social circle. She had worked so hard to take the three men

surrounding Claire away from her.

She couldn’t let all that effort go to waste!

She could only lower her head and say uneasily,

“It’s my fault. You know Claire is my best friend. It’s not that I don’t want to ask. I’m just afraid to hear the

answer.”

She began to sob.

“I’m scared they’ll tell me something happened to her…”

The three men fell silent.

Ethan was about to speak when he saw firefighters carry out a stretcher. The person on it was covered by a

white sheet.

His entire body went rigid.

“Is there almost no chance the person inside survived?”

The other two men’s eyes reddened too. They were all suppressing something they couldn’t bear to say.

They couldn’t say yes.

But they all knew. After a mudslide that large, after being buried overnight, how could anyone still be alive?

One body after another was carried out.

With every body,

their faces grew paler.

They were terrified that the next person carried out would be the girl they had promised to protect for life.

Lily clenched her teeth.

For the first time, her usual helpless act didn’t work.

For the first time, she was ignored completely!

She looked over the wreckage and slowly tightened her hands. Claire had better not come back!

They waited from morning until night.

Not one of them drank a drop of water.

Their panic grew with every passing hour.

When Ethan became so dizzy that he nearly collapsed, another person was carried out.

This time,

on the fallen arm visible beneath the sheet was a bracelet exactly like Claire’s.