They Granted Her 100 Wishes And Forgot I Was Dying Too Chapter 05

Much of their initial panic and guilt had already faded.

Three days later, the memorial was ready.

The wind blew hard through the cemetery. Molly, dressed in muted colors, delivered a eulogy for me.

“Rest easy, Maya. I’ll live well for you and take care of everyone you loved.”

“You always protected me and carried my burdens. Now it’s my turn.”

“I’ll live for both of us. I won’t let you down.”

By the end, she could barely speak through her tears. She swayed on her feet as if she might faint.

Ben rushed forward to steady her, his face full of concern.

“Don’t wear yourself out. You’re still recovering. Maya wouldn’t want to see you like this.”

Sophie said much the same. Maya had always been tenderhearted, she told her. She wouldn’t want everyone so upset.

Ryan stood beside them and sighed. He said my death was worth it, at least: Molly got to stay.

The relatives and friends at the memorial were moved by how hard Molly cried.

Everyone praised her devotion. They said I was lucky to have a sister like her.

I floated above them, watching the performance.

Molly was so convincing I almost believed her myself.

Their guilt had arrived quickly and disappeared even faster.

One tearful performance convinced everyone I’d willingly sacrificed myself for Molly, that my death had served a purpose.

What little guilt they had was soon replaced by the comforting thought that they couldn’t waste my sacrifice. They turned all of it into more love and attention for Molly, determined to make it up to her.

The time my consciousness could remain there ran out.

For my last glimpse of them, I watched Evan drape his jacket over Molly’s shoulders and carefully guide her out of the cemetery.

The four of them surrounded her, asking if she was all right.

I gave a quiet laugh, and my consciousness sank into darkness.

Molly had taken my place completely. She lived in the house I’d bought, ran the project I’d led, and basked in

the affection of the other four.

There was no more countdown, no more fear of disappearing. Every morning, she woke to find everything

taken care of for her.

But her comfortable life fell apart within days.

Molly couldn’t even understand the basic code behind the chip I’d spent ten years perfecting. Three days after launch, a critical security flaw came to light.

Customer data leaked in bulk, and the backend systems kept crashing.

Their first three corporate clients sent letters from their attorneys demanding to end their contracts and

receive substantial damages.

When the news reached the company, the conference room erupted.

Evan received the engineering team’s vulnerability report. Every problem it listed was a basic error in the logic or architecture, the kind even a moderately experienced engineer wouldn’t make.

He called Molly to ask what had happened.

She stammered that she’d been too busy before launch to run the final tests.

“You didn’t have time?”

Evan’s voice went cold. “We spent ten years on this project, and you didn’t have time for the last round of testing?”

Molly started crying, saying she was under so much pressure and had so many things to handle that she’d

overlooked it.

Hearing her cry, Evan swallowed the questions he’d been about to ask.

He remembered that Maya was never like this. Before a launch, she stayed in the server room for three days and nights, watching the screens even while she ate. She never let anything go wrong.

He pushed the thought away as soon as it came.

Molly had just taken over, he told himself. Of course she wasn’t familiar with everything yet.

Maya had done the work for years. Of course she’d been good at it.

But the trouble was far worse than he’d imagined.

As the security breach made news, more clients canceled and distributors returned shipments in droves.

The company’s cash dwindled fast. Desperate, Evan asked accounting for six months of financial records to find a way to keep the business afloat.

Accounting brought him more bad news.

“Mr. Parker, take a look. There are several large payments from the company accounts that we can’t trace.”

“And the access logs show several logins to the core technical documents from unusual IP addresses.”