The System Offered Death As My Only Exit Chapter 09

The System Offered Death As My Only Exit Chapter 09

Alter Vivian was wheeled into the resuscitation room, she had completely lost her mind.

The cut on her face was deep, and blood covered half of it, yet she kept staring at Adrian.

“Adrian, killing me won’t change anything.’

“Evelyn is dead. Audrey is dead too.”

“You and your daughter will never wash that blood off your hands.”

Adrian stood at the end of the hallway, the back of his hand covered in cuts from the broken glass.

He slowly bent down, picked up the crumpled official death report from the floor, and tore it apart piece by

piece.

Not long after, Vivian woke up.

She had just opened her mouth to cry when the door to her room was pushed open.

The police laid out the evidence in front of her, one item after another.

There were records of the money she had transferred to the driver before the accident.

There was surveillance footage of her using Adrian’s access card to alter the ER records, and even recordings of her calls with a private doctor before Audrey’s blood was drawn.

There was also evidence from the day I gave birth. The unit of rare blood reserved for me had been transferred away at her instruction.

Vivian finally panicked.

She struggled to get out of bed. The bruises around her throat had not faded, and her voice came out rough

and broken.

“I want to see Adrian. How could he do this to me? I did all of this so I could be with him,”

“He said he would marry me. Why would he call the police on me?”

“That bastard. He ruined me. He was already married, so why did he keep giving me hope? Why did he push me into doing all those things?”

No one answered her.

She was dragged away, thrashing the entire time.

Adrian watched her from a distance, his eyes frighteningly empty. His throat bobbed once, and then he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

With all the charges combined, Vivian received a lengthy prison sentence.

I heard that what she hated most in prison was anyone looking at her face.

The scar Adrian had left on her cheek looked like a centipede crawling across her skin, and no amount of

expensive plastic surgery could make it disappear.

Adrian sold the medical group and used all the money to establish a rare-blood emergency foundation.

There were no portraits of him in the foundation lobby.

Only two nameplates hung there.

Evelyn Winters.

Audrey Winters.

Every year on the anniversary of my death, he would sit in the hospital room where I had once stayed. On the table before him were three things.

My wedding ring.

Audrey’s two unused plane tickets.

And Annie’s parent-child dance sign-up form.

On the mother’s signature line, Vivian’s name had been blurred by tears.

Annie never danced again after that.

On the day of the school’s parent-child dance event, she sat in the last row in her uniform.

When the teacher asked if she wanted to go onstage, she clenched the white hair ribbon in her hand and

shook her head.

Adrian tried to hold her hand, but she pulled away.

Father and daughter sat side by side, yet it felt as if death itself stood between them.

Many years later, Adrian died on the anniversary of my death.

Before he died, he read through that blood bank record again and again.

On the last page, there was only one sentence written by his own hand.

[Evie, it was my fault. Please forgive me.]

When the system told me all this, I was sitting on the balcony, basking in the sun.

The weather in the real world was beautiful. Freshly baked bread sat on the table, and steam still curled from iny mug of warm milk.

I listened to the ending Adrian had chosen and said nothing.

Then the system mentioned Audrey.

[She left that world too and went somewhere new. With the system points you left her, she finally got the healthy body she had always wanted, along with parents who loved her.]

At last, I smiled.

The system paused for a moment, then continued.

[Before Adrian died, he sacrificed his entire soul to see you once. Annie wants to see you too.]

[She said she knows she was wrong.]

I set my cup back on the table.

“No.”

[Is the host certain?]

“Yes.”

“They want to apologize. That is their business.”

“I don’t want to hear it. That is mine.

The wind lifted the white sheer curtain by the window.

Sunlight spilled across the back of my hand, impossibly warm.