𐙚˚࿔ Scarlett POV 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

The afternoon sky had turned the color of a bruised plum by the time the final bell rang. I didn't wait for the family car. I knew Stella would be out there, surrounded by Adrian and Noah, playing the wounded martyr who had been wrongfully accused of domestic cruelty. I didn't want to sit in that suffocating vehicle and let them iron out the narrative.

Instead, I walked out of the back gates of the academy, taking the long pedestrian route that led toward the city's commercial district.

My feet ached in my school loafers, but the physical discomfort was a relief compared to the mental exhaustion of maintaining the white-lotus mask. It took so much energy to look that fragile, to calculate every tear, to ensure my voice broke at the exact frequency required to trigger human guilt.

But it was working. For sixteen years, I had been the hammer, trying to break their indifference with brute force, and I had only ended up breaking myself. Now, I was the water—soft, yielding, but slowly eroding the foundations of everything they thought they knew about me.

I walked past the high-end boutiques, the glass storefronts displaying jewelry that could buy a small island.

Suddenly, a black, armored Rolls-Royce pulled up to the curb a few yards ahead of me. The door didn't open immediately. The engine just purred, a low, expensive growl that commanded the entire street to pay attention.

The rear window rolled down, slowly, smoothly.

My heart stopped.

The air in my throat turned to glass.

There, sitting in the dim, leather-scented interior of the car, was a boy who looked like he had been sculpted out of marble and shadows. He was eighteen, wearing a charcoal-gray tailored suit that lacked a school uniform crest—because he didn't need one. He didn't go to school to learn; he went to school to oversee his family's endowments.

Zyan.

His dark hair was pushed back carelessly from his forehead, his jawline sharp enough to cut, his pale skin completely flawless. He was looking at a document on his lap, his long fingers turning the page with a slow, agonizing precision.

In my past life, if I saw this car, I would have thrown myself against the door. I would have banged on the glass, screaming his name, offering him a coffee I bought with my allowance, begging him to just give me a ride home. I would have made myself a spectacle on a public street just to get those dark, unreadable eyes to look at me for three seconds.

My legs trembled. The sheer, deep-seated trauma of my past obsession rushed through my body like an electric current. My mind screamed at me to run, to turn around, to hide behind a bus stop. The fear hadn't left me. The memory of how small, how pathetic, how utterly worthless he made me feel was still vibrating in my bones.

But I couldn't run. If I ran, I was still letting him control my movements.

I took a deep, shaky breath, forcing my feet to keep moving forward at the exact same pace. I didn't slow down. I didn't speed up.

As I drew parallel to the rear window, Zyan's head slowly lifted.

He didn't look at me because he cared. He looked at me because my uniform bore the Salvatore crest, and his brilliant, corporate brain automatically registered any movement within his peripheral vision.

Our eyes met.

Deep, endless black met my tired, watery gray.

In the past, my eyes would have flared with hunger, with desperate, pleading hope.

Today, I let my eyes do something else. I let them look through him. I didn't flinch, I didn't widen them in surprise, I didn't even register his presence with a blink. I looked at his face the exact same way I had looked at the utility poles during the car ride—as a blank piece of scenery, an uninteresting object occupying space in my field of vision.

I walked right past the window.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

Behind me, I heard the faint, sharp rustle of paper inside the car. A sound of a hand stopping mid-movement.

"Stop," a voice commanded from inside the vehicle. It wasn't loud. It was a low, quiet baritone that carried the absolute weight of an empire.

The Rolls-Royce didn't move. The window stayed down.

I didn't stop. I kept walking, my backpack swaying slightly against my hip, my head up, my eyes fixed on the crossing signal ahead of me.

"Scarlett Salvatore."

He said my full name. In my past life, he had never said my name out loud. Not once. He had always addressed me as 'Miss Salvatore' or simply let his security guards handle me. Hearing it leave his lips now felt like a phantom hand wrapping around my throat.

I stopped. Not because I wanted to obey him, but because if I kept walking, it would look like I was running away from him out of fear. And a white lotus never runs from a predator; she lets the predator see how fragile she is until he feels uncomfortable for hunting her.

I turned around slowly. I didn't rush. I didn't smile.

I looked at him across the few feet of pavement, my face completely neutral, my eyes wide and slightly vacant, holding that same profound, tragic exhaustion that had thrown Noah off earlier.

"Yes, Mr. Zyan?" I asked, my voice polite, formal, and entirely devoid of any warmth or history.

Zyan leaned forward slightly, his sharp eyes narrowing as they scanned my face. For the first time since I had known him across two separate lifetimes, I saw a tiny, almost imperceptible crease form between his eyebrows.

He was looking for the girl who used to chase his car down the street. He was looking for the girl who used to cry when he ignored her.

He found a stranger. A sixteen-year-old girl with the eyes of a ghost, looking at him like he was nothing more than a stranger blocking the sidewalk.

"You're walking," he said flatly, his voice a cold statement of fact. "The Salvatore detail usually picks you up at three."

"I wanted to walk today," I said softly, my voice carrying a small, pathetic tiredness. I let my eyes drop to the ground for a second before looking back up at him, making myself look completely defenseless. "The car was... a bit crowded. I didn't want to cause any more trouble for my family today. If that's all, Mr. Zyan, I should get going. I don't want to take up your time. I know my presence is usually... inconvenient for you."

I gave him a tiny, respectful bow—the kind of bow a low-ranking employee gives a CEO—and turned around before he could give me permission to leave.

"Scarlett," he called out again, his voice dropping lower, a rare hint of friction cutting through his usual perfect calm.

I didn't stop this time. I stepped onto the crosswalk as the light turned green, blending into the crowd of regular citizens, disappearing into the city before the heir to the world's number one company could figure out why the girl who used to live for his attention had just looked at him like he was entirely invisible.

As I walked into the crowded subway station, my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, and my hands were soaking wet with cold sweat. The fear was still there. The trauma of my past life was screaming in my ears.

But as I pulled out my transit card—a card I had never even owned in my past life—a small, sharp smile cut through my pale face.

You're noticing me now, aren't you, Zyan? I thought, stepping onto the crowded train, surrounded by the noise of the city. You're wondering where your shadow went. Well, get used to it. Because in this life, I am never going to look back at you again.