“H-help me . . .”
Ragnar and Roz exchanged looks and decided to go on their way.
“Hey! Wait!
“Help us!”
Ragnar and Roz didn’t seem like they heard anything and went back to searching, leaving the two men to their death.
However, when a girl’s voice resounded in the darkness, deep in the library, Ragnar stopped walking and turned back towards the voice.
“What is it?” Roz asked.
“You go ahead,” Ragnar only said and hurried to that voice.
“Ragnar!” Roz called, but Ragnar seemed like he didn’t hear anything, and followed the voice deeper into another corner.
With the library filled with a series of tall bookshelves that formed a maze, anyone could lose their way. If Roz didn’t go after Ragnar now, he feared that they could lose each other.
Roz was about to chase after Ragnar when he heard sobs coming from a dark corner.
Instead of going after Ragnar, Roz tried to search for the source of that sobbing voice in the darkness. He didn’t know why he was being pulled by that cry. In his mind, he wanted to go chase after Ragnar, yet he found his body being pulled toward those repressed wails.
After a while, Roz found a sobbing woman sitting on the floor as she cried uncontrollably behind a large stack of boxes.
Roz peeked around the corner and saw a girl with long green hair, with streaks of pink, raised in pigtails. Her head was buried into her knees and hands.
“Are you okay?” Roz asked. “What’s wrong? Do you need help?”
When she raised her head from the comfort of her knees, Roz was stunned.
Lira?!
What was she doing here?!
Rage boiled in the pit of Roz’s stomach. Blinded with his fury, he was about to summon a monster to finish her off, but seeing the tears in her eyes made him stop.
Lira’s eyes were red and swollen, and she was wiping her tears with her hands. She stood up and brushed off her clothes. Then, she looked at Roz with an expression of exhaustion.
“Ohh . . . it’s you . . . funny how we meet again under this circumstances.” She weakly smiled and looked to the side.
“You must be happy now, right?”
“. . . Happy?” Roz gnashed his teeth. She ruined his life — how could he be happy?!
But before he could scream his indignation, the woman looked at him and started sobbing again.
“My followers are gone just because of a single video. Everything is ruined. The image that I carefully crafted for years is now destroyed,” she said between sobs. “My life is ruined.”
“. . .” Video? Roz didn’t know what she was talking about, nor could he access the outside world to check.
Though he hated the woman and wanted nothing but revenge, beating her while she was down didn’t sit well with him either.
In the end, Roz decided to leave her alone to resume his search for Ragnar when a group of men and women came rushing in their direction.
“There she is!”
“We found her!”
“She’s here!”
Roz was surprised to find three men and two women in front of him. Some of their faces were familiar to him. They were part of Lira’s group from before.
He could tell since he had faced them in The Mad Lab. As for the others, he couldn’t recognize them.
However, their gazes directed at Lira were full of hate, and it seemed like he was invisible in their eyes.
“You! So this is where you’re hiding!” said a man, spit flying from his mouth, making Roz wonder why he was so angry.
“You bitch! You made us believe that you’re good and sweet, but you’re just like the rest — a slut that would do anything to hoot their fans for money!”
“I gave you so much money, believing that you’re sweet and kind, but all of that was a lie! Give me my money back you faker!”
Roz could piece what had happened based on the other players’ words. They must have found out Lira’s true character.
Roz understood where their anger was coming from. Her loyal fans turned into her worst enemies after they saw her true colors. They invested their time and money, thinking she was sweet and angelic, so when they found out her true self, they felt betrayed and disappointed.
It was like she was another girl. They felt like they were played and, thus, the anger.
“Give me my money back!”
“You fake slut!”
Lira shrunk behind Roz, and due to fear for her life and the remaining terror she felt from the servers, she couldn’t think straight.
She shouldn’t have come into the server. After that video circulated, in just one day, everything she had worked hard to build was gone.
She didn’t feel safe in her own home, and she couldn’t just sit still while her fans turned enemies were smearing her on social media.
Her group duped her into thinking that they would comfort her once she logged into the game, and so she did. She didn’t expect that it was just their ploy to lure her into logging in so they could take revenge on her after what happened in The Mad Lab.
She could neither log out of the game nor log in to another server to escape because the leader’s position was vetoed from her by the majority in her group.
Now, she was stuck in this server, running from players who were once her fans.
And this was where she ended –– at the back of the kid whose life she ruined for views and likes.
Lira was so sure that Roz would leave and hand her to her group. She could feel his anger radiating from him.
To her surprise, the kid held his ground and didn’t move one bit away from her.
pAnD a(-)n0ve1.com
“I’m already eighteen,” Roz corrected, then added with a calm voice, “And you should leave.”
“Haaa?”
“Didn’t you hear us?!”
“Leave,” Roz repeated.
“Kid. That girl you’re protecting is a fake conniving wench! She duped everyone into believing she was nice and sweet, but her personality is so horrible!”
( . . . continuation on NOTES)
