Yuri's Pov
It has been exactly one month and twenty-five days since Jay vanished into the night. I know the exact count because the number repeats like a broken clock in my head every single time I open my eyes in the morning. One month. Twenty-five days.
Fifty-five mornings of walking down the hallway of the hvis , half-expecting to hear her slamming a door or shouting at the top of her lungs, only to be met with a cold, dead quiet that makes my teeth ache.
Ever since that explosive, terrifying confrontation at the Watson Mansion, our entire reality has fractured into tiny, jagged pieces. We are all just wandering around the wreckage, bleeding in secret, trying to figure out how a single group of friends could fall so far apart, so fast.
Shortly after Jay ran away, the remaining structures of our world collapsed completely. Keifer couldn't stay here anymore.
The legal war over his family estate reached a violent, absolute boiling point, and his presence in the city was turning into a massive liability for everyone around him.
He had to board a private flight, leaving his family behind, crossing the ocean to face his fate alone. Now, he is thousands of miles away, trapped in a cold tower, surrounded by nothing but his inheritance, endless legal documents, and a mountain of family blood money.
With the main Watson house completely ruined and crawling with increasing enemy threate, Tita Serina packed and fled to their isolated family farmhouse in the countryside, taking Keiren and Keigan with her.
She was desperate to give the younger boys a life where they didn't have to look over their shoulders every time a car pulled up the driveway.
Back here at the hvis, the atmosphere shifted into something strange and fragile. Jane and the rest of Section E have actually started to talk again.
If you had told me that sometimes ago that Jane would sit at the same table as the boys who broke her trust, I would have laughed in your face. But yeah, it is the absolute truth.
Against all odds, Jane has chosen to give everyone a single, fighting chance.
To be completely honest with myself, I don't know the real reason behind her change of heart.
I watch her from across the room sometimes, studying the quiet line of her jaw, and I wonder if she truly accepted their emotional, tearful apologies, or if she was simply so exhausted and annoyed by their stupid, daily efforts to win her back that she finally just gave in to make them shut up.
The boys of Section E have been acting like absolute, desperate idiots. They have been showing up at odd hours, leaving her favorite snacks on her desk, washing her car in the middle of the class, and just standing around the class room like awkward, silent guards, desperately trying to prove they aren't going to betray her again.
But the greatest thing in the entire world for me—the single piece of news that felt like fresh oxygen to a drowning man—was the day she finally looked at me.
She stood by the window, her voice steady but incredibly soft, and told me that we could be friends again. But she didn't leave it at that. She made one thing painfully clear: she has not forgiven me yet. She told me that true trust is a glass bowl that took a lifetime to build, and now that it is shattered, it takes real, agonizing time to glue the pieces back together.
Trust me, it wasn't easy to earn even her basic friendship back. I had to swallow my pride every single day, accept the cold distance she kept between us, and realize that I couldn't rush her heart just because my own was aching...
But then, my own foolishness changed the entire trajectory of our relationship. Or maybe, if I am being completely honest, it was a strange stroke of luck wrapped inside a very painful, terrifying medical lesson.
About two weeks ago, the crushing weight of the guilt, the constant stress, and the overwhelming emptiness of our broken circle finally caught up to my head. I couldn't sleep. The silence in the house was too loud.
I sat alone in my room in the dead of night and had way too much to drink. I kept pouring glass after glass, desperate to drown out the memory of Jay's disappearance, the sound of the smoke canister exploding, and the sad, detached look in Jane's eyes.
My body couldn't handle the poison I was pouring into it. By the time the sun came up, I woke up with a burning, agonizing pain deep in my abdomen. It was a severe, dangerous stomach infection that left me curled into a tight ball on the cold bathroom tiles, completely unable to stand up, breathe properly, or even reach for my phone to call for help.
When Jane found out, she didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. She came running to my room as fast as her legs could carry her, her face twisted in pure panic.
When the paramedics finally loaded me onto the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance, I managed to open my eyes through the thick haze of my pain.
I looked up, and right there, clear as day, I saw the raw, unfiltered love for me shining through her tear-filled eyes. She couldn't hide it behind her walls anymore.
She stayed with me at the hospital for hours on end, sitting right beside my stiff white bed, holding onto my hand with a fierce grip while the medical machines beeped rhythmically in the background.
Later that afternoon, when the medication finally kicked in and the burning in my stomach began to fade, I looked at her through my exhaustion and begged her for a real chance to prove my love.
That was the exact moment she let out a long sigh, smoothed my hair back from my forehead, and whispered the words: We can be friends.
I was incredibly happy to hear that. My chest felt lighter than it had in fifty-five days. But even in the middle of my own relief, I am not blind to the reality around me.
I know Jane is missing Jay terribly every single second of the day. To be perfectly honest, everyone in our circle is losing their minds.
The section e is entirely too quiet without her. I miss Jay so much it hurts my chest. I miss the way she would constantly tease me just to get a rise out of me, her stubborn refusal to ever back down from an argument, and her annoying but deeply loving habit of meddling in everyone's personal business.
She was the anchor holding our chaotic lives together, and without her, we are all just drifting out to sea in the dark.
But more than anyone else on this entire planet, Keifer is the one who absolutely needs Jay right now.
From the dark, quiet rumors filtering through our underground intelligence networks, Keifer has completely drowned his entire existence in pure, exhausting work.
But he didn't just stop at managing his corporate business affairs. In his total desperation, loneliness, and growing madness, he actually joined a ruthless, dangerous mafia league operating out of Europe.
I know it is completely foolish. I know it is a suicidal path that will likely end with him in a ditch. But he did it anyway, and there isn't a single person alive who can step in his way to stop him.
He used the league's massive, shadowy resources to hunt down every single enemy who ever dared to threaten his family, his friends, and especially the ones who had put a dangerous target on Jay's back during that final dinner.
He has turned into an absolute beast on the battlefield, fighting his targets with a terrifying, heartless rage that doesn't care about survival. He doesn't protect his own body anymore.
Just last week, during a brutal, bloody raid against one of his father's old hidden syndicates, Keifer took a heavy bullet straight to the torso.
He came incredibly close to actual death, losing an immense amount of blood on a cold concrete warehouse floor before his private medics could pull him out.
When the message reached my phone, I was hell scared for him. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely hold the device against my ear. But that absolute idiot didn't even wait for his skin to heal or his stitches to settle.
The very second he woke up from the anesthesia in his private medical suite, he was right back at his desk, pushing his broken, stitched-up body far beyond its physical limits.
He is completely drowned in his own suffocating guilt. He genuinely believes that if he had been stronger, if he had stopped the plan sooner, Jay wouldn't have left him alone .
He is punishing his own flesh and blood every single day, trying to die in the shadows just to quiet the screaming inside his head.
I can't bear to see him like this anymore. I am breaking under the absolute weight of managing this situation. I can't keep it all together by myself.
I am trying to hold Jane up, trying to keep Section E from falling apart at the seams, and trying to monitor a best friend across the world who is actively trying to destroy himself.
I just wish with everything I have left that Jay would come back soon. Jane needs her twin sister. I need my friend back. Her little brothers need their protector. And Keifer... Keifer needs her to save his very soul before he throws it away completely.
Where are you, Jay? Please, just come home to us.
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Jane's POV
It has been exactly one month and twenty-five days since my twin sister walked out of our lives without looking back, and each single day has been an absolute mountain to climb.
At first, when the smoke finally cleared and the terrifying silence took over our bedrooms, I felt completely left out of the world. I felt like a ghost walking through empty, echoing hallways, trapped inside a deep, dark pool of loneliness that I couldn't swim out of no matter how hard I kicked.
The person who shared my soul, the person who had been by my side since before we were even born into this world, was just... gone. She had vanished into thin air, leaving nothing behind but a silver drive and an empty bed.
But slowly, painfully, the people around me refused to let me drown in my own sorrow. Aries and Percy started spending almost all of their free time sitting right outside my door or in the corner of my room. They would show up without asking for permission, forcing me to sit at the kitchen table, making sure I swallowed at least a few bites of warm food, and distracting my mind with random, stupid stories just to keep me from staring at Jay's empty mattress across the room.
Then, the boys of Section E continued their relentless, stubborn persistence day after day. Every single morning, they made tiny, awkward, quiet efforts to show me how truly sorry they were for their past betrayals.
They would leave my favorite chocolates on the counter, wash the kitchen floors before I could even wake up, and stand guard outside the house like loyal dogs in the rain.
Slowly, seeing their constant, genuine effort week after week started to melt the frozen, angry edges of my heart. It took a massive amount of time, but I finally started talking to them again. I realized I couldn't hold onto the heavy anger forever; it was keeping me awake at night, making me too tired to even breathe.
But right in the middle of trying to rebuild the broken pieces of my life, the universe dropped another terrifying bomb directly onto my head.
The day I received the phone call about Yuri being rushed to the emergency room with a severe, agonizing stomach infection, my entire world stopped spinning completely.
In that exact moment of absolute terror, when my phone vibrated and his name came up on the screen, a horrible, undeniable truth hit me like a physical blow to the chest.
I thought I was losing my entire world all over again. Because deep down in the dark corners of my soul, beneath all the lingering anger, beneath the painful memory of betrayal, and beneath the high walls I had spent weeks building up against him, I knew that I still loved Yuri with every single drop of my heart.
I couldn't change that truth, no matter how hard I tried to hate him for what happened.
I ran through the cold hospital corridors like a madwoman, my breath catching in my throat, my heart pounding against my ribs until I finally found his room number.
When I pushed the heavy door open, he was hooked up to clear IV lines, his face completely pale and covered in a cold sweat. He was trapped deep inside a heavy, medicated drug sleep, drifting back and forth between consciousness and pain.
I stepped closer to his bed, my hot tears completely blurring my vision, and that was the exact moment I heard his voice. Even in his unconscious, painful state, his pale lips were moving slightly in the dark.
He was brokenly mumbling the same words over and over again into the empty hospital air: I am sorry, Jane... please, I am so sorry, Jane...
Hearing those words slip from his lips while he was completely helpless and broken shattered my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. The very last of my defensive anger completely evaporated into the sterile hospital air.
Right then and there, as I clutched his cold, trembling hand against my wet cheek, I made up my mind to give him a real chance. I decided to start over. I am still not ready to fully forgive him for the past—the deep pain is still too fresh for me to just forget—but I am entirely willing to start completely from the start.
We can build a brand-new foundation, as quiet friends first, and see where the long road takes us.
Yet, even with Yuri back by my side, a massive, dark cloud still hangs over my head every single hour of the day. I am so deeply, terribly worried about Jay.
My ears actually ache because I haven't heard her loud, familiar, demanding voice calling me Ate in the last one month and twenty-five days. I miss her ridiculous, late-night demands for greasy food. I miss the silly, passionate arguments we would get into over the most meaningless things in the house.
My heart feels physically cut in half, like a part of my own body is walking around somewhere out in the cold without me. I am missing my twin sister like absolute hell, and the constant uncertainty of where she is sleeping or if she is safe is driving me crazy.
And in the middle of all this domestic grief, I was completely shocked by Keifer's continuous, silent worry for my well-being.
Even though he is thousands of miles away across the ocean in London, completely swamped by his massive new inheritance responsibilities and corporate legal battles, he has never forgotten about me.
Without a single miss, every single week, a small notification pops up on my phone screen. Keifer sends me custom music playlists or beautifully curated dance tracks all the way from the UK.
They are always filled with the exact types of upbeat songs or specific underground artists that I had casually mentioned to him months ago during our late-night conversations, long before our world fell apart at the mansion. He is checking on my heart in the only quiet, distant way he knows how, making sure I still have music and dance left in my life.
But through those playlists, I can read between the lines perfectly. I know exactly what he is doing to his own mind. He is drowning himself in endless, brutal, dangerous work to keep his thoughts from snapping under the pressure of his grief.
Then, two days ago, the quiet illusion completely broke into pieces. I walked into the mansion's study room late at night to find a book, and I found Yuri sitting alone in the pitch dark, silently crying with his face buried deep in his hands. His shoulders were shaking violently.
I rushed over to him, pulling his hands away from his wet face, begging him to tell me what was wrong. Through his heavy, panicked sobs, the horrific truth finally spilled out.
He told me about Keifer's terrible accident in London—how Keifer had joined a highly dangerous underground mafia league, how he had been hunting their enemies like a savage, heartless beast, and how a sniper's bullet had nearly taken his life just days ago.
I spent hours holding Yuri against my chest, rubbing his back, and slowly calming his frantic, terrified breathing down until he could finally close his eyes and find rest. But as I sat there in the quiet room, watching him sleep in the moonlight, a cold, hard realization settled deep into my bones.
I understand one crucial thing with absolute clarity now. Keifer is out there in the dark, facing a massive, destructive storm inside his own chest that is burning him alive. He is tearing his own life apart because the guilt of losing Jay is eating his soul from the inside out.
He won't listen to my voice, he won't listen to Yuri, and he won't listen to the boys of Section E. There is only one single person on this entire planet who holds the absolute power to calm the raging storm inside Keifer's heart.
Only she can pull him back from the edge of the cliff before he jumps.
Where are you, Jay? The boy who loves you is actively destroying his own life, and your sister is breaking down from the loneliness. Please, wherever you are hiding, hear our voices tonight. We need you to come home.
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Author's Note
Hey, beautiful readers! ❤️
I wanted to take a quick moment to talk about this latest chapter. Writing this was an absolute emotional rollercoaster for me, and I really wanted to dive deep into the raw, painful reality of what happens after a massive explosion.
Seeing Yuri drown his guilt in a way that literally made him sick, Jane fighting through the crushing loneliness of losing her twin sister, and Keifer transforming into a literal beast in London just to survive his own heartbreak—it was heavy, but it was a story that needed to be told.
They are all facing their own internal storms right now, and as Jane realized, only Jay holds the power to calm the raging winds.
Be ready with tissues for the next chapter also ...
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