The V-tuber Who Became Obsessed With Me

Chapter 101: Painful

( continuation from previous Chapter )

The silence between us answered before I ever could.

Ethan lowered his head and let out a slow breath. Not the kind that came from frustration. The kind that came from someone who had been holding onto something and had finally accepted they needed to put it down.

"I thought so," he said.

There was no triumph in it. He sounded like someone watching the last reasonable explanation dissolve.

"I kept telling myself there had to be a reason," he continued. "That maybe you’d been protecting someone. That there was something I wasn’t seeing." A faint shake of his head. "But if Felix had never come back, you would’ve carried this through the rest of our lives."

"You’re right," I said.

The words hurt more than anything else I had said since walking through his door.

"I kept waiting for the perfect moment to tell you." A short bitter sound escaped me. "It never came because it never existed."

"No," he said quietly. "It didn’t."

A silence settled between us that was different from the ones before it. Not uncomfortable. Just the sound of two people standing on either side of something neither of them knew how to cross.

"When my mum had you over for dinner the first time," he said, "she called me after you left." He looked somewhere past me, his eyes soft with a memory I could not reach. "She told me she hadn’t seen me smile like that in years. After that she asked about you almost every week." He paused. "Is Raina coming this weekend? Tell her I’ll make her favourite."

He swallowed.

"She’d already started treating you like family. So had Nathan." He rubbed the back of his neck. "My nephew still asks when you’re coming over. He wants you to help him finish that dinosaur set." His voice cracked on the last word, just slightly, the first time it had done that since I arrived. "I don’t even know what to tell him."

The tears I had been holding back since the hallway finally came through.

"Ethan—"

"What do I say when my mum asks why you stopped coming?" He was not looking at me now. "Do I tell her the woman she welcomed into our home had another name? That she’d been carrying an entire life none of us knew about?"

He pressed his hand over his face for a moment.

"I don’t blame you for surviving your past," he said finally. "I blame the fact that you never let me carry any of it with you."

"I wanted to."

"I think you did." He looked at me and there was no anger in it, which was harder to receive than anger would have been. "But wanting and trusting aren’t the same thing."

I had no argument for that.

"I told you everything," he said. "You knew about my dad. You knew why I changed courses. You knew every stupid decision I’ve ever made." A tired laugh. "You even know I still can’t cook rice without burning it." The laugh faded. "But I never really knew you."

"You knew pieces of me," I said quietly.

"I know." He nodded slowly. "And I think those pieces were real." He held my gaze. "I don’t think Raina was a performance. I think she was the person you were trying to become." He paused. "I just don’t know if you ever believed she was real yourself."

That landed somewhere deep.

Because for years I had told myself that if I buried Himari completely, Raina would eventually be all that remained. Maybe I had not been trying to deceive Ethan. Maybe I had been trying to deceive myself, and he had simply been standing close enough to be caught inside it.

"I loved you," I said. The words came before I decided to say them. "I still do."

He closed his eyes briefly.

"I know," he said. "So do I."

For one moment something flickered between us.

Then he opened his eyes.

"And that’s exactly why this hurts the way it does." He took a slow breath. "Every memory I have of us feels different now. I keep going back through them and wondering what you were thinking while I was falling in love with you. Were you waiting for the right time? Were you hoping I’d never find out? Were you afraid every time I said your name?"

Each question landed and settled and stayed.

"I don’t know," I admitted. "I genuinely don’t. I only know that none of it was false." I took one step toward him. "When your mum hugged me goodbye I wasn’t pretending. When your nephew wouldn’t let go of my hand because he wanted one more story, I wasn’t pretending. When we sat on your balcony until sunrise because neither of us wanted the night to end." My voice broke cleanly. "I wasn’t pretending then either. I loved every one of those moments. I loved the life we were building."

He listened without interrupting.

When I stopped talking he looked away.

"I believe you," he said.

That caught me off guard. "You do?"

"I believe Raina loved me." His jaw tightened. "I just don’t know whether Himari ever trusted me."

Something shattered quietly inside my chest.

I pressed my hand over my mouth as another sob came through.

"I’m sorry." The words felt completely inadequate for the size of what had happened between us.

"I know," he said. He looked at me with an expression that was not anger and was worse than anger because it was the face of someone who still cared. "But some things don’t stop hurting because the apology is sincere."

The room fell quiet again.

I looked at him and knew there was still one more thing I had to say, and I hated the timing of it, hated that it had to come now when everything was already raw and open.

"Ethan."

He looked up.

"You need to be careful." I tried to find the right words and could not locate them, so I said it plainly. "My grandfather is not the kind of man who lets things go quietly. If he thinks you’re going to talk about what happened, what you saw—"

I watched the understanding move across his face.

Slowly.

His shoulders stiffened.

"Wait." His voice went flat. "Is that why you came?"

"No."

"Is it, Raina?"

"I came because I needed to see you," I said. "And because I’m afraid of what happens to you if he decides you’re a problem. Both of those things are true at the same time."

He let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. "I actually thought you came because you couldn’t stand the idea of losing me."

"I can’t," I said. "I can’t lose you."

He met my eyes.

"I think you already have."

He walked to the front door and pulled it open.

Neither of us moved for a moment. The apartment behind him looked exactly as it always had, every familiar thing still in its place, and I understood that it would keep looking that way long after I was not part of it anymore.

"Please," he said.

He did not explain what he meant. He did not need to.

I nodded.

Every step toward the door was heavier than the one before it. When I reached him I stopped.

"I never stopped loving you," I said.

His hand tightened around the edge of the door.

"I know." His voice had gone very quiet. "I wish that made this easier."

I stepped into the hallway.

The door closed behind me.

The soft click of the lock was the only sound in the corridor.

I stood there for another minute, telling myself I might hear footsteps coming back toward the door.

I did not hear footsteps.

The silence that answered instead was the part that hurt the most.