The V-tuber Who Became Obsessed With Me

Chapter 99: You can’t trust your grandpa part 2

( a continuation of the previous Chapter told from raina’s pov)

By the time I came downstairs breakfast had already been served.

The smell of grilled salmon and rice drifted through the dining room, mixing with the earthy warmth of miso soup.

Ojiisan sat alone at the long wooden table eating with the same quiet composure he always carried, as though he had not executed a man only a few hours earlier.

A folded newspaper rested beside his tea.

For one absurd moment I wondered if he had slept well.

The thought turned my stomach.

I tried to walk past without disturbing him.

"And where," he asked, without looking up from his tea, "do you think you’re going?"

My feet stopped before I told them to.

"I’m allowed to go out, aren’t I, Ojiisan?"

He raised his eyes to meet mine and studied me for several seconds with an expression I could not read.

Just as I started wondering whether he somehow already knew about Kuro’s call, a gentle smile spread across his face.

"Of course."

He set his chopsticks across his bowl with the same careful precision he applied to everything.

"But it’s dangerous outside. Kurosawa escaped police custody last night."

I made myself blink in surprise.

"He escaped?"

"So it would seem."

He nodded, watching me a little too carefully for my comfort.

"My men restrained him until the authorities arrived. He slipped away before they could transport him."

A faint note of disappointment entered his voice.

"They’re searching for him now."

"They’ll find him."

"They always do."

"Of course they will," I said quietly.

Inside my head my thoughts were moving too fast to follow properly.

So Kuro had been telling the truth.

He really had gotten out.

Ojiisan rose from his chair with the same practiced elegance he carried into every movement.

"Until he’s found, you’ll remain under protection."

He snapped his fingers and the dining room doors opened almost instantly.

Three men in dark suits stepped in and bowed in unison.

"Hai, Arashigumi-sama."

"Escort my granddaughter wherever she goes."

"She is not to leave your sight."

"Hai."

Their voices merged together in that perfect agreement that had followed me through most of my childhood, the kind of obedience that came from years of practice rather than loyalty.

The sight of them pulled me straight back to Japan, to years spent with shadows behind me reporting my every movement back to him.

I had told myself I had escaped all that.

Now I understood the cage had simply been waiting patiently for me to return to it.

"Ojiisan, I don’t think that’s necessary."

"I’m only going to check on Ethan."

"I just want to know he’s alright."

"I know," he said, his smile unchanged.

"And that’s precisely why you’ll have protection."

"I’m only thinking of your safety."

There was no point arguing.

There never had been.

Once Ojiisan made a decision the rest of the world simply adjusted itself around it.

"Thank you, Ojiisan."

I turned toward the entrance.

"Raina."

I stopped.

Looked back slowly.

"Yes?"

His smile remained warm enough to fool anyone who had not spent their entire life learning the difference between his real warmth and the version he performed.

"Say hello to your boyfriend for me."

Anyone else hearing that sentence would have heard affection in it.

I heard a warning underneath it, clear as anything he had ever said to me directly.

Make sure he keeps his mouth shut.

Because next time I won’t be so merciful.

A chill moved down my spine.

"I will," I said.

I walked out before he could notice the slight tremor that had started in my hands.

Nearly an hour later our car pulled into Ethan’s apartment complex.

The three bodyguards climbed out with me.

"I’d like a few minutes alone," I said.

I expected pushback.

None came.

"We’ll wait outside, Miss Takahashi."

I thanked them and went up alone.

The hallway looked exactly as I remembered it.

The same faded paint along the skirting boards.

The same worn patch in the carpet outside the elevator.

The same faint smell of someone’s laundry detergent from one of the neighbouring units.

Nothing had changed about it physically.

But it no longer felt like the place where Ethan and I had laughed over bad takeout and stayed up arguing about which movie ending made more sense.

It felt like a hallway I was walking through for the first time, even though every detail of it was familiar.

I stopped outside his door.

My heart was loud enough that I could hear it over everything else.

I knocked.

Nothing.

I waited and knocked again.

Still nothing.

A knot tightened somewhere behind my ribs.

I pulled out my phone and called him.

Unavailable.

Again.

I was about to lower the phone when I heard something.

A small sound from inside.

Movement.

The specific quality of someone standing very still and trying not to be heard.

"Ethan?"

I knocked harder this time.

"I know you’re in there."

Silence.

"Please."

"I only need five minutes."

Nothing came back.

The strength went out of my legs slowly, the way it does when you’ve been holding yourself together by force and the force finally runs out.

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor outside his door, my back against the wood, looking at nothing in particular on the opposite wall.

"I’m sorry," I said.

The words barely made it past my throat.

"I should have told you the truth from the beginning. I kept telling myself I was protecting what we had."

I pressed my fingers around the phone in my lap.

"But the truth is I was protecting myself."

"I was terrified that if you knew who Himari Ishigami really was, you’d stop looking at me the way you always did."

I rested my head back against the door.

"I thought becoming Lumi♡Live meant I could leave all of that behind me."

"I actually believed I could start over completely."

My throat tightened.

"Then you found my stream."

"And everything I’d spent years burying came back at once."

I closed my eyes.

"I should have trusted you."

"I know that now."

"I’m not asking you to forgive me."

"I don’t even know if I’d forgive me."

My voice cracked properly on the next part.

"I just need to know you’re okay."

Nobody answered.

The hallway sat in complete stillness around me.

Then...

A click.

I was on my feet before I had registered moving.

The lock turned.

The door opened.

Ethan stood there.

His hair was unkempt in a way I had never seen it, like he had been running his hands through it for hours without meaning to.

Dark shadows sat under his eyes, the kind that came from a body that had simply stopped knowing how to sleep.

He looked at me without saying anything for several seconds.

Not with anger.

I had braced myself for anger.

Just with the exhausted look of someone trying to find the woman he had known inside the woman currently standing in his hallway, and not entirely succeeding, and not entirely giving up on the attempt either.

He stepped aside.

"Come in,"