Chapter 104 Alone in the Apartment

Chapter 104 Alone in the Apartment
Aleli's POV

THE APARTMENT was quieter than I expected.
Not the comforting kind of quiet that settled over the Ricafort mansion late at night, where distant footsteps from the staff or the hum of the air-conditioning reminded me that other people were still awake somewhere.
This silence felt different. It belonged only to me.
I stood in the middle of the small living room with my overnight bag resting beside my feet. Bea had already left after giving me a quick tour of the apartment and repeating her rules for what felt like the fifth time.
“Don't leave your phone near my work desk,” she said. “Don't touch the black laptop.”
“I won't.”
“If you accidentally unplug anything, pretend you didn't.”
I couldn't help smiling. “That's oddly specific.”
She had only shrugged before picking up her backpack. “You'd be surprised how many disasters started because someone wanted to charge their phone.”
That had been the closest thing to humor I had seen from her.
Now she was back at the university, attending her afternoon classes, while I had the apartment entirely to myself.
I slowly walked toward the window overlooking the busy street below. Cars moved through the afternoon traffic, people hurried along the sidewalks, and somewhere nearby a child laughed loud enough for me to hear despite the closed glass.
Life outside continued as if nothing had changed.
Mine, however, had changed so much in only a few weeks that I no longer knew what normal was supposed to look like.
I rested my forehead lightly against the cool glass.
Just a month ago, I had been living in our old tenement, worrying about tuition fees, commissions, and whether I could afford another set of paintbrushes before finals.
Now I was hiding in a secret apartment because people I had never met wanted to erase pieces of my past.
The thought still sounded ridiculous. If someone had told me this story a year ago, I would have laughed.
Now I was living it.
I turned away from the window and looked around the apartment again. Bea's place looked exactly like its owner.
The couch was buried beneath books about programming, networking, and computer systems. Empty coffee cups occupied nearly every available surface, while tangled charging cables disappeared beneath tables and reappeared somewhere else without any obvious purpose.
The only decoration in the apartment was a tiny cactus sitting beside the television. It looked surprisingly healthy.
I smiled to myself. "At least someone around here remembers to water something."
The words echoed softly through the empty apartment before disappearing into silence.
I carried my bag toward the guest room Bea had prepared for me. It wasn't really a guest room. It was more like a storage room that happened to fit a single bed.
Still, she had cleaned everything before I arrived. Fresh sheets covered the mattress, a folded blanket rested neatly at the foot of the bed, and someone had placed a small lamp on the bedside table.
The simple effort touched me more than expensive furniture ever could.
I slowly unpacked my clothes into the small cabinet. There weren't many. A few school uniforms. Some casual clothes.
My sketchbooks. My pencils. My paint set.
I paused when I reached the last item inside my bag. The old wooden box Uncle Jerry had carved for me years ago. I ran my fingertips across the worn surface.
He had spent an entire weekend making it after I complained that my colored pencils kept rolling off our table.
"I can't buy you something expensive," he had told me while laughing. "So I'll make something nobody else has."
Back then, I believed he could fix everything.
I swallowed hard.
For years, I had tried not to think about that night.
Whenever memories came too close, my mind always seemed to stop itself before reaching the end.
Almost like there was a door inside my head that refused to open.
Lately, however… That door had begun shaking. I closed my eyes. For a brief second, something flashed through my mind.
I closed my eyes, hoping the scattered images inside my head would finally connect into something that made sense.
Instead, another memory crashed into me without warning.
I could suddenly feel the icy hardness of a concrete floor beneath my feet, while a loud, piercing ringing filled my ears until it drowned out every other sound around me. A sharp metallic smell lingered in the air, making my stomach tighten. At first I thought it was rust, but the realization came almost immediately.
It wasn't metal. It was blood.
My breathing became uneven as another image flashed through my mind. I saw a small child's hand trembling uncontrollably, its tiny fingers wrapped tightly around the smooth wooden handle of something heavy. I tried desperately to focus, searching for the missing details that refused to stay still.
What was I holding?
For a brief moment, I convinced myself it had been nothing more than a stick.
But the memory resisted that explanation.
The handle had been polished from years of use, solid enough that a child would have needed both hands to keep a firm grip on it.
Before I could understand what I was seeing, another image struck me so vividly that my eyes flew open.
A dark red stain spread slowly across the front of a little white dress.
My dress.
I stumbled backward until the edge of the bed caught my legs, forcing me to sit before I completely lost my balance. My hands immediately pressed against my temples as though I could physically stop the memories from breaking through.
“What...”
The word barely escaped my lips before the images vanished again.
The room returned to normal, but my heartbeat refused to follow. It pounded painfully against my ribs while I struggled to steady my breathing.
Why couldn't I remember the whole night?
Why did every memory stop just before it revealed the truth?
I lowered my head into my hands, trying to calm the growing panic inside me.