I Am The Game's Villain Chapter 791: Miranda SS [2]

Miranda had always thought of her life as a happy one.

From the moment she was born, she had been surrounded by love. Both her father and mother gave it to her freely, so naturally that for a long time she never imagined life could be any other way. Her father had been a busy man, rising quickly through the ranks of power and becoming a Monarch at a young age, but even so, she had never doubted his affection. And when his duties kept him away, her mother was always there, there for her, there for her brothers, there for all of them with a warmth that seemed endless.

Her mother had poured love into their lives so much that Miranda had once believed it could protect them from anything.

She had heard, when she was younger, that her mother had even severed ties with her own family in Edenis Raphiel in order to stay with Draven and the children they had built a life around. When Miranda had asked her about it, her mother had answered with a smile, without bitterness or hesitation. She had said she had never once regretted choosing Draven, because that choice had given her them.

Miranda never forgot that.

Her mother had never spoken of sacrifice as something tragic. She had spoken of it as something made meaningful by love. And because of that, Miranda had always seen her not simply as a parent, but as one of the most precious presences in her life.

There was only one other person who had once stood beside her mother in that same sacred space of importance.

Edward Falkrona.

Miranda had first met him as the eldest son of Duke Thomen Falkrona. Because their mothers were close, and because their fathers also seemed to share a certain understanding, the children had been brought together often enough that closeness had come naturally. It had started simply, with shared visits, childish conversations, familiar faces turning into beloved ones but before long, Edward and Elona had become woven into Miranda’s life.

And Miranda, young as she was, had attached herself to both of them with all the wholehearted devotion children are capable of.

Elona became the little sister she had never had, someone she adored with easy tenderness.

Edward was different.

To Miranda, Edward had been something almost magical in those early years. He had been the perfect boy in the eyes of a child, kind, dependable, attentive, always there when she needed him. He helped her, listened to her, treated her gently. And because she was still young, because her heart had not yet learned caution, she made a place for him in it without even realizing how deeply.

He became her childhood crush.

Then her first love.

As the years passed, that image of him only grew stronger inside her. Edward did not fade in her heart the way childish affections often did. Instead, he became more solid there, more rooted, until Miranda could hardly imagine a future in which he was not important to her.

Even their parents had begun speaking, little by little, of the possibility of an engagement between them.

And Miranda had wanted it.

Wholeheartedly.

At that time, everything in her life had seemed to be moving in the right direction. She was loved. She was safe. The future felt bright and orderly, as though all the things she valued most would remain exactly where they belonged.

Then two things happened that shattered that certainty.

The first was Edward’s change after the death of his mother, Oryanna Olphean.

The second was the death of Miranda’s own mother, killed by Raisa, a member of the Iris Project.

Those two blows came too close to one another, too brutally, and together they broke apart the life Miranda had known.

She was still a child.

There was only so much grief a child could carry before it began to spill out in ways she no longer knew how to control.

Edward’s change frightened her.

That was the truth of it. She did not want to be afraid of him, but she was. More than that, she was terrified of losing him. Every time she tried to speak to him, every time she reached for him, it felt as though he was slipping farther away. Not only from her, but from everyone. He was shutting people out one after another, pushing away every hand that came near him, until it began to feel as if some invisible wall had risen around him.

And Miranda, standing outside it, did not know how to break through.

At times she wondered if she had done something wrong.

Whether she had failed him somehow.

Whether she should have said something different, done something sooner, understood him better.

Then her own mother died, and grief entered her life in a form she could no longer misunderstand.

And in that pain, she thought she finally understood Edward.

Or at least part of him.

She thought that because she too had lost someone irreplaceable, she could now reach him in a way others could not. She believed their suffering might become a bridge between them. That perhaps, instead of drifting apart, they could hold one another up. Help each other survive what had happened.

That hope became something desperate inside her.

She needed him.

She needed him back in her life.

She loved him that much.

She wanted him to comfort her the way he once had. To speak to her softly. To pull her into his arms. To reassure her, to make the world feel less unbearable simply by being near.

But it did not happen.

Perhaps the moment Miranda truly began to lose hope in Edward’s redemption was on his tenth birthday.

That was the day he asked for her body as gift.

The remark had stunned nearly everyone present. It was so vile, so sudden, so inappropriate that the shock of it spread through the room at once. But for Miranda, the worst part had not even been the indecency of the words themselves. It had been the wound hidden inside them, the way he had spoken to her, the way he had reduced her to something cheap, something he could name so carelessly and expect to take.

That was what hurt her most.

Not embarrassment.

Not even outrage.

Hurt.

Because in that moment, more clearly than ever before, she felt just how little of the Edward she had once loved remained in front of her.

After that, things only worsened between them.

What little was left of their relationship began to collapse beyond repair, and eventually, with the agreement of both their fathers, the engagement that had once been spoken of between them was completely abandoned. By then, Edward’s change had become too obvious, and too impossible to ignore.

Miranda, of course, remained close to Elona.

In fact, with time, she also grew closer to their adopted brother, Simon. But when it came to Edward, something in her finally gave way. She stopped trying to reach him. Stopped waiting for a different side of him to return. Stopped hoping that if she only said the right thing, or stayed patient a little longer, he would remember who he used to be.

Trying to save that connection had begun to hurt her too much.

So she did what she had never wanted to do.

She cut him out of her life.

If Edward no longer wanted her near him, then she would no longer keep offering herself to be pushed away. It was not a decision born from anger alone, but from exhaustion, grief, and the realization that she could not keep tearing herself open for someone who did not want to be reached.

And in the years that followed, she kept that distance.

She did not speak to him.

She did not seek him out.

She removed him from her life as thoroughly as she could, and in truth, she had every reason to believe she had done the right thing. Edward’s behavior only worsened with time, growing uglier, more difficult, more impossible to excuse.

Aurora became engaged to him then.

Miranda remembered feeling immediate pity for her.

She had spoken to Aurora, warned her even, telling her to be careful around the Edward he had become. Aurora had listened, and she had been grateful for the warning, but she had also answered with some kind of determination and positivity Miranda had not expected. Aurora said she believed the kind Edward still existed somewhere deep inside him, buried beneath everything that had gone wrong, and that she would be the one to reach that part of him.

Miranda had not believed her.

She could not.

How could Aurora succeed where she herself had failed? Miranda had known Edward longer, had loved him more openly, had tried harder than she liked to admit, and in the end all she had received for it was pain. So when Aurora later asked for her help, Miranda refused.

She had already turned the page on him.

Or at least, that was what she told herself.

She had no desire to walk back into his life and risk being hurt all over again. She would not reopen a wound she had barely managed to close. Not for hope. Not for old memories. Not for the ghost of the boy he had once been.

And besides, her life had changed too much by then.

Her mother was dead.

Her father, burdened by the responsibilities of a Monarch, was constantly occupied.

That left Miranda with a role she had not chosen but accepted anyway: she had to become the elder sister her younger brothers now needed. They were motherless too. They had lost just as much as she had, and whatever pain still remained in Miranda’s heart, she could not indulge it endlessly. She had responsibilities now. She had people who needed her in the present, not memories dragging her back into the past.

So yes, she had turned the page on Edward.

At the very least, that was what she believed back then.

Before her second year at the Royal Eden Academy.