Chapter 6 - VI

Timeskip~

My friends and I successfully passed our final exams and managed to graduate from senior high school.

We are currently thinking about what college we're going to. Turns out, all of us decided to go to the same college. Well, except for Aerielle. Her family was going to move to a distant land and it seems that there were tons of universities there that Aerielle wanted to go to. Maybe some of us would probably go with her too but the day we walk on water is the day we'll get accepted into a single university in that place she's moving into. Before Aerielle left, we all decided to have a party to celebrate our graduation and it turned out pretty fun. I even forgot about my feelings for Hailey. I wish it already disappeared.. but it just wouldn't. After a while, Aerielle left the city and my friends and I decided to study more to get accepted into college. I was very excited since I remembered that Ethan will go to the same college as me so he'll come back to America for a while.

Well, that's what I thought.

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Ethan: Hey Karli? I have bad news. I can't go back to the US right now. Sorry, but it's urgent and I can't go.

Karli: Oh no its fine. I'll tell mom about it. Take your time.

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I sighed and told the others about it and their reactions were pretty much the same.

Except for Allan. The two of them were childhood friends and were very close. He looked sad when I told him about it.

However, I tried not to get bothered by it and tried my best to be able to get into college.

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After a few weeks, we finally saw the results and everyone surprisingly got in. We were all jumping in joy and were extremely excited to go to college. All those weeks of studying is worth it. We decided to go out for dinner to celebrate and we enjoyed it. The food was delicious and we were all just joking around and started to talk about what course we'll take. Lyf chose nursing, Erich chose teaching, Allan chose criminology, Hailey chose architecture and I chose law. We all wanted to have the job we've always liked ever since we were just kids and studied hard for it. And here we are now getting closer to our dream.

However, we felt like something was missing. Is it Ethan and Aerielle? It felt so different without the both of them here. Ethan probably didn't have a choice but to stay in Australia because of his parents and Aerielle also didn't have a choice to move to another place because of her family. Maybe not having a rich family is pretty good sometimes y'know?

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8 months later~

Nothing happened that much in the past 8 months and if I had to describe it with one word, it would be "boring". Every day is the same and we all didn't have any free time at all. It's currently saturday and my friends were out of town since they took a vacation with their family. However, on my side, well we did go out of town but didn't have fun at all. My mother had to attend a meeting and decided to make me come along so that I'll learn a few stuff that lawyers do. My mother was a lawyer and she was the one who inspired me to be one.

One of her co-workers rented an apartment for us to stay in for a while and the apartment was large enough for the two of me and my mother.

However, an hour hasn't even passed and I was already bored. There weren't snacks in the kitchen too. My mom left me alone in the apartment for some kind of meeting or whatever. As I was looking outside the window, I saw a store which seemed to be selling tons of snacks. I couldn't resist my hunger and I ran downstairs and went running to the store as fast as I can. Good thing I had a wallet in my pocket or else I would need to go back to the apartment again.

There wasn't many people in the area so it was pretty quiet.

Too quiet to be exact.

As I walked to the store, a guy put a handkerchief in my mouth and I passed out.

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Unknown POV.

"Hey Rie, I think that's her."

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Karli's POV.

I woke up to see myself tied up on a chair.

'Where am I?' I thought to myself.

As I tried to remove the rope from my hand, I noticed a familiar guy sitting next to me.

"I see you've woken up, Karli."

"A-alex? Why are you here? I already told you that we're done so stop it and let me go!"

"Karli, I already told you, I'm not letting you go until you agree to be with me again!"

His name was Alex. He was my ex-boyfriend and the reason I broke up with him is that he was getting too toxic and started to hurt other people for no reason at all. He dragged my collar and pulled my face towards his.

Before he could do anything, a feminine figure with a mask jumped onto his back and threw him away.

"Oops, sorry! Didn't see ya there." the girl smirked at him as if she was trying to provoke him.

"Who are you? And how did you even get past those guards? Never mind that, I'll kill you myself." He ran to her and kicked her in the stomach as he grabbed a knife from his pocket.

Before he managed to hurt her, someone stabbed him with a knife and he started screaming in agony.

"Didn't I already warn you to never get near Karli ever again? Now, look at you down there crouching and screaming in pain." another lady whispered at him kicked him on the face, which threw him across the room.

The two of them helped me get out and run away from the area and fortunately, we managed to get out safely.

"Thanks for saving me! Please take this money as a token of my gratitude." I said.

"Oh it's no problem, you can keep the money. Anyways, I'm Franchesca!" said the unmasked lady.

"And you, miss?" I said looking at the masked lady.

And then, she took off her mask and revealed her face.

"I'm Aerielle."