Kyra's thumb hovered over the screen, the name LUCIFER flashing like a warning light in the suffocating dark.
In their strange, transactional world, a call was a total anomaly—a violent rupture in the digital veil they had so carefully maintained.
Taking a shuddering breath, she finally pressed the phone to her ear.
She didn't speak waiting for lucifer to say something but as no voice came, she finally whispered, "Hello?"
"Where are you?" Lucifer's voice came through the receiver, low and gentle, asking the question like he was just curious.
"I... I'm at the library," Kyra lied, her heart clenched slightly as she noticed the eerie calmness beneath his tone.
"Oh... really?" Lucifer asked, his voice rising just a fraction, laced with a dangerous edge.
Listening to his raised tone, Kyra felt her nerves fray. She raised her head, her eyes frantically scanning the rows of trees and the distant, stoic pillars of the library, searching for a shadow that shouldn't be there.
"Yes... is there something wrong? You suddenly called," Seeing no-one,she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of her growing dread.
"Heh..." A dry, humorless laughter came from the other side of the line.
Listening to that laughter, Kyra felt a sharp chill travel down her spine.
Suppressing her spiraling emotions and her shaking hands, she forced herself to ask, "What happened, babe? Are you okay...?"
"Hmm... nothing. Well, why don't you turn your head, love?"
As the words left his mouth, Kyra heard the distinct sound of footsteps approaching from behind her.
The synchronization of his voice in her ear and the boots on the pavement made her blood turn to ice.
Her body became paralyzed, seized by a single, devastating thought:'It's over.'
"Kyra..." Lucifer's voice rang out beside her ear, still sounding gentle and soothing, yet her entire body trembled as she slowly turned her head.
Looking at Lucifer, she saw a face that was still smiling, but his eyes were like frozen depths—utterly cold.
Kyra forced a smile, though it looked stiff and brittle. As she stood up and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out; her voice had died in her throat.
"What? Can't explain why you are here?!" Lucifer's smile vanished as he suddenly grabbed her wrist, dragging her violently close to him.
"No... I... I just went to a nearby cafe because I wanted to have some cold coffee," Kyra said, a desperate mixture of a half-lie and a half-truth.
Even though she hand went for announcement of competition but also made his favorite pastries as a way of thanking him for a gift.
But before She can explain it...Lucifer said again with the gentleness she has never seen.
"Hmm...? You like coffee? I didn't know that. And even so, why did you lie?" Lucifer leaned down, his face inches from hers as he mockingly stroked her head.
Before Kyra could reply, a sharp sting flared in her arm. She looked down at her hands, which were already bruising under his iron grip.
Mustering her fading courage, she tried to shake off his hand, crying out, "Oouch.... it's hurt, baby...let go!!"
But her resistance only snapped his remaining patience. His face twisted as he hissed, "You lied to me!"
Before the words even fully left his lips, his other hand shot out, tangling his fingers deep into her hair and yanking her head upward with a violent jerk.
"Ah!" Kyra gasped, a sharp cry of pain escaping her as the roots of her hair burned from the force.
She tried to pry his fingers loose, looking up at him with wide, shocked eyes as she apologized softly feeling his rising anger,
"I'm sorry! I—I just wanted to surprise you... I made your favorite pastries..."
"Ha! Pastries? And what about your lie... hmm?" Lucifer's voice was filled with a burning anger fueled by the poison he had heard from his friends.
"I heard that someone important from the capital has come near your library. What was it called? One of the Six Princes... Did you go to drink coffee, or were you trying to win a chance with a bigshot?"
His mind flashed back to the club earlier if his friends teasing.
"Hey... Luci... look how trending this man is, just because he is from a rich family! Tsk..." Lucifer's friend, Shelly, had said sarcastically as he tossed his mobile to the table which were filled with wine bottle and cigarette ashes.
And refocused on cuddling with a model, his hands roaming as he twisted her waist.
"Shh..." The model inhaled sharply at the rough touch, but she leaned more against him, rubbing her breasts across his chest as she said coquettishly, "Don't be angry, Young Master... I'm not like those girls. I love you wholeheartedly."
Listening to the flattery, Shelly's mood improved. He kissed the model as his hands wandered around her body briefly before turning back to Lucifer, who sat across from him.
Lucifer himself was not sitting idle; he was flirting with another model, his fingers tracing the rim of his wine glass while his other hand rested on the girl's inner thighs.
"Hey... doesn't your little girlfriend also hang around that library area?" Shelly said, laughing sarcastically.
"I'm betting she also went to look at the so-called prince,trying to seduce the bigshot from the capital."
"Haha..." The laughter rang around the booth as the other friends joined in, listening to Shelly's sarcastic tone.
Lucifer had laughed then and boasted, acting confident as he remembered Kyra—who was usually as timid as a rabbit but as bright as a star. "There is no chance... she loves me."
"Haha... she loves you? So why haven't you crossed the line aside from kissing? Have you even seen her body?!" Shelly mocked, and the rest of the group joined in, laughing at Lucifer's expense.
"Hey... it's just because she is shy," Lucifer had said, his eyes narrowing with a predatory light mixed with a lingering softness.
"Well, I also like her quite a bit... so I am patient. Don't worry, within two to three months, she will definitely be mine."
The friends around him booed and teased him further.
"Okay... now I'm gonna go. I'm going to surprise her," Lucifer said remembering Kyra tempting lips from yesterday afternoon, finally pushing away the model who had been feeding him wine and kissing him as he squeezed her breasts.
He stood up between the model reluctance giving her some tip and grabbed his jacket, his ego bruised by his friends' taunts.
"Okay, go, go!" Shelly waved him off.
Remembering that scene now, Lucifer's anger burned even hotter. He looked at Kyra and said harshly, "I never thought you were just like other girls... Just as materialistic, vain, and loose like courtesans."
"Do you even know what you are saying, Lucifer?! How can you think of me like this...?" Kyra's heart ached, and her eyes began filling with tears that shone like pearls against her golden-tinted eyes in the afternoon sunrays.
"Hah! You can wander around like a slut...but I can't say that!!" Lucifer spat,gripping her chin and raising his voice to a roar.
"You..." Kyra looked at Lucifer, whose face was filled with nothing but suspicion and disgust, as if he were looking at a dirty, broken thing.
Seeing that look, Kyra felt something inside her shift. Two images began to overlap in her mind. Cold walls... her hands handcuffed to a chair... people surrounding her in white coats... and a woman whose face was blurry, but who held the exact same look of disgust in her eyes that Lucifer had now.
"Why? Am I right? Nothing to say now?!" Lucifer raised his hand to slap her, seeing her fall silent and look at him blankly.
Kyra snapped out of the vision—a hallucination she had never experienced before.
She looked at the boy in front of her, who was meant to be her safe haven, a place of shelter and light. Now, his hand was raised, ready to strike.
Kyra laughed.
As she laughed, her voice carried a raw pain that even the bypassers watching from a distance seemed to feel. Her body trembled as she clutched her stomach, still laughing, but her gaze never left Lucifer's.
She seemed to want to etch his very face into her memory as her inner-self whispered:
'Look... this is the light you wanted. Forget it, Kyra... you were born to live in darkness.'
She retorted mentally, 'No... I'm not... I'm not meant to live in darkness!'
But she only heard laughter echoing around her as the faces of Mille, her parents, Lucifer, and figures she didn't even recognize began to surface and swirl in her mind.
Her mind began to buzz, and her consciousness started to slip away.
But before the world went black, she saw Ashley and Sam running toward her.
In her fading vision, they seemed to overlap with two young men from another time, running toward her with the same desperate cry:
"Kyra... Little Sun!"