"Rose, Rose…my Rose,"
On the highest floor of a glass building, moonlight poured in through the wide windows and glass walls.
The whole room was a mess. Broken furniture, shattered glass, and pieces of things lay everywhere on the floor.
At the center of the floor stood a large piano, silent and dark.
Moonlight fell over its surface as slender fingers moved across the keys, pulling out soft, painful notes.
The sound filled the room, slow and trembling.
"Rose I'm sorry…" His voice cracked.
"I'm sorry…I wasn't there, I wasn't in your world…I couldn't save you…"
Tears fell from his eyes and dropped onto the piano keys. His knuckles were bleeding from hitting things earlier.
Red blood dripped down and mixed with the tears, staining the white keys red.
The music carried deep sadness, heavy and raw.
The one playing was just a boy, no older than sixteen or seventeen, sitting alone in the vast glass hall, drowning in guilt, regret, and loss as the moon watched in silence.
"Rose, my Rose.."
He laughed softly, broken. "Do you think I'm crazy? Is it wrong of me to love you?"
"They killed you because you were beautiful, strong and brave."
His voice trembled with anger. "They called you the villainess. Evil. Crazy. But you were the most brilliant Rose of all."
He kept whispering, lost in memory, clinging to her name like a curse.
"Rosalina Valentine…"
The villainess of the hit novel, "In your love."
And this boy was Julius Ashborn. He was the heir of a powerful business family. His parents died in an accident, leaving him completely alone in the world.
However, they left him great wealth and a secure future, but after their death, Julius slowly became mentally unstable.
At times he was violent and aggressive. At other times, he acted like a criminal without fear or regret.
People stayed away from him, and he stayed away from people.
This is how he spent most of his life.
However everything changed when he met Rose…or to be exact, when he read about her.
Rosalina Valentine was one of the two main villains in the novel "In your love"
She was strange, cruel, distant, arrogant, and full of pride. Yet for reasons even he could not explain, Julius fell deeply in love with her.
Whenever he read about Rose, his madness faded. His mind became calm, but his heart grew obsessed.
He even sent his fortune to the author, begging him not to kill her and to give her a happy ending.
But in the end, she died.
"Why? Why? Why? WHY?!"
Julius roared as his fingers slammed against the piano keys.
"Why?! I gave you everything! Why did you kill her?!"
He roared once again. Wasn't money everything? Wasn't it enough to control fate itself?
When he read the recent chapter, he was completely shattered. Rage consumed him so deeply that he went to kill the author himself. But the author had already vanished.
No matter how hard Julius searched, he could not find him. He searched cities, countries, the entire world…but the author was nowhere to be found.
And now, he was here, alone, mourning her death through the sound of the piano.
Each note carried his grief.
Each strike carried his hatred.
And each echo carried the name of the woman he could never save.
"I won't forgive you, I won't! I won't! I won't!"
He rose from the piano, the music stopping suddenly. His hands slammed onto it as he roared into the empty hall.
"I WON'T FORGIVE YOU!!!"
His roar echoed through the hall. His hands bled even more as he bent forward, breathing heavily.
"The world is unfair… the world is unfair," he murmured to himself.
"First you took my mother from me… and now Rose too?"
He slowly walked toward the window, repeating the same words again and again.
"Why is this world so unfair? Why is this world so unfair?"
He reached the railing as the moon came into his sight.
His obsession with the woman he could never have dragged him into a deep sea of sorrow. He stood there, staring at the moon in silence.
"I'm sorry, Rose… I couldn't avenge you," he whispered.
"That bastard vanished from this world."
His eyes were filled with longing and madness as he looked at the moon.
"Rose… are you lonely?"
"I'm lonely too."
"I want to see you. I want you. I want to stay with you for the rest of my life."
Below, the horns of passing vehicles screamed through the streets, but none of them reached his ears.
"Don't worry, my Rose," he said softly.
"I will see you… I will see you."
The madness in his eyes grew deeper as the moon reflected within them.
He kept staring at the moon. Tears kept falling down his face as he started to laugh. "Haha... haha... hahahaha."
"I'm lonely, Mom. I'm lonely, Rose. This world is too bad. I don't want to stay here anymore. I want to be with you both."
He laughed again as he climbed over the railing of the open window.
He did not look down at the ground far below. He only looked at the moon and laughed louder.
"Everyone calls me mad. Psycho. Evil. Am I really evil?" Those were the words people at school threw at him every day. That's why he quit school.
"But don't worry. When I meet you both, I'll fix everything. I won't be mad anymore. I won't be evil. I won't be psycho."
"I will meet you, right?"
He gave a silly, broken smile, the kind that existed only because nothing else was left.
Then he looked at the world one last time, glass and light and distance blurring together.
"Goodbye, world. You were never mine to begin with."
He jumped!! Fifty floors down, he didn't look back.
The fall was very high, yet strangely short at the same time.
Julius closed his eyes. Cold air rushed past him, whipping his hair and clothes. His body twisted in the wind.
'Will I be able to meet Rose?'
'She died... so she should be in heaven, right?'
The thought kept echoing in his head. He pictured her face, sharp eyes, proud smile, the villainess who owned every page of his heart.
"Rose... my Rose... I will meet you soon…"
Memories flooded in. Not real moments, but the ones he lived through reading, her cruel words, her lonely pride, her tragic end.
What did it matter if they were only words? They were real to him.
"Rose…"
"BOOM!!"
His thoughts cut off as his body slammed into the hard road below.
Pain exploded for one split second, then faded to nothing.
Everything went dark... but not completely.
Voices started around him, distant at first, then louder.
People ran over. Shoes scraped the pavement. Someone screamed. Phones flashed. A crowd gathered fast, forming a tight circle around his broken body.
"He's not moving!"
"Call an ambulance!"
"Oh my God..."
Julius could barely hear them. His vision blurred, weak, fading.
Through the haze of legs and faces, he saw something else.
A figure walked toward him slowly.
She moved through the crowd like they weren't there, elegant dress flowing, hair catching the moonlight, eyes fixed only on him.
'Rose…'
Not a memory. Not a dream. She was walking straight to him, calm and beautiful, the way she always looked in his mind.
Her lips moved, but no sound came. Or maybe he just couldn't hear anymore.
She reached out a hand.
The world went quiet.
Julius smiled faintly, one last time.
'I'm coming... my Rose…'
Slowly, he closed his eyes.
The pain vanished.
The noise faded.
The crowd's voices blurred into nothing.
A soft light bloomed behind his eyelids.
Then…a voice.
Clear.
Close.
Real.
"Young master... Young master Julius...?"