Chapter 54: Stella’s mother-like-figure

After a while, Stella’s tears stopped.

Not because she felt better, nor because the pain had eased even slightly.

The weight pressing against her chest hadn’t grown lighter. If anything, it felt heavier now, like something inside had settled inside her and refused to leave

No.

She simply could not cry anymore.

Her tears had dried out.

Her body had exhausted itself. It had reached its limit of venting out her sadness. The tears had poured out of her entirely, wrung from her like water from a soaked cloth, leaving behind only swollen eyelids, a raw, burning throat, and an emptiness that felt far worse than the sobbing ever had.

Her breathing, which had been uneven and desperate, slowly steadied, though it trembled faintly at the edges. Each inhale felt thin, like one wrong word could shatter her again.

Her fingers, which had been gripping Julia’s sleeve so tightly, so desperately, slowly loosened little by little.

She didn’t let go, just merely stayed there, weak and drained, as her forehead pressed against Julia’s breasts.

“Sorry?” she muttered in a meek, trembling voice, her face still buried against Julia’s chest, and her voice a bit muffled by the fabric.

She was embarrassed—no, more than embarrassed.

Her face had turned red, not just from crying but from the humiliation of losing her control entirely in front of her.

She couldn’t believe she had just acted like a child throwing a tantrum.

She didn’t want Julia to see her face right now, didn’t want her to see the mess she had become.

Julia smiled gently and softly rubbed her back in a slow, warm motion.

Stella’s tense muscles eased a little under her touch, as if some quiet magic had been done to her body.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said quietly, patting her head.

Her voice didn’t carry even a hint of judgment or irritation.

No disappointment flickered through her voice—just patience and a tiny bit of amusement, since she had just seen a different side of the girl before her that the world rarely got to see.

“Mm.” Stella hummed quietly, her reply barely audible.

She always turned like this when she was with Julia—soft, small, and unarmored.

Around everyone else, she carried herself with practiced confidence. She knew how to speak clearly. How to smile just enough. How to tilt her chin and make eye contact without appearing intimidated.

She knew how to look unbothered.

She had learned that from her childhood—or rather, was forced to learn it.

But around Julia—

The walls melted like snowflakes under the morning sunlight.

Julia was like a mother to Stella.

Not in blood. There was no shared lineage tying them together.

But her presence mattered more than blood sometimes.

Her father was someone bound to her by blood—yet she rarely saw him, rarely spoke to him properly, informally, the way a daughter should speak to her father.

Whenever they talked, it felt less like family and more like a manager speaking to an employee.

But that wasn’t the case with her.

Julia was always there for her in times of need.

When Stella had stumbled through her first school presentation, fumbling her way through the entire thing.

When those stupid business gatherings felt suffocating, filled with adults who smiled at her too widely, and looked at her as though she were an investment to them rather than a simple girl.

Adults who had sent their sons toward her in hopes of them making a relationship with her, encouraging them to “get to know her better”, despite her only being 9 years old at that time.

When she had locked herself in her room once at midnight and cried quietly so no one would hear.

Even when she was forced to transfer to another school, leaving behind her childhood best friend—the only person who liked her without knowing her surname—she had cried as she threw and destroyed almost everything in her room.

Julia had been there then, too.

She was always there.

And she couldn’t believe she had just yelled at her like that.

Even though she had been enraged previously, even though her emotions had spiraled out of control, she shouldn’t have done that.

She shouldn’t have grabbed her collar like that. She shouldn’t have screamed at her like that.

Unlike the other servants in the mansion, Stella had a soft spot for Julia.

Julia had followed her everywhere.

She listened to her.

Actually listened.

Unlike the others, who merely nodded politely, smiling and nodding at her without even knowing what she was talking about, simply because it was their job.

Unlike those who approached her only because she was the Young Miss, because of the wealth and status attached to her name.

Julia never looked at her like that.

She looked at her like Stella.

Just Stella.

“I shouldn’t—” her voice began, guilt rising in her throat.

But before she could finish—

Even before she could complete her apology, the car stopped abruptly.

The sudden halt threw them slightly forward.

Stella instinctively tightened her grip around Julia again, her fingers curling into her shoulder as her body reacted before her mind caught up.

Julia frowned instantly, her hand immediately bracing against the seat in front of them to steady them both.

The air inside the car shifted instantly, as tension began to seep in.

“What happened?” Julia asked, lifting her head and looking toward the front windshield.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” the driver replied, confusion evident in his voice.

“The car before me stopped all of a sudden.”

Crash!

A loud metallic sound echoed through the street, sharp and violent.

All three of them flinched.

Crash!

Another violent collision.

Louder. Closer.

Then another.

And another.

More and more sounds came in rapid succession, like a chain reaction dominoing over one another.

Glass shattered somewhere nearby, the piercing sound slicing through the air like a scream.

Car alarms erupted—multiple of them blared violently in a chaotic harmony.

The street transformed within seconds from a normal traffic lane into something frantic and broken.

The driver cursed under his breath and stepped outside to check what had happened.

Julia’s eyes narrowed.

Her brows knitted together.

Something felt wrong.

It didn’t just look like a simple traffic accident.

The sounds carried panic beneath it, along with the screams mixed in right now.

She turned slightly and looked through the side window, only to see multiple people running away from the scene in panic.

They didn’t look like people who had seen an accident, since nowadays, when someone sees one—they start recording rather than helping, and there was no way they would run away like that.

They weren’t just running away.

They were fleeing.

But from what? She didn’t know.

She couldn’t even see properly from such a distance. Cars blocked her view. Smoke or dust—whatever it was lingered in the air.

Her heart began to beat faster.

Just as she considered stepping out to investigate herself, her gaze caught the driver a few meters ahead.

He had walked a few steps cautiously and—

Then he stopped.

He froze.

His entire body went stiff.

Completely stiff.

His eyes widened, and his shoulder tensed.

“What is it?!” Julia shouted from inside, as her heartbeat began to rise with unease, seeing the driver frozen like that, zoning out.

The driver didn’t answer at first.

He didn’t even blink.

After what felt like seconds stretching into eternity, he swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and finally spoke.

“I–I d–don’t know?!” his voice stammered, as he stumbled backward slightly.

“The cars before us crashed into each other!”

Both Julia’s and Stella’s eyes widened.

But the answer didn’t settle anything.

It deepened the confusion—especially for Julia.

That explanation made no fucking sense.

Stella’s fingers tightened around Julia’s sleeve again, anxiety creeping into her veins.

“What?” Julia frowned.

“Why would multiple cars suddenly crash?”

Her mind raced with multiple possibilities.

Mechanical failure? Unlikely. There was no way so many cars could crash all at once because of that alone.

A distracted driver? Not enough to trigger a chain reaction this violent—this chaotic.

And even if that was the case, then why were the people running like they had seen some terrorists with guns?

And why did the driver look like that?

Then—

A sound came.

A crawling noise.

Low, heavy scraping noise.

The driver turned his head to the sound, and his eyes instantly widened in absolute horror.

“W-W-Wha—” he stumbled back, almost tripping over his own feet.

Julia’s frown deepened.

She couldn’t see what he was looking at from inside the car.

But her instincts screamed at her.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The screams ahead grew louder now. Closer.

One man ran past their vehicle, with his face pale, and his mouth open in a soundless cry. He didn’t even look at them—just ran as if his life depended on it.

Stella’s heartbeat thudded painfully in her ears.

Her earlier guilt, her embarrassment, everything was gone.

In place of it, something else had settled in—something colder.

Fear.

Julia didn’t hesitate any further.

Her fingers tightened briefly around Stella’s hand.

She opened the door and stepped out.

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