Bastian - Chapter 155 - Somewhere Between Truth and Lies - WoopRead
7-10 Minutes
✧Somewhere Between Truth and Lies✧
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Odette's eyes flashed with anticipation as Bastian looked her calmly. She looked desperate in her hope, which was nothing more than an attempt at clutching at straws. The hope was fragile and she felt like she was drowning.
The more they stared at each other, the more desperate that hope became. Bastian reached up and cupped Odette's cheek with a wet hand.
"Bastian," Odette said, the urge to draw closer to him was insatiable.
Bastian thought Odette looked like an abandoned child and it reminded him of that day he proposed to her. She had been sitting all alone on the bench in the hospital garden, nestled in amongst tall roses. With a crippled father and unknown to her, a sister who had crippled him. Her face now mirrored the day she faced an unbearable reality.
Tira was the real culprit of the accident.
It had taken Bastian a long time to come by the information, but he finally had it. The conversation over the phone went long into the night. Tira confessed everything to him. From the circumstances that led to the fight with her father, to the unexpected accident, and what happened afterward. In her exasperated desire to clear her conscience, it didn't feel like she was making it up.
Bastian listened in silence, feeling disappointed in Tira's attempt to save herself by selling her sister, yet also empathizing with her reasons for doing so.
Tira had been desperate to protect what she had and her new way of life. Her husband, their child and their lumber business. Her whole family's future. It was hard to dismiss her lack of emotions when it came to her older sister, who wasn't even a bit part in Tira's family.
She tried to defend Odette, who had been left with no choice but to make such a decision. and when she learned of her sister's sacrifice, even covering up her wrongdoing, Tira broke down and cried.
Tira claimed to love her sister, but could not prioritise the love for a sister over the love of her family and her future. Perhaps it was only an ordinary affection. The abnormal one actually was Odette.
Bastian slowly opened his mouth, but he could not say the words on his lips. If she didn't have a sister, then she at least had a child. If she didn't have a child, at least she had Margrethe. Odette was still continuing to wander around looking for an alter to cast herself on.
Responsibility. Sacrifice. Dedication.
That was all Odette's life had become, as if it was all she could do to put meaning to her existence. She didn't know how to live for herself. Maybe because no one had shown her how to live any differently.
Bastian felt he could understand Odette in that moment. If you replaced family with revenge, they were the same person.
If someone asked him why he did what he did, he wouldn't be able to answer, but he knew no other way to lead his life. His life was pushed forward by blind inertia.
"... Yes, that's right....It wasn't Meg, Odette," Bastian said, looking into her eyes.
The hope of Margrethe's return was painful to bear, yet that pain was the last thread that could tie Odette by his side. Bastian decided to choose the latter. He let greed steer, casting aside what was best for Odette.
"I knew it, there was no way I wouldn't be able to recognise Meg," Odette said, forcing a laugh. Bastian replied with silence, stuck amid truth and lies, like in a vague fog.
