herophine - Trouvaille

Chapter 3

Los Ángeles, 2021

- People remembers what we want them to remember. - Nicolas tells him. - No more events or new projects and they will start to forget you.

His words are not mean to be cruel, just realistic. If Hero takes the step forward, there isn't turning back: it is finished for him. But Hero has made his decision and it looks like he is all alone in it.

- Okay, then it's settled.

It is a simple plan but it has to be handled with great caution.

Nicolas Chartier, as the executive producer of the After franchise, schedules for the next week all the interviews of the last two movies. They mostly do press interviews and the ones that are recorded, he ensures they are in foreground.

They won't be the best interviews out of all the ones they have ever done, for sure. But both, Hero and Jo, try to play it along. She barely makes eye contact with him and speaks to him out of the courtesy of the interviews. No one would tell they are having a child together; the truth is that they are not having that child together.

The last day of the week, while they wait on the small room to be called, Josephine finally dares to talk to Hero about them.

- Do you know already where are you going to live?

Hero looks up and frowns a bit. He didn't expect her to talk to him.

- Yes... but it's better if I don't tell you. - He stutters with the small hope that she wants to know, with the small hope that she still wants to be part of their future.

But no, she doesn't. Josephine had felt detachment for anything that has to do with her pregnancy since she found out. And, surprisingly, Hero has started feeling detachment towards her.

He was taught that everyone should be responsible for their mistakes, although trying to make them disappear is not being responsible. He bets that Josephine was taught the same, but shock has seized her causing her to shut down the emotions, and Hero doesn't know how to bring the girl he fell in love with back.

Following the instructions provided by Chartier, Josephine and her manager Lena Roklin fly to a suburb in Perth. "The less people knowing about this the merrier", but the little time that Jo invests on thinking about this, she comes to the conclusion that her family is not included in that small percentage of people either.

For Hero, the instructions received are clear: going back to his "I'm not famous" life.

And Nicolas Chartier is right on what he said: people remember what show business wants them to remember, because people don't know to what point they are being manipulated.

Fourteen months later, without any media appearance or in new projects, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin is just another name left behind in the show business.