Chapter 55: Who are you?
"I am a Data Architect for Hephaestus’s upcoming generative AI model. Let alone hundreds of me, you cannot even buy a single me," Flinn blurted out, feeling smug at himself.
He had kept it a secret from Liliana and everyone, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as long as he could have her for himself.
Liliana, who was about to leave thinking that the masked man was wrong about him, stopped after hearing those words from Flinn’s lips.
’It can’t be...’ she mumbled in her head and turned her disbelieving gaze to him.
Meanwhile, Klaus grinned widely behind his mask. If he wasn’t wearing one, his demonic grin would be visible for both of them to see.
’What humans like more than seeing a person rise is watching them fall and die trying...’ he remarked, and to drive the nail into the coffin, he muttered in a haughty tone, "Heh. That’s all? A mere Data Architect and I thought you were someone important. Talk about laughable."
Flinn’s smile vanished for a moment before he let out a chuckle and added, "Seems like you don’t know anything. The model I am working on is seamless, nothing like it has even been done! It will be a revolution in both media generation and textual voice."
Klaus leaned back in his chair and turned his head to the right and then up to look at her.
"So he says."
Flinn furrowed his brows and finally looked at Liliana, who was staring at him with wide, broken eyes.
She didn’t know what to feel, what to think, and most importantly, what to say.
The masked man had set up the perfect time and place for it, but no word came out. All the time they had spent together, all the comfort that he had given her... everything was fake.
It wasn’t goodwill but desire.
Desire to fix something that was broken only to see it broken again and then fix it once more... it was to fit into her mind that no one except him could fix or comfort her.
That was the kind of person Flinn actually was.
Klaus didn’t know if Flinn himself was aware of it. After all, more often than not, the last person to learn about their wrongs was the person committing them.
Flinn stared in confusion at the two of them.
"Liliana, what’s wrong?" He asked, unable to understand the situation.
Klaus tapped the table with his fingers and said, "For the past few weeks, Liliana had been receiving letters talking about how they had her explicit images, and for the last few days they had started to send them with the letters."
Flinn froze for a moment before he said worriedly, "She didn’t tell me anything about it..."
"Those images are fake, but they’ve been made with such precision and quality that even she thought that they were real," Klaus added.
Flinn blinked and rose from his chair with his arms open for a hug.
"I didn’t know you were going through something like that. Let me hug you."
Hearing that, the last thread of sanity keeping her from breaking down fell apart.
She glared at Flinn and demanded furiously, "Why?"
Flinn frowned. "What?"
"Why did you do it?!" She slammed her hands onto the table. "What do you want from me? You bastard!!"
"L-Liliana, what are you talking about? There’s no way you think I would do something like that, right?" Flinn stammered.
"Then why..." she whispered with a lowered head.
"Then what?"
She balled her hands into fists and raised her head to look straight into his eyes, tears streaming down.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Ah..." Flinn raised a hand and touched his lips. "Am I smiling?"
He looked at Liliana with a tilted head and muttered, "Why am I smiling?"
"Haah..." Klaus sighed and said, "Are you not even going to try?"
Flinn looked at Klaus and sneered, "What do you even know?"
His expression darkened, and Lillian frowned.
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"Since childhood, I have stood beside her. Comforted her. Yet not once did she look at me."
"Selfish, isn’t she?"
"No matter what I did. No matter what gifts I gave her. They didn’t mean anything... I did everything, yet I was always a side character in her life?"
"Do you even know how hard it was for me to do that?"
His smile widened, and he turned his head to Liliana.
"See... She finally looks only at me!"
Liliana stumbled backward with a horrified look on her face. That wasn’t the person she knew he was.
That wasn’t the boy whose shoulder she had cried on after getting beaten by her father... She didn’t even know who he was anymore.
"W-Who are you?" She muttered instinctively, her face deeply grim.
Flinn laughed. "You don’t even know who I am anymore? Haah... After everything I did, is this how you are going to treat me?"
"Alright, that’s enough," Klaus said as he stood up.
"Stay out of this!" Flinn growled.
He turned to Liliana and met eyes with her. "Calm down."
A lost look appeared on Liliana’s face, and suddenly Klaus’s image in her mind changed into something she could never understand or reach.
She lowered her head and nodded. "Alright..."
Flinn’s eyes widened, and he shouted, "No! Look at me!"
"How noisy," Klaus mumbled and raised his hand in front of Flinn’s face.
Power beyond what a human should have coursed into his body, and he flicked at his forehead.
The moment his finger touched his forehead, a sharp pain tore through Flinn’s head, and it shot back, causing his chair to fall backwards.
He hit the ground with his eyes rolled up and his face full of pain.
All of it happened in a moment, and Liliana stared at Klaus with a dumbfounded look on her face.
The image that had felt like an illusion conjured by her mind to help her cope with the situation suddenly began to solidify into something real.
"Do whatever you want to do about him," he mumbled and walked toward the apartment’s entrance.