I Was Hoping She Would Notice but again Now When She Did... Im Tired

“Kill Lucian… if you want your parents to live.”

Her heart stopped.

The words hit her like a blade to the chest. The air in the room turned ice-cold, thick with dread. Silence fell sharp and suffocating as if the entire world paused to listen.

Avey stared at Max, her lips trembling, her breath caught halfway through her throat.

“K… ki… kill Lucian?” she stuttered, the words barely forming, stuck somewhere between disbelief and horror.

Her whole body shook, not with fear but something darker. Betrayal.

Her eyes, once pleading and desperate, slowly turned cold dangerously cold. The warmth, the respect, the fragile hope she held for the god-like being in front of her began to vanish.

“Are you out of your mind, Max?” she said, voice suddenly sharp cutting through the silence like a knife. Her tone wasn’t pleading anymore. It was flat. Hollow. Cold.

The same girl who just moments ago had looked at him like a savior, now stared at him like he was a monster.

Max blinked. He raised a hand gently, almost defensively, his small brows furrowed in guilt and weariness. “Calm down, kiddo,” he said quietly, his voice softer than before, almost reluctant. “Let me explain”

“No,” she interrupted, her voice trembling with restrained rage. “You told me Lucian was like a son to you. Your son. And now you’re telling this?”

Max’s lips parted slightly, as if to argue, but he couldn’t. The words died in his throat. His bright eyes always filled with a mysterious, godlike calm dimmed as emotion flickered within them.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Her eyes full of disbelief, pain, and fury. His full of something unspoken… burden, maybe. Regret.

Then he finally said it.

His voice was quiet, like a sentence too heavy to carry.

“Choose one then.”

Avey blinked.

“Lucian… or your parents.”

The air seemed to vanish from the room.

He looked at her, not as a god, not as a mentor but as someone who had made a terrible choice and was now placing that choice in her hands.

“You decide.”

Her legs almost gave out.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry.

She just stood there, frozen… as if the entire world had split in two at her feet.

“Leave.”

Her voice was flat numb. A command without color, as if any trace of feeling had been stripped from her tone.

“Kid… it’s not time for that. There’s sigh…” He broke off, closing his eyes. Even the act of speaking seemed to drain something out of him. “Let me explain…”

But the words fell like pebbles into a void.

“I SAID LEAVE!”

The scream cracked through the air like lightning. Her voice, cold as a blizzard disgusted, as if just looking at him tainted her.

“Disgusting.”

Her voice dropped low, chilling, trembling with a kind of revulsion that made the air itself feel heavy.

“You don’t want your parents?” He silently looked at her.

“You don’t think I want my parents?” she spat, stepping closer. “You think I’d let them die? But this~ this disgusting option… how dare you even speak it?”

“The doctors said there’s still a chance. Nothing irreversible’s happened. You don’t need to this you don’t need to choose something like this.”

“So no, I don’t need your twisted god’s mercy.”

Her voice trembled now, her anger folding into something dangerously close to desperation.

Max didn’t respond.

“And Lucian… I’ll tell him everything. He deserves to know. He deserves to know the kind of monster you really are.”

Her eyes flickered somewhere between rage and heartbreak.

“I don’t know what your relationship is with him if you were friends, family, or something else but whatever it was… this is betrayal.”

She spat the words like venom. “Disgusting. Traitor.

Max’s small body stiffened. For a second, his expression was blank… unreadable.

Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.

The brightest, most radiant smile she had ever seen. A childlike grin, showing his little white teeth pure, innocent… and horribly out of place.

It made her freeze.

“…It’s alright,” he whispered, almost too softly.

“It’s alright,” Max said softly. “Yeah… I think he deserves to know. Tell him.”

He tilted his head slightly, his eyes glassy but still holding a strange, eerie clarity.

“Tell him I was a bastard. And he’s still as stupid as ever.”

“Tell him I betrayed him. That I, Max… the one he trusted… his so-called father, his friend… I’m the bastard who turned on him.”

“Hahaha… Tell him I always told him not to trust anyone. But that idiot—he never listened.”

Max’s legs swung lightly off the edge of the bed, his little shark costume wrinkled around his small form. His feet dangled, almost playfully.

But his voice trembled.

His smile stayed.

And the tears kept falling.

“I’d be grateful if you could tell him. That I betrayed him. Me. Max.”

“Tell him…” Max whispered, “Not to scream my name like a prayer in the air. Not to waste another second looking for someone who’s already gone.”

His voice Lauging as mimicking

“Max? Max, are you there?”

“Where are you, Max?”

“Did you come back?”

Max’s head tilted, his hair falling over his eyes. His shoulders trembled as he let out another laugh but it was barely human now, choked with tears.

“Tell that stupid idiot to stop,” he said, brokenly. “Tell him to stop trying. Stop looking. Stop… caring.”

He looked at her then, and in his eyes was nothing but the echo of a boy who never got to be one.

“I don’t belong to him anymore.”

And still, he laughed.

And still, his tears fell.

Avey stood there frozen in place. Lips parted. Brows drawn so tight it hurt. She stared at Max like he wasn’t even human anymore.

Like he was a ghost… no worse. Like he was someone she had once trusted, now wearing a stranger’s face.

“…Alright,” she whispered.

The word cracked in the air. Fragile. Suspicious. Wounded.

She didn’t know why, but something in her chest twisted painfully as if invisible strings tied to her heart were vibrating, warning her.

Something’s wrong. Something is deeply, terribly wrong.

“What happened?” she asked again, barely above a whisper. “What the hell is going on?”

Max didn’t answer at first. His laughter had stopped, but that unsettling smile remained, stretched thin across his boyish face like a cracked mask. His eyes… still gleamed. But not with joy. With something colder. Something emptier.

Avey’s face darkened.

Her eyes sharpened like blades, her heart beating a little faster not out of fear, but fury.

“…What do you want?” she snapped.

The cold edge in her voice could’ve frozen fire.

“If you came just to say that twisted choice then leave. Get out before I lose my patience and raise my hands.”

Her hands twitched at her sides, as if her body was fighting to stay still. Only she knew the storm brewing inside her rage, heartbreak, confusion, fear. Anxiety was crawling through her veins like acid.

What the hell was happening?

Why Lucian?

Why her parents?

Why now?

What is his connection with her parents incident?

She wasn’t stupid she could feel it in her bones. but Lucian’s name being at the center of this… it was enough. He is a outside Afterall fighting world will.

Her voice lowered, full of restrained disgust.

“You want me to murder him?” she asked, eyes narrowing. “Is that what this is about? You’re dangling my parents’ lives over me so I’ll do your dirty work?”

She hated how her heart pounded. She hated how much it hurt to even say his name like that. Lucian.

She hated herself for even hesitating. For not immediately striking Max where he stood.

Max tilted his head, still watching her with that unfathomable calm.

Then he spoke again. “As I said…”

He smiled wider too wide. Too broken. “Kill Lucian… if you want to save your parents.”

Then came the laugh.

Soft.

Shaky.

Ugly.

The kind of laugh someone lets out when they’re already too broken to cry anymore.

Avey’s breath caught in her throat.

Because now that she was really looking at him this wasn’t amusement. This was pain.

Sick, aching, deep-rooted grief.

Something inside Max was bleeding. And he was hiding it behind that damned smile.

And it hurt to look at.

But she didn’t back down.

Not even when her heart cracked louder than his laugh.

Not even when the boy she once thought was some divine guide started to look like a shattered mirror of everything she was afraid to become.

Avey’s voice trembled caught between fury and disbelief.

“Just yesterday… you told me the truth, Max.”

Her breath hitched. Her hands clenched.

“You gave me hope. You… you were the one who told me to … to reach for Lucian. You told me we could still—still—!” Her voice cracked.

“…And now you’re doing this?” She took a step closer, her eyes locked on him like she was staring down a blade at her throat. “What the hell do you want?”

For a moment, silence.

And then…

Max laughed.

Soft at first.

Then louder.

Then louder still

Until it wasn’t even laughter anymore, just a bitter, broken noise tearing itself from his chest like a scream disguised as joy.

“Ahahahaha… Yes, that too!” he said, wiping at the corners of his eyes though they held no real amusement. “The hope… the truth you got… AHAHA wasn’t it beautiful yes yes?”

His laughter rang out, hollow and sharp like shattered glass.

Avey’s heart was racing, but she stood her ground.

And then he looked at her really looked and tilted his head slightly, the smile never quite reaching his eyes.

“Let me change the question,” he said.

His voice dropped cold, almost gentle. Too calm. The kind of calm that made your skin crawl.

“Lucian,” he said. “Or eight billion people.”

He laughed again this time louder than ever. The kind of laugh that didn’t belong to a child or a god only a man broken far past saving.

Like he had just told the best joke of his life.

Like the world had already ended, and only he had heard the punchline.

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