I grabbed her hand and asked Jean to stop for a moment.
She looked back at me, slightly confused, as if she didn't expect to be stopped right now.
"What happened to you Jean? Why did you stop ignoring me?"
I spoke my words bluntly.
"Hmm? I don't understand, why would I ignore you? You are my youngest brother so ofcourse I'll treat you well."
Jean replied after a moment of thought, she seemed fully convinced of what she said. Her face had a look of genuine confusion that couldn't be faked.
For a moment, her reaction left me questioning myself. I know that my memory isn't the most reliable lately so could it really be that I was misremembering our relationship?
But… I could swear I really did experience what I remembered, that after I was born, all of our parents time and attention was given to me, the attention which Jean once recieved in full. She never could come to terms with no longer being the youngest and grew to resent me and disacknowledged my existence at every opportunity.
Although the library of my memories are aflame, the pages intact, still tell a story, a part of the whole.
No matter how much I dwelt upon this matter, I could never convince myself that my memory about Jean were false. To confirm or disprove my suspicions I consulted with Maria and her friends and Uncle Raul and some maids and then even head maid Anna.
And they all, all except Anna, came to confirm my suspicions with accounts of their own. I know this sounds preposterous, but if you have faith in my story so far, have faith in my coming words too, I believe Jean and Anna have been changed.
Not that they have changed themselves but that they have been replaced by people who look, talk and act like them, with all the memories their original selves had, except the ones with me.
I do not know why I am the sole exception to their perfect disguise, neither do I have any firm, rigorous evidence to prove my bold claims.
Hence why I plan to closely monitor Jean and Head maid Anna for every moment of he day until I truely get to the bottom of this situation.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The next morning I woke up before Maria did, much like I do everyday, she really is bad at being a maid, but oh well she is still learning. I nudged Maria awake, she groggily blinked the first few times, then turned around around to go back to sleep until I gave a hard, frustrated nudge which finally reminded her of the plan we made yesterday causing her to jump awake.
Right, here is the plan we made; since it's the weekend, we have no classes and are free to move about the whole day. Hence why I'll be observing Jean from afar and Maria will volunteer to help the maids and in doing so observe Anna. We will be observing and noting down their actions and interactions, if anything is amiss we will report to eachother first before taking any further action.
After we freshened up and ate breakfast, me and Maria split off for the day.
While I wasn't able to check in on Jean in the early morning, just the fact that she is awake this early is already suspicious. From as far as my memory goes, Jean always struggled to wake up before noon, yet today and the fast few days, she always seemed to wake up before sunrise and buzz off to work around the estate.
I wonder, what's so important, for which she wakes up this early for.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Today…the whole day… she did so much work?… since when was Jean this diligent!
In the morning she checked up on some construction on the front yard, from what it looked to me she was just destroying the yard to dig up around a weird hole.it wasn't just an impulsive little project, she hired a whole damn construction crew and rented heavy machinery to make a mess of the yard.
In the evening she went and drove away to some place just outside our estate, after asking around I learnt that she was nearby, just a little ways off into the woods from stable, so I went exploring and found a huge flat strech of land.
She was there, at that strech of land and do you want to know what she was doing there? Farming! She was f###### FARMING!?!!?
She is literally the richest woman in the world, everything we eat is imported from a hydroponic farm in the Netherlands, what possible use could there be for her to have to personally farm for food.
Either this woman has gone crazy from her isolation or I am right about my suspicions of her being replaced.
And so I continued stalking her, even as the sun set she was still buzzing about. Here she was talking about digging for oil, there she was checking up on her stockpiles of guns and ammo and heavy artillery.
Stockpiles of …guns… ammunition…and heavy artillery…
Yep she has gone insane, absolutely bats### insane. I should probably scout an escape route just in case, my daily life might be in danger.
I continued monitoring Jean, even into midnight she didn't stop working, double checking the construction around the 'hole', having a meeting about 'the future of her settlement' with Anna, this conversation in specific mentioned something concerning about 'organising a civil war in the US'.
Then she vetted the background check reports of 'mercenaries', I don't like where this is going, then for twenty minutes Jean blankly stared into the hole before going to sleep at 3 in the morning.
I'll organise everything I learned today, tomorrow or well in the morning when I discuss it with Maria. Just from the looks of it, I can easily conclude Jean is planning something massive.
'Stockpiling weapons', ' Hiring mercenaries', 'Organising a civil war'. What ever she is planning I don't like the sound of it. I don't know what's the situation outside the estate or what situation could require such drastic preparations, but whatever it is, Jean is incredibly thorough with it.
The thing is, she is working incredibly hard with undoubtedly a lot of focus, just like the Choppafeller heirs aughta do. But this hyper-focused-hard-working image is just so unlike her and the reputation that she has garnered over the years that I find it hard to believe that she could ever change this much.
Throughout my observations spanning the entire day, although I have spotted many incredibly strange behaviours from Jean, there is nothing that I could point to as hard evidence to prove that she really has been replaced.
Although her work ethic changed overnight, her behavioural antics still remain. The way that she is so obviously head over heels for Anna still is extremely present, the way that she maintains a professional distance from everyone else and the way she still hasn't gotten over our parents' passing are all proofs that undeniably tell me that Jean is still Jean.
—Sigh— I still can't get used to it, I guess I'll observe her some more and-
"Marcus… Oh Marcus"
A gentle whisper floated through the morning air.
Huh? Did someone call my name? It sounded… a little like Jean.
But no, I made sure of the fact that she was sound asleep. And this sound isn't coming from the mansion but from behind me… from the construction site around the 'hole'.
I turned around, the scene was blank. Just the construction machinery and piles of materials resting.
I walked a little closer.
—Step—
—Step—
—Step—
—St-
"You poor, poor soul."