Three days later.
Marianne went missing.
There was no warning. No notification. She simply disappeared.
Five days before her disappearance, the men accompanying her reported her final orders:
"There's another team waiting for me in Japan. Please return to the main estate."
The report reached us during tea.
"What? She said that?" Grandmother murmured.
The man nodded, dipping his head as he remained standing beside her. I sat across her, lifting my teacup with practiced calm, completely unaware of what those words meant.
Grandmother fell silent at the man's report before dismissing him with a flick of her wrist.
At first, there was only silence.
I saw Father contacting the Japanese branches, his phone pressed to his ear even as he walked the length of the hall.
His posture remained straight, practiced, but his eyes told a different story. I saw it when his grip tightened, the faint crack of plastic echoing as his phone strained under his hand, even as he tried to make sense of what was happening.
By the second day, people were constantly coming and going from the estate. Members of the branch families. Men clad in black suits. Limousines entering and leaving the grounds.
By the third day, phones around the estate rang almost constantly. Most of the calls coming from the Japanese and Chinese branches. One line I overheard in passing stood out above the rest:
"There was never a team assigned to receive the young lady at any airport in Japan. Nor are there records of the private jet she used landing anywhere near Japanese airspace. The aircraft's GPS trackers were stripped. Its flight paths over the past three days are completely blocked. The pilots only remember returning from whichever direction they came from—and have no memory of what happened before that."
By the fourth and fifth days, the estate had gone silent.
The air was thick with tension, as though everyone was waiting for something, some announcement that would either confirm or dissolve the unease that had formed around Marianne's disappearance.
I found myself wandering the halls more often. The maids and butlers whispered among themselves, speaking freely under the assumption that I couldn't hear them.
One voice stood out.
"Lady Marianne often left for long business meetings… didn't she?" a maid said, Luciena, if I remembered correctly. "Maybe she's simply tied up with another one?"
Another replied quietly.
"That's exactly why no one thought anything was wrong at first."
A pause.
"Until things stopped adding up."
They went silent the moment I walked past. Lucien and the other maid stepped aside at once, dusters held tight in their hands.
My jaw tightened as I strode down the hallway. Still, I forced my shoulders to relax, my posture smoothing itself out.
Knowing the cause of the problem takes priority. Emotions later.
I stopped in front of Marianne's door. The same door that once felt like it was holding back the full weight of the Auclait legacy.
Now, it felt… hollow.
Slowly, my hand found the doorknob. Before I realized it, I had already stepped inside Marianne's room.
The massive four-poster bed dominated the space, its gilded pillars rising like silent sentinels at each corner. The curtains were drawn. Books lay scattered across the floor, abandoned.
I bent down and picked one up, opening it.
These are… magazines.
No—
Guidebooks.
Each one was for a different country.
England. The Americas. Indonesia. Malaysia. Myanmar. And many others.
Strangely, the guidebooks for Japan and China. Along with Germany and Canada were crossed out and tossed aside.
Why would she mark those…?
Aside from the fact that the company had deep roots in those countries—
I froze.
Was avoiding the Auclaits' reach her goal?
I searched through the rest of the room, but there were no more guidebooks.
Eventually, I sat on the edge of Marianne's bed, staring at the books scattered on the floor as if something might change if I did.
She was crying back then…
I pressed my hand to my forehead.
Because of the pressure… maybe?
Then a memory surfaced.
Grandmother started noticing me a month after I heard Marianne crying… then the rest of the family followed…
I rubbed my temple.
She started going out more after that. Stayed away longer. Rarely visited the estate. Didn't even check on grandmother.
A pause.
The family started recognizing me… she cried not long before that… then her visits became shorter.
She brought Hinami and Mei over more often.
Carrying her belongings somewhere…
I stood from the bed and walked out, unconsciously biting my thumb as I moved through the hallway.
Days blurred together.
I stared at the guidebook resting on the small table in my room, the one I had taken from her room days ago.
The Philippines.
A small archipelago near China, beneath Japan.
For days, I flipped through it aimlessly. Opening it. Closing it. Over and over.
I never made it far. Always stopping at the first few pages, where sandy beaches filled the photographs.
The Auclaits had already dispatched teams, focusing their search on countries near France.
News outlets were instructed to report Marianne's sudden disappearance as a kidnapping.
The two pilots of the private jet were detained as the primary suspects.
But it wasn't like that.
Kidnapping?
Of course not.
No one would be foolish enough to even consider kidnapping an Auclait.
But even then, it didn't matter.
To protect their reputation. To shield the Auclaits from scrutiny, from the truth that their own heir had chosen to run away. Anything was on the table.
Even if it meant destroying two innocent lives.
It was something I had already grown used to over the past week.
As expected, the two pilots who had been flying Marianne's private jet were arrested. Charged with child abduction. Then, quietly, with potential sexual assault.
They became the story.
And just like that, the family's hands were clean.
Which, frankly, was already terrible in itself.
The pilots were sentenced to twenty years in prison. Potentially life, after Father quietly used his connections to bend the outcome in the Auclaits' favor.
They were condemned almost immediately.
Given the chance to speak, yes. But their words were drowned out before they could reach anyone willing to listen.
The masses were already enraged.
Enraged at the thought of Marianne, the heir to the Auclait legacy, the girl the media painted as someone who spoke for those the government ignored, being taken advantage of. Abducted.
The story was easy to believe.
Watching the two men dragged away without question, my expression remained flat.
Don't question. This is necessary.
…
Necessary… how?
I turned away.
My heart didn't ache. It didn't race.
It simply felt… empty.
As I watched the two men being dragged away, there was no guilt. Only a void forming somewhere inside me, swallowing everything else until the world became little more than distant, muffled noise.
Back at the estate, I walked straight to my room.
Not because I felt compelled to.
But simply because I wanted to.
I sat on the edge of my bed, then lay back, the fabric sinking beneath my weight as I stared up at the ceiling.
"Mari… where… exactly are you…" I whispered, my hands resting over my chest.
Did she leave… because of the pressure…?
Or did she believe I could take her place after I showed even a hint of potential…?
I shook my head slowly, trying to push the thoughts away.
They lingered anyway.
I wanted to be someone she could rely on…
Not her replacement…
The days that followed were… a blur.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months.
And before I even realized it, a year had already passed.
"Still no sign of—"
A man. One of the members of the search team the Auclaits had sent out discreetly, came running through the halls, straight toward grandmother's study.
My brows furrowed.
Curious, I followed.
The door shut with a loud BANG, the sound echoing down the corridor.
"It's locked…" I murmured.
Still, I pressed my ear against the door.
And on the other side—
"Madame Matriarch," the man said, breathless. "Lady Marianne has been found. She's currently staying with a family in a rural area of the Philippines. One of our informants just relayed the information."
My eyes widened.
The Philippines…?
My breath caught.
Wasn't that the guidebook I kept…?