Chapter 394 -: 393 I would have never told her!

Chapter 394: Chapter: 393 I would have never told her!

"Wh-what have you done, Destiny...?"

Julius murmured, his hand still outstretched toward the space where Rosalina had disappeared.

Vitra stood beside him, watching with an amused expression, but Julius was in no state of mind to pay attention to the enormous man’s reaction.

His thoughts were consumed by Rosalina’s final words, which continued to echo in his mind no matter how desperately he tried to push them aside.

He had known that this day would eventually come, yet the realization that she had already begun questioning his identity left him feeling as though the ground beneath his feet had suddenly disappeared.

He was... honestly, he didn’t even know what he was feeling anymore. His face had turned as pale as paper, and his heart was beating so violently that he could hear its rhythm in his ears.

It was almost as though he had lost Rosalina for the second time, and the worst part was that he couldn’t even blame anyone but himself.

He had spent so long keeping the truth from her that he had gradually convinced himself he could continue doing so indefinitely, but now that she knew something was wrong, he had no idea what he was supposed to do when she returned.

Should he tell her that the Julius she had fallen in love with had been created in his image? Should he explain that he was the original Julius, the man who had loved her long before this world’s version of him had ever existed, and that his feelings for her had never been a lie?

And even if he told her everything, would she believe him? More importantly, would she ever be able to love him?

Julius’s heart sank at the thought of Rosalina looking at him with nothing but disgust and hatred, and he found himself unable to imagine how he could possibly repair the damage he had done.

He didn’t know how to mend their relationship, nor did he have the courage to face the consequences of his actions. All he felt was fear, a suffocating fear that made it difficult to think clearly, because he had already lost her once and couldn’t bear the thought of watching history repeat itself.

"It seems your love life is a mess, isn’t it?" Vitra chuckled.

His voice finally pulled Julius out of his thoughts, and the latter slowly turned toward him. For a brief moment, he simply stared at the towering man before him, his expression gradually twisting into one of barely restrained irritation.

If not for the fact that Vitra was nearly seven and a half feet tall and possessed an aura that made it abundantly clear he wasn’t someone Julius could casually pick a fight with, he might have considered slapping some sense into him.

There was something infuriating about the way Vitra could stand there and make light of a situation that had left Julius on the verge of a mental breakdown.

"It’s all your mother’s fault!"

Julius spat through gritted teeth, his face gradually turning red with anger.

"She told Rosalina everything about me! What the hell was she thinking? Couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut for once?"

Vitra’s amused expression remained unchanged, although his eyes narrowed slightly as he examined the man standing before him.

"Were you planning to never tell her about your identity?"

Julius’s eyes trembled at the question, and for a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to respond.

When he had first told Rosalina that his knowledge of the future and his sudden change in personality were the result of him coming from the future, he had genuinely believed he would eventually find an opportunity to explain everything.

He had intended to wait until she became comfortable with him, until their relationship had developed to the point where she would be willing to listen to his explanation without immediately rejecting him.

At the time, it had seemed like a reasonable plan, and he had convinced himself that delaying the truth was necessary to protect what they had begun building together.

However, things had changed far more quickly than he had anticipated. One problem had followed another, leaving him with neither the time nor the willingness to confront the truth of his existence.

Whenever he considered telling her, he found another excuse to postpone the conversation, reassuring himself that there would be a better opportunity later.

As the days passed, the lie became increasingly difficult to abandon, and the thought of losing the relationship he had worked so hard to establish frightened him more than the consequences of keeping his secret ever had.

Now, after seeing Rosalina’s reaction, Julius realized that if he had the choice, he would never tell her anything at all.

"I would never tell her!" he declared, his voice rising as he struggled to justify his decision even to himself.

"Why should I? I don’t want her to hate me! Besides, that Julius was a copy of me! In truth, I’m the one who loved her all along, so what does it matter if I took her for myself? He was just a fake, wasn’t he? Why should I feel guilty about taking something that was supposed to be mine in the first place?"

The moment the words left his mouth, Vitra raised an eyebrow.

"A fake, you say?"

His tone carried a hint of genuine curiosity, as though Julius had just made a particularly interesting observation. He studied the other man for a moment before letting out a quiet laugh and shaking his head.

"I thought Mother had already explained everything to you, yet you still believe this world exists inside a novel. How interesting. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Deep down, you already know the answer, but you’re too confused to accept it. Honestly, if I were in your position, I would probably be just as lost."

Julius frowned, his anger momentarily giving way to confusion.

"What are you talking about?"

"Let’s see if I remember everything correctly." Vitra rested a hand against his chin, appearing to consider the matter.

"You spent your entire life loving a fictional villainess, as my mother calls them. You became so obsessed with her that you eventually used the money your parents left you to pay the author to create a character modeled after you. You even had them write a version of yourself into her world, hoping that if you could just become part of that fictional reality, you would finally have the life you had always longed for."

Vitra paused briefly, watching Julius’s expression change as the memories he had tried to bury began resurfacing.

"But things didn’t go as planned, did they? The author eventually killed Rosalina, using the very character they had created in your image. You were so furious that you wanted to kill the author himself. I can’t recall the exact wording, but I’m sure you remember it rather well. And then, you took your own life, only to be reincarnated as Julius, the very character you had paid to have created in your image."

Julius’s face grew increasingly pale as Vitra continued speaking.

He had never told anyone the full extent of what had happened on Earth, and hearing those events recounted so casually by a man he had only just met filled him with an unsettling mixture of disbelief and apprehension.

It wasn’t merely that Vitra knew about his past; it was the ease with which he spoke about things that should have been impossible for anyone in this world to know.

"You found your family again, along with Rosalina and everything else you had once longed for," Vitra continued. "For a while, everything seemed to be going smoothly, and you probably convinced yourself that you had finally received the happy ending you deserved. After everything you went through, who could blame you for wanting to believe that? Then you discovered that Earth exists in this universe, and that my all-knowing, impossibly intelligent mother somehow knew about your past."

Vitra’s lips curved into a faint smile, though there was little humor in his eyes now.

"So tell me, Julius, what exactly are you supposed to make of that? How can a world you supposedly influenced through a fictional story exist in reality? How can the people you imagined, the family you wanted, and the woman you spent your life loving all exist beyond the boundaries of a book? And even if you were willing to dismiss the similarities between the two worlds as a coincidence, how would you explain the fact that your family dynamics remained so remarkably consistent? The relationships, the circumstances, the people who shaped your life... how much of it could you reasonably attribute to chance?"

Julius stared at him, unable to find a suitable response. The questions struck far too close to the doubts he had spent so long trying to suppress, and for a moment, he felt as though someone had reached into his chest and tightened their grip around his heart.

’How?’

The question surfaced in his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak it aloud. He had asked himself the same thing countless times since discovering the truth about Earth, and every time, he had arrived at the same dead end.

He had tried to construct explanations, to convince himself that there had to be a reasonable answer, but none of them had ever been convincing enough to put his doubts to rest.

The similarities between his life in the two worlds were simply too striking to ignore. And Destiny’s hint that the Earth in this universe was the same one he had come from, and that everything here was real rather than a fictional story, only made it harder for him to make sense of it all.

Now, standing before Vitra, Julius felt those doubts growing into something far more unsettling. For the first time, he began to wonder whether his understanding of his own existence had been fundamentally wrong from the very beginning.

"You see, I have my secrets as well," Vitra said, interrupting his thoughts. "And unlike Mother, I’m willing to share some of them with you."

Julius looked up at him, his expression tense as he waited for the man to continue.

Vitra raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The space beside him immediately began to distort, and a dark fissure opened in the air, its edges rippling as though reality itself had been torn apart.

It resembled the passage through which Rosalina had disappeared moments earlier, although the darkness beyond it seemed strangely still, offering no indication of what might be waiting on the other side.

Julius stared at the opening, then shifted his gaze back toward Vitra, whose expression had returned to its usual composure.

"Enter that space and find out for yourself," Vitra instructed. "You’ll find the answers to your questions there, including the ones you haven’t even realized you should be asking. Once you come out, I promise you that Rosalina will choose you, and your doubts will finally be cleared."