CHAPTER 090
JULIAN’S POV
“Where… where did you find this?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper,
disbelieving what I was seeing on the screen.
One of the investigators turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow. “Are you surprised to see the video you asked us to track down? That’s Mrs. Olivia, plain as day. We event pulled up footage from other angles before she was brought into the orphanage.”
My eyes stayed glued to the monitor, but my mind was spiraling. That wasn’t Olivia… no. It couldn’t be. That had to be some kind of mistake or a sick coincidence. Because the girl I saw in that video–the one walking alone, confused, and eventually led into the orphanage wasn’t just Olivia.
She was my sister.
The girl who went missing years ago. My baby sister. It had been nearly two decades. and yet I could never forget her face. Her wide, curious eyes. Her favorite hairstyle. The way she always insisted on wearing that ridiculous pair of glitter–covered sneakers that lit up when she walked.
And the girl in the video had all of them. Same hairstyle. Same shoes. Same floral dress with the faded cartoon character print. Unless my eyes were playing a cruel trick. on me, this wasn’t just a resemblance. This was her.
I took a shaky step back, trying to steady myself as the weight of realization started crashing down on me. My pulse thundered in my ears, and I could barely hear anything around me.
No. I was overthinking. That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.
My fingers trembled as I pulled out my phone. I quickly opened the old family photo album I kept stored away, hidden deep in my gallery. After a few frantic scrolls, I stopped on one picture–one I had tried not to look at too often because it brought back too much pain.
It was the last family photo we took together.
There we were–Mom, Dad, me, and Olivia–smiling in front of the amusement park gates. Olivia had insisted on wearing that floral dress, even though Mom thought it was too chilly. She had a juice box in one hand and her favorite pink bunny toy clutched in the other. My arm was draped protectively over her small shoulders.
And then… she was gone.
The same dress. The same day.
Successfully unlocked!
Even though I tried to deny the possibility, tried to convince myself it was just a cruel coincidence–everything pointed to the truth. A truth I had buried for years.
1/3
CHAPTER 020
***
FLASHBACK 20 YEARS AGO
It was supposed to be a perfect day. We were all so excited to go to the amusement park. Dad had bought a brand new camera just for the occasion. After taking that last family photo, we were all set to board the Ferris wheel, but there was a delay at the ticket booth–something about a payment issue that needed our parents‘ attention. Mom and Dad told me to stay with Olivia while they sorted it out. As the big brother, I was always the one expected to watch over her. She looked up to me and trusted me. We walked around the park, getting snacks and admiring the place, on our way back to the Ferris wheel, Olivia struck her right foot into a small pit hole, I rushed and gently pulled her leg out, but the damage had already been done, she got a small injury on her ankle, and I knew if my parents found out about this I would be in trouble giving how much they loved their baby girl, my eyes scanned the whole place and I finally sighted a small pharmacy, I turned over to little Olivia and told her to wait here on a bench while I go get some first aid to treat her wound, she was crying so I don’t really think she heard what I said
I
“Wait here, okay? I’m going to get something to fix your ankle. I’ll be right back.”
She was sniffling, too overwhelmed by pain and tears to respond properly,
1t couldn’t have been more than five minutes.
Either way, I rushed off to the pharmacy to get the bandage, but when I came back to that spot I couldn’t find her there again.
Gone without a trace. No witnesses. No clues. Just an empty bench and a missing girl
PRESENT TIME
And now, twenty years later, here she was–on my screen, in front of me–wearing that same dress, as if time had frozen.
Since then, I’ve told everyone who asked about Olivia’s disappearance that she was the one who ran off on her own. It was easier that way. I didn’t want anyone to know the truth, especially not Olivia herself. I lied to Olivia about her own past–about her disappearance and deep down, I knew it was completely my fault.
The guilt weighed on me like a ton of bricks, but I told myself it was for the best.
But now, standing here, something was changing. There was still a way to confirm if the girl on the video was truly Olivia. If she had wandered off on her own that day, the amusement park wouldn’t have been too far from where the camera had caught her.
I clenched my fists, trying to push down the fear creeping up my spine. “Check if there‘ s any amusement park around that area,” I said to one of the investigators, my voice steady despite the chaos swirling inside me.
CHAPTER 090
A few seconds passed, and the guy at the computer looked up. “Yes, there is. Fun Quest Amusement Park.”
The name hit me like a punch to the gut. My heart skipped a beat as my eyes.
involuntarily squeezed shut, a wave of emotion crashing over me.
“Sir, is everything okay?” one of the voices asked, concern in their tone.
But I couldn’t answer. My hands ran through my hair as I sank to my knees. The breath left my lungs in short gasps. The person I had been searching for all my life–the one I thought I had lost forever–had been in front of me the entire time.
Subsenbed
