Backstage Trap - Chapter 11

The devil smiled.

“You know, I’ve never regretted a single thing in my life.”

There was something terrifying about that smile.

The steady click of his dress shoes echoed through the room, each step sending a chill down Lucia’s spine. The closer he came, the more it felt as though she could hear the ticking of a time bomb counting down.

“Do you know what that means?”

As though the gun in his hand weighed nothing, he lazily scratched the side of his head with the barrel, letting out quiet, unhinged chuckles.

Everyone stared at him as though he had lost his mind. Yet the man paid them no attention.

No, it wasn’t that he didn’t care.

‘He doesn’t have the luxury to.’

Lucia scrutinized his face carefully. On the surface, he looked composed. But beneath that calm façade, anxiety and impatience flickered unmistakably in his eyes.

“I’ve never once looked back with regret. Not from the day I killed my first person at the age of eight until now.”

“…”

“I always gave everything I had. Enough that I never needed to wonder what would’ve happened if I’d chosen differently.”

His smile vanished in an instant.

The air turned cold. Sensing danger on instinct, Lucia took a step backward. She only managed one. The next moment, his fist had tangled itself in the front of her clothes.

“Ugh…”

“So what the hell did you do? Talk. You witch.”

“W-What did I do…?!”

The grip around her collar tightened, cutting off her breath. Her feet lifted off the ground as heat rushed into her face.

But what shocked Lucia wasn’t the fact that she was being threatened. It was that this had never happened before.

‘This wasn’t part of the past…’

Before the thought could finish forming, the man leaned in until their foreheads collided, his jaw clenched tight.

“Tell me. Why the hell did I come back to the past?”

“…!”

Lucia’s eyes flew wide.

She wasn’t the only one who had lived through that impossible experience. The man she’d met on the rooftop had returned as well.

Killian Walker, the man who ruled Terrinica’s streets. Or rather…The man who had once ruled them.

* * *

Lucia Everhart had been an insignificant orphan.

She had been born into a loving family. But that warmth had not lasted long. Her parents had emigrated from Eldora to Terrinica with their young daughter.

Before Lucia had even learned to write a diary in Terrinican, they were killed in a mining collapse.

Her father had grown up in an orphanage. Her mother had long since severed ties with her family. With no relatives willing or able to take her in, Lucia was placed into foster care under Terrinica’s welfare system.

The government paid families a monthly stipend to raise children who had lost their parents, believing children deserved to grow up in a home rather than an institution.

It was a noble idea.

But for children like Lucia—taken in by people interested only in the money while keeping the authorities blind to the reality—the outcome was rarely a happy one.

“No! I don’t want to! Why do I have to live with another one of these kids?!”

Emilia Florianne, the foster family’s biological daughter, was two years older than Lucia.

She hated her from the very beginning. She hated having strangers invade her home over and over again. She hated Lucia’s pretty face even more.

In truth, that was the real reason.

Though still only a child, Emilia firmly believed she was the prettiest girl in the world. Every foster child before Lucia had arrived dirty, ragged, and forgettable.

Then Lucia appeared and shattered that illusion.

“You little parasite! Get out of our house! Just disappear already!”

From that day on, Lucia endured Emilia’s endless bullying and petty cruelty.

Her foster parents were no better. As though it were only natural, they forced the young girl to do the household chores. They cut her hair short, disguised her as a boy, and sent her to polish shoes outside the train station to earn money for them.

It was a life spent constantly watching other people’s moods. But she could bear that.

What truly frightened her was realizing that, little by little, she was forgetting her parents’ faces as she grew older.

And then there was the closet. Whenever she displeased her foster parents, she was locked inside. There, she would find the traces left behind by children who had once suffered the same fate.

Help me.

Mom, I miss you.

The desperate scratches and childish words carved into the wood belonged to someone just like her.

“Do exactly what you’re told. Otherwise, you’ll end up in there just like the others. Do you really think anyone would care if a kid like you disappeared? Even if the government comes looking, we’ll just say you ran away.”

“If you’re useless, that’s exactly what’ll happen to you. Understand?”