113 Choices 3 (1/2)
They always say keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Sofony had always been hearing this from TV series and she sometimes could not help but agree. When she was still a drama-addict regularly watching afternoon dramas with her mother every summer vacation, she had always pointed out to her mom how the female antagonist cleverly drew close to the naive protagonist by pretending to be her friend. Back then, she always felt like it was fun laughing at the female lead.
But now due to her circumstances, she realized this is only a good saying if the other was not aware that you're the enemy.
It was because once they knew, you would have no choice but continue keeping your enemies closer while pushing your loved ones away, especially if the enemy was not a weak and naive person but a deadly, vengeful and poisonous one.
There's no other choice. At least, for her, this was the case. She couldn't choose to run away with the others since the enemy would surely just keep coming after them. Considering Clarissa's grudge, she would be a fool to hope or assume that woman would let them off that easily.
Sadly, she has no choice but admit that she was currently not strong enough to shield them from the deadly strikes the opposite party could throw at them. In fact, she was hardly keeping her life.
This was why the better option was for her to keep them away from the battlefield. Maybe through this way, she could also have peace of mind and focus only on her and Gio's survival.
Because she finally acknowledged this, although it very much pained her, Sofony ultimately decided to let some of the Silver family's people bring Steffy and the Gomez' family out of the city.
Everything has been hastily arranged, but since Gio also helped out, at least the process went smoothly. Of course, most of the problem was still dealt through her hypnosis and memory eraser.
Now the story created was this.
The Gomez family relocated because Simonne offended someone high-ranking from his branch and was made to transfer to Jasper City. As his family was also threatened, he decided to move them away with him to the new city. Tomorrow would be their departure. They didn't have to worry about their documents and stuff since Sofony already arranged people to do it for them. Loopholes were probably left somewhere, but what matters was when tomorrow comes, they'll become another city's citizen.
As for Steffy and Wendy, both became two of HCA's exchange students who would go to a school in J country, an island country in the east. The group was only supposed to take off next week but she made them take their flight tomorrow. They'd only be back after a year. Sofony hoped before that, she had already taken care of the problem here.
When she heard it asking her, it was already the next day, late afternoon. Like yesterday, she didn't attend school. Instead, this morning, she hung around with the social workers still tending to the fire victims. In the afternoon, she sent off both Wendy and Steffy at the airport, waiting until their plane took off.
As she saw their plane disappeared in the sea of clouds above, no expression could be seen from Sofony's face. However, deep down, she felt very empty. And guilty. As she thought of why things devolved to this state, everything just felt so surreal. Things happened so fast that she, who had been caught reluctant and unprepared, just couldn't help but wish she didn't become an immoral host so that things wouldn't reach this point...
Actually, she had so many wishes. She really wanted to turn back time and become a normal girl again. She wanted to retain Gio and the Silver couple in that life and not ever cross paths with Clarissa or that Floyd again.
But it seems as she wished for these, the world deemed her greedy.
Maybe it was a very great sin to wish for the best of the two worlds. So she was now emotionally and mentally suffering.
'Do it. It's not like it's my first.'