Chapter 594: The Girl Who Still Remembered His Name
If not for his greed a moment ago, he probably would’ve kicked the vault door open without hesitation.
"Your gear can’t handle it? Let me try."
At those words, Ethan suddenly glanced at his wristwatch. He had completely forgotten about it.
"Boss, don’t be reckless. I meant what I said!" Williams tried to stop him in a hurry.
"Who said anything about reckless? Watch closely. I’ll show you what real high-tech looks like." Ethan grinned, confidence written all over his face.
He started fiddling with the watch, swiping and tapping at random. Williams hovered at his side, staring with an expression that made Ethan feel strangely self-conscious.
How the hell was this thing supposed to work? There were too many functions, too many options.
"Ahem..." Ethan cleared his throat, forcing authority into his voice. "Activate lock-picking function."
[Lock decryption function activated!]
To his relief, the device actually listened. A beam of blue light shot from the watch, scanning across the vault door’s surface.
[Beep beep beep... Unlock complete!]
In less than three seconds, the massive door’s mechanisms clicked and whirred, and the steel slab began to swing open.
"Heh..." Ethan flashed Williams a smug grin and strode in first.
"Mine..."
A cube-shaped stack of cash vanished before his eyes.
"Mine... mine... slurp... mine... slurp..."
He sounded like a man possessed, chanting at the piles of money as if reciting incantations, drool practically glistening at the corner of his mouth.
Williams buried his face in his hands. Was this really the same ruthless, lethal man who had just cut down everyone in their path?
"What are you staring at? Your wife’s in there." Ethan kept scooping up bills without even glancing over.
That snapped Williams back to his senses. He hurried deeper into the vault, not daring to linger. The sight of so much cash was tempting, but watching Ethan slobber over it was unbearable.
"Ah—don’t come any closer!"
Two sharp cries rang out from inside. Ethan froze.
"Shit, I screwed up. Collect, collect, collect..." He grabbed the last stacks of money with frantic hands, then, with a thought, conjured two sets of clothes. Keeping his head ducked, he sprinted into the chamber.
"Don’t scream, don’t scream, we’re here to rescue you."
He covered his eyes with one hand and stretched the clothes out with the other. It had slipped his mind that Director Vaughn, when imprisoning Williams’s wife and Rainie Chen, had stripped them bare.
As Ethan rushed in, he bumped straight into Williams, who was also turned away.
"Williams? Is that you?" one of the women’s voices trembled with recognition.
She had started forward, but the presence of another man made her falter. She crouched down quickly, arms wrapping around herself.
Ethan tossed the clothes toward them without looking. "Put these on quickly, uh... don’t catch cold," he mumbled, not sure what else to say.
The sound of fabric rustling filled the vault. Ethan and Williams stood back-to-back, both men stiff with awkwardness, sneaking the occasional sideways glance at each other.
"Damn it... did you see my first love’s body?" Ethan muttered under his breath.
"You saw my wife’s body too," Williams ground out.
"I didn’t see anything. Didn’t you notice I came in with my eyes covered?"
"Not now, maybe. But you brought clothes without even checking. How else would you know? And don’t think I missed you grabbing those last few stacks while you ran in. Boss, I never realized you were this greedy."
Williams’s voice was tight, his words squeezed out through his nose.
Ethan suddenly realized he should never have brought up that topic. The truth was, he had seen Williams’s wife before—first in Director Vaughn’s memories, and again when he’d swept the vault with his Soul Sense earlier.
The awkwardness weighed heavily in the air.
"Williams..."
Just as Ethan struggled to find the right words, one of the women behind them cried out and rushed forward. She wrapped her arms around Williams from behind, clinging to him as if afraid he would vanish.
Ethan exhaled in relief. Perfect timing. He hadn’t had the faintest idea how to steer that conversation away. A friend’s wife was absolutely off-limits.
He slowly turned, his gaze falling on the other woman crouched in the corner.
"It’s you..."
Rainie Chen’s eyes widened at the sight of him. She raised a trembling hand to cover her mouth.
"Me? You know me?" Ethan asked, smiling in disbelief. He hadn’t expected her to recognize him at all.
"You’re... Ethan..."
Rainie’s voice was soft, but the words struck him like lightning. For a moment he was transported back to that strange illusion.
On the Umbral Star, in the depths of the Sea of Death, during the Sacred Assembly—he had once fallen into the second layer of the Spirit Realm while searching for Blackie. He’d wandered into forbidden territory, been ambushed by aerial beasts, and nearly died. And then, in that illusion, he had met Rainie.
She had looked at him and spoken those same exact words: You’re Ethan.
But that had been nothing more than a mirage shaped by his own memories. This moment, however, was real.
He never could have imagined that the goddess-like beauty from high school—the girl who rarely spoke and spent every second buried in her studies—would actually remember his name.
Ethan felt a sudden, almost ridiculous sense of pride.
"I never thought the school’s top beauty would still remember me." He smiled, though there was a trace of mockery in his voice to cover the flutter in his chest.
"Wait—he’s Ethan?" Williams’s wife turned her head sharply, eyes widening.
At first Ethan thought she was asking Williams, but realized her attention was fixed on Rainie.
"She... mentioned me?" Ethan asked, curiosity piqued.
"More than mentioned!" Williams’s wife laughed lightly. "She told me she even dreamed you pinned her against a wall. Rainie, looks like your dream came true! Oh, but how did you even get here? There are dangerous people outside—we need to leave!"
Her tone flipped from teasing to urgent in an instant, but Ethan barely heard the last part. His eyes were fixed on Rainie, who had buried her face so deep against her chest it looked like she was trying to disappear.
Ethan was completely thrown off. Rainie... dreamed of him pinning her against a wall?
Could it be that the illusion he’d experienced had bled into her dream somehow? Or worse—had he actually stepped into her dream during that illusion?
’What the hell...’
The thought left him utterly speechless. But judging from Rainie’s embarrassed reaction, his guess wasn’t far off.
The two women had likely endured despair while imprisoned here, with no secrets left between them. In those quiet, hopeless moments, they must have shared everything.