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Todos os capítulos de He Chose My Stepsister, I Left Him Forever: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 10

10 Capítulos

Chapter 1

I'd been in the future for a week, but I still wasn't used to any of it. Then the Temporal Immigration Bureau contacted us. We had to register as a couple right away, or I couldn't be added to the residency system.But Adrian wanted me to give my slot to Sasha.An hour before we were supposed to register, I sat in a waiting room at the Bureau, scrolling through photos on my old phone. My chest tightened.There wasn't a single posed photo of us.Instead, there were photos of Adrian mixing paint beside my easel, leaning against the window, or quietly watching me work whenever I looked away.There were also photos of museums we'd visited, sunsets by the water, and crowded subway rides.In every one, Adrian looked at me as if I were the only person in the room. His eyes held such tenderness that I'd once believed he would still look at me that way 200 years later.What I hadn't noticed was the person behind the camera. Sasha had taken most of those photos.Adrian had been looking at me whi

Chapter 2

The next morning, I woke to the hum of a freight unit.When I stepped out of the guest room, hover units were already moving Sasha's luggage into the main bedroom.Adrian stood beside the daylight panel, adjusting the room's lighting to a warm yellow glow that was supposed to help patients recover.That room was supposed to be my studio.One entire wall opened to real sunlight, and at night, I could watch the stars through the glass.Just yesterday, Adrian had told me that almost everyone in this century preferred digital art. Real paintings were rare. He said that with this studio, I could create something no one else in the world could make.Now my paint cases, the ones I'd carried 200 years into the future, sat outside the door.He didn't turn around as he adjusted the panel. "Sasha says she's always thought of your family as her own. Now that she's sick, she doesn't want to be away from you, so I brought her here. You don't mind, do you?""Adrian, where am I supposed to sleep?"He

Chapter 3

On the third morning, I was up by six.The couch in the storage room was narrow and hard, nothing like the climate bed in the main bedroom.I had just finished getting ready when I heard suitcase wheels rolling across the living room.I opened the door to find Adrian dressed for travel, with two silver cases beside him. He was fastening a heated wrap around Sasha.The mind-link glowed on each of their wrists. Sasha leaned against his shoulder, her heart racing.Adrian mistook it for fear and reached for her hand."Don't be scared. I'll be right there with you. It's all arranged."His voice softened. "Polaris still has huge areas of untouched wilderness. The doctors say real sunlight and fresh air can help with recovery. It'll help you relax before surgery."They were going to the Polaris Nature Reserve.It was one of the few places in this century where nature had been preserved.Every 50 years, something extraordinary happened there. Two colors that did not exist in Earth's natural sp

Chapter 4

My question stopped Adrian cold.Sasha was the first to cry."Thea, do you really think I'm faking my illness? You grew up with parents who loved you. You're a talented painter. Everyone loves you wherever you go. All I want is to stay alive. Why can't you even let me have that?"Adrian wiped away her tears without a second thought."The report is in the Union medical network. It can't be fake. Thea, you don't understand this era. Stop letting your jealousy get the better of you."You don't understand this era.I'd given up everything familiar to me for him, only to wake up in a world I barely knew. Yet somehow, my unfamiliarity with this world became his excuse to dismiss everything I said."I'm not jealous." I looked him straight in the eye. "I just want you to take her for a full scan yourself. Don't rely on some old report stored on her terminal. Scan her now."Sasha's breathing suddenly grew shallow and rapid. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed into Adrian's arms."I won't go."

Chapter 5

When the white light faded, the first thing I smelled was turpentine.The paint-stained wooden floor stretched beneath my feet. Outside, a car horn blared from the street. September sunlight filtered through the plane trees and spilled across my easel.I was back in my own studio.The calendar on the wall showed a date 31 days after I'd entered the pod.200 years had passed in the future. Here, only a month had passed.[Forced repatriation complete.][Host's memories of the future preserved in full. The neural pathway linked to her love for Adrian Marsh has been severed.]After the voice faded, I still remembered Polaris, the Shared Light, and every word Adrian had said when he registered Sasha as his partner instead of me.But those memories couldn't hurt me anymore.They felt like an old painting I'd once poured my heart into but no longer cared about.A key turned in the door.My grandmother came in carrying the gown I had never finished painting, and froze when she saw me."Thea?"

Chapter 6

When the Shared Light appeared over Polaris, the whole sky seemed to fall silent.Adrian stood at the edge of the viewing platform.The grass beneath his feet glowed faintly blue, while a river in the distance flowed upward into the sky, defying gravity. Thousands of visitors from across the star systems had gathered to witness the event that came only once every 50 years.Thea used to watch videos of this place over and over.She used to say that when the Shared Light appeared, she'd use Earth's oldest paints to capture the universe's newest color.Two rings of light rose above the horizon, one gold and one blue, like two rivers destined never to meet.All around him, couples reached for each other's hands. One by one, the mind-links on their wrists began to glow. Through their shared vision, the two rings merged into a single color that had never existed on Earth.Adrian saw it too.The color was impossible to describe. Blue seemed to burn inside it while gold sank through it like li

Chapter 7

The night before they left Polaris, Adrian and Sasha were resting at the viewing camp.Not far away, an elderly couple sat beside a fire, looking through their photos.The man added a photo of the two of them beneath the Shared Light to their album and laughed. "50 years from now, we'll come back and see it again. Just you and me."The woman smiled and nodded. The mind-link on her wrist gave off a soft glow.Just you and me.Adrian's cup hit the table with a thud.200 years ago, Thea had said almost the same thing.She'd covered the walls of her studio with everything she could find about Polaris and spent days deciding which paints to bring. She'd been so excited. She'd said the Shared Light was something you should see once in your life with the person you loved most. No one else should be part of it.He'd wrapped his arms around her from behind and made that promise without hesitation.But in the end, Sasha was the one who had seen it with him.Adrian opened his terminal and sent Th

Chapter 8

Adrian kept his eyes fixed on Sasha."Did you know Thea had filed for repatriation?"Something flickered in Sasha's eyes, but a second later, she put on a wounded expression."She's only doing it to scare you. She's been like that since we were kids. Whenever she doesn't get her way, she threatens to run away.""Did she submit an application to the Bureau or not?""How would I know?" Sasha grabbed his hand. "Adrian, my stomach hurts again. Let's go back to the room, all right?"She pressed his hand against her belly, as if the mind-link could prove she was in pain."Then why did you keep these?"He turned the terminal toward her.One photo after another appeared on the screen, each with Thea deliberately cropped out. Sasha went pale, and pure panic flooded through the mind-link.For the first time, Adrian didn't mistake it for fear of dying.He remembered the joy that had flooded through the link during the Shared Light, her racing heart whenever she got close to him, and the jealousy

Chapter 9

Adrian left Polaris that night and raced back to Skyhaven alone.When the door slid open, the only sound inside was the hum of the air system.The storage room was empty.He yanked open every cabinet anyway, then pulled up the apartment's entry log.In the final recording, Thea stood in the living room with her paint box in her arms. She stared out the window for a long time, then shut off her terminal and stepped into the repatriation pod sent by the Bureau.She never looked back. Not even once.The paints she'd brought from 200 years ago were gone. So were the old brushes bearing her teeth marks. Even the sketchbook filled with drawings of him was gone.Yet the master bedroom still glowed with the warm yellow light Sasha liked, and her blue roses were blooming in the growth tank.Only then did Adrian remember that the last thing he'd asked Thea to do was take care of Sasha's flowers.He stormed into the Temporal Immigration Bureau and slammed his highest-level clearance down on the c

Chapter 10

50 years later, the Shared Light returned.Adrian stood alone on the viewing platform at Polaris.One gold ring and one blue ring hung on the horizon. Without a partner to share what he saw, the two colors stayed separate until they faded.Around him, people cheered and held each other close.Through their partners' eyes, they saw the two colors merge into one. Then they tucked that memory away somewhere safe. It belonged only to the two of them.All Adrian could think about was how badly Thea had once wanted to stand here beside him.But he'd given that chance away with his own hands.The light over Polaris grew brighter, but the two colors never merged for Adrian.More than two centuries earlier, one winter in Finland, I carried my paint box out into the snow.Travelers from all over the world sat around a fire in the open countryside. Wood crackled in the flames. Someone pressed a hot drink into my hands. Another traveler threw back their head and shouted something in a language I d

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