Fake Façade 소설 & 이야기

“Why are you doing this Mr. Ben? I thought you genuinely cared for me. I had started seeing you in my father’s place.” Loud guffaws resonated in the room. He tried to say between bouts of laughter, “ You…ha ha ha….. are very naïve, Sia….ho ho ho…. You really believed my pretense…. Oho, oho…oho….” He was laughing so hard that he had to stop talking. When he finally managed to calm down he said, “Or maybe…I am a very good actor. I was pretending to be your well-wisher all this while. It was all a ruse. If I had tried to usurp your property the moment you arrived the Immortal Council would have got suspicious.

Warren’s urgent voice cut off at once. “What are you doing?” I roared, my eyes bloodshot. “Still acting?” Vincent pointed at the broken phone and let out a cold laugh. He looked around at everyone. “Everyone, do not be fooled. AI face‑swapping scams are everywhere now. Even celebrities can be faked, let alone a random person in a white coat. That is obviously her accomplice pretending to be a doctor.” He tightened his grip on Emily and stepped back, keeping her farther away from me.

His mask had slipped, revealing the real him. “You’re fake,” I whispered, feeling a mix of anger and relief. “You’re a total fraud.” The man laughed nervously and took a step back. “Don’t be silly, Natalia. You can’t believe everything you see on the internet. That guy in the video… he’s the fake one. He’s an AI deepfake that your husband’s company put together in ten minutes to cover up the scandal. I’m the real Damian Vance.” I glanced at the man’s face and then at his hands.

If only he had seen the desperation behind her calm facade… He snatched his phone, his fingers flying as he sent a frantic barrage of messages. [Where are you?] [Come back. Can we please talk?] [I can explain, Grace. The ceremony was fake. You're my only mate!] [Please, don't ignore me…] The messages vanished one after another, like stones tossed into a deep ocean, met with total silence. The only sound was the soft swoosh of his own outgoing texts, echoing in the empty house. He’d never imagined she would actually leave.

I can already see it in my head, “Jealous Best Friend Almost Jeopardizes Engagement.” This feels sadly like high school all over again. I look at my reflection in the mirror and nearly jump, my face a mess of mascara streaks and redness from crying I didn’t even realize I was still doing properly. I wash it off and breathe out slowly, forcing myself not to think about tomorrow. No more thinking about tomorrow. When I step back out, I am pretending I am okay. Kade is sitting on the edge of the bed now, elbows resting on his knees, head lifting the moment I appear. His eyes move over me slowly and pause on my legs, and I immediately want to cover up but there is nothing available.

she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. I could see the truth written in the lines of her face, the guilt and shame that she tried so desperately to hide. And as I pressed on, recounting the details of the fake pregnancy and the false claims of miscarriage, her façade began to crumble, her defenses crumbling like sandcastles in the face of the rising tide.

(FACADE) FAÇADE. The words mean someone wearing a mask, a false reality someone is pretending to be. A lie and the very untrue theme of someone who wanted to hide something or be somebody else they want to be yet they could not. To the human realm, in human nature and the very freedom of choice, God gifted mankind, with HIS love and unmeasurable patience to his creations will one who is wearing a mask can conceal the darkness that he had inside? What if one would tell that wearing one is for the sake of the many? Is the white lie still considered as a sin?

Almost too perfectly timed. Then a voiceover. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” It was Marla. One-half of the snarky influencer couple who’d always seemed suspicious of them. “But what if I told you it wasn’t real?” she continued. “What if they weren’t a couple at all… but two strangers who faked everything to win a fifty-thousand-dollar prize?” Gasps. Lake’s stomach dropped. Ivy stood, eyes wide. “No…” she whispered. The video kept playing. A voice recording—not clear where it had been taken, but unmistakably Lake’s:

Noah Ellis had a theory about Mason Reed. The theory was this: Mason was the most self-aware person Noah had ever met who worked the hardest to pretend he wasn't. Everything Mason did, the jokes, the charm, the easy confidence that filled whatever room he walked into, was deliberate. Not fake, Noah had never thought it was fake, but deliberate, the way an architect is deliberate, building something functional and beautiful that also happened to hide its own foundations. Most people never looked for the foundations.

Nor now nor ever. There was no place for emotions in their fake relationship and there should be no blurred lines between...