Farewell To My Contracted Life 소설 & 이야기

“The contract will expire before morning.” My voice cracked. “Will this life-changing contract slip through my fingers… just like that?”

The hand that I still did not know who had reached for first and that I had been turning over in my memory since it happened with the specific attention of someone handling something they were afraid of dropping. One hundred days until the contract expired. And I was lying in bed at seven in the morning feeling the number in my chest like a bruise. I stood up. Went to the window. The grey morning moved below me without asking anything from it. I thought about what one hundred days meant practically. The contract would end. The arrangement would conclude. I would leave this house with the settlement terms fulfilled and my father stable and my debts cleared and the two years served as agreed.

I moved through the room, greeting businessmen, CEOs and high profile guests playing the dutiful groom. Elena did the same. Smiling, nodding and accepting congratulations as if this was real. My mother didn't congratulate us. She just stood in one corner, unbothered and sipping her wine. Everytime, someone toasts our future. I fought the urge to laugh. There was no future here. Only three years of contract. Then we'd go our separate ways. For the sake of appearances, I held her waist, touched her hand, leaned in and gave her a peck on her cheek. She allowed me, smiling all through just for a show of affection.

The burned photo curled into ash. 9 days left. And the contract was the least of her problems now.

She stopped laughing, and her expression turned even colder. "So you're telling me that my father made a contract that involves my life with his best friend, and you did not try and stop him? Charlotte asked in a low and dangerous tone. Martha wiped her forehead nervously. "I did not know anything about the contract until after he died when the lawyer told me about it." "If dad and this so-called best friend were so close, how come I have never met him or his family?" Charlotte asked her mom. "That was because I kept you away from them. After your father's death, I found out about the deal your father made," Martha answered.

The lawyer stared at me in his office, "So, is it done?" I nodded and handed him a copy. "Why after twenty years, and why me?" The lawyer sighed, "I randomly chose you after seeing your name in a newspaper. And why twenty years?" The lawyer sat back, reminiscing about twenty years ago. When Alex suddenly sought him out and asked him to change his will. It was a time when he received a call and was about to enter a government chemical weapons research facility. Alex was afraid something would happen to him. *** "If something happens to me, please give this letter to a writer. Exactly twenty years after my death," Alex instructed. "But if nothing happens to me in this year and I marry Claire,

How else did that bloody bastard know about him and Dennis relationship if she didn't tell him. "What are you talking about? What gossip?" "Oh! Cut the pretence woman. I know your kind. Remember this..." He gestured between them " ...Is just a contract." Her jaw ticked with annoyance and anger. So he thought of her as a gossip, she didn't need to be reminded she made the most stupid mistake of her life by agreeing to the contract. "Stay away from me and my kid." She spoke with so much anger. "Just like you said this is just a contract, I don't want you anywhere near my kid." She spat with fury and marched to her room.

"You were always trying. You just didn't want anyone to see it." He was very still. "Mara," he said. "Yes." He reached across the table and put his hand over mine, just rested it there, warm and deliberate, and looked at me. "I need to tell you something," he said. My heart was doing something unreasonable. "Okay," I said. "The contract ends in twelve days," he said. "I have been trying to figure out the right moment to say this and I have decided there is no right moment so I'm going to say it here on a paper plate over fish."

The warmth I had glimpsed at the door was gone, replaced by the distant coldness I remembered from the first day we met. He took a breath, and in that pause I already knew. “The contract is over,” Aleksander said. The words struck like a blow, heavy and final. For a moment they did not register. They only echoed in the space between us, filling it with a hollow ache. I forced air into my lungs, though it felt like my chest was collapsing. This was what I had wanted, I had told myself. To leave. To be free. To erase all of this as if it had never happened.