Novel & Cerita 흑막을 버리는 데 실패했다

she said shortly. The red spots had disappeared from her face, and the swelling had visibly subsided. But still, simple cool water cannot wash away all traces of half an hour of sobbing. She couldn’t do anything about the pinked whites of her eyes. Anyone, even a stranger, at the first glance at her will say: “This girl must have cried all night” - and will be partially right. Ultimately, all her manipulations to return her neutral appearance were in vain. “It’s not so obvious, but it’s still noticeable,” Neil concluded, getting up from his chair.

Lavender went about her day like a miserable person. Her eyes were deep and hollow from crying throughout the night and her strength was almost depleted. She would have applied a lot of makeup to cover it up, but she didn't have the money to purchase a decent makeup kit. Her skin easily reacted if she used cheap or fake beauty products so she resulted in making natural concoctions to sustain her beauty. Still, the herbal and fruit mix was only for skincare and not to cover the horrible state of her face.

And badly too. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't go to bed. I'd pressed my eyes shut over and over again, but it didn't work. Instead, time and time again, I opened my eyes to the shadow still staring at me, until it wasn't. One moment, the shadow stood as it's usual spot, and the next, it was no longer there.

Soon, everything was ready. Kim and Zafrina face to face, pick up the makeup removal towel and start to remove makeup. At first, she was full of confidence. When she unloaded her eyes, she did not hesitate to expose the two red blemish patches on her forehead. But when she saw that she had erased the foundation of her face, her skin seemed to be more white, and could not rub away for a moment. Until two people all unload make-up, all around people can't help but send out bursts of startled voices.

It didn’t wash away the dream, the eyes, the shadow of my uncle’s presence. I reached for the shampoo, squeezing a handful into my palm. I scrubbed hard at my hair, desperate to erase the green. My fingers clawed at the strands, but the color wouldn’t fade. It clung stubbornly, brighter with every rinse, like it was a part of me now. I dropped the shampoo bottle, watching it float in the water. “I give up,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. When I finally stepped out, my towel clung to me, dripping water across the floor. I rubbed my hair with both hands, but no matter how much I dried, the green sparkles still glowed faintly against the darker strands.

The way her eyes kept darting toward Xavia. The second batch failed too. She slammed her fist against the ground, her face twisted with frustration, her eyes wet. "I don't understand," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I've done this before. I've made this before. Why isn't it working?" I looked at Xavia, then back at my mother, and I felt something cold settle in my stomach. A suspicion I couldn't name. A question I couldn't ask. "Try again," I said, my voice quiet.

My face was pale, almost gray, and my eyes looked too wide, pupils dilated, and not wanting to see anymore of helplessness in myself, I looked away from the mirror and turned the tao on. Brushing my teeth, I made sure I didn’t look at the mirror even as I rinsed my mouth and later, I made my way into the shower, scrubbing my skin harder than necessary as if I could erase the soreness that clung to my skin. The shower rained down on my body with heat until my skin burned, but nothing chased away the feeling that I was forgetting something, I felt like I was missing something but I couldn’t put a finger on what it was.

She would have recognized us instantly, felt the bond, and it would have been a whole different story. Everything would have changed. But nothing had. “No,” she said finally, her voice quieter now. Her expression shifted, the earlier embarrassment fading into something heavier, more subdued. Disappointment, maybe. Or frustration. “The experiment was a failure,” she admitted. “At least I tried.” Tried. I exhaled slowly, lowering my hand from my forehead and looking at her properly this time. “Don’t do something like that again,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected, but there was no mistaking the weight behind it.

But this morning upon glimpsing my reflection, the differences had become impossible to ignore. My complexion had turned sallow, cheeks gaunt and shadows ringing my eyes. Even the vibrancy of my hair seemed diminished. I had aged a decade overnight. Without a dragon heart's power coursing through me, this mortal shell was failing. A wheezing cough wracked my frame at that moment as if to underscore my weakening state. I braced a hand against the wall until the spasm passed, leaving me drained. Deliberately avoiding the mirror now, I sank into a chair by the cold hearth.

She'd left her hair loose to fall down her back in a mass of vibrant curls, but she admitted bleakly that it would take a miracle and a lot of make-up to conceal the ravages of her utter misery. She needed to talk to Ahsan, to ask him outright if he was planning to exchange his wife for a more sophisticated model, but she dared not contemplate his reply. Malika’s taunts echoed in her head while she applied taupe eyeshadow to her lids and highlighted her cheekbones with blush in a desperate attempt to give her face some color.