Chapter 14

New York, a few months earlier.

It was only eleven o'clock on Isabella's watch, but the girl with the icy attitude was already walking home. Her forehead was red and slightly bruised. But Isabella didn't seem to care at all. If others grimaced with pain or even cried sobbing, Isabella just stayed on a wooden park bench and took a sip of her cigarette.

The atmosphere in the park near her school that afternoon was completely quiet. No one would catch her smoking there. After all, Isabella just needed to finish the rest of her tobacco and act as if nothing had happened to her. Smoking was her way of releasing stress, easing pain, and forgetting the bad things that happened in her life. Activities that take no more than a few minutes can be a medicine, as well as vitamins for her damaged body.

Until finally, Isabella finished with a cigarette. She dropped the few remaining cigarette butts onto the asphalt and stomped on them hard, grinding them down with