Book 2: 14

"Good morning!"

I glanced towards the voice of a woman coming in our direction. Her smile was bright as the morning sun rays piercing through the glass wall of the restaurant Sean brought me in.

"Miss Trixie," Sean greeted back with a smile as he scrambled to his feet to pull out a chair for her to sit down.

"This is too kind of you, Mr. Grey," she said, throwing me an awkward gaze before she sat down across us.

"Miss Trixie, you're here," I said, smiling, acknowledging her presence. She was Eric's most favorite designer, and ironically, Sean's, too. I just learned about it when we had our gown fitting for that party in the hospital during the Founding Anniversary.

Trixie glanced at Sean with a confused expression even if her smile never left her face. I also shifted my gaze between Sean and back to her.

"I let her come over so that you can choose a dress for tonight," Sean said, looking at me.

"For what?" I never remembered him mentioning earlier about a party.

"We're going to a Thanksgiving Party."

I nodded without asking who among his circle of friends was throwing a party. I got used to it when I was with Eric. There were too many parties and functions we attended during those five years I stayed with him.

"Have your breakfast first, Miss Trixie," I suggested after a moment of silence followed.

Sean pressed the buzzer, and an attendant came in, bringing a tablet of the menu. Trixie glanced gracefully at the attendant, taking the menu from her.

"Freshly-brewed coffee, garden salad, and French toasts," Trixie narrated her order after a few seconds of looking into the menu tab. It seemed that she was not new in this coffee shop.

While waiting for her order, we finished off our meal while Sean and Trixie drifted into a conversation about how lucky Sean was to have her time this morning.

"I have people under me, Mr. Grey. I send them off to our clients if they are not able to come into the shop."

Soon, their conversation flowed into names and preferred designs of her clients that seemed to impress Sean. I got no interest in their topic, so I let my thoughts wander away.

We both woke up late this morning. I tried to push back the many questions I had in my mind regarding the news about the president and Sean's reaction. I didn't want to spoil our night about this news since the mention of the president's name would always link to Calla.

Why did Sean's mood turn sour at the mention of that prominent business tycoon? Is he involved, or is he the mastermind of a conspiracy against the president? Is Sean capable of doing that? Why would he plot against the president's life? Does he want to destroy his image? Are all these because of Calla?

So many questions rolled one after another as I thought about it. All these outrages against the president started when a netizen uploaded a video that displayed his intimate moments with Calla in one of the beaches of the Sama Islands. Unfortunately, this infidelity issue gave way to another problem when the Bronc X virus started to spread its scare throughout the country, and across the globe. The only exemption was our city, where the president lived.

Thousands of people died when it spread as a pandemic, causing the global economy to go upside down. This epidemic started in Sama Island, where tourism spiked high. And because these tourists came from different countries across the globe, they were also the reason why the disease had spread widely to almost all parts of the world.

All the nations were cramming to find the nature of this virus, how the outbreak started, and how to prevent its transmission until other videos came up through the social media pointing President Abella as the instigator. These videos highlighted the crawling Bronca bugs from the president's lapel flower. And these Bronca bugs were the hosts of the so-called Bronc X virus.

Researchers got confused about its nature because each of these Bronca bugs that they captured from the president's lapel had colonies of different viruses inside their bodies. Some were fatal, and some were not—only causing common-colds-like-illnesses; thus, the term X virus. They tried to compare it to other Bronca bugs from other places, and it showed that these types were harmless, and did not even host the same types of viruses. They came up to the conclusion that those Bronca bugs that came from the president were intentionally cultured for a purpose to kill thousands of people.

Then, I remembered Patrick!

Patrick was that weird man in that forest where I wandered and got bitten by a Bronca bug. He got angry when out of curiosity, I opened a reservoir of those creepy bugs. Sean cried his heart out and thought I wouldn't survive before he brought me immediately to the hospital, where I got critical for a few days. He even sucked the venom from the wound in my cheek, making Patrick roar in anger.

"Do you also want to die?" Patrick's growl pierced rang in my mind again.

"What sense there is to live if I lost her?" answered Sean, his voice breaking into a bitter cry.

That was one of my sweetest memories with Sean. That was when I felt he truly loved me. I wouldn't have tolerated all his lies and mysteries, if not for that incident, where Sean almost took his life because of me.

We were supposed to take a vacation in that remote home place of his that housed a forest at the foot of a hill. But since Sean disappeared, so I went to look for him and ended up lost in that wood. I remembered seeing different kinds of containers and mats spreading out in the forest ground. There were also some baskets in different shapes and sizes hanging in the branches. In those containers were also sticky fluids and gels that looked like improvised media to grow viruses and bacteria.

"Dear, you're lost again." Sean spread his arms across my shoulders, and I looked up.

I threw a questioning look that had Miss Trixie chuckle.

"Miss Trixie wants to show you her brochure," Sean filled me in as I moved my eyes back to him.

"I see," I replied, laughing about how lost I was. I then stood up and pulled out a chair next to her.

Miss Trixie spread out the pages in front of us; then, I began flipping its pages. I stopped at a page where a note, "Sold Out," was stamped.

"I would have picked this one," I mumbled as I ran my fingers through it.

"I'm sorry, doc. This design is already taken by Miss Sevilla again."