Chapter 5: The brilliant game designer and her foster father 5
1176 Words
Faced with Valeria’s wary attitude, Roger felt a trace of helplessness as well.
He was never the type to grow close to strangers, nor did he have any interest in meddling in other people’s affairs.
But the person standing before him was an exception.
Ralph Harold’s decision to adopt a seventeen-year-old daughter had been a topic of endless discussion in City A’s business circles over the past few months. Everyone knew about that man’s peculiar fondness for adoption, yet at barely over thirty, he had suddenly taken in a child more than half his own age. It was a move that made it impossible not to raise suspicions.
Although Roger was often overlooked by his family and usually appeared aloof, as if nothing in the world concerned him, in truth he was no different from anyone else, curious, fond of gossip, and especially interested in rumors circulating among the elite.
Two days earlier, at his family’s private hospital, he had accidentally glimpsed a patient’s diagnostic report. Combined with what he had read in novels and seen in films, a bold conjecture had unconsciously taken shape in Roger’s mind.
In the very next instant, he was startled by his own imagination.
From that day on, when he returned to school, Roger found himself paying more attention to Valeria than he meant to.
Not long after, he noticed that Valeria had fallen into the sights of the school’s resident bullies.
She had transferred here for two months already. At first, they did not act rashly, but instead watched her in silence, testing the waters.
Like Valeria, Fiona Harold was also an adopted daughter, but she was cherished and protected by Ralph Harold no differently from a biological child. That alone was enough to make the bullies wary. They feared that Valeria might also be valued by the Harold family, and if that were the case, she would clearly not be a suitable target for bullying.
They might have been wayward children, but they all came from influential families. They might not be outstanding, but they were certainly not stupid.
They knew very well whom they could afford to bully, and whom they absolutely could not, without bringing trouble upon their families.
After two months of careful observation, they finally realized that Valeria was nothing like Fiona. She was not favored by Ralph Harold at all; in fact, her treatment within the Harold household was worlds apart from Fiona’s.
And so, Valeria became the perfect choice for their next victim.
That was also the true reason behind the so-called hero saving the damsel scene just now.
Valeria was not someone who failed to distinguish kindness from malice. Roger had helped her, and she was not stingy with a word of thanks.
Roger seemed determined to see things through once he had decided to help. He took the initiative and said, “I’ll walk you to the school gate. There’s a car picking you up outside, right?”
Valeria nodded. “Mm. Thank you.”
On the way, Roger lowered his voice and reminded her, “From now on, don’t walk alone on campus. They’ll definitely wait for a moment like that to show up and bully you again.”
“I know,” Valeria replied. “Thank you for the warning.”
After walking a little farther, Roger asked casually, as if it were an afterthought, “Does Ralph Harold treat you well?”
The question was far too personal. Valeria immediately realized it was a probe.
Unable to tell whether Roger meant well or was trying to test something, she chose not to answer. She simply lowered her head and remained silent.
According to the memories of this body, Ralph Harold was an extremely cold man. Since the day she entered the Harold household, she had exchanged fewer than twenty sentences with him in total. Only in front of Fiona did he speak a little more.
001 popped out, making its presence known.
“Ms. Meredith, this is precisely the common trait of male leads in romantic novels: cold to the entire world, gentle only toward the female lead. Very romantic, isn’t it?”
Valeria snorted coldly and replied,
“That’s not romance. It’s arrogance. And rudeness.”
She and Roger fell into silence at the same time, walking down the corridor together. Before long, they reached the school gate.
When Roger spotted the black car bearing the Harold family crest waiting in the distance, a trace of conflict flickered across his face. In the end, after a brief inner struggle, he finally spoke:
“Valeria… do you know that Fiona has a heart condition?”
She nodded.
“I know. She’s been absent from school for the past two weeks because her condition relapsed. She’s currently recuperating at home.”
She deliberately followed his lead, cooperating just enough to probe Roger’s true intentions.
“Then… do you know that the doctors have concluded that if a heart transplant isn’t possible, Fiona won’t live past the age of twenty?”
Valeria, of course, already knew. But the original owner of this body did not.
So she deliberately put on a look of surprise.
“How do you know that? She’s never mentioned this to me.”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with how I know,” Roger said calmly. “But it’s the truth.”
This was as far as he was willing to warn her. If she still failed to see what was really going on, then she could only blame herself for being too foolish.
“The black car belongs to the Harold family, right? You should get in.”
Valeria bade Roger farewell and stepped into the car.
On the way back, her thoughts kept circling around the things Roger had just said.
“001, what role does Roger play in the plot?”
She had skimmed through the novel’s storyline before, but she genuinely had no recollection of a character like him at all.
“He’s the youngest son of the Hawthorne family, the dynasty that owns the largest chain of private hospitals in the state. Roger Hawthorne is the result of a one-night drunken affair between his father and a nightclub dancer. After he was born, his mother received a huge sum of money and handed him over to his father.
Roger’s older brother is the male supporting character. In the future, he will harbor unrequited feelings for the female lead and offer her significant help in both her career and personal life.
In the novel, Roger himself only appears in a single line of dialogue spoken by the male supporting character:
‘My useless little brother…’”
Hearing this, the wariness Valeria had toward Roger eased considerably.
Perhaps he had learned something through his family’s hospital and was simply offering her a well-intentioned warning.
They were both supporting characters, yet she had an entire narrative arc of her own, while Roger did not even have a single line of dialogue.
Did that mean she was actually luckier than he was?
- Writer
