There were rows upon rows of chat logs, all of them kept encrypted within his phone as if they were treasures. There were even some photographs of Amber, and the backdrop of each photograph was always Amber’s mother’s house or even Amber’s own house. There was even one of her in a doctor’s lab coat in the hospital!
Amber rarely ever posted pictures of herself on social media, so these could only have been sent over privately.
At this point, she really wanted to yell out, ‘When on earth did this happen? Why didn’t I know about this at all?’
She glanced at Daren, who had given her his phone and then retreated back inside his blankets like a turtle, and then asked, “Can I see these chat logs?”
She didn’t get a response.
When Ian’s grandparents saw these things being pulled out, they instantly became mentally and physically weary. Unable to bear it any longer, they stood to the side and didn’t say anything.
Ian walked toward the side of the bed, leaned over, and roughly prodded the blanket. “Come out and unlock your phone. If it’s true, then I’ll return her to you.”
Ian’s harsh words rendered Amber speechless.
Even though she knew that Ian wasn’t an ordinary person, her heart still went cold whenever she heard him say things like this. She took a deep breath, only able to mask her discomfort.
Daren hesitated for a moment before actually coming out. He first looked at her with eyes as red as a rabbit’s before lowering his head and taking his phone back from Amber’s hands.
He slowly unencrypted the files and then returned the phone to her even as he stole another glance before retreating back into his blankets like a frightened rabbit.
Daren’s actions also rendered Amber speechless.
She was really curious about how the Axton family had managed to raise two siblings with such contrasting personalities.
Daren had evidently built up quite a number of files in this folder, but they were all labeled very cleanly-he had also carefully sorted all the chat logs by both date and topic.
In this aspect, he was somewhat like Ian, neat, tidy, clear, and ordered.
The most recent folder was from February, around New Year, and the earliest folder was February from four years ago. Back then, Amber had been getting her Ph. D. under Nancy’s direction, and given how much Daren’s looks and personality made him stand out, Amber was absolutely certain that she hadn’t met him then.
As she pondered over all this, she opened the first chat log. Originally, she had been calm and composed, but when she saw the log, her face blanched.
Daren’s chat log had been copied directly from the messaging program, and not only were the chats timestamped, but they even had both parties’ IDs.
There were two IDs, one, ‘smiling_and_proud,’ and the other, ‘icey.’
The only time Amber had ever used the moniker ‘icey’ was in a game that had gotten really popular a few years back, ‘Escape from the Apocalypse.’ It had been snowing on the day she had registered for an account, and so she had called herself ‘icey.’
The first stranger that she had befriended in ‘Escape from the Apocalypse’ was ‘smiling_and_proud.’ The two of them had met on a battlefield, and Amber had thought that his skills were very good, and he had also thought that Amber was quite a decent player. So, the two of them had added each other as friends after the battle.
She had never expected that this ‘smiling_and_proud’ who seemed to be lively and cute in-game would actually be the shy and introverted Daren Axton. The gap between them was so large that she really couldn’t comprehend it!
The chat logs revealed that the two of them’s conversation was really quite boring. It was mostly them praising each other’s performance in battle, and occasionally, there’d be an, “Are you free today? Let’s team up and join a match.”
Amber flipped through the logs of quite a number of days, and all the content seemed to be the same. She then realized that she had only played this game until May. And then, it had become graduation season and she had gotten really busy, so she had quit.
She hadn’t touched the game since, but there was a period when Ruby was so bored that he had wanted her to help him level up. Since Amber didn’t have the time to do so personally, she had simply given him her account details.
At this point, Amber could essentially guess at what had transpired afterwards. Evidently, at first, the Ruby who had taken over her account only responded to ‘smiling_and_proud’ when he felt like it. Then, one day, when ‘smiling_and_proud’ told him that his surname was Axton, the chat logs between the two of them inflated rapidly.
Amber’s expression suddenly changed.
Ian was watching her quietly, and then he saw her expression change suddenly -even if it was all but imperceptible, he was still able to detect it. His eyebrows raised themselves subconsciously, and his lips tightened.
Amber continued to scroll through the chat logs for quite a while before hurriedly putting the phone away and asking, “I’m sorry. Perhaps this is a little too inappropriate, but Daren, can you send me these records?”
As Amber lowered her head to continue to scroll through the records, the other three members of Ian’s family looked at her. When they saw her calm demeanor, they couldn’t help but feel slightly hopeful, and Ian’s grandmother even asked, trembling as she did so, “It’s all fake … isn’t it?”
Amber didn’t reply. She didn’t even know where to start explaining, and she could only give her an apologetic look as she said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t clarify this right now. However, please believe me when I say that I’ll give all of you a thorough explanation for all this.”
And then she looked towards the blankets and gently said to Daren, “Daren, please give me some time to explain all of this to you, alright?”
The person hiding the blankets was silent for a moment, and then finally responded, “Alright. If you can explain everything clearly to my brother, then I … I’ll forgive you.”
Amber had no response. “….”