The Unveiled Rose
Chapter 184

I reluctantly accepted his explanation. "Alright, then."

Zane let out a light laugh.

...

Steven opened his eyes and immediately noticed the absence of Jessica, who had always been beside him just days ago. His mood lifted at the sudden emptiness.

He got up and walked to Zachary's bedroom door, knocking lightly. "Time to get up! I'll take you to school today."

There was no answer.

Steven casually opened the door, only to replace the room empty.

It was then he remembered that Zachary had spent the night at Chloe's house.

Steven made his way to the living room and sat down. It felt like everything had changed since he and Annalise had separated. The house no longer felt warm. Instead, it was cold and distant, the silence more suffocating than comforting.

...

Today, the little girl arrived earlier than usual. When we dropped Willow off, we saw her standing at the door, waving at Willow.

Willow didn't even say goodbye to us before she ran over to the little girl. The little girl took Willow's hand, chatting as they walked forward together.

As Willow had done the other day, she listened patiently and focused entirely on her new friend.

I felt a surge of relief. Though Willow still couldn't speak with others, it was reassuring to see her make a friend. I turned to Zane and said, "Let's go." Zane nodded. "Okay."

Even though he didn't need to drop Zachary off, Steven still found himself at the kindergarten. He leaned against his car, watching Annalise from a distance.

He instinctively wanted to tell her that Jessica had moved out of the house, but he hesitated as he took a step forward.

He and Jessica were just living apart for now their relationship wasn't completely over.

What would telling Annalise even accomplish? What if she wanted to get back together with him? And if that happened, how would he explain things to Jessica? Steven's mood grew inexplicably heavy.

...

After I arrived at the office, I immediately set my laptop down and opened Instagram.

The head of the game department had already sent me a message. "We've received the four sketches you sent over. We had a meeting and decided to go with this one." Then, a picture appeared.

I opened it to replace it was the first draft I had done.

I quickly replied, "Alright."

Since my work on the game department posters was just a side project, I couldn't let it interfere with my main job. I turned on my computer and got back to sketching the line art I needed for the comic.

By the time I finished, I was exhausted. I lay back on the couch and pulled out my phone. Since it was my break time, I decided to check the comic's performance on all the platforms.

To my surprise, the growth in followers had been rapid in the past few days. Just yesterday, I gained over 500 new followers.

At first, I thought it was just one platform. But after checking all of them, I was stunned to replace that every platform had seen a similar increase.

I opened the backend and checked the viewer data. That was when I realized the videos I had made by turning the comic into short videos had worked surprisingly well.

Each video had at least 5,000 views. I had posted more than ten videos, and the total views for yesterday alone surpassed 50,000 views.

Finally, I checked my earnings.

Across all platforms, it amounted to just over 500 dollars.

It wasn't a huge amount, but I was still satisfied.

I held my phone and couldn't help but smile.