From Villain to Virtual Sweetheart: The Fake Heir's Grand Scheme(BL)-Chapter 678: Coal and Diamond

Upstairs, just a few steps away from Micah’s bed, Darcy stood silently in the hallway outside the half-open door.

He had not meant to eavesdrop. At first, he had only paused when he heard Clyde’s voice, low and steady, drifting faintly through the door left slightly open. But then Micah spoke. And Darcy’s feet would not move.

The door was ajar. The sound was muffled. Yet the emotion carried through.

Every tremor in Micah’s voice. Every broken confession. Every soft attempt Clyde made to comfort him.

Darcy lowered his gaze. He knew Micah too well.

He knew how soft-hearted he was. How he carried responsibility like a habit, as if the suffering of others naturally belonged on his shoulders. Micah blamed himself easily...right, too easily. If someone was hurt, he would search for his own mistake first. If something ended badly, he would question what he could have done differently.

Even now, grieving his grandmother, he was not asking why did this happen? He was asking what he had failed to do.

Darcy’s fingers curled slowly into fists at his sides. He understood that way of thinking intimately. Because he was living proof of it. He was the result of Micah’s self-blame.

The walking evidence of a boy who believed he could have changed everything if he had just tried harder.

But Darcy had made a promise.

He had promised Clyde that he would not reveal the truth. That he would not let Micah know he remembered... that he carried memories of all the past lives, of the forced change of the protagonist, of every betrayal and every collapse that had pushed Micah into rewriting fate.

So Darcy remained silent. And that silence barred him from stepping into that room. Barred him from saying: It wasn’t your fault. Barred him from admitting: I failed you too.

He had no right to address Micah’s guilt honestly without exposing everything.

And so he stayed behind the door, listening to Micah fall apart in someone else’s arms.

When the sound of sobbing finally echoed down the hallway, raw and unrestrained, Darcy closed his eyes. That cry pierced deeper than any blade.

He turned away. Each step down the corridor felt heavier than the last.

The final fragile hope this version of Darcy had carried in this world, the quiet, selfish wish that perhaps he might one day stand beside Micah again, dimmed further with every breath.

Because what had he done? What had he ever done except watch?

If, in the first life, he had been braver... smarter... less consumed by pride and anger...

Even with Noas interfering from the shadows, even with the plot twisting events toward tragedy, perhaps he could have prevented the worst of it.

Perhaps Micah would not have been cornered into sacrificing so much. Perhaps the storyline would never have needed to change.

Darcy did not blame Micah for the past. He couldn’t. Clyde had proven that it was possible to endure the pressure of the plot and still stand firm. Clyde had resisted. He had survived.

But the others, those four men who once claimed loyalty and affection, had stumbled the moment the narrative pushed against them. They had abandoned Micah when he needed them most.

And the Ramsy family... they had been swept along by misunderstandings and manipulation.

As for Darcy?

He had been neither capable enough to protect Micah nor strong enough to withstand the pressure of the ridiculous plot.

A hollow laugh almost escaped him.

In those lives, he had been reduced to an accessory, a decorative presence orbiting around four men who claimed to care for him. Their affection had been loud, dramatic, possessive.

And yet, when tested, it had shattered.

Superficial love dressed up as devotion.

The proof was simple: when circumstances shifted, when pressure mounted, when the plot demanded sacrifice, they had chosen themselves.

And Darcy had been the one who tasted the burn of it.

Even after revenge. Even after he had ensured those men paid with their lives. The bitterness had not faded. It still lived inside him like a slow-burning coal. That alone set him apart from Clyde.

Clyde’s strength was steadiness. Restraint. Endurance.

Darcy’s was anger. Calculation. A willingness to burn everything down.

Micah did not need someone like that beside him. Micah’s heart was nothing like Darcy’s.

It was clear. Unyielding in its kindness. Hard and brilliant like a diamond, not because it was cold, but because it could withstand pressure without losing its shape.

He was a diamond in the rough... every life had carved into him, yet his core only shone more brilliantly.

Even after betrayal. Even after abandonment. Even after being rewritten by fate itself. Micah had never once sought revenge.

Not truly.

He had chosen protection. He had chosen preservation. He had chosen to save what he could instead of destroying what hurt him.

Darcy looked down at his own hands. These were hands that had orchestrated deaths. Hands that had held onto hatred long after justice had been served.

How could someone like him stand beside someone like Micah?

The qualification had long been lost. And perhaps it had never belonged to him in the first place.

He walked slowly down the darkened hallway. The lights were dimmed; only a few wall lamps cast faint golden pools along the carpet.

His shadow stretched long in front of him, distorted by the angle of the light. It looked unfamiliar. Like a fragment from another lifetime following him.

Each step carried the weight of memories, of past lives, of fractured endings, of silent regrets that no one else remembered. Pain layered over pain. Loneliness layered over loneliness.

Yet he carried them quietly. Because this was the role he had chosen. To remember. To endure. And to walk away when necessary.

Behind him, faintly, Micah’s sobs began to quiet.

Darcy did not turn back.

He simply continued down the corridor, his shadow trailing behind him, holding within it all the regret, all the longing, and all the loneliness of lives that no longer existed, yet still refused to let him go.