From Villain to Virtual Sweetheart: The Fake Heir's Grand Scheme(BL)-Chapter 693: While He Was Unconscious (part three)

Their strange alliance had begun only a few months ago. It started the day Archie was discharged from rehabilitation, only to find he was still forbidden from going near Micah.

Not just warned. Banned. There were eyes on him at all times, Clyde’s people. Silent, efficient, impossible to shake off. If Archie stepped too close to a certain street, someone would appear. If he lingered too long near a familiar café, a car would idle nearby. He was not threatened directly. He didn’t need to be. The message was clear. Stay away.

For someone who had always moved freely, who had once believed he stood at the centre of everything, that kind of invisible cage was suffocating.

So Archie went looking for someone who might understand why he needed to see or to talk to Micah. He found Silas first.

When Silas stepped into Queen Hospital’s lobby and saw Archie waiting there, unkempt, eyes bloodshot, and shoulders slumped, he didn’t even need Archie to speak.

One look was enough. Silas knew. Archie remembered.

That knowledge flickered across Silas’s eyes for the briefest moment before settling into something distant and unreadable.

Archie started talking immediately. Words tumbled out of him, fragments of memory, flashes of scenes that did not belong to this life but felt more vivid than reality. He spoke of blood, of betrayal, of choices they had made again and again.

Silas listened. He did not interrupt. But he also did not respond the way Archie expected. Because Silas had already gone through that storm alone. He had remembered first.

And when the memories came, they did not come gently. They tore through him, stripping away the careful layers of logic and rationality, the identity he had built for himself. Silas had always prided himself on being reasonable. Analytical. Detached.

But in those other lives... He had not been rational. He had been cruel. Cold. Calculating in the worst way. He had convinced himself it was necessary. That it was logical. That eliminating obstacles was efficient.

Micah had been an obstacle. That truth alone had shattered something fundamental inside him.

By the time Archie showed up, Silas had already played out every possible scenario in his head.

He could go to Micah. He could apologise. He could kneel if necessary. But his mind, so accustomed to mapping out outcomes, had laid the conclusion out plainly.

It would fail.

He had burned every bridge between them. Not just once. Repeatedly. Across lives. Apologies would not undo what he had done. Redemption was a word for people who still had something left to salvage.

Silas did not believe he did. So he stepped aside. He let Archie speak. And when Archie finished, Silas simply said, "Leave."

That was all. No promises. No alliance. Just distance.

Archie mistook it completely. He thought Silas didn’t remember. He thought he was alone. And that loneliness festered. So he went looking for the others.

Aidan was next.

The moment Aidan saw him, something dark and heavy passed over his face. It was not confusion. It was recognition.

Aidan had tried very hard to bury what he had begun remembering. He had thrown himself into work. Into denial. Into routine. Anything that would drown out the intrusive flashes of memory that did not align with the person he believed himself to be.

Seeing Archie standing there, dishevelled and desperate, was like seeing a mirror held up to his worst self.

Aidan tried to close the door. Archie shoved it open and grabbed his arms.

"Stop pretending!" Archie had shouted. "You remember! You know what we did!" 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

And then he began recounting everything. The manipulations. The schemes. The quiet approvals. The moments Aidan had stood by and allowed things to unfold because it suited him.

At first, Aidan argued. Then he grew silent. Then pale.

The room seemed to tilt around him as Archie’s words piled up, each one another weight pressing down on his chest.

When he collapsed, it was not dramatic. It was quiet. His body simply gave out.

He woke up in a hospital bed, with white walls and the faint smell of disinfectant pressing in on him. Doctors called it acute psychological stress. Dissociation. Possible delusion.

He was admitted to the psychiatric ward for observation.

Archie stood outside that ward once, staring at the closed doors. He felt anger more than pity. To him, it looked like escape. Aidan was running from responsibility. Calling it an illness. Calling it a delusion. Anything but what it truly was.

Leo was different.

When Archie approached him, Leo did not look surprised. He looked tired.

"I know," Leo said before Archie even finished explaining.

There was no denial. No collapse. Just acknowledgment.

But when Archie asked for help, asked him to find a way to connect with Micah, to fix things, Leo’s answer was immediate. "No."

Archie stared at him.

"Hadn’t we done enough damage?" Leo’s voice was strained. "Leave him alone."

It was not said in anger. It was said in grief. Leo had no illusions about forgiveness. He had watched Micah suffer in too many versions of reality. He had been part of it. The idea of showing up again, of reopening wounds, felt selfish. So he refused.

And Archie was left alone. He spiralled.

Days blurred together. He stopped attending classes regularly. Stopped answering calls. He replayed memories in his head until they lost edges and became a constant hum of regret.

But he never once went near Darcy. He told himself that at least he was not that far gone.

Who goes after their own victim?

He wasn’t that kind of psycho.

What he didn’t know was that someone exactly like that already existed, and it was Aidan.

Because when Aidan was discharged, something in him had shifted. He had not come out calm or enlightened. He had come out unsettled.

The doctors told him he had experienced a breakdown. That stress had triggered delusions about past lives. They spoke gently, professionally.

They explained paranoia. They explained projection. They explained guilt manifesting as elaborate narratives.

Aidan listened. He nodded. He even repeated their conclusions back to them. But the memories would not fade.

He still saw flashes when he closed his eyes. Still heard echoes of words spoken in different times, different places.

What past lives? What male leads? What switched protagonist?

It sounded absurd. It had to be.

He refused to accept that he, a man who had built his reputation on discipline and strategy, had once been so weak that he bent under something as ridiculous as "plot pressure."

He told himself it was an illness. That was easier.

Yet one afternoon, without planning it, he found himself driving toward the university.

He told himself it was a coincidence. Curiosity. Closure.

When he parked outside campus, his hands were tight on the steering wheel. Students walked by in groups, laughing, unaware of the storm inside his head.

He could feel eyes on him. He was certain of it. But his psychologist had said that was paranoia. Side effects. His mind playing tricks.

Aidan exhaled sharply. He had grown tired of being told what was real.

So he drove. He took random turns. Changed routes. Watched his rearview mirror carefully. Eventually, he no longer saw the familiar vehicles he suspected were monitoring him.

He slowed down. And then he saw Darcy. It was almost mundane.

Darcy was walking along the road, headphones around his neck, hands tucked into his coat pockets.

Aidan stopped the car. He stepped out.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then Darcy looked up. Their eyes met. Pitch black. That was the only way Aidan could describe them. Soft in colour. But not in expression. There was no confusion in Darcy’s gaze. No fear. Just pure hatred and rage. And something deeper. Disgust.

It hit Aidan like a physical blow. In that instant, the last thread of denial snapped. He was not sick. He was not imagining things.

The weight in Darcy’s eyes could not be fabricated. It came from history. From memory. From pain.

Aidan threw his head back and laughed. The sound startled even him. It was sharp, cracked at the edges.

"What a joke," he muttered.

He had always thought of himself as controlled and superior. But in the grand design of things, he had been nothing more than a villain playing his assigned role. The devil himself.

Darcy blinked once. And then, slowly, he masked everything. His expression flattened. The hatred disappeared behind a wall of indifference. He turned around. And walked away.

He did not speak. Did not shout. Did not accuse.

That silence was heavier than any words.

Aidan dug his nails into his forearm, grounding himself in the sting of pain. There had been no conversation. But the verdict was clear. Darcy was the victim. Aidan was the perpetrator.

There was no space left for self-deception.

After that day, Aidan stayed quiet.

When the truth about the fake and true heirs surfaced, when the internet turned vicious and attacked Micah, Aidan used his company’s influence. Posts were removed. Accounts were pressured. Narratives shifted subtly. It was not redemption.

It was the least he could do. He watched from a distance as Micah’s grandmother passed away. Watched as Micah withdrew, staying inside the house for weeks. Watched the brightness dim from afar.

And he did nothing. Because he believed he had forfeited the right to approach.

Then Archie came again. This time, Aidan did not turn him away. He agreed to meet. To gather the others. To attempt something, anything, that might count as acknowledgment.

They told themselves they would apologise properly. Explain that they had remembered. Explain that they had cared. That their minds had been weak. That they had bent under invisible pressure and made unforgivable choices.

They rehearsed words. But words are fragile things. And their attempt unravelled before it even began. Instead of closure, it led to chaos. Instead of an apology, it ended with Micah in critical condition.

Standing in the aftermath, Aidan replayed everything. Technically, he had done nothing wrong earlier.

He had not pushed. Had not shouted. Had not acted violently.

And yet... That rabbit. The snowmobile. The chain of events.

If he had not been there, would it have happened? If he had not existed in Micah’s orbit at all, would fate have left him alone?

Aidan stared at his hands. In every life, disaster seemed to follow him. In the end, wasn’t he the source of misfortune?

Even if he did nothing... Wasn’t his very presence enough to cause harm? The thought settled heavily in his chest.