Cecil was only half asleep and was quickly awakened by the sudden movement.

She immediately caught a hint of the familiar scent of cologne, which helped her identify the person.

Uncle Cleo?

Why had he suddenly charged into the room to kiss her?

She was thrown off, and before she could even react, she heard Cleo’s raspy voice followed by the heat of his breath beating on her skin.

“Amelia…”

She felt herself tense up at the name.

The accompanying smell of alcohol helped her decipher the situation swiftly.

Cleo was drunk and mistakenly thought she was Amelia.

While she was still processing it, she felt Cleo’s hand creeping downward.

She started to panic upon realizing what was happening. She reached for his hands to stop him while attempting to push him away.

“Uncle Cleo, you’ve got the wrong person! It’s Cecil!” she cried out frantically.

Cleo must have been too drunk to understand what she was saying. If anything, he seemed to have become more excited by her actions.

He kissed Cecil with increased intensity and started sucking on her lips.

Cecil felt like she was going to be suffocated.

She felt so frustrated that she started to cry. Her tears wet her bandages and sent a prickly feeling running through her body.

“Uncle Cleo, you’re hurting me, my cuts are…”

She was not sure if it was the alcohol or her cries that finally reached him.

Cleo suddenly stiffened, and then he let go of her arms shortly after that.

Cecil quickly turned to the side and scrambled out of the room, not even bothering to put on her shoes in the process.

She ran downstairs to the living room and wrapped herself in a blanket until the morning when she finally fell asleep.

The next afternoon, when she opened her eyes, she saw Cleo sitting in front of her with an expression she had never seen on him before.

She suddenly recalled the scenes from last night.

She was so scared that she shrank into the corner of the couch.

A cold look flashed across Cleo’s eyes when he observed the way she reacted.

“Was it you who tried to get me into your room last night?”

Cecil was thrown off by the question. Just as she was about to explain, Cleo cut her off with a sharp frown.

“Don’t you ever hatch that kind of idea about me again. I’ll kick you out.”

Cecil studied the determined look on his face.

She was about to tell him that he was drunk but decided against it.

Seeing as she had tried to sneak a kiss on him in the past, she realized that Cleo was not going to believe her no matter what she said.

With that, she gave up on explaining entirely and opted to stay quiet.

She looked down and stared at their shadows cast on the floor.

When she noticed the figure of the shadow in front of her reaching a hand across, she instinctively looked up.

Cleo's hand hovered on top of her head, and it looked as if he was going to pat her head.

Cecil froze. Her eyes were filled with disbelief.

When she was a child, there were times when she would miss her parents so much that she would cry to the point of hysteria and then lose her breath.

During those desolate moments, it was always Cleo gently patting her head and comforting her that saved her.

It was a symbolic gesture between both of them for a long time.

When she turned seventeen, there was no longer any physical interaction between the two.

The thought of Cleo doing it made her so nervous that her heart could stop.

A second later, Cleo angled his hand further upward and grabbed a bottle of red wine from the cabinet behind her.

She had been reading too much into it.

All she could do was laugh at her naivety.

Because she was in a hurry for cash, she had listed all of her belongings as well as the family house at a price lower than the market average.

It did not take long for everything to be sold.

She managed to put together roughly nine million dollars, but it was still several hundred thousand dollars short of the amount she planned to return to Cleo.

Since she was going to Vinland very soon, she did not have much time left to put together the money to make up the difference.

She was a painter and was relatively new to the scene, but despite that, she managed to win many awards over the last few years and was relatively well-known in the industry.

With that in mind, she decided to hold an exhibition to sell her paintings.

It was going to be too hard to coordinate all of that by herself, so she decided to go to Cleo for help.

Amelia happened to be nearby when she approached Cleo.

She seemed surprised at the mention of an exhibition and approached them with a radiant smile.

“What a coincidence! I'm also preparing for an exhibition! Why don't we host a joint exhibit?”

Cecil turned to Cleo, and seeing that he did not object to it, she agreed as well.

Five days later, the joint exhibitions of Cecil and Amelia were held at the art museum.

Amelia had been painting for more than a decade, but it was her first large-scale exhibition.

Because of that, Cleo was particularly invested in the exhibition.

He designated that Amelia’s work be displayed in the main gallery and even ordered the gallery to be renovated.

Significant effort was put into advertising as well.

On the opening day of the exhibition, many celebrities and intellectuals showed up, so much so that the museum recorded a new high in the number of daily visitors.

Meanwhile, things were not as ideal in the other wing of the gallery.

There were nearly a hundred paintings, all cramped into a room barely ten square meters large.

It was so confined that the visitors barely had any space to walk. Auctioning any art on display was completely out of the question.

Cecil stood by the entrance and stared at the commotion in the main gallery with a dejected look in her eyes.

A few of her friends who showed up were just about to console her when they heard a sharp shriek in the room.

“Cecil, there’s a situation!”

There was a wave of controversy on the internet about a certain artist plagiarizing from another fellow artist.

The artists in question were none other than Cecil and Amelia, who were holding an exhibition on the same day.

Cecil looked at the illustrations made by the netizens on her phone.

It was a side-by-side comparison of two similar paintings, along with a reference that indicated how similar the composition and color chart were.

It did not take long before the topic “Cecil Miller is an imposter” became viral and went to the top of the trending topic list.

Her friends crowded around her, all of them as anxious as the other.

“How could they accuse you of plagiarism? The shirt you are wearing in this picture is from our high school! Are they stupid?”

“That's right! This is Cecil herself! We can vouch for you!“

“Amelia is the one who is plagiarizing your art. How shameless!”

Cecil stayed calm and rational the entire time.

The first thing she did was rush back home to collect her draft so she could prove her innocence.

She felt her head spinning the entire time.

She recalled a specific episode from when she was just starting as an artist.

At the time, she was only eighteen years old.

It was shortly after Cleo stopped picking her up after school.

She was rushing back home with her exam report that showed she had managed to come in first place in her grade.

She wanted to show it to Cleo to impress him.

When she got home, the room was very quiet.

She found Cleo slumped against his table and asleep. She gently tiptoed to his side.

The auburn glow of the setting sun beat against his profile.

It made him seem more mesmerizing than ever, as if he had come straight out of a fairy tale.

She decided that she must be the one destined for him in this fairy tale.

She covered his face with the exam report and planted a gentle kiss.

Cleo was awakened by the rustling movement and ended up telling her off again.

However, she did not take his lecture to heart and ended up setting the scene to her canvas.

She kept the painting for many years after that.

Now that she had finally moved on from him and needed quick cash, she put that painting into the exhibition as well.

Little did she know, it was to her ruin.

When she got home, she searched everywhere in the house but could not find the initial draft, no matter how hard she looked.

She began to panic and tried to jog her memory to figure out where she had put it.

Around this point, she received a text on her phone.

It was a friend who sent her a link and urgently beckoned her to open it.

She tapped the link and immediately saw Amelia’s face show up on the screen.

Her heart dropped when she saw the panel behind Amelia with the words “Press Conference” printed on it.

It was a live broadcast, and Amelia seemed especially stoic.

She was in the middle of giving a statement addressing the plagiarism accusations, then she began to describe the process of her drawing.

Shortly after that, she revealed the first draft she brought with her and showed it to the reporters and cameras.

“I am very close with Cecil, the up-and-coming artist who has been named in the plagiarism controversy.

“She is a young, innocent girl, and I believe she did not do it to be malicious; it was just a mistake, and I don’t blame her for what happened.”

With the press conference, the collective opinion of the public immediately shifted toward Amelia’s side.

A whole wave of people flocked toward Cecil’s account and began to hurl insults and criticism at her, the comments numbered up to a hundred thousand.

Meanwhile, yet another topic went trending:

[The Daughter of the Wrights Just Kissed the President of Emerson Corporation! A Love Story is Budding Before Our Eyes!]

There was a video that followed the article.

In the video, Cleo was seen arriving at the press conference in a sports car. As soon as he showed up, Amelia ran up to him and threw herself into his arms with a beaming smile the entire time.

The couple shared an intimate embrace before burrowing into the car.

Moments before the privacy screen came up, the camera managed to catch a glimpse of them sharing a passionate kiss.

Their relationship had become public even when they had just started dating and drew in a large following over time.

A lot of the fanbase poured in with a string of comments.

[So sweet! Oh my God, I can’t!]

[No! Don’t put up the privacy screen! I want to see all of it!]

[I heard Cleo is Cecil's uncle. If you consider Cecil and Amelia’s recent plagiarism scandal and the fact that Cleo vouched for Amelia right away, doesn’t that basically prove that Cecil is guilty as charged?]

Cecil swiped out of the comment section with a numb expression.

Then, she watched as countless notifications poured in, all of them from people criticizing her.

They accused her of malpractice, lacking basic decency, and for being a poor artist in general.

Some of them dialed it up further and began to insult her family as well.

They began to make comments about her lack of manners and that she was poor.

At one point, her finger hovered stiffly over the display, and she began to tremble from head to toe.

A single tear fell on the screen of her phone.

The text on the display was blurred, but that was not enough to censor the pain inside her.

She called Cleo.

He did not pick up the first time.

He did not pick up the second time either.

Cecil called again and again, and it was only at the ninth call that Cleo finally picked up.

She could hear his heavy, rhythmical breathing from the other end of the phone.

She suddenly recalled a similar incident when she was in high school and was also accused of plagiarism.

At the time, she felt ostracized and helpless, and that was when she decided to call him for help.

He had assured her immediately after picking up the call, “Don’t worry, I have your back.”

But now, she was the one who started the dialogue with a swift accusation, “Were you the one who gave Amelia my first draft?”

Cleo confessed without a second thought.

“I did.”

The response from Cecil was a long, heaving sigh.

“Why did you do it?”

After a brief silence, Cleo answered.

“That painting should have never existed in the first place, especially not with your name attached to it. What part of this don’t you understand?”

So that was it. He was afraid of someone noticing.

He was still worried about Cecil having scandalous ideas about him.

Cecil grinned ironically, then she shut her bloodshot eyes.

“Still, it wasn’t me who plagiarized the piece, it was all Amelia! If you give her my first draft, how am I going to clear my name and beat the accusations?

“My entire career as an artist is going under!”

“Amelia made a blunder. She didn’t mean it. Why can’t you take the backlash just this one time?

“Back when I first taught you how to paint, I only intended for it to be a healthy hobby and a way for you to kill time. There’s no need to be so serious about it.

“Either way, I am going to take care of you for life, so you don’t have to worry about finances.”

Then he hung up without another word.

Cecil continued clutching onto her phone and stared blankly at the mirror in front of her.

She observed her reflection, particularly noting her red and swollen eyes from crying for so long.

She looked so haggard that she could barely recognize herself.

Was that her in the mirror?

More than anything else, she felt like she could not recognize Cleo anymore.

Was this the same man who would go against the entire world for her sake?

There was no telling if that very man was still there.

The exhibition turned out to be a complete flop, but that only made her more determined to return all the money she owed Cleo.

A few friends introduced her to various part-time jobs for her to bring in some quick cash. The jobs ranged from working as a caddy at a golf course to part-timing as a waiter in high-end clubs.

Since she had to raise the money as soon as possible, she was not picky and would take up any job that was offered to her.

She would work from morning until night and was rarely seen at home.

A week before she was set to fly to Vinland, she managed to put together the remaining sum.

After she had changed into her waitress uniform, she opened the door to the private room and prepared herself for her final shift.

As luck would have it, she just had to run into someone she knew on her final shift.

There was a group gathered and playing some sort of game.

Cleo lost in the very first round.

The host of the game proceeded to read out the punishment from a card.

“You have to kiss someone of the opposite gender for three minutes!”

The group burst into excited cheers at the dare.

They all turned to Amelia, whose cheeks had turned stark red.

Meanwhile, Cleo confidently got up and filtered past the group. With every step he took, he drew closer to Cecil.

Everyone in the private room was stunned by what they were seeing, and there was a round of commotion.

Just as they were still trying to figure out what was happening, Cleo produced a phone from his pocket and handed it to Cecil.

“Record it with my phone.”

Cecil felt a subtle quake inside her heart. She had a feeling of what was to come.

What surprised her was that the realization no longer stung her the way it did in the past, perhaps because she had truly given up on him.

There was no way this could ever hurt her feelings anymore.

She took the phone calmly and swiped to the camera.

Then, she angled the camera and hit the record button.

The camera was very high quality and managed to capture every detail inside the private area despite the dim lighting. The footage was clear as day.

After Cleo returned to his seat, he pulled Amelia into his arms and kissed her.

The time was indicated on the display.

Three minutes. A hundred and eighty seconds. No more and no less than that.

That was not the end of it.

After they were done kissing, Cleo got on his knee and produced a diamond ring from his pocket.

He spoke in a voice filled with tenderness.

“Amelia, will you marry me?”

He had proposed to Amelia!

Cecil could not catch what Amelia said.

It did not take long before the rest of the group crowded around the couple and shielded them from the view of the camera.

Their rabid screams echoed across the private room and were so loud that Cecil felt her eardrums would burst.

With that, she stopped recording.

Her manager showed up just in time to instruct her to head to another private room to attend to a new group of customers.

She handed the phone to her colleague next and turned to leave the room.

She did not linger a second longer than she needed to.