Red Lucy [v0.6] By Lefrench [ 2027 ]

The questions always started at the dinner table. Whenever the topic of his parents drifted into the conversation, the air would turn heavy. Grandfather would suddenly find a reason to prune the hedges or check the locks, and his roommate would go silent, focusing intently on her plate. "They’re gone," was the only answer ever given. But in a house filled with old photographs where faces had been meticulously cut out, "gone" felt like a lie that was still breathing.

Then there was the neighbor’s wife. She was always a bit too friendly, leaning over the garden fence with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, offering "neighborly advice" that felt more like warnings. She seemed to know the layout of their house better than he did, and she whispered about "the turn the case took" years ago, as if life in Santa County was just a long-running investigation waiting for a closing argument.

The floorboards in Grandfather’s house had a way of whispering secrets when no one was around to hear them. For the young man living there, life was defined by a quiet, rhythmic simplicity—sharing meals with his "roommate" and avoiding the dusty corners of the past. But simplicity is often just a veil for things people are too afraid to say out loud.