Chapter 15: A Glimmer of Hope
"Could she be divorced?"
Even though he knew it was unlikely, someone like her seemed too rare and valuable for anyone to let go, Christian still held onto a sliver of hope. As he didn't want to change the genre of his story to Netori or Milf hunting.
Returning back to his computer screen, he searched through the posts to see if he could find her mother's account.
Luckily, he quickly found it in the same post. Her name was apparently Eva Carter, and Christian, reading it repeatedly, couldn't help but find that even her name was lovely. However, when he opened her account, it was private, unlike her daughter's.
Feeling stuck again, he searched through Olivia's other posts. But after spending some time looking through all of them, he still didn't find anything useful, such as any indication of her mother's current marital status.
He decided to look through them one more time carefully and finally noticed something strange.
There was no father figure visible; the posts only featured her friends, her mother, various places, or just food pictures.
Given the number of posts, it seemed impossible that a girl who had posted nearly everything happening in her life, as if she wanted to document it, wouldn't have any pictures of her father.
Or so Christian thought, finally finding some hope on this thorny road and solace for his wounded heart.
Assuming inside his mind that Eva was divorced, what should his next step be?
Now that he had given up on getting close to Olivia, Christian after thinking a little, thought of two approaches. First, he could try to talk to her if he happened to run into her by chance in front of the school, which was unlikely, as he didn't have the courage to approach the mother of one of his classmates in public even if she didn't seem like one, especially in front of other students.
Alternatively, he could try visiting the places shown in Olivia's photos and see if he could find her by coincidence at a location she frequented. While this approach had the downside of potentially taking some time, for Christian, reading a novel in his room or in an expensive restaurant was not very different, as long as he could concentrate without disturbance.
He wanted to give it a chance outside the school, but when should he start going there exactly?
Luckily, Christian didn't take long to get his answer this time. When he went there, he wanted to wear something nice, like expensive clothes, and with an improved physique. And he figured he would need at least two weeks to achieve this.
After making his decisions, he went through Olivia's account again, searching for the places she had posted and noting the names of the ones where he had seen Eva. Fortunately, most of these locations were well-known in Harrisburg.
…
Three days passed.
It was Friday evening, and Christian was reflecting on his school lately. He thought about the tests and assessments that teachers were giving, as well as the projects assigned since it was April now.
It was a grueling time, with homework to do even at home. However, thanks to his perfect knowledge about high school subjects, he could breeze through the assignments. They weren't a problem, just very boring and tedious.
But the topic of college and university was another matter. He needed to talk to his sister about his decision not to attend university and also inform her about how he started working in Trading.
After much thought, he had already arrived at an answer.
In the last three days, he had started taking some risks with trading, and one of his deals turned out to be a jackpot. He now had $22,000, having made $10,000 in just three days, an excellent result.
So he finally withdrew $5,000.
He decided to finally go ahead with his plan to buy a gift for his sister. However, he felt his lack of fashion sense was a problem. So he planned to buy her an expensive brand bag and let her choose the clothes herself later. Or he could go out with her shopping and choose something together.
So he decided to finally go out the next day, something he hadn't done in a long time.
…
Next day.
After filling his stomach with food to the point of bursting and collecting his idle practice slots, Christian took a long bath to wash away the sweat and relax a bit.
Then he went back to his room and put on the clothes his sister had bought for him, which he hadn't worn much yet.
He wore a somewhat stylish pair of jeans, a black and red shirt, and a light jacket on top. After dressing, he looked at himself in the mirror and felt his handsomeness had really increased. Working on his body with the Idle system had really gave some positive effects.
He found his sister relaxing in the living room, seemingly with nothing to do. He informed her about his plans for the outing.
"Hey, Sis, I'm going out. Do you need anything from outside that I should bring back?"
Annabelle, who was watching the TV to pass time until her evening appointment with a friend, was shocked to see her brother, who usually never went out no matter what she did or nagged, dressed in his best clothes and saying he was going out.
Having her woman intuition ringing inside her head, that it was probably a girl, she felt happy for him, happy that he was finally coming out of his shell. But at the same time, she felt a bit sad that she wasn't the one who had helped him.
Trying to shake off her mixed emotions, she looked at her brother again, but seeing his terrific hair style, even though his hair was normally really smooth and nice, she felt a pang of guilt and responsibility, realizing she hadn't taught him better.