Two months had passed since she was discharged from the hospital.
Olivia’s life was much calr now, though sowhat limited. She had moved into a small rental house on the outskirts of the city, a house surrounded by a vast vegetable garden.
Although far from the city center, the peaceful atmosphere there helped her forget the emptiness that often haunted her heart.
On a hot afternoon, Olivia had to go to the city center to buy groceries. While walking along a busy road, her steps stopped automatically in front of a large building.
There, a giant digital billboard was displaying a promotion for a newly published web novel.
My Beloved Ophilia
The blood in her body felt as if it had frozen. That na... Ophilia.
For so reason, her heart beat rapidly all of a sudden. She stared intently at the screen, trying to read the short synopsis displayed below the title.
However, as soon as her eyes focused on the writing, her vision blurred.
The letters on the screen appeared to dance, becoming blurry, as if experiencing a severe technical glitch.
Olivia furrowed her brow. She rubbed her temples, which had begun to throb with pain.
"What... what is this?" she whispered.
She tried to focus her vision again. The more she tried to read the text, the blurrier the screen beca in her eyes.
The writing, "My Beloved Ophilia," seed as if it were being hidden from her sight by sothing invisible.
Dizziness began to attack. She felt as if there was a strong pressure pushing her mories away from touching the novel’s title.
"Sigh..." Olivia sighed heavily, trying to brush off the anxiety that began to spread in her chest.
She adjusted the plastic bag in her hand, trying to act as if nothing had happened. She assud the vision disturbance was just a side effect of her condition, having only recently recovered from a coma.
"Next ti... I need to buy glasses," she said to herself in a nonchalant tone.
"My eyes are getting worse every day."
Without looking back at the giant billboard, Olivia walked away quickly. She quickened her pace, as if by walking far from the building, she could leave behind the unease that gripped her soul.
Olivia stepped off the bus at a stop near her rental house. The evening air was comfortable, slling of grass and soil that had just been watered by rain. She took a deep breath, trying to discard the remnants of the uneasy feeling she had felt earlier.
"Next ti, if my vision is blurry, don’t force myself to look at bright screens," she muttered to herself while adjusting the heavy bag of groceries.
Her rental house was located quite far from the main road, at the end of a gravel path surrounded by vegetable gardens owned by the villagers.
She enjoyed this tranquility. There was no more city noise, no more pressure from those around her. Here, she was just Olivia, who was starting a new life.
Upon arriving ho, she imdiately placed the items on the kitchen table. She started arranging the groceries she had bought: so vegetables, a bottle of sauce, instant noodles, and other basic necessities.
She sighed slightly looking at her wallet.
"Money is running low. Need to be more frugal this month."
Olivia started her afternoon routine. She swept the floor of the small house, then went to the back of the house to hang up laundry. Her life was very simple.
There was nothing unusual. She was just a girl working hard to survive.
After finishing her chores, she sat on the porch, watching the vegetable garden before her eyes that began to be illuminated by the setting sun.
"So peaceful," she whispered.
She took out her mobile phone, which had returned to functioning normally. No more glitches, no more flickering screens. She opened the gallery app, browsing through old photos that had survived the accident.
Suddenly, her eyes fell on a photo in her phone.
The photo was taken a year ago, before her coma. It was a picture of her sitting at her study desk in her old rental room, with stacks of books and a small notebook open on the side.
Olivia furrowed her brow.
She tried to rember what she had written in that note, but her mory remained vague. She only assud it might have been lecture notes or a list of her daily tasks.
She turned off the phone. She didn’t want to think too much. To her, what was important now was that she was safe, she was healthy, and she had a roof over her head.
"Instant noodles it is for dinner tonight," she said, rising toward the kitchen.
She did not know that behind that peace, ti continued to move. And even though she tried to live like a normal human, the world around her seed to be waiting for sothing to happen.
That night, Olivia slept soundly. No dreams, no whispers, no shadows. Just a peaceful sleep in her small house on the outskirts of the city.
That night, Olivia’s small house was enveloped in silence. Her sleep was initially peaceful, but gradually, her breathing beca uneven.
In the world behind her closed eyes, everything was dark.
Suddenly, she was standing in an endless space. In front of her, the figure of a man stood with his back to her. The man’s hair was white, glowing dimly like the faint moonlight.
The man turned slowly.
His face was not clearly visible, as if covered by a mist, but the man’s hands were very cold and he held Olivia’s hands very tightly. The grip was not painful, but it felt very possessive, as if he were afraid that if he let go, Olivia would vanish forever.
No words were spoken. The situation was silent, until Olivia began to hear a sound that tore her soul apart.
Sobbing.
The sound of the sobbing ca from the man. It was the sound of very bitter weeping, the cry of a man who had lost everything.
Olivia felt her heart begin to beat in a painful rhythm. Deep inside, sothing that had been "buried" began to vibrate intensely. The pain was so deep that Olivia’s legs felt weak. She wanted to ask, she wanted to know who the man crying in front of her was.
"Who... who are you?" Olivia asked in her heart, her voice choked.
For so reason, automatically, Olivia’s own tears began to flow rapidly down her cheeks. She didn’t know why she was crying, but the sorrow was too great to be borne by her chest.
Olivia’s heart felt like it was being crushed by an extrely heavy burden, as if she herself were the cause of all the man’s suffering.
The man tightened his grip even more, as if wanting to convey sothing he could not express.
Zup!
Olivia jerked awake. She woke up instantly, gasping for breath as if she had just finished running a long distance.
Olivia’s chest heaved. She touched her face with trembling hands. Wet. Her eyes were still soaked with tears that had flowed from the dream earlier. She looked around the dark room, searching for remnants of the white-haired man, but no one was there.
"Who..." she whispered, her voice breaking from the lingering sobs.
She did not understand the aning of the dream at all. Why was she crying for soone she didn’t even know? Why did that feeling of longing and sadness feel so real, as if she had just said goodbye for the last ti?
Olivia hugged herself in bed, trying to calm her heart which was still beating rapidly. She tried to close her eyes again, but she was afraid.
She was afraid that if she slept again, she would return to that place the place where a silver-haired man was waiting and weeping for her.
She rose from the bed, walked toward the window, and looked at her vegetable garden illuminated by the moonlight.
"Just a dream,"
she persuaded herself, even though her hands still felt cold, as if the remnants of the white-haired man’s grip were still there.
_______________
The next day, Olivia woke up with a heavy head. The remnants of tears on her cheeks had dried, leaving an uncomfortable sensation. She looked in the bathroom mirror; her eyes were swollen, her face pale.
"Slept as if I ran a marathon," she complained while washing her face.
She tried to forget the dream. She convinced herself that it was just the effect of life stress or perhaps the side effects of the dication she was still taking after her coma. She didn’t want to think about the white-haired man. She didn’t want to think about the sound of the sobbing that still echoed in her ears.
That morning, she headed to her workplace, a small bookstore in the city center located in a rather quiet alley.
The shop belonged to a kind old man, Uncle Tan, who didn’t ask many questions and only wanted help organizing old books.
Upon arriving at the shop, Olivia began her daily routine. Organizing novels on shelves, cleaning dust, and serving the few custors who ca by.
However, today felt different.
Every ti she touched books in the fantasy or historical romance genres, her hands would tremble slightly. There was a strange pull. As if the books were "calling" to the mories she had buried.
"Olivia, can you help organize the boxes in the back? Those are the latest novels that just arrived this morning," Uncle Tan said from the front counter.
"Alright, Uncle."
Olivia walked to the storage room in the back. The room was cramped and slled of old paper. She began to open the cardboard boxes one by one.
Suddenly, her hand stopped on a book at the very bottom of the box.
The book had no title on its cover. Only a blank black cover with a delicate silver carving in the center. Olivia pulled the book out. Her heart suddenly beat rapidly the sa heart rhythm as in her dream earlier.
She opened the first page.
No writing. The second page, the third, the fourth... all were empty.
But when she reached the middle, she stopped. There was a very neat pencil sketch.
It was a picture of soone’s hands. Slender hands, with prominent veins, firmly holding a pair of smaller hands a woman’s hands.
Olivia was stunned. She touched the sketch of the hands with her fingertips.
Tuk.
Her heart felt as if it had been struck by sothing hard.
Suddenly, a very fragrant floral scent a scent that was very strange yet felt like ho filled the cramped storage room. The scent of fresh forget--nots.
"Olivia? Are you okay back there?" Uncle Tan’s voice echoed from the front, sounding very far away.
Olivia jolted, nearly dropping the book. She closed the black book roughly and shoved it back under the box.
"I-I’m okay, Uncle! I... I just felt a little dizzy!" she shouted back.
She leaned her body against the wall of the storage room, her breath coming in gasps. Her hand that had touched the sketch earlier felt hot, as if she had just touched actual human skin.
"What is wrong with ..." she whispered in a trembling voice.
She looked at her own hand. There, on her wrist, was a faint red mark shaped like the mark of soone’s fingers who had just held her wrist very tightly.
Olivia rubbed the mark, but it didn’t disappear. It wasn’t an insect bite. It looked like... a grip mark.
And for the first ti, Olivia no longer lied to herself. She knew, sothing was trying to connect with her from behind the wall of reality she had been trying to build all this ti.
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