Free Web NovelChapter 94: Not Just A Dream
Olivia returned from the hospital with deeply mixed feelings. The psychiatrist’s referral letter felt heavy in her handbag.
She arrived at her rented house just as the sun was nearly set. She went inside, locked the door, and headed straight to the kitchen to brew some hot tea. She tried to be rational.
The doctor said it was just the effect of trauma. Maybe I’ve been overthinking the novel I read earlier. Maybe I’m stressed because of work.
She sat at the dining table, staring at her left wrist. The red line was still there. It didn’t throb like before; it was just a thin red line that looked like a scratch or a common skin allergy.
"It’s nothing," she whispered to herself.
"It’s just skin. My skin is sensitive."
She got up and went to the bathroom to freshen up. She deliberately avoided looking closely in the mirror. She just wanted to shower, eat dinner, and sleep. She wanted to wake up the next morning and have the line completely gone.
As she washed her wrist with mild soap, she observed the line. It hadn’t disappeared, but it hadn’t changed into anything either. It was just a red line.
"Okay, Olivia. If it’s still there tomorrow, I’ll go to the pharmacy and buy some allergy cream. Problem solved."
She stepped out of the bathroom feeling much calmer. She felt she had successfully regained control of herself. She would not let those "shadows" or "dreams" destroy her sanity again.
That night, she sat on the porch, sipping tea. She watched her neighbors near the vegetable garden, busy tidying up their gardening tools. The atmosphere was peaceful. This was the life she wanted calm, free of disturbances, free of mysteries.
She opened her phone and started searching for reviews of the novel My Beloved Ophilia, not to read it, but to see why it was so popular.
[Rating: 4.8/5.]
[Genre: Historical Romance/Tragedy.]
Olivia took a deep breath, trying to dispel the anxiety gripping her chest. She stared at the phone screen, attempting to focus on the text displayed.
"Okay, Olivia. Chill," she whispered softly.
She read the synopsis carefully.
Ophilia, a gentle noblewoman. After meeting the male lead, Avvion, her once boring and aimless life became brighter and more meaningful... until one day, due to that incident, she lost all memories of the male lead...
Before she could finish reading, she exited the website, letting out a slightly forced laugh. She shook her head.
"So cliché," she muttered, leaning back in her chair.
"The main character loses her memory, lives in isolation, supposedly watched over by a great power... every romance novel nowadays uses a plot like this, right?"
She crossed her legs, feeling slightly relieved that she had managed to dismiss the synopsis as something mundane.
However, the moment the word "cliché" left her lips, her phone screen suddenly flickered.
A blinding white light dazzled Olivia for a second, and when she looked back at the screen, the text had changed. She didn’t know how it happened, but the synopsis she had been reading simply vanished.
Now, the text on the screen read:
She did not realize that she was no one in this world. She was merely a shadow fleeing. Behind the thin veil of reality, Javien was waiting patiently. He would not stop searching, because that woman was everything that had been lost from his world. He had sworn to claim back what was his, even if it meant tearing down the world the girl was trying to build.
Olivia felt the blood drain from her face.
"What... what is this?"
She rubbed her eyes repeatedly, but the words remained unchanged. Javien . The name... it felt so heavy, as if it were calling out to something in the deepest part of her soul.
She tried to hit the refresh button, hoping it was just a system glitch, but the screen remained frozen. The name Javien seemed to force Olivia to look at it.
Olivia covered her phone with her trembling hand. She didn’t want to read anymore. She tried to act calm, but her left wrist, where the red line was, suddenly felt very hot, as if it were burning.
She looked out the window toward the dark vegetable garden. She felt as if Javien was not just a character in a novel, but something that truly existed and was standing somewhere out there, watching her with a painful sense of longing.
"No... this is just a novel," she whispered, trying to deceive herself for the thousandth time.
"I am not Ophilia. I am Olivia. And Javien... Javien doesn’t exist."
But in the quiet of the night, the sobbing sound she had heard in her dream the other day seemed to resonate once more, very softly, as if acknowledging the existence of the name she had just read.
That night, Olivia lay on her bed, her eyes fixed on the dark ceiling. She tried to deny everything the changing novel synopsis, the scent of forget-me-nots on the porch, and the red line on her wrist.
"It’s all just stress," she whispered repeatedly. She shut her eyes tight, forcing herself to enter an empty dream.
However, she failed.
In the blink of an eye, she found herself in a vast space, shrouded in thick white fog.
In front of her, at some distance, stood a tall man with his back to her. His silver hair rippled gently, glowing faintly under the moonlight that came from nowhere.
Olivia knew who it was. Although she couldn’t see his face, her heart pounded with a feeling that was all too familiar a painful longing and a profound sense of fear.
The man stood rigid, as if he had been there for hundreds of years, waiting for someone who never came.
Olivia had no intention of moving. She wanted to turn around and run, but her feet seemed to have a will of their own. Without realizing it, she began to walk toward the man.
One step.
Two steps.
Her heart beat rapidly with every step she took. She knew she shouldn’t be approaching that figure. The name "Javien" echoed in her mind, but she resisted. She didn’t want to acknowledge him. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Yet, the pull was too strong. Like a magnet, her body was drawn toward the silver-haired man.
The man still didn’t turn around, but his shoulders lifted slightly, as if he knew Olivia was approaching.
He was waiting. He was waiting with a patience that tore at the soul.
Olivia reached the back of the man. She stopped. Her hands trembled. Without realizing it, she slowly reached out, wanting to touch his shoulder, wanting to see the face that had been hidden by the mysterious fog all this time...
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The shrill sound of her phone alarm shattered the silence of the dream so harshly.
Olivia gasped. She was panting, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling of her ordinary bedroom. Her breath came in gasps, and her hand that had been reaching out in the dream now hung in the air, empty.
She looked at the time on the phone screen that was still blaring loudly.
6:30 AM.
Olivia let out a long, shaky breath of relief, almost crying out of gratitude. She immediately pressed the dismiss button on the alarm
"Just a dream..." she whispered, her voice hoarse.
She got up and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing her face, which was wet with cold sweat. She looked at her left wrist. Clean. No red line, no mark, nothing.
She smiled faintly, feeling as if the burden that had crushed her soul the night before had vanished with the dream.
"That’s all it was," she said, rising to start her day
"Javien, Ophilia... everything was just a nightmare because I read too much."
She walked to the bathroom with renewed spirit, ready to live her life as a normal Olivia. She did not realize that although the dream had ended, the sensation of her reaching out still lingered, as if a trace of cold remained at her fingertips.
Olivia let out a long breath, trying to steady the heartbeat that lingered from the dream. She glanced at the time on her phone screen; it was 6:30 AM.
Sunlight began to filter through the cracks in her curtains, bringing with it the scent of morning dew and the hum of a city just beginning to stir. She offered a thin smile, one filled with a forced sense of relief.
"Just a dream," she whispered, trying to convince herself for the umpteenth time.
She stepped into the bathroom, letting the cold water wash away the remnants of cold sweat from her face.
As she stared into the mirror, she studied her reflection a young woman with a stable career, an orderly life, and absolutely no connection to majestic palaces or a silver-haired man named Javien. She gazed at her left wrist one more time. It was empty. Clean.
The red line had truly vanished, as if it had never existed at all. She felt as though she had just won a war against her own mind.
