"Was that really a dream?"
I pondered in quiet stillness, finding myself in a strange daze, lying exactly where I had been since the moment I'd fallen asleep.
Even after waking, I found it oddly difficult to believe that I was truly inside a novel I had once read.
It felt much like waking up in a relative's house, or somewhere that wasn't home, that brief stretch of disorientation where reality feels muted, distant, and faintly unfamiliar in the pale morning haze.
I hadn't planned to sleep.
I'd meant to get up and start grinding immediately.
But my beautiful girlfriend had insisted, claiming it was practically a rule, that one had to rest after returning successfully from the dreamlands.
Speaking of Endorsi… I couldn't quite figure out whether she was real or just something my mind had fabricated before I drifted off.
Either way, I had seen visions, glimpses of us together.
Endorsi scolding me, our first meetup, the beginning of whatever we had become, and everything that followed.
It felt like recovering from amnesia, like memories once lost had finally clawed their way back to the surface.
When I thought of her, a strange sense of attachment stirred within me.
Or perhaps it belonged to the previous me, and why wouldn't it?
Growing up, I'd never known the comfort of parents who could truly care for me.
From what the memories of my former self revealed, I was certain they had either died or vanished somewhere beyond recall, lost to a time I no longer remembered… a period where even my own identity had dissolved into blank silence.
My childhood wasn't a story, it was a prolonged humiliation, and none of that blamed at my parents by the way.
it was A slow, grinding lesson in how insignificant a life could be.
Cold sunk into my bones as naturally as breath, hunger hollowed me until even hope felt luxurious.
I clawed through filth, through shame, through whatever scraps the world carelessly dropped.
I worked when work was offered, begged when pride was useless, and stole when morality became a privilege I could no longer afford.
Survival was not heroic.
It was ugly.
Desperate.
Degrading.
Each night I slept unsure if I was resting or merely postponing extinction.
And then Endorsi entered Rael's life.
Into my ruin.
I was everything a person like her should have despised, poor, decrepit, morally rotting at the edges.
A stain masquerading as a man.
She was the opposite, a cruel reminder of everything I had been denied.
Wealth, power, elegance, a world that had never once been kind enough to offer itself to me.
And yet she chose me.
Not because I deserved it.
Not because I earned it.
But because fate, in its twisted humour, found entertainment in watching a drowned man be handed air he did not ask for.
She paid for my existence like one pays for a mistake they cannot be rid of.
This shelter, this bed, the fragile illusion of stability I now rest within, all of it bought by her generosity, and all of it a constant reminder of how little I have contributed to my own survival.
Even the ritual, she gave her time, her energy, her concern, while I remained what I have always been: a liability wearing gratitude like a poorly-fitted mask.
And that is the bitter truth.
Without the grotesque coincidence that bound our paths, Rael would have died as he lived, unnoticed, disposable, and quietly erased as millions does.
Though this had been the conclusion I had drawn based on the memories I had received, something about it still felt strangely incomplete.
More unsettling was the fact that no memories related to any other person, or even Rael himself, in the way one's personal awareness should exist, had truly occurred to me.
There was no internal monologue, no clear trace of his living consciousness.
The others within those recollections appeared like blurred figures, hollow and indistinct, drifting through fragments of time with no soul of their own.
Creaakk.
The wooden gate, adorned with intricately polished carvings dulled faintly by age, creaked open slowly as a figure emerged from it.
She tilted her neck slightly, as if silently asking for my permission, and I responded with a plain nod.
Only then did she step further in.
Endorsi wore a flowing, ethereal gown in soft white and deep teal, layered with delicate lace and intricate embroidery.
The wide, draped sleeves and floral accents gave her an elegant, almost fairy-tale aura.
Slowly, she approached me as I lay on the bed, pulling a chair closer before sitting beside me with a fluid, measured motion.
"How do you feel now?" she asked politely, her gaze fixed directly upon my eyes, as though she were trying to decipher something that shouldn't have been possible through mere calculation alone.
"Though I was not tired at all, it still feels kind of nice," I replied in a low hush.
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, leaving the world submerged beneath the quiet veil of night, clouds stretching lazily across the darkened sky.
With barely any sound outside, or within the room itself, speaking any louder felt as though it would only disturb the fragile stillness that had settled between us.
Endorsi flashed a faint smile before continuing, "That's what everyone says though.
Then they end up falling sick for several days."
Silence followed.
A hollow, awkward kind, heavy with unspoken words and uncertainty.
I snapped my gaze toward the windowpane, not out of contemplation, but from the uncomfortable inability to hold the conversation any further.
"Rael… your behaviour seems to have changed."
Her voice lingered faintly in the air as I lifted my gaze and locked eyes with Endorsi, noticing the careful scrutiny behind her composed expression.
"Changed?..." I echoed softly.
"I think it could be related to the Dreamlands… it could be, right?"
The words left my mouth almost like an excuse, a fragile attempt to rationalise the shift in behaviour.
"It could be..." Endorsi muttered, her voice trailing off as her gaze slowly dropped to the ground.
A heavy silence settled between them, stretching far longer than it should have, as if she were gathering the courage to shatter something fragile.
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.
When she finally spoke again, her voice was quieter this time.
"Rael... I think we should break up."