Miranda woke up the next morning, her eyes still heavy and her body weak due to lack of adequate sleep.
Having slept only three hours, her body protested her waking up by that time. Her mind, however, was already active as she remembered she had fallen asleep while reading a book.
She had fought sleep so that she could finish the story, but it was just a few pages remaining before her body finally gave in to sleep.
Moving her hand around the bed to find the book, her brows pulled together and she sat up when she didn't feel any hard substance around her. She searched all over the bed, but her book was nowhere to be found.
Just as she was about to check if it had fallen by mistake, her eyes caught sight of the book, lying undisturbed on the desk beside her phone. How did it get there?
She didn't remember waking up to drop it there. Could it be that Connie came into her room and took it to the table when he saw she was already asleep? That could be it.
Pushing herself off the bed, she approached the desk and sat down on it. Her alarm had not rung so she still had some time to finish the story before starting her daily activities.
It took a little less than an hour for her to get to the last sentence which read: "and the demon king was locked away for good, never to be seen by the human race again. The end."
Wait! What? The story can't end like that. The king was not at fault so why should he be punished like that? And the people who provoked him to do what he did were not punished. That was totally unfair.
There has to be another book where the king was released and granted justice. The fact that he wasn't human doesn't make such betrayal from humans right. There has to be a continuation and she made a promise to herself to find it.
Greatly annoyed, she flipped over the last page, expecting it to be blank as the book had ended. However, to her surprise, the page wasn't empty.
There were tiny words on it that were not typed like the rest of the words in the book. These ones were written with a pen, and they were so tiny that she had to squint to make out the words properly.
'Injustice right? Well, the king is still locked up to this day and you can help free him.' The first sentence stated.
What the heck? What psycho decided to write such rubbish at the back of a book? She let out a disbelieving laugh. Just when she thought she was addicted to books, this person comes along and proves she was still a novice.
She should just close the book and move on to other things she needed to do, but no. Her curiosity had been piqued and she wanted to complete reading what the person wrote.
'To begin, memorize these.' The next sentence read, then what followed were a series of symbols she didn't understand.
There were ten of them in total and she could swear she had never seen any symbol like them in her entire existence.
Having trouble figuring out what the symbols meant, she moved on to the next sentence.
Her brows pulled together when she saw that the next one was a warning.
'Do not read the following words unless you are very sure you've memorized the symbols.'
As if she was being controlled, her eyes veered back to the symbols, as she looked at each of them again according to their numbers.
'What am I doing?' She asked herself. She couldn't believe she was taking some nonsense a stranger wrote at the back of a book seriously.
Letting out a sigh, she closed the book, and at the same time, the alarm clock rang out, signifying the start of another tiring day.
She grabbed her phone, and sent a text to Loretta, asking if her own copy of the book had an extra page with instructions written on it. Pushing herself off the chair, she headed to the bathroom.
By the time she returned, her phone was ringing. She picked up after seeing the caller was Loretta.
"Hi, Loretta."
"Morning, Mira. What book are you talking about?"
"To redeem the devil."
"Oh... Let me check it out. I've not started reading it." Loretta went silent for a few seconds, but from the background sounds, Miranda knew she was moving about.
"Umm, no. The last page is the end. There is no extra page. Why?"
Miranda frowned. No extra page? "Mine has an extra page after the end, and some sets of instructions were written on it with a pen on how to rescue the king who had been imprisoned."
"Huh? That's strange. It's probably a printing error and someone playing with a pen. Bring it along when coming to my place so I can take a look." Loretta suggested, and Miranda agreed without even the slightest hesitation.
"Alright. I'll see you later."
"Have you informed Patrick?" Loretta probed.
"I'll do that now." Miranda ended the call, and immediately texted Patrick, her boyfriend, who she had been dating secretly for the past three months.
At 22, she was done with college but was still too scared to introduce any male to her parents as her boyfriend. The last time she did it when she was in college, her parents went to her school to embarrass her and the guy. That single incident made her the laughingstock of the entire school.
Her so-called boyfriend broke up with her, and since then, she stayed off anything called relationship, until three months ago when she met Patrick. However, even though she gave him a chance, she decided to keep their relationship a secret.
The only person who knew about him was Loretta, and she provided the perfect opportunity for them to meet whenever they wanted to.
"4 pm, Loretta's place."
She hit the send button, then walked out of her room.