"And another story is finished"
Arun closed the book Infront of him, picked it up and put it on the bookshelf
"And I still felt like someone just reading a book" 'sigh'
"Even after reading a million stories, there was not one that made me feel like I was living in that story"
Even before he could read, Arun fell in love with stories that his parents read to him
Imagining and living in the wonderful worlds, going through the adventure with the characters, when other people talked about their experience with stories and how it moved them, changed their life, gave them a new perspective of the world
Arun wanted to experience that feeling himself and that desire only fueled his love for stories, he read all kinds of them, from children's stories to Epics
But none of them were able to make Arun feel like he was a part of the world, from the start he only felt like he was reading words on a piece of paper
He loved stories but the stories didn't seem to want him
"It was all for nothing"
Even after reading a million stories, he was still here, in the world he grew up in, the world he was living in till now
Tired he lay down on his bed, put on the blanket and went to sleep
***
"Uhhh"
Arun rubbed his eye after waking up to warm sunlight
'Sunlight?'
but he didn't have any window in his room so where was the sunlight coming from, he put his hand on his bed to support himself getting up but there was no feeling of a regular bed instead he could feel cool and wet blades of grass, covering his face with his hand to protect his eyes from the sunlight he opened them to look around
From as far as eyes could see there were only grasslands
'A dream'
But the feeling was too real to be a dream
He finally pushed himself up, his body was awfully tired for someone who just had a full sleep, he was still sleepy and rubbing his eyes with one hand and covering them from the sunlight with the other
'Where am I'
When he asked himself, a few different explanations started appearing in his mind
'A dream'
But like he experienced before, it was way too real, he could feel the warm breeze going past him, the air was fresh and breathable, and the grass felt natural to touch
'Someone took him to another country'
That's not possible either, there was no land left in the world with natural vegetation, the air was toxic and he would have died without the mask
Just to make sure this is actually real, he pulled out a few blades of grass and examined them
'These are called roots I think'
There were actual roots coming out from under them even the soil looked fertile and real unlike the dead and dry ones he had outside of his house, but just to really drive the point home he chewed on the grass, it wasn't the plastic grass he always saw everywhere, it was real grass, the ones he read about in a history book, he spit the grass because even if it was real they weren't tasty
'Then where am I'
With that question, another explanation appears in his mind
'A different world'
This, as absurd as it sounds can be the only thing to explain this situation
There was no way that a place like this existed in the world he grew up in, if that was true, humans would have already taken this over and brought it to ruin
'Sigh'
He first gave another clear view to his surroundings if this was a different world, then he needed to be careful, who knows what kind of horrors he might need to face in this beautiful place, he also checked his pockets and found a few coins and a bookmark in it
'Sigh'
He doesn't have anything for survival
'I should start carrying a few edible things from now on'
Making a mental note he stood up and surveyed his surroundings again
'There's nothing except grass'
He decided to walk a bit trying to find something like a village or a road, maybe humans or any traces of any kind of civilization if this world has anything like that
But the moment he took his first step, he felt like he stepped on something hard instead of grass
"HIiiii"
A stupid shriek left his mouth as he fell on his butt, looking at the place where his foot was, laid a book
"What's a book doing here"
Confused he examined the book carefully without touching it
"No matter how I look at it, it feels like a normal book"
He then tried to slowly touch it but nothing happened,
Taking a sigh of relief he lifted the book and took another look at it
It was a hardcover book, the front cover of the book was blank and was of white color with grainy texture and at the back there was an intricate design of a heart, the book seems to have no more than 100 pages, opening the book from the middle to see what could be written in the book, but it was empty, he flipped the pages but there was nothing written in it, though the pages felt really good to touch, they felt premium and better than the cheap artificial pages he was used to
'Ah'
Without knowing it he was rubbing his fingers on the pages
Stopping himself, He closed the book and opened it again to take a look at the first page of the book
There was something written on it in a weird language that he never seen before but slowly it started making sense and he could understand it somehow
The first line written in the book is
'I woke up in an unknown grassland'