Prologue
In a dark room, where the only light was from the computer screen, its glow was casting light in the room.
A man, Damien, was sitting with a hunched posture. His features were not visible, except for the light glowing on his face. His hands were moving quickly across the keyboard. His body was fat. A patch of unruly hair hung over his forehead.
He was so absorbed in the computer screen that he seemed unguarded to anything else. His eyes were red, his mind lost in some other reality.
The air was strange, filled with a chill and silence, only disturbed by the sound of the keyboard. The man didn't notice a person entering his room, his mind focused on the web novel before him.
The room was filled with trash, as if he hadn't gone out for many years. The failures of his past had long since turned him into this person, who found peace in fictional reality rather than in his own life.
A person stood behind him, silent and motionless, as if studying the man.
Damien suddenly smashed the keyboard and yelled, "Fck you, Author, I'm gonna find you and beat you to death, you fcker," he said, smiling like a psychopath.
The figure behind him reacted, raising his knife to stab Damien.
Damien heard a faint rustling sound and tried to move sideways, but the knife was fast and stabbed into his back.
He was trying to turn back to see the person who stabbed him, but his body was losing strength as he slumped down to the ground.
"Who the f*ck are you?" he said in an angry voice, hoping to get a reply, but he didn't get any.
They say that in the moments before death, a person's life flashes before their eyes. For Damien, it wasn't his accomplishments or joys he saw—it was everything he had lost.
His thoughts went back to a time when he wasn't a shut-in and he actually had a life. A girl he loved, Elena. He was a different person back then.
His heart tightened when he thought back to his parents, who never left him even when he was a disappointment.
He remembered the first time, after that incident, his mother's soft smile, as if saying, "Everything will be okay," and his father's calm and steady gaze. "Damien, we believe in you."
The images and voices of his parents resonating in his head filled his heart with warmth.
'Why did I change so much?' His thoughts went back to the time when everything changed.
The girl he loved, "Elena."
He remembered the scene of Elena barely holding onto life with a pained smile, holding his hand.
"Damien, please live a life free of regret. Please be happy… I will… I will always be with you…"
Her pained smile when she said it seemed so vivid now.
'I'm sorry, Elena. I couldn't live the life you wanted me to.'
"I wasted it all…" A bitter laugh escaped his lips, choked by the blood rising in his throat. "I wasted… everything."
After that incident, his life wasn't the same as before. He lost something he couldn't explain… He only found peace in novels… the world of fiction.
His body had gotten pale due to all the blood loss. His eyes, unfocused, started to give in to darkness.
And that was how his life came to an end.
Or that's what he thought...
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