"Hey, should we call an ambulance?"
"Nah. You heard what they said—this girl's poor, she doesn't have any money for medical fees. Just leave her, I'm sure she'll be fine."
"Hey, did anybody get the punch that guy threw? Can somebody send it to me??"
"Sure, what's your number?"
"That girl's boyfriend looked like a total loser."
"You want him to hear you say that?"
Cough "A-Anyway, do you really have a foot fetish, bro?"
The crowd surrounding the altercation began to disperse, seeing as there was no more action and nobody was coming to help Elara Caba as she lay on the ground, struggling to breathe.
'This is such bullshit… What the hell did I even do to deserve this?'
Elara slowly slipped into unconsciousness after cursing her miserable fate with every fiber of her being.
When she opened her eyes, all that greeted her was the pitch-black nothingness of the void.
"This is a weird little dream."
Elara often had strange dreams that didn't make any sense, but this one certainly won the grand prize for strangeness.
She tried to move her body to look around the void, only to realize she was bright green and ethereal—like some kind of ghost.
While this should've alarmed her greatly, she didn't think she was dead.
She could just… sense it. That was why she still believed completely that this was a dream.
She was not uncomfortable in the dark. Hell, she'd had her lights cut off more times than she could count, so naturally, she was used to something like this.
Faced with nothing to do but float and poke holes in her ghostly body, Elara began to sing songs to pass the time.
Music-wise, she was a bit of an oddball because she liked everything.
From hardcore rappers to heavy metal and even a little K-pop, she had a little of everything on her playlist.
"Hello darkness, my old friend…" 🎶
"I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known…" 🎶
"Isn't it lovely, all alone? Heart made of glass, my mind of stone…" 🎶
After exhausting all the songs she had in her memory, Elara simply chuckled, finding humor in her own private concert. She floated in the void for what felt like hours before a voice finally reached her.
"Will you answer my call..?"
"Who the fuck said that?!"
Elara spun around so much, looking for the new entity, that she made herself incredibly dizzy.
She was supposed to be alone here, so suddenly hearing a deep, menacing voice made her instinctively clench her ghostly fists in fear.
She just hoped she hadn't been heard singing—but with her luck, she probably had.
"Will you answer my call..?" the entity repeated.
'Nobody ever fucking calls me, so I'm sure this is a dream,' Elara thought with a frown.
"Uhh… sure?" she said hesitantly. She was unsure of what would happen next, but she almost never had nightmares since she graduated high school, so her guard wasn't up too high.
"What three desires lay in your heart…?"
When the entity asked this question, Elara was immediately taken aback.
"I want to be rich, beloved, and popul—ARGHHHH!!"
As soon as she answered the question, Elara felt immense pain where her heart should've been.
"You lied…"
"What? That's what I really want! What kind of fucked-up game is this?"
"ARGHHH!"
Elara screamed out in pain as her heart felt like it was being torn to shreds.
"Every lie you tell here will only damage you further..." the entity said. "The wishes you have spoken are all human trivialities that you do not truly care for."
"Well, I'm a human! So how can you say I don't care for those things?!"
Elara was beginning to get annoyed. What the hell was this voice even talking about??
"They are beneath you... You recognize their flaws and find anguish within them..."
"You appreciate their creations, yet hate their ideals, their behavior, their controversies…"
"That's… That's…"
The young woman couldn't find a way to refute what the voice was saying.
Elara didn't get along well with other people.
The things they cared about—she didn't.
Though she could find beauty in their creations, she found humans overwhelmingly flawed and hard to deal with, not to mention hateful.
Though she'd never admit it out loud.
It wasn't exactly the kind of thing one could freely talk about with others, and even if she could, who would she do that with?
Her parents weren't in her life; they were horrible drug addicts who were probably in some random alley hunched over with needles in their arms.
She had no friends to speak of—everyone either avoided her or bullied her, either due to her inferior looks and clothes or her soft-spoken personality.
Just look at what happened earlier!
Her whole life had been like that.
Not once had she belonged anywhere.
That's why she spent all her time alone reading web novels, manga, and listening to music.
Only through escapism could she belong somewhere.
'Wait… Web novel…'
Elara's train of thought immediately halted as an insane realization crossed her mind.
Remembering the plot of several web novels she'd read, she found this situation eerily familiar and wondered why she hadn't noticed before.
"This… This isn't a dream, is it?" she asked, her voice full of suspicion.
"….No."