"Hmmm~", a euphoric hum broke through the still, silent night air.
The silence of the night was absolute—no rustling leaves, no distant hum of life, not even the chirp of a nighttime cricket—just a nauseating, rare, eerie humming silence…an untouched stillness. Untouched, except for the girl who walked around the night carefree as though she ruled it.
It was the type of silence that makes one think about what lurks in the darkness, despite knowing they're alone. However, the girl, who was humming the music roaring in her earphones, felt no fear…. On the contrary, she felt ecstatic.
The mysterious girl had shoulder-length black hair with messy bangs that fell over half her eyes, along with dark olive skin and sharp green eyes that shimmered with an eerie emerald hue. A chillingly delighted smile tugged at her lips as she walked, her steps too light—too smooth, like she was floating through a world that didn't notice she existed. Her movements contradicting the stillness the night held.
The music bled from her earphones in soft echoes. She walked like someone who had just witnessed a miracle. Or perhaps become one. The girl walked in such a way that anyone seeing her wouldn't be able to help but wonder what miraculous thing had happened to her, however… There was no one to see her…
…..
…..
Her arms swung slightly as she walked, a small backpack strapped to her back, head tilted up towards the stars that decorated the sky as if they were hers alone to admire.
She passed through empty streets lined with dark houses, then moved on to taller buildings. She walked for hours—or maybe it was no time at all. It felt like both.
She halted in her steps, however, as she reached a parking garage reaching around thirteen stories tall. Her smile fell.
One of her earphones fell out of her ears onto her shoulder, the silence of the night now managing to creep its way into her ear as she tilted her head, straining her neck, taking in the massive height that stood infront of her. She stood there for a good five minutes without moving, expression hollow, as if waking from a dream and being forced back into reality.
An image flashed through her mind: a body standing at the top, falling forward under the weight of gravity, and crashing to the ground where she now stood. Her heart began to shudder violently in her chest, and cold sweat trailed down her back. The humming of the silent night seemed to be roaring impossibly loudly in her ears.
And yet—
After a moment, a small smile made its way back onto her face. It was an unreadable smile, but something about it felt …unsettling. She lowered her head, her neck still slightly aching from looking up for so long, before her smile grew brighter, a soft blush tinting her cheeks, and her heart began to beat as if in love rather than in fear, her body feeling light.
She took one earphone and placed it in her ear again, leaving the other out before she opened the door to the parking garage.
For being thirteen stories tall, it was pretty empty. Despite being a parking garage, there didn't seem to be many cars there. As she slowly walked up, seemingly in no hurry, she only passed around 3 cars, all of them looking quite old and possibly abandoned, along with some graffiti-stained walls. Other than that, however, there didn't seem to be any other signs of human life.
She walked up the stairs one by one, the only sound being the echoing of her footsteps and her music sounding through her earphones.
She halted in her steps once more as she reached the top floor of the garage, the cold night air from the height making her shiver slightly, an infatuated smile still placed on her face as she walked towards the edge. She took out her phone and paused her music, allowing for the silence of the night to fill her ears as she made her way to the ledge and peered down at the long drop it would be to the bottom.
She felt her heart thundering in her chest, vibrating against her ribcage, the familiar image that she must've imagined at least a thousand times over and over of her body falling from such a height playing in her head.
Silently, she nudged her bag from her back and placed it on the concrete ledge, digging through it and pulling a white teddy bear out. The teddy bear had a purple heart necklace strapped around its neck that sparkled in the dim night light. The girl frowned before unstrapping it from the bear and clasping it to her own neck, the heart pendant now resting on her chest.
She placed her bag on the ground before reaching her hand over the ledge, letting the teddy bear hang dangerously as she smiled and continued humming despite the absence of any music playing in her ears.
The glassy, beady eyes of the bear glistened before she loosened her grip on it and let it take the long fall down.
She watched as the bear fell under the weight of gravity. It reached the ground quickly, and as it made impact, the multiple beads previously resting inside it spilled all over the ground as it broke open, letting out a barely heard thump. The girl took in the sight in silence, her humming stopping as her smile halted a centimeter. An image of herself burst open down there, flashing in her head.
After a few moments, the smile on her face grew back, as did the pace of her heart. She let out a cheerful hum as she pushed herself up from leaning on the ledge and turned away, making her way back down the parking garage, the echo of her steps following her this time, no music to block out the silence.
"Here we are~" she chimed cheerfully as she stopped walking. She was on the eighth story of the garage, not far from the top, and stood infront of a dirty old door. She reached for the rusty knob and turned it however due to how old it was the door seemed to need some pushing to get open. She let out a sigh and raised her leg before harshly kicking the door.
The door swung open, banging loudly against the wall of the inside of the room and letting out a loud bang that echoed through the empty lot. The banging echoed through the space for a good ten seconds, and the girl covered her ears, cringing.
The open door revealed a small, dark room with cobwebs in the corners, dust coating every surface. The room had a small office desk and a few scattered chairs, it showed an absence of any human presence. The girl set her bag down on the dust-covered desk before letting her body fall back into one of the old, dusted chairs, relief instantly coming to her as she could finally let her feet rest after walking for hours.
She sat in the chair, taking in the dark, empty room for a few breaths, her heart calm in her chest, before she reached into her pocket and took out her phone, scrolling mindlessly through the apps.
Her finger ended up landing on a familiar webnovel app, one of her most-used. Without hesitation, her finger pressed it, and she quickly navigated to her recently read list, clicking on an all too familiar title.
"The Lost Princess Claims Her Crown" was an ongoing popular web novel series that the girl had been obsessed with. She had always been a fiction enjoyer, but something about the story had consumed her in a way she had never quite experienced before.
Calling it a comfort story would've been an understatement.
She had never experienced anything like it. It didn't feel like just a story—it felt real somehow. Even after catching up on the uploaded chapters, she couldn't stop thinking about it. The characters, the world, the story, the emotions—it all lingered in her mind throughout the day, refusing to let go. She reread it at every opportunity, craving the feeling it gave her.
It was the kind of story that burrowed into your soul, refusing to fade no matter how much time passed.
She scrolled, planning to select a random chapter... knowing that she would likely enjoy it no matter what part of the story it was. After all, even after having reread the available chapters more times than she could count, she still yearned for the story just as much. However, she saw with delight that a new chapter had been updated. She quickly tapped on it, opening it up on her phone.
She began reading automatically. It was the chapter following the ending of the main climax in which the heroine was finally able to get rid of the main villain, the vile villainess. She read it happily, instantly getting drawn into the story, the old run-down, dust-filled room disappearing in her mind as she read, a smile growing on her face.
Her scrolling paused, her smile freezing as a paragraph caught her eye.
"Luminia lay on the cold stone floor, a crimson halo of blood spreading beneath her, staining the white of her prison dress like wilting petals. Her lifeless red eyes, once so cold in life, now gleamed with an eerie light, brighter in death than they had ever been in life. And on her lips, despite the stillness of death, a smile lingered. Not one of malice or deceit, as it had always been, but of something far more unsettling—undeniable peace.
As if, only in dying, the demon had finally found solace.
The first and only genuine expression she had ever worn, now frozen forever on her face in death."
How ironic…the girl thought to herself, an unknown feeling growing at the pit of her stomach.
Her eyes stayed on the lines, rereading them over and over as she often found herself doing whenever she landed on a line involving the villainess.
"Not a single person in the world truly loved Luminia Everhart, and she, in turn, loved no one. A demon who only existed to harm others…finally left the humans alone in peace."
She read it again.
And again.
She let out a shaky breath before continuing scrolling through the story, the evil villainess now forgotten as the heroine moved on to get her happy ending, as it should be.
As someone who enjoyed the story, it was no surprise that the girl's favorite character was the heroine of the story…and in turn it was no surprise that her most hated was the villainess. However, her hatred for the vile villainess Luminia was different than the average reader.
She hated Luminia. More than anyone else in the novel. More than any villain she had ever read about. Villains were meant to be hated—annoying obstacles standing in the hero's way. However, her loathing for Luminia was deeper than that. More visceral. A hatred she had spewed so effortlessly and naturally, cursing Luminia's name whenever she appeared on the page, to the point that it didn't make much sense.
But it was never about what Luminia did.
Luminia's acts were indeed vile, and to top it off, she had done them without remorse, her gaze inhuman, her presence like something not meant to be among humans. The novel called her a demon over and over again.
Yet, that wasn't why she hated Luminia.
It wasn't the cruelty. It wasn't the blood on her hands. It wasn't even how she opposed the heroine every step of her way as an obstacle.
It was… something else.
The way she looked at the world—detached, hollow, as if it had never truly belonged to her. The way joy never seemed to truly touch her. The way she was always–always alone…
A stubborn kind of solitude.
Like A choice.
A curse.
There were so many reasons, yet none she could fully grasp in her mind.
All she knew was that every time she read about Luminia, something inside her twisted—dark, ugly, vile. And she hated it.
And she didn't know why.
She stared at the words one last time, the weight of them sinking into her bones as if engraving themselves into her being.
A deep, aching exhaustion suddenly washed over her, dragging her down—inward.
Her grip slackened. The phone slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor with a dull thud. The purple heart necklace that rested on her neck shimmered.
Then pulsed.
Once.
Then again—like a second heartbeat.
Her vision blurred. Then darkened.
Her eyelids fell shut, but not with sleep—something heavier, darker, unnatural.
Something tugged her inward—beyond the room, beyond her thoughts, beyond the girl she believed she was.
The purple heart on her chest dimmed, pulsing once like a dying echo.
Then, silence.
And somewhere in that silence, something laughed.