The rain hadn't stopped for hours.
It tapped gently on Evan's bedroom window like a nervous rhythm, too steady to ignore and too soft to be a storm. The outside world was a misted blur—streetlights melted into golden smears on the glass, the sidewalks glossy and slick under the weight of the downpour. But inside, Evan's room was a small cocoon of warmth and solitude.
His lamp glowed beside him, casting amber light over the paperback novel in his lap. The rest of the room had faded into shadows: the cluttered desk, the pile of laundry he hadn't touched in days, the worn hoodie slung over his chair. None of it mattered right now.
Evan's fingers turned a page slowly. His eyes devoured each word.
The Vengeful Maiden.
He was nearly at the end.
His legs were curled under him on the bed, bare feet poking out from beneath an old blanket. He hadn't moved in hours, not since the sun dipped behind the buildings and the sky turned slate gray. Dinner sat forgotten on his nightstand, a bowl of noodles long gone cold.
Evan always read like this. Fully absorbed. Like the world around him was just something paused while the one in the book pulsed with life.
He blinked slowly, his eyes aching from the strain, but he didn't stop.
Not now.
Evan was twenty-four, though lately he felt older—frayed at the edges, caught in that gray space between youth and adulthood. A college dropout turned night-shift barista, he drifted through his days in silence. No big dreams. No drama. Just work, sleep, and long hours buried in stories.
Books had always been his escape. His quiet rebellion. While the city outside thrived on deadlines and noise, Evan thrived in fiction. Fantasy, romance, mystery—it didn't matter. As long as the characters felt real, he was home.
But this book—The Vengeful Maiden—was different.
He'd found it randomly on a clearance shelf, the title barely visible on the worn spine. He wasn't expecting much. But page after page, it pulled him in deeper. The story was brutal and beautiful, like a slow unraveling of something innocent into something jagged.
And at its center: Claire.
The girl who lost everything.
"He never once defended her. Not when they mocked her clothes, her family, her silence. He laughed along. And she remembered."
Evan winced.
The line lingered long after he turned the page.
Claire was eight when the story began. The village outcast. The girl everyone whispered about. Her mother was gone. Her father—a cruel man, drunk more often than not—left bruises no one spoke of. And the boy next door, the one who could've stood up for her, the one who lived with his kind old grandmother and shared his lunches with everyone else?
Leon.
Leon, who laughed when others laughed. Who kept his distance. Who watched her suffer.
At first, Evan had wanted to hate Claire. She became cold as she grew older. Sharp. Unforgiving. She clawed her way into power through manipulation, turning every weakness against those who once made her feel small. The book called her "vengeful," but Evan saw something else: a girl who had been failed. Again and again.
And Leon… he wasn't innocent.
"He had kindness in him, but it was tucked beneath fear. Fear of being next. Fear of standing alone. So he stood with the crowd."
Evan sighed, rubbing his eyes.
It felt too real. Too raw.
He remembered kids like that in his own life. Bullies, sure. But worse than them were the ones who stood by. The ones who could've spoken but didn't.
He had been one of them, once.
"By the time Leon tried to change, it was too late. Claire had already decided. She would erase him."
The words sat heavy on the page.
And now, Evan was on the last chapter.
He wasn't ready.
His throat was tight as he read the final lines.
Claire's revenge didn't come in fire or fury—it came in silence. A quiet severing. She watched Leon fall from grace, stripped of his comfort, his pride, his name. And when he reached out to her, whispering apologies too late, she simply turned away.
The book ended there. With Leon forgotten, and Claire walking away into a world that still didn't love her, but feared her enough to leave her alone.
It wasn't satisfying. It wasn't cathartic.
It was... empty.
Evan stared at the last page, unmoving.
Minutes passed.
The lamp hummed softly beside him, and still he didn't blink. Didn't move. Just sat there with the book open in his lap, heart aching.
"I wish..." he whispered.
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to. As the rain had softened to a smooth, soothing lullaby.
Evan closed the book gently, as if afraid the fragile weight of his hands might shatter its ending. He stared at the now-blank page, the spine creaking softly in protest. His body was still, but something inside him throbbed with unease. Discontent. Grief.
It wasn't just the ending. It was everything it could have been—and wasn't.
"She deserved better," he murmured. "They both did."
He placed the book on his chest, exhaling. The steady patter of rain against the window soothed the tension in his shoulders. A dull tiredness settled behind his eyes, heavy and persistent. He hadn't even realized how late it was.
He tilted his head back into the pillow, the dim lamplight painting warm patterns across the ceiling. Shadows of dripping water danced lazily above him. Somewhere in the apartment below, a pipe groaned.
"I wish someone had been there," he whispered.
His fingers traced the worn edge of the book cover. His eyelids fluttered.
"Someone to stop it before it started…"
The rain. The warmth. The weight of the story.
Everything blurred.
His hand slid from the cover and fell against his chest.
And then—
Darkness.
Something cold touched his cheek.
Wet. Soft.
Evan stirred with a groggy grunt, swatting half-heartedly at whatever it was. His body ached, limbs stiff like he'd slept on a pile of bricks. His head felt too heavy for his neck. There was a strange taste in his mouth—like dirt and copper.
"Ugh…"
He cracked one eye open.
And immediately shut it again.
Too bright.
Wait—bright?
Wasn't it raining?
Blinking furiously, Evan tried again. His vision swam, a blinding haze of greens and browns and blue sky overhead.
Sky?
He pushed himself upright with both hands, dirt falling from his palms.
Grass.
He was lying in the grass. A wide field, untamed and scattered with wildflowers, stretched around him. Trees swayed gently in the distance. The sun was high, a golden disk painted into a sky too perfect to be real.
"What the hell…" he breathed, sitting up fully.
His body felt strange. His limbs too small. His clothes baggy.
He looked down.
And froze.
Those weren't his hands.
Not entirely.
They were too small. Too soft. Too smooth. And the sleeves he wore—an oversized gray shirt with sleeves that went well past his wrists—weren't his either.
Panic started to thrum low in his gut.
His heartbeat picked up.
"What is this?" he muttered. He turned his hands over, palms up, then clenched them into small fists. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. "Okay… okay. I'm dreaming. That's all. Just dreaming…"
But he didn't feel like he was dreaming.
He could feel the cool breeze, the itch of grass against his ankles, the hum of insects in the air. Everything was too real. Too vivid.
He stood up, wobbling slightly. His knees felt unsteady. Shorter than before. Clumsier.
"I must've fallen asleep reading…" he murmured.
The thought stopped him cold.
The book.
The Vengeful Maiden.
The memory came rushing back; Claire, Leon, the ending. The ache in his chest as he turned the last page. His whispered wish. The warmth. The shadows.
And now… this?
"No way," he whispered. "No way."
He stumbled toward the edge of the field, where the tree line met a worn dirt path. There was a cluster of bushes nearby, and beside them, something familiar: a wooden crate half-covered by a tarp, weather-worn and tucked carefully behind a makeshift shelter.
It was small, too small to be a house, but there were signs of someone living there.
A satchel. A pair of old boots. A cup.
A stick with a crude carving of a bird.
His breath hitched.
He knew this place.
Or rather, Leon did.
This was the hidden clearing where Leon sometimes went to escape. His "safe haven." It had only been described briefly in the book, but Evan had remembered it.
Because it was the only place Leon ever cried. The only place he was portrayed as something that wasn't a villain.
He stumbled back, heart thudding hard against his ribs. His pulse roared in his ears. His fingers trembled as he reached for his reflection in a small pool of water near the shelter.
A boy stared back.
Dark hair that was messy and tangled. Sharp cheekbones, with slight baby fat that transformed the face to an adorable cuteness. A familiar nose.
And then… the eyes.
Emerald green. Wide. Too wide. Too innocent. Too pure to be considered evil but there was no denying whose eyes they were.
Leon's eyes.
No…
Evan fell back onto the grass, staring up at the sky.
"This isn't possible," he whispered. "This, this can't be real."
But it was.
He felt it. In every breath, every heartbeat, every sharp twinge of unfamiliar muscle.
He was in that book, the book that had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Worst of all he was Leon.
A bird called out overhead.
The wind stirred the trees gently, like a whispering hand on his shoulder.
Evan sat there for a long moment, silent and stunned.
His mind raced through every explanation hallucination, coma, dream but none of it changed the fact that this world was real to him now. That the sun warmed his skin. That his heart thudded in a new rhythm inside a body that wasn't entirely his.
A slow chill crawled down his spine.
He remembered the timeline.
Claire was here. In this town. Still living under her father's roof.
Still just a child.
And Evan, Leon, was the boy who would let it all happen. And suffered at the end of it all.
He closed his eyes, a pit opening in his chest.
Not this time.
He stood, brushing grass from his shirt. His limbs still felt unfamiliar, but determination grounded him. This wasn't just a story anymore. It wasn't someone else's tragedy. He was here now. And it was his.
And he wasn't going to let it unfold the same way.
The first step was getting home to Leon's grandmother's house.
She'd know him. At least… she'd know this version of him.
And from there, he could figure out what came next.
He turned toward the path, shoulders squared, heart still hammering.
The air smelled of wildflowers and wood smoke.
And far off, drifting faintly through the trees so faint he might have imagined it was the sound of a child's soft sobbing.
His stomach twisted.
He started walking.