The night was unnervingly quiet, the kind of silence that made every tick of the clock sound like a hammer. Beyond the office window, the stars shimmered faintly against a washed-out sky, too distant to offer any warmth. Inside, the hum of computers filled the emptiness.
Baek Jiwoo sat hunched over his desk, his shoulders stiff from hours of staring at the progress bar crawling across his monitor. Lines of green inched forward with agonizing slowness—files for tomorrow's meeting being uploaded one by one. The glow of the screen threw sharp shadows across the empty cubicles around him, reminders that he was the only one left.
"Ugh… this is taking forever," he muttered, pressing the heel of his palm against tired eyes.
His gaze wandered to the neat stack of manuscripts beside him—upcoming releases waiting for their final checks before they could be sent to print. The pile seemed to whisper at him in the stillness, each book a temptation.
Why not kill some time with one of these?
He reached for the topmost one, fingers brushing its crisp cover, when something unusual caught his eye. Wedged slightly out of place near the bottom was a book he didn't recognize. Unlike the others, it wasn't tagged or labeled. Its cover was sleek black, strangely smooth to the touch, with a title etched in silver: Journey Thru Success.
Jiwoo frowned. No author's name. No publisher's mark. No barcode. Nothing at all.
"How mysterious…" he murmured, curiosity prickling the edges of his fatigue.
He flipped the book open, and from the first line he was caught. The story unfolded in an omegaverse setting—a genre he rarely touched—but the prose had a strange rhythm, like a voice whispering directly into his mind. Sentences bled seamlessly into one another. Characters came alive sharper than anything he had edited before.
Just one chapter, he told himself.
But one became two. Two became five. The room around him seemed to shrink until there was nothing but him and the words on the page. By the time he reached the final chapter, hours had slipped by unnoticed.
Jiwoo closed the book with a sigh, his pulse strangely quick, as if he'd lived the story himself.
A yawn broke through his lips. His eyelids felt unbearably heavy, and before he could think about saving his files or shutting down his computer, he slumped forward against the desk.
Then—light.
It pierced through his closed eyelids, searingly bright, nothing like the muted glow of an office lamp. Jiwoo's eyes flew open, breath catching in his throat.
He wasn't at his desk anymore.
He lay sprawled across a narrow bed, the mattress creaking beneath him. Dust tickled his nose, and the air carried the faint scent of old wood and damp earth. The walls around him were rough-hewn, patched with age. A single window let in sunlight far too warm for midnight in the city.
Heart pounding, Jiwoo sat upright. This wasn't his apartment. This wasn't the office.
And strangest of all—he couldn't remember how he had gotten here.