"Emii! It's midnight. If I have to tell you to sleep one more time…"
Her mother's voice drifted through the hallway—a familiar cocktail of exhaustion and affection.
"In a minute, Maa!" Emii yelled back, her eyes anchored to the glowing rectangle of her phone. In the darkness of her room, the screen was her only oxygen, casting a blue, ghostly pallor over her face that clashed with the warm gold of her bedside lamp.
She wasn't just reading; she was vibrating with secondary embarrassment.
"Oh my God, this woman," she hissed, pulling the duvet up to her chin as if to shield herself from the heroine's stupidity. "Does she have a single functioning brain cell? You have a brother who would literally die for you and a fiancé who is—frankly—hotter than the sun. And you're chasing him? The 'Dog Man'?"
She kicked her legs out in a fit of dramatic agony. "Who writes this garbage? The author must have picked up his plot at a discount bin. If I had a brother like that—rich, sweet, and emotionally stable—I'd guard him like the Crown Jewels. And Dravin… uff. Tall, loyal, and capable of a complete sentence? That's dream-man material. But no, let's dump him for the guy who treats her like a doormat."
Emii flopped onto her pillow, staring at the ceiling fan. "I am emotionally compromised. I want a refund on my tears."
Outside, the wind gave a long, low whistle against the glass. The air in the room suddenly felt heavy, like the static before a storm.
Rustle. Rustle.
Emii froze. Her phone was sitting face-up on the silk pillowcase. She wasn't touching it, yet the text began to scroll. Line by line. Word by word.
"Okay, great. My phone is possessed," she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Then, the black text vanished, replaced by a single line of glowing, neon script that hadn't been there before:
[ Welcome to the world of the novel, Emii. ]
"What the actual—"
A blinding, supernova-white light erupted from the screen. It didn't just illuminate the room; it consumed it. Emii screamed, throwing her arms up as the world dissolved into a roaring pulse of light. The bed vanished. The air thinned.
And then, the silence arrived.