From the day the nightmares began, Adaline Bertrand could no longer sleep properly.
[This is some kind of perverted punishment...]
Every night she tossed and turned in bed until dawn, exhausted by more and more nightmares. Sometimes the dream lasted all day, as if she lived her whole life in it, and woke up only when the morning light was already breaking through the window. No rest, no relief. Today it was still the same.
[What nonsense...Why on earth did my brother go on a business trip? He's still underage!]
In this dream, Adaline was killed by a servant, whom her second older brother brought with him. The guy hired by his brother during a business trip turned out to be an assassin sent by the head of a criminal organization.
[The country he went to...I think it was Tveit. But what should he do there?]
[Tveit had no connection with the Bertrand family. This is not the country where the sons of marquises are sent to study. Everything looked extremely suspicious.]
Of course, the uneasy feeling caused by another death in a dream gave the event an unnatural “realism”, but even with this, she considered the plot too far-fetched.
[I’ll find someone who can kill me, and everything will work out. The anxiety will pass.]
She was absentmindedly stirring the soup with a spoon when her mother spoke:
“Adaline, are you feeling unwell?”
“A little...I didn’t sleep well.” - she muttered.
“You're probably sad that your brother moved away.”
“Yes, this is...What?”
"Well, yes. He is caring in his own way. Said he wanted you to smile goodbye. He promised that he would bring you gifts... and maybe even a kiss on the cheek.”
“Brother...Oh, did he say where exactly he was going?”
“To the Kingdom of Tihit. He says he has business there that he wants to develop on his own.”
...This is the first time I've heard about this.
“He said he would start everything from scratch, in a place where the influence of our family is not felt. That’s how he is with us - he’s blazing with enthusiasm, not thinking about how his parents will worry...”
But...She already knew that. I saw it in a dream.
[So this...wasn't just a nightmare?]
Adaline's face paled even more. The dream looked more and more like a prediction.
Along with various deaths, dreams also showed events that would soon occur in reality.
As soon as she saw her older brother in a dream, the next day news came that he was indeed returning to the estate. As soon as you dreamed about your mother getting sick, she soon fell ill.
The dreams seemed to mock her: “Well, you still don’t believe it?”
Even when the Adaline who lived in dreams tried to survive, pretending to recognize the main character, the end was the same: death.
No matter what she did, she couldn't escape that damned label of "villain" whose death was supposedly necessary for the main character's happy ending.
And even the ways of dying in dreams were different.
As soon as Adaline, despite the shame for the family, decided to break off the engagement, she was persecuted.
If he tries to stay close to the heroine and pretend to be friendly, he gets killed in his sleep.
Decides to escape to a monastery - dies in an accident.
“I’m no longer a villain, I’m a scapegoat!” - she cried out in despair, looking in the mirror.
[Does this make any sense?]
Adaline felt powerless. It was as if she had been sucked into a swamp of fate, where any movement only accelerated her death.
There was only one brief moment when the nightmares stopped, during Shane Blanchard's trip abroad on business.
All that week - not a single nightmare. But as soon as he returned, everything began again.
[I seem to have nightmares when I'm closely involved with key characters. As long as I stay within the plot, I can't escape.]
The dreams themselves were like warnings: “No matter what you do, you will still die.”
The force that moved the characters of this world, inexorable, unerring, like a mechanism with perfectly tuned gears, made Adaline feel all the cruelty of her destined fate.
She could no longer deny the obvious.
[This world wants Adaline dead.]
[As if whispering: “Die without having time to do anything.”]
[What, now just lie down and meekly wait for the end?]
[No. She had already died once. And I wasn't going to do it anymore.]
She wanted to live.
So...
[I have no choice. You'll have to fake your death.]