Why was it here? I left it in the shelf inside my office. And none of my family members went to my office to pick it up.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. These past few days, I always had a hard time going back to sleep after dreaming about Alexandros. That’s why I often had headaches.
When I was a little girl, I dreamt to be successful in whatever career I’d take. I dreamt to be the best. However, now that I had reached this age, all I wanted was peace of mind. To sleep at night without crying, without worrying that I might dream about the past again, and wake up screaming in the middle of the night again.
I just wanted to have a moment of serenity. I wanted to at least have that even in my dreams. But then I realized that as a person grow older, those things become a little harder to achieve.
Sometimes, the simplest things were the hardest and the most complicated to achieve.
When I opened my eyes, I stared at the book I was holding. It was about three inches thick. “Do you want to be read so badly that you keep showing up wherever I’m at?”
The cover of the book was a castle surrounded by four dragons. There were countless of people standing at the castle gates. In the middle of all of them, there stood a man who seemed to be their king based on the crown in his head. He was holding an incense stick.
Everything was gray on the cover except for the stick. It was the only thing which had color. It was maroon.
“Weird. What’s with the incense?” My thumb instinctively reached for the incense on the cover. But my eyes widened when I felt hot. My thumb hurt that I had to blow it away to ease the burning sensation.
Now, I was sure. There really was something different about the book… like it has a life of its own, or a magic of its own. With my forehead still creased, I finally opened the book and read the foreword.
To the next person who will read this,
There were hundreds of people who got a hold of this book, people who had different wishes and goals in life. Some wanted endless money, others wanted to travel, while there were a few people who was looking for silence, for peace of mind, and for a way to escape the reality.
And this book could be a temporary or a lifetime answer to those things.
This book will take you to the very place where your heart desires to go. Only those whose hearts were furious, grieving, hurt, afraid, and dejected could open this book. Only those who feel such negative emotions could read this. This book was created for them since they had the potential to contribute and change the life of the characters in this story. In some cases, it was also possible that the characters will be the ones to change your life.
Once you flip the next page, it means that you want to enter their lives, that you are knocking on the door towards another world. And the doors will be opened for you.
However, if you no longer wish to stay in the page you are at, touch the mark of the book drawn in your wrist and the book will appear.
A warning. Be careful in flipping the pages of other people’s lives. The pages could change your lives. -The writer
My eyes widened when after reading the last word, the page had become blank in an instant. I wanted to close the book immediately.
I may be sad, lonely, depressed, in pain, and I may be everything just like what the writer of the book had described but I was not mad enough to say yes to his or her challenge.
I didn’t need to enter a whole new world to ease the pain inside me. I didn’t need to meet new people or see a different surrounding. What I needed… was answers that could lead me to closure, to peace of mind, or anything related to it, so I could finally stop imagining the could-have-beens at random hours.
That way, I could finally convince myself that I really made the wrong choice, that I should let go because it had been so long and yet, here I was. Damn, I was dying for answers almost every day.
But what if it was true that I could really find the answers in the book?
I badly needed something to help me start over. I was desperate for it. And who knows? Maybe this book could really help me. I took a deep breath.
This was a gamble. But it was for my family, too, for myself… and for the likes of Jeremiah who had been praying for my healing. Healing… that was the second thing I wanted and needed the most aside from the answers.
And I had already been through tons of things to be afraid now. My eyes watered as I willed myself to flip the page.
I screamed when the book suddenly got bigger and swallowed me whole.

(Alexandros)
“HELLO again, cold days,” I whispered. My eyes felt hot by the tears I had been holding back while I was catching the snow with my hands.
I hurriedly told Nathan to stop the carriage. Both of us rushed outside.
After what seemed an eternity, we get to savor the first snow in the winter again. And this snow meant another chance to open the portal, another chance to be reunited with Alison and Demi. With this, I could take a break. My wounds could heal. And maybe… just maybe, I could revive all the magic that I had lost.
“To You up there, thank You,” I whispered. I pressed the corners of my eyes to stop the tears from falling.
I could hear the happy screams from the houses nearby. The entire kingdom was currently celebrating. Who would have thought that in our last few minutes, someone would come along? We all knew that it was still too early to be happy and to celebrate. The arrival of the guest didn’t mean we could be saved.
But we were saved for tonight. And somehow, that was good enough for all of us.