Adrian had everything.
When he walked down the middle school hallway, voices trailed him like spotlights:
"Hey Adrian! Wanna join us later?"
"That girl from Class 2 asked for your number."
"Yo, Adrian, party this weekend—you in?"
Smiles. Laughter.
Hands patting his shoulder.
Teachers liked him. Girls liked him. Guys wanted to be him.
It wasn't just luck. He earned it — on the field, in the classroom, in every hallway he walked like a stage.
The roar of the crowd echoed across the school grounds.
As Adrian charged toward the defender,
he heard his classmates and fans chant from the sidelines:
"Adrian! Adrian!"
"Beat that damn team, Adrian!"
Hearing their voices — his classmates and his fans — he smiled and muttered,
"I need to get this."
He dribbled past his defender, then sprinted as fast as he could.
When he reached near the goal, he planted his foot and struck.
The ball sailed through the air — clean and fast.
Then—
"Goal!!!"
"No way, Adrian did it!"
"Adrian! Adrian! Adrian!"
Back then, being Adrian meant something.
They swarmed him — teammates, classmates, even juniors he barely knew.
He was lifted off the ground, the school's hero, laughter echoing into the sky.
But as he looked at countless eyes staring at him with adoration — and even love —
he saw a quiet girl reading her book alone on a bench under the shade.
Adrian stared longer than he meant to.
"Hey, Adrian!" one of his friends said, jogging up beside him. "You remember Elisa, right?"
He blinked, pulled from the moment. "Huh? Elisa? Yeah, what about her?"
His teammate smirked. "She wants to meet you after this. Said she likes you."
A few of the others whistled.
"Elisa, man. Damn."
"You're basically set for life now."
He could have. Should have.
She was waiting by the vending machines near the gym, pretending to scroll through her phone like she wasn't hoping to see him.
Adrian saw her.
He even walked halfway there.
But then he noticed another guy glance at her — not with surprise, but with something familiar. Recognition. Interest.
And suddenly, the confidence he'd built all year cracked like glass.
He turned around and walked the other way.
He didn't know why.
Maybe it was fear of commitment.
Maybe it was something uglier — fear that he wasn't good enough for someone like Elisa.
That night, she sent him a message.
He read it.
And never replied.
A few days later, she stopped smiling at him in the halls.
A week after that, she blocked him.
They never spoke again.
And the quiet girl?
As weeks passed, Adrian tried to gather up the courage to talk to her —
but he never said a word.
He told himself he'd try tomorrow. Then the next day. Then next week.
But She transferred before the end of the year.
Gone without warning.
Just… gone.
What if he'd spoken up?
What if he'd gone to meet Elisa?
What if he hadn't kept running away from people who actually saw him?
⸻
Then high school hit.
His voice cracked weirdly. His face changed.
The shine dulled. His charm vanished.
The hallway got quieter.
The invitations stopped.
People moved on — Adrian didn't.
He looked in the mirror one morning and whispered:
"What's wrong with me?"
He tried to fix it.
New haircut — same as the popular guys.
New clothes — trendier, cleaner.
He even smiled wider.
But nobody noticed.
Once, a girl in class asked to borrow a pen.
He offered one, hopeful.
She didn't even look at him.
She just walked past and took one from someone else.
It wasn't cruel.
That made it worse.
It was like he didn't exist.
He laughed it off. Of course he did.
Later that night, curled in a dark room, that moment played on loop.
No tears. Just silence.
He scrolled through his phone like always, looking for something — anything — to distract from the nothing.
That's when he saw it:
Hero of Light Chronicle.
A hero everyone remembered.
A boy everyone loved.
He tapped it.
That's when he found the novel.
It was supposed to be just a story.
But to Adrian, it became a mirror.
A world where things made sense.
Where pain had meaning.
Where a boy named Arthur Valeheart —
wielding a blade of light —
stood against the darkness.
Arthur lost things too.
He was betrayed, broken, nearly consumed.
But he never gave up.
He found people who stayed.
He found strength that mattered.
Adrian wanted to be him.
No —
Adrian wanted to escape.
Hundreds of pages.
Thousands of lines.
Dozens of nights spent reading beneath the covers.
And now — after 1,328 chapters — Adrian had finally reached the end of Hero of Light Chronicles.
He stared at the screen.
The ending was perfect.
…Too perfect.
He hovered his thumb over the final line. He didn't want to scroll.
Because when he did, it would be over.
And when it ended — so would the world that had kept him warm at 2 a.m.
No more Arthur. No more light. No more Kael Veylor, falling and rising again.
Just him. Alone in a room that hadn't changed since middle school.
Adrian turned off his phone.
Walked to the mirror.
And stared at the reflection he had been ignoring for years.
Adrian muttered, "…That's it?"
He laughed — dry, quiet.
"Guess that's the end of my fantasy too, huh?"
Adrian lay back on his bed, eyes heavy from hours of reading.
Then suddenly, a soft hum filled the room — almost like the air itself was vibrating.
His window glowed with an eerie white light, soft but unyielding.
He blinked. The light wasn't just outside — it seemed to be reaching in, filling the room with a calm, yet overwhelming presence.
A moment later, the walls around him bent and shimmered as if reality was folding like paper.
The last thing Adrian saw before the light swallowed him whole was his own reflection in the window — frozen, silent, and wide-eyed.
Then — nothing.