Ch7: An incomplete dream

I never even realized that I was pulling my legs close to me and resting my head upon them as I sat on the floor next to Kai, drowning in my thoughts, until my eyes grew heavy. My body surrendered to its exhaustion, and sleep overcame it, while my consciousness kept fighting alone against a painful and old dream that used to haunt me frequently. Then it vanished, and here it was visiting me once again with Adrian's return—Adrian, who remained absent from the company for a year and did not return until I was hurt.

​Adrian, who was always at the edge of the horizon, pressing upon my feelings and never forcing me, waiting for me to choose him even just once, but I never turned to him. Yet I return again and again to Kai...

​Kai, who resembles a hedgehog, giving me warmth once and withdrawing into himself, wounding me with his thorns a thousand times. Yet I hold him close every time. I do not know why there is all this struggling from my side; is this love?

Loving Kai was an affliction with which I afflicted myself, and here I am bleeding because of the wound of his love.

​In my dream, Adrian was seven years younger, shaking me and speaking passionately:

"Eileen, why, why him!! I can give you a better life than him!!!"

​I pulled myself away from him, my features turning mocking:

"At least he never forces me to do anything! You deceived me and you want to withdraw my file from the University of Arts!! Who are you to control my life!!!"

​Adrian shouted in my face, pressing tightly on my hands with force:

"I am protecting you!!!!"

​Protecting me?? Protecting me from what?... I asked him, I screamed at him, but everything turned into a mirage when I felt a large hand stroking my hair and a familiar voice repeating my name... It is.. Kai..

​I opened my sleepy eyes and saw him looking at me in bewilderment as he tried to wake me up:

"Eileen, what are you doing on the floor?"

​Eileen looked at him with misty eyes, confusion dominating all her senses. She was not sure if she had truly woken up or if this was merely an extension of her baffling dreams. The Kai before her now—it seemed as though his cruelty of yesterday had evaporated with the effects of the wine, replaced by a quiet confusion and an unspoken regret.

​He did not wait for an answer from her; rather, his strong arms extended to lift her from the floor, her slender body utterly depleted by fatigue. He placed her on the bed with extreme gentleness and tucked her in with the blanket as if she were a piece of glass he feared breaking. He sat beside her, wiping the beads of cold sweat from her forehead, and spoke in a low, raspy voice:

"Rest a little.. I will make us some coffee; perhaps it will help you wake up."

​Kai moved toward the kitchen, while Eileen kept watching his back in silent bewilderment. The room still reeked of that sharp odor, but his sudden care stormed all her fortresses once again. His lack of consciousness always brings him back to his old version—the version she adored and for which she found a thousand excuses.

​After a few minutes, he returned carrying a warm mug from which the rich aroma of coffee emanated, banishing the unpleasant smell of drunkenness from the place. He sat on the edge of the bed and held her trembling hand to carefully place the mug between her palms, avoiding looking directly into her reproachful eyes.

​He left the mug in her hand without interest when he suddenly looked at her and realized:

"Where were you, Eileen?"

​I looked at him, and the confusion that was wrapping around my mind seconds ago began to dissipate, replaced by a true terror. The features of gentleness vanished from his face, replaced by that sharp tone and the deep-seated suspicion in his eyes. With trembling fingers, I gripped the hot coffee mug, as if its heat were the only thing connecting me to reality, while questions spun in my head like a hurricane: What will I answer him? Do I tell him that I was at the mansion of the man he loathes more than anyone else in the world? And that I spent the whole night there?

​Kai took a step backward, and his narrow eyes began to examine me sharply from head to toe.

​Kai's features tightened, and the trace of regret disappeared completely, the veins of his neck bulging as he repeated his question in a low voice, charged with a suppressed anger that resembled the calm before the storm.

​I swallowed my bitterness and felt a severe dryness in my throat preventing the words from coming out. The hedgehog that I thought had been tamed moments ago unleashed its thorns all at once, piercing the remnants of my broken heart with them.

​"I.. took a night shift at a hotel."