To My Beloved, I Present My Exquisite Nightmare (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 5
Eustar groped forward with his fingertips along the damp, pitch-black soil. His figure seemed to be gradually swallowed deeper and deeper into the darkness.
Laila desperately followed behind, determined not to lose sight of him, but the deeper they went into the forest, the stronger her urge to flee became.
Hugging herself tightly with both arms, Laila spoke in a hushed voice.
“This place… feels awful.”
Fear seeped through her normally calm voice in trembling waves. Yet Eustar merely nodded calmly, as if this were entirely expected.
“There’s probably a sink nearby. If you’re not accustomed to the aura it emits, you’ll feel fear. But you mustn’t let it consume you. Laila, you’re especially susceptible to the sink’s influence. Your eyes, your ears… and your blood as a witch—everything about you is sweet prey to the sink. Like a fig dripping with honey, one might say.”
Just as a chilling shiver ran up Laila’s spine, Eustar halted abruptly. On edge, Laila found herself hypersensitive to even the slightest movement he made.
“What is it? Is there something?”
After a brief silence, Eustar straightened his back and rose to his full height.
“A child died here—and so did the mother.”
He swept his gaze across the utterly lightless, black forest, then turned to look at Laila.
“Tell me if you see anything, Laila.”
“See? I can’t see anything. It’s so dark I can’t even make out your face properly….”
It was at that very instant that ‘it’ appeared.
At first, Laila couldn’t grasp what was happening—she only knew she wanted to escape this place.
Though Eustar’s arm shielded her, even his presence now offered little comfort. Her heart pounded wildly, and a deafening alarm rang through her mind, screaming for her to run.
It was a hole—black as the darkness itself, as if another layer of shadow had been smeared over the night, just like the powder Eustar had scattered earlier. It was so profoundly dark that even its edges stood out sharply.
Instinctively, Laila knew the hole had no bottom. Realizing this and her foot moving toward the hole happened almost simultaneously. The warning ringing in her head had already fallen silent.
“Laila! Snap out of it! Don’t empathize with the sink!”
Empathize? What was he talking about? And more importantly—who was this man?
That’s so sad, Laila thought. There’s someone so sorrowful inside it… She kept repeating this thought, even feeling pity. She felt she had to go in there and help whoever it was…
—Laila Chrisrad.
In that instant, Laila’s eyes flew wide open, her whole body trembling as if stabbed by a knife.
She couldn’t tell whose voice she’d just heard. It sounded like Eustar’s, yet it felt as if someone else—or rather, something else—had spoken through his mouth…
It was clearly not human.
Laila, barely regaining her composure, turned to look at Eustar.
“Is that… the sink?”
He pulled her closer into his embrace and nodded.
“The sink is both a ‘phenomenon’ and a living entity.”
“It’s alive?”
“Not in the way humans, dogs, or cats are—beings of flesh and blood… But conceptually, it’s unquestionably alive. So don’t empathize with it. I told you—you’re like a fig dripping with honey in the sink’s eyes. It’ll do anything to swallow you whole. Don’t feel anything toward it.”
“But it’s not something I can control. I just… can’t help it…”
Eustar gave her a gentle smile—an expression meant to reassure her.
“I know. Everyone reacts that way when encountering a sink without any protection. But remember my words—as long as I’m by your side, no one can harm you. Not even the villagers, and certainly not the sink. Now, Laila—it’s time I need your eyes. Look carefully. What do you see?”
Though Laila never wanted to look back again, she realized Eustar’s hand had somehow gently taken control of her. And again, a question surfaced in her mind.
Why isn’t this making me uncomfortable?
Then, in Laila’s vision, a shape emerged—gray and white intermingled.
It was a child.
The boy sat with his legs stretched out near the sinkhole. Around him rolled several bead-like objects…
No, Laila thought. Those aren’t beads.
Suddenly, her throat went dry.
“Those are eyes…”
She whispered.
“The eyes of dead children. What on earth is that…”
Eustar wrapped his arms around Laila once more and leaned past her shoulder. He adjusted the ornament on the monocle over his right eye slightly, then let out a soft exclamation.
“Ah. Good. I can see it very clearly now. At this level, I can see exactly what you see.”
As he murmured something unintelligible, the boy’s ghost began repeatedly picking up the rolling eyes from the ground and inserting them into his empty eye sockets, only to pull them back out again.
Now Laila noticed his eye sockets were hollow—empty. Horrified by a sight she never wished to see even in dreams, she shuddered, and Eustar spoke again.
“Look closely. Watch and listen well. What is he saying?”
“I can see him, but I don’t hear anything.”
“I think you do. Try listening carefully.”
Laila took a sharp, ragged breath. She focused slowly on the boy endlessly inserting and removing eyeballs.
She knew she shouldn’t stare too intently, but right now she had no choice. And with Eustar there, she felt slightly—just slightly—braver than usual.
How long had she been like this?
Though only a few seconds had passed, it felt like years to Laila. Suddenly, a strange sound reached her ears.
It was hard to describe—like dry leaves brushing against each other in the wind, or countless insects fluttering their wings and quickly scurrying through a narrow space…
The sound grew clearer and louder. Finally, amidst the rustling, meaningless background noise, Laila picked out one distinct phrase.
—They killed me. They killed me.
A shock struck her forehead as if someone had hurled a stone at it. Simultaneously, Laila saw the memory that had birthed the sink—the boy’s memory.
‘Vin… his name is Vin.’
Vin, who had just turned eleven this year, lived fairly happily on the outskirts of the village with his mother, who sometimes traveled even to neighboring villages to sell her labor. His life would have been perfectly fine—if not for one thing: he was blind.
At around six years old, Vin had survived a severe fever but lost his sight as a result. Overnight, his world went pitch black, and he no longer dared to step outside his home.
Whenever his mother had to leave for work all day, she locked the door from the outside.
So Vin stayed alone in the house, shrouded in darkness both day and night. The faint warmth he felt when touching the windowpane was all that reassured him time was still passing.
Then the accident happened.
One day, exhausted, Vin’s mother overslept. To avoid scolding from the field owner, she rushed out without even properly securing her headscarf.
The lock, carelessly fastened, clicked open, and Vin realized the door was ajar. He knew he shouldn’t go out—but he couldn’t resist the temptation.
When Vin stumbled and swayed out of the house, Tommy, the neighborhood ringleader, spotted him.
—Hey, look! The blind kid’s out for a stroll!
Tommy was a mischievous and cruel boy who delighted in tormenting younger children. Though nearly the same age as Vin, bullying the sightless boy—who could do nothing but stumble around—was easier than twisting a baby’s wrist.
Tommy led Vin deep into the woods with his group of friends, then suddenly let out a mocking cry, cackled, and scattered with the others, leaving Vin alone. No matter how desperately he screamed and cried, no one came.
“That child fell from the cliff…”
Laila said, her trembling lips barely moving.
Slowly, she turned her head and pointed toward the ominous cliff swallowed by darkness—right above the sink. Below, jagged rocks loomed menacingly.
Two days later, when Vin’s mother found her son’s tattered body, wild beasts had already torn and devoured most of the remains. Clutching his mangled corpse, she wailed until she smashed her head against the rocks and took her own life.
The villagers carelessly dumped both bodies into the forest and returned home, determined to forget the incident. No one ever spoke of it again. The house where Vin and his mother had lived was torn down.
Laila’s body shook with pain and anguish. The boundless fear and terror Vin must have felt pierced her like needles. Just before she screamed, Eustar gently patted her hunched shoulders.
“Thank you, Laila. Thanks to you, I saw it clearly too. Now I’ll handle this.”
At that moment, Vin’s ghost stood up, glaring at Eustar with pure malice.
Simultaneously, the sink’s ominous, indescribable energy thickened. Laila nearly fainted from suffocation, but Eustar remained unfazed, as if basking in warm steam, casually turning his head.
He extended one hand forward. Vin, even as a ghost still desperately searching for eyes that fit, suddenly snapped open his closed eyelids. From the hollow sockets, two snakes shot out like arrows, slithering toward Eustar’s ankles to bite.
“You have no bottom. Look—you have no bottom. Look beneath where you stand.”
—Hate, hate, hate!!
A piercing shriek tore through the air. Wind howled, and branches scraped violently against each other.
“Look beneath your feet! See where you are!”
Suddenly, something exploded with a loud *boom!* At that same instant, Vin’s spirit was sucked into Eustar’s outstretched hand.
Until just moments before, the spirit had retained a fully human shape—but now it grotesquely stretched like pulled taffy. Vin’s stomach stretched long and hollow, screaming without a single organ inside.
When the echo of the explosion faded, Laila collapsed, unconscious.
When scheming men desperately battle for her favor in the male harem
This one’s also on my reread list! The rivalry, scheming between the men in the imperial harem are just as intense and thrilling as in classic palace drama novels, where concubines fight to the death. Give it a read, girls! I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Synopsis:
“I am not worthy of her… but I still want to be by her side, even if only as a loyal dog…”
Those were the painful whispers of Yue Guanyi – the proud Crown Prince of the Great Qi, who was torn between deep love and a guilty conscience. Despite holding the supreme power of the Imperial Guard, he still could not forget the dark past when he was sold into a brothel.
Fate played a cruel twist when Qiu Shuzhi – a young female official who had just passed the imperial examinations with top honors – stepped into his life. She did not know that she was the one who had saved him from a tragic fate many years ago. And now, her heart was the target of pursuit for both Yue Guanyi and the powerful Empress Dowager Qin Qing.
While Yue Guanyi only dared to silently care for and protect the one he loved from afar, the Empress Dowager Qin Qing openly expressed his feelings and did not hesitate to take advantage of his power to approach Qiu Shuzhi. The covert struggle between the two most powerful forces in the imperial court began…
Trigger warning: All men in this novel are yandere style.
_____
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