It was a long, long dream.
So long that, toward the end, Yates Donovan felt completely trapped in it, as if he would never wake up.
In the dream, he saw the banquet thrown into chaos.
The ambulance, which had been late to arrive, carried away two bodies.
A man and a woman.
Everyone at the banquet saw that the deceased were the young master of the Hughes Family and that fake heiress.
People whispered amongst themselves, thinking that the so-called cousins had never gotten along.
And Mr. Hughes doted on his biological cousin, Serena Grant. Yet the fake heiress had always seen Serena as a thorn in her side.
Perhaps the fake heiress had tried to pull her old tricks again and ruin Serena Grant’s birthday banquet, so Mr. Hughes hadn’t hesitated to act against her.
Or maybe Mr. Hughes hadn’t intended to kill her. It was just that, in the heat of their argument, the fake heiress had gotten angry and struck first.
Of course, this was all just speculation.
Then someone asked, could the killer be someone else?
Who else could it be?
And so, everyone turned to look at the other person at the scene—him, his hands also covered in blood.
He looked down at the girl’s blood on his hands and rubbed his fingers together. It seemed he could still feel the searing heat of it.
But the blood on his fingertips had already dried, cold and chilling, like her gradually stiffening body.
Before he could come to his senses, someone grabbed him by the collar.
He couldn’t see who it was.
The person was strong, asking him again and again what had just happened.
He shook his head. "I don’t know."
"I don’t know."
He truly didn’t know. He hadn’t even seen her one last time.
He buried his face in his hands. With a few quick, deep breaths, his nose and mouth filled with the pungent stench of blood.
He didn’t hold back. After forcing himself to calm down, he pushed aside the person blocking his way.
Serena Grant.
Serena Grant!
Like a madman, he snatched a dinner knife from the long table as he passed.
Then, he shoved open the door to the lounge.
* * *
As if a door had been violently shoved open, the half-dreaming, half-awake man braced himself against the sink and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
His silk pajamas were soaked in a cold sweat.
He splashed his face with cold water several times, forcing himself to calm down before looking up at the mirror.
Yates Donovan hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in a long time.
After staying up all night, his complexion was even worse than before he’d returned to the country, and stubble had even started to sprout.
He looked completely disheveled, so haggard that not a trace of the Donovan Family’s formerly glorious young master remained.
After a long moment, Yates Donovan turned off the faucet.
Bracing himself on the marble countertop, he struggled to straighten up.
At that moment, how he wished he could doubt what Mia Grant had said yesterday.
’Maybe then I wouldn’t be in so much pain right now.’
’If I just don’t believe it, if I treat it like some absurd farce, then it won’t hurt so much, right?’
’As if.’ The man scoffed.
’I was so stupid.’
Long ago, that Qi fellow had reminded him—the killer in Mia Grant’s dream used a knife...
’A knife!’
’A scalpel!’
He couldn’t convince himself it was just a dream.
Because his dream had filled in many of the details from Mia Grant’s dream.
This was beyond what so-called telepathy could explain.
The only explanation was that he and Mia Grant had truly, genuinely experienced this scene before.
But the problem was, in this dream scene, his identity, Mia Grant’s, Hayes Hughes’s, Serena Grant’s, and everyone else’s were no different from the present.
This wasn’t the so-called "original world" that Mia Grant had spoken of.
There was another suspicious point.
A person like Hayes Hughes, even if he didn’t love someone, wouldn’t have it in him to deliver a fatal blow.
And Mia Grant would never allow someone to end her life so hastily.
There were no signs of a struggle at the scene.
The security footage captured no cries for help from the room, not even a single scream.
Hayes Hughes also left quietly, without a trace of reluctance.
Yates Donovan carefully recalled the time displayed on the security monitor in his dream.
Mia Grant must have spoken with Hayes Hughes for a long time before she died.
He desperately wanted to ask Mia Grant about it now, but he knew she didn’t have the answers either.
In fact, her dream wasn’t even as complete as his.
She had been tormented for so long by the fact that Hayes Hughes had killed her.
She was so smart; if she had dreamed of these details too, she surely would have realized there must be an unknown inside story.
Yates Donovan quickly got himself ready and went out to find Mia Grant.
When he arrived at the university, Mia Grant wasn’t there.
She had gone out with her roommates today and said she would be back very late.
On the phone, she asked if there was anything he needed that could be discussed over the call.
"...It’s nothing. I just wanted to have dinner with you."
"Oh, what a coincidence."
"Coincidence?"
"Simon Adler just asked me out, too. He said he’s also on campus. Why don’t you two just grab a table together?"
Yates Donovan: "..."
"Go on. If you have any thoughts, you can talk to him about it."
Mia Grant was referring to the matter of her faked death.
Her two "strategists" should have a talk.
Yates Donovan said he was busy. "I have no interest in having dinner alone with another man. We’ll talk when you have time."
Mia Grant laughed and agreed, "Alright, alright."
The call ended, and Yates Donovan started the car, preparing to leave.
Nearby, a black Cullinan suddenly honked its horn, impossible to ignore.
Yates Donovan rolled down his window and glanced at the person in the car.
Simon Adler took the initiative to invite him. "I made a reservation nearby. Can’t let it go to waste. Shall we go together?"
* * *
Inside the private room, Yates Donovan looked around at the setting and frowned.
Coincidentally, he and Mia Grant had been in this very same room just yesterday.
"How much do you know about Mia Grant’s situation?"
Simon Adler asked first.
"Everything."
Yates Donovan lit a cigarette. "No need to test me. If you want to ask something, just say it."
"She called me at three o’clock this morning."
"..." The flame of the lighter flickered and went out.
"She told me about her dream. She probably told you, too."
"But I find it very strange." Simon Adler poured a cup of tea and continued, "I don’t think it’s a dream. It feels as real as something that happened in another world."
"She always tells me that if she had a choice, she obviously wouldn’t be shamelessly hovering around you guys like this."
"I never understood her helplessness before. I always thought it was just an excuse for being a player."
"Until she told me about her dream on the phone."
"If her tone had wavered even a little, I would have called a psychiatric hospital overnight and had them come pick her up."
"But she was too calm."
"And beneath that calmness was a hint of sadness."
Yates Donovan leaned back, affecting a relaxed tone as he asked, "So you believe her?"
"I didn’t rest last night." Yates Donovan wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept well last night.
Simon Adler said, "I suddenly understood what Felix Sinclair was trying to do."
"So, following that line of thought, everything starts to make sense."
"Don’t you think something is off?" Yates Donovan didn’t show his hand.
Simon Adler picked up a chopstick and dipped it in his tea.
"I thought about it all night and have provisionally figured it out."
"It certainly sounds absurd. I feel like a lunatic myself."
"But this line of reasoning actually works."
He drew two lines on the table. Pointing to the first, he said, "This is her. This is the original world she lived in for a long time."
Then, the second line. "Then death, and she arrived in our world."
"I know this part doesn’t add up. It troubled me for a long time, too."
"But let’s make a bold assumption..."
"What if... this isn’t the first time the current her has come here?"