The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Chapter 228: Bizarre

Adrian opened his eyes.

The monitor light hit his eyes first. He sat up straight in a familiar office chair and at the same time, he wiped the drool that was dripping from his chin.

He looked around and saw a familiar and messy room. Crumpled foil balls and greasy fast-food boxes were fallen on the floor. Stacks of dead energy drink cans sat by the keyboard and even the air smelled slightly off. It was that specific, gross smell of a room shut tight for days.

A room with no ventilation.

Panic spiked in his chest and he frantically called out. "Aria? Aria! Where-"

He stopped right there.

He squeezed the plastic armrests hard and looked back at the screen.

A wiki page was open. Just a massive wall of text explaining how to min-max resources in some medieval city-builder. He stared at it few seconds.

Then he glanced at the bottom right corner of the screen for the clock.

There was nothing there. No time and no date. The taskbar was just blank space and some app icons.

He felt his hair stand up as he took his phone from his pocket.

And at the same time, his stomach growled. It was a loud, painful rumble. He let out a soft sigh and leaned back against the chair.

The chair felt way too comfortable. Much better than the so-called noble highchair he had been using for a while.

But weirdly enough, he hated the feeling. It just felt wrong.

He unlocked his phone and opened a food delivery app. He scrolled through the main page.

The categories were right there. just as he remembered.

Pizza. Burgers. Chinese. Indian.

He tapped on Pizza.

The menu loaded, but the items listed were totally messed up. It showed pictures of different burritos, rice and curry bowls, smoked briskets and fried chicken.

He went back to the main menu and tapped on Burgers.

The exact same list of food showed up.

He just stared at the bugged screen.

He got up. His foot caught on a greasy pizza box. He tripped a little and out of anger, he kicked the trash out of the way, shoving the foil and cardboard piles into the corner.

His head felt weird... almost like it was thick and foggy.

He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. He could physically feel the feel the weird heaviness in his head. But his brain just refused to connect the dots, almost like his ability to be logical was completely shut down. The missing clock on his PC didn’t bother him, and the glitching food app was just a weird bug that his brain refused to register as a weird outcome.

Even the fact that he had called out for Aria a minute ago was pushed away to the back of his mind.

Adrian blinked a few times. He just stood there in the middle of his messy bedroom holding his phone.

He looked around in a daze.

"What was I even doing?" Adrian muttered.

He frowned.

"Right." he mumbled. "I was reading that novel."

He tapped the screen and pulled up his webnovel app. He checked his library. The book was sitting right at the top of the list. The green tag in the corner just said COMPLETED.

He stared at the cover art.

"Right, I finished it last night."

He tossed the phone onto his messy looking bed and stretched, popping his stiff shoulders. Then he looked at the bedroom door.

"Guess I’ll grab some breakfast." Adrian said to the empty room. "Then get back to the game."

He grabbed the door knob, and opened the door. He expected the messy living room.

But he got a street instead.

The road outside his bedroom was made of carved stones. It was nothing but a paved stone path.

Adrian frowned.

Something just clicked, and a sharp, unimaginable pain stabbed the back of his head the second he saw those stones.

But he couldn’t help himself or turn back anymore. He stepped out of his bedroom and walked onto the street.

Memories started coming back to him.

But the more he remembered, the worse his head pounded.

He just kept walking slowly down an empty stone road.

He looked at the wooden buildings as he walked past them. They weren’t modern apartments. They were tall structures made purely of thick wooden beams and planks. There was no paint and no glass windows.

He walked past tiny shops and wooden market stalls.

Nobody was there. The streets were dead quiet since it felt like he was the only person around.

But as he kept walking, the architecture started feeling incredibly familiar.

He turned a corner and stopped.

He was looking at a massive mansion, and two men wearing heavy armor were standing guard right outside the iron gates.

Adrian slowly walked toward them.

The familiarity hit him like a truck all of a sudden and the headache spiked again.

’I feel like I have been here before.’ Adrian thought, rubbing his temples. ’Why am I having this much deja vu? And why are there so many old-looking buildings around here? It is like I traveled back in time... but why is it so empty?’

He got no answers. The fog in his brain just kept him from thinking straight. From getting to the truth.

He looked at the two guards and te took a step closer. He waited for them to cross their spears and block him.

But they didn’t even twitch. They just kept staring blankly at the empty street like he was invisible.

Adrian felt sick to his stomach. He took a few more steps.He walked right between the two of them and crossed the archway.

They didn’t react at all, through he just kept walking.

He headed for the huge wooden doors of the mansion.

But the closer he got, the worse the headache got. The throbbing turned into a suffocating, blinding pressure. He had to slow down just so he wouldn’t throw up on the stones.

’Why does it hurt this much?’