Seducing The Second Male Lead

24

Trying to accept reality, I closed my eyes and tore down that world that I had made. The world full of trouble that I had put onto myself. I felt that I needed to face reality.

Within he distance, there were two tunnels in sight.

One that showed my bedroom, Yulian and Elise sleeping by my side whilst my father had already gone to his study to try and find ways to help me. Ted had returned home and he was feeling burdened by my helpless situation. Pity was in the air. Sorrow was in the air.

I knew that if I had returned there, I would definitely have a happy end. After all, that was what my mind had wanted.

A series of dramatic hardships till the happy end.

I laughed at that thought now and I understand what my subconscious mind had been telling me. Such a happy end may as well be delusional. That could only happen to proper heroines and it has to happen in novels and mangas. It wasn't meant to be my happy end.

Then I turned to my left where the second tunnel stood open.

Faint beeps could be heard through the distance which got me thinking who on earth was paying for my medical bills and was keeping me alive.

Because I was a more or less abandoned girl, I wouldn't have anybody caring for me, let alone paying for my injuries. Sooner or later, shouldn't they just cut off the life support?

But then again, am I rejecting something? If they were to cut off life support, they should have done it long ago.

I looked at the passage dazing until a silhouette caught the corner of my eye.

A tall and proud posture that sat, holding a book and seeming reading it aloud for the patient to hear. His face wasn't too clear but his wizened grey hairs could be seen as his shadow was cast onto the bed.

The sun was already going down but he was still there.

Putting down the book, I saw that it was the fairy tale that I was oh so familiar with when I was a child.

The book that my father had always repeatedly read for me when I couldn't sleep. The book may as well been remembered word by word in my brain.

The man then bent over to kiss the sleeping girl's forehead, just like how Ain did to Ariella whenever he saw her and all of a sudden, it seems like my materialistic world and reality seemed to have clashed for a moment.

Then, I didn't have to hesitate anymore and I ran straight down that tunnel that led me to the light.

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Third Person's POV

Matthew Ignes had never felt so much regret in the thirty years of his life until he gazed upon the sleeping and peaceful face of his daughter that he once couldn't bear to see.

Ariella had always resembled her mother more with her chocolate brown hair and her lively eyes so when her mother came to pass away during birth, it was hard for him to watch over his daughter after the age three and he gave her away to his relatives instead.

However, he wasn't attentive enough and had completely put his daughter to the back of his head, allowing this incident to happen.

The Ignes were reckless, leaving an eight year old constantly by herself to the point where they even threw her out of their house and rented a separate apartment for the girl.

They thought that they were doing Matthew a favour by not spoiling his only daughter that he did not particularly want and they went ahead and did it even though it may as well be counted as illegal.

The child didn't have any proper sort of primary socialisation and was only taught at school so there was nobody to monitor her, nobody to teach her common sense. It was just the computer and the little human being.

That was probably why Ariella had been so heavily influenced by novels that she even created her own world, even though she shouldn't have done.

When Matthew had reached the top and managed to make his own company strive, he began to think about lacking something. He felt that something was missing by his side but he couldn't tell what until a friend of his had a child and then Ariella surfaced in his mind.

Just when he was planning to get her back, he heard news that his brother and his wife was planning to cut off the life support of his daughter and that Ariella was stuck in a coma for a week already due to an accident.

The fact that he didn't know about this made it seem like hell to him and he realised his misdeeds all too late.

His daughter had trapped herself in her own imagination, where she is loved and cared for. That way she could escape the harsh reality where she did not have the love that she had yearned for.

The doctor had clearly told him that his daughter had no desire to wake up, shocking him into recognising his sins.

He saved his daughter from his brother and also kept by her side for eight years now whilst his hairs were turning grey.

In the years when his daughter was trapped in her wonderland, he was always the one swimming in guilt and so the subconscious mind of Ariella heard his regrets and surfaced in the dream world of Ariella Ignes to pull her out.

Putting down the book that he and read for hundreds of times now, he seemed to never get bored of it, after all, it was a story that his daughter had liked.

He stood up after his secretary had peeked in and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead, for a while, hoping that she would somehow magically wake up.

Laughing to himself, he got up and walked off to work. It was him that made his daughter like that in the first place...

"Daddy!"

Suddenly he couldn't take a step further.

The voice that he had always imagined of seemed to rush through his mind, anchoring him to the room as he turned his head round to see the crying girl, bound by wires and tubes.