04 || Caffeinated Mornings

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I jolted awake, falling off the couch in the process.

"Holy shit." I scrambled to my feet and stumbled in the general direction of my room through the pitch black living area. Olivia moaned and shuffled on the couch as I noisily navigated the dark apartment. Despite the horrifying factor of my dream, I didn't have a trace of fear in me and I hadn't a clue why.

I cursed when I stubbed my toe on the corner of a bookshelf, but kept hobbling as fast as I could. I can't believe I found inspiration in a fucked up nightmare.

My hand slid along the wall in my room, searching for the light switch. I cursed again when I switched them on and squinted while my eyes took an eternity to adjust. I shook out my arms and legs, encouraging the return of proper blood flow, before sitting at my desk and opening my computer. After screwing up my password a few times, I managed to log in and open a Safari window. My hand strayed to the left side of my desk, expecting to find a notebook there.

"Damn it." I quickly snatched it from my bed, remembering that I'd hastily thrown it there last night. I threw open a drawer and grabbed a pencil, then frantically wrote before the rapidly fading details could slip my mind.

The door whined on its hinges and I heard a yawn. I didn't need to look up from my paper to know that Olivia was standing in the doorway of my bedroom.

"I suppose it's three in the morning," she muttered.

I glanced at the corner of my Mac's screen. "It's only five," I said, rubbing the drowsiness from my eyes in an attempt to make it easier to write anything legible.

"You are so lucky." She stood for a few more minutes, watching me. Then she sighed. "I'll make coffees."

"Bring the leftover pizza too!" I called as she left my room. 

After I finished writing down everything I could remember about my dream, I started on the beginnings of a new discovery method. My fingers flew across the keyboard of my laptop, fuelled by excitement and hope. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this excited about a dream. I felt a grin spread across my face. My impatience to gather all the info and evidence I needed to be sure my method would work made me bounce in my seat.

Liv returned with an insane amount of coffee and microwaved pizza and placed it on the edge of my desk, but I was too immersed in my research to stop and devour it all. She waited patiently for me to finish gathering everything I needed before asking about my most recent theory, sitting cross-legged on my bed and sipping her coffee.

I switched between all my open tabs displaying news articles, blogs and even Yahoo! questions. Words popped out at me;

Mysterious...

Shadowy figure...

Dark alley...

Rescued me...

Midnight...

Invisible...

They all mentioned him. But that wasn't the only thing they had in common.

I wrote like a madwoman in my notebook: erasing almost every second word; second-guessing every sentence; rewriting the whole thing over and over and over again. It was a long, frustrating cycle only broken by the rare coffee or pizza breaks to refuel.

I read it over once more and wrinkled my nose. What the hell am I writing? This is like a god damn military operation.

I tore the mangled paper from the notebook and tossed it over my shoulder. Just keep it simple, Raiya.

After a warm sip of caramel macchiato to keep my mind from shutting down, I picked up my pencil and wrote.


••• 影の秘密 •••


I grinned and put my pencil down, satisfied at last. Olivia looked up from her book and waited expectantly for my excited explanation.

"What's the grand idea this time?" She asked, propping her chin up on her hand.

I took a bite of pizza before explaining. "Okay, so you know how I've been trying to find this guy and basically track him down like a bloodhound and no matter what I came up with it was always completely impossible?" I began, already vibrating in my seat with excitement. She nodded. "Okay, well I had this super weird dream and I was like, holy shit this is actually genius. So I just did a shit ton of research, as you already know, and from that research, I found the similarities in all my rescuer's appearances and based off those findings, I formulated a method that–"

"Raiya!" Olivia held her hands up, overwhelmed by my ongoing blabbing and fancy words I was starting to unconsciously use. "Dumb it down for me. I don't need to know the physics behind it, I just need to know if I need to put an ambulance or a firetruck on hold for you or something."

I waved away her concern. "Nah, I won't be doing anything stupid. Alright, so check this out." I turned my Mac's screen toward her, which displayed a blogger's personal experience of her shadow-saviour encounter. "She was saved by this guy in the middle of the night on her way home from a movie. These guys tried to mug her but shadow man dropped in and saved her." I opened more tabs on different blogs and news articles. "Muggings, robberies, rapings, beatings, kidnappings. All these people were in some sort of danger when he showed up, including me. So I figured, why go track him down when I can just let him come to me?"

Olivia groaned. "So you're going to intentionally put yourself in a shit show in hopes of this guy coming to your rescue again?"

I nodded and ate more of my pizza while spinning around in my chair. "Smart, huh?" When she didn't reply right away, I spun towards her. Liv was watching me with a mixture of annoyance and disbelief.

"It took you that long to come up with something that simple?" She demanded.

My mouth dropped open and I threw a pencil at her. "Hey! You can't rush ingenuity!"

She threw the pencil back, then pushed herself off my bed. "Well you're insane. And if you get dragged off by a bunch of Albanians, don't expect me to run all over Europe looking for you."

I grinned and spun around, glancing over my plan again. You won't need to.



AN: I know it's kinda boring right now, but hang in there it'll get interesting soon 😊

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