Naroaika

Chapter 2

A boy wakes up in the middle of the night.

"...A nightmare?"

Al Ascian, the younger brother of Mr. Keilan head off to college after an unusual dream.

'What was that dream last night?'

Still in thought, he entered the campus and saw Juliette walking with some girls but Jerinah wasn't with them. Maybe she came early or was late for class. He silently kept a watch on Juliette and concluded that Jerinah must have taken leave for the day.

All of a sudden, he remembered the dream he had and how the other person abruptly forgot about Jerinah. He rushed to the faculty room and asked his brother for a student named Jerinah.

His face grew pale when the teacher said that no such name existed in the record books. The dream he had was not a dream but must have been all true. He wasted no time and requested for a leave for the day.

He hurried along to the café he had seen in the dream. He opened the door and saw the wormhole. It was exactly the same one which had sucked in Jerinah. He held out his hand into the unknown space. In an instant his body was pulled inside.

"Good afternoon Sir, Welco- Huh? Who was I welcoming just now? I must be really tired."

•        •       •

I was falling.

There seemed to be no end to this fall. I wondered if Juliette was sucked into this weird space too. I looked around but saw nothing. Suddenly, a light shone brightly from above.

I covered my eyes as it seemed to get closer and soon covered the entire space.

"Lady Jerinah! Lady Jerinah!"

I could hear someone calling out my name. Did I go back to the real world? But why was he calling me 'Lady'? I opened my eyes slowly allowing them time to adjust to the blinding light coming from 'I-don't-know-where.' I blinked, closed my eyes and blinked again.

"Lady Jerinah, you're awake! Why are you here?"

The same voice I heard before spoke to me. I looked at the person, he was a young man. He wore some unusual clothes. What was he wearing? An armor?

He had smooth brown skin and his platinum blond hair moved in the breeze. He looked as if he came out of a book but he had an unsettling look on his face. Considering the situation I believed he was worried about me but why so? I didn't even know who he was. He even spoke in an unusual language but for some reason I could understand him.

"Can you get up?" he offered his hand.

I took his hand and stood up. I looked around and saw the most amazing view. Flowers of different kind grew just below us. The wind was cool and the sunlight warm; it wasn't as harsh as it was in the city. I did not understand where I had landed and who the man standing next to me was.

'Am I dead?' I thought. "Is this the afterlife?"

Expecting to clear my doubts, I asked him.

"Where am I and who are you?"

The man looked at me with a rather troubled expression. Was I supposed to know him? Maybe he had the wrong person but he called out my name. Suddenly without any hesitation, he put me on a horse. All he said was to forgive him for his impolite actions and rode off. I tried to resist but I realized it was better to sit quietly than falling off the horse which was at full speed.

We reached a certain place where I found myself in front of a huge mansion. My heart was already pounding from riding on a horse for the first time.

"Where are we?" I asked the man again still trying to calm myself down.

"This is your home, Lady Jerinah."

I look at the man dumbstruck. This person just appeared out of nowhere and said that this was my home. Am I to believe that? Absolutely not!

"You don't understand, I'm sure you have the wrong pers-"

"Adline! My beautiful girl, where have you been? You shouldn't be staying out."

The door opened and a lady walked out and embraced me. This person called my second name. Do I know her? No one but my dad called me by that name. Her embrace was warm. I could tell that she was a very loving person.

But most importantly, these people whom I've seen for the first time seemed to know me but I knew none of them not forgetting the place I was at too!

"Lady Jerinah doesn't seem to remember anything. Where she is and who we are." The man from earlier said.

Well he did get that right; he's sharp. But that doesn't answer any of my questions.

The lady as well as the other maids around looked at him in disbelief then turned their heads to me.

"Do you not remember me either, Adline?"

I shook my head. She brought me to an embrace once more and started to cry. Unable to say anything I held her back. I hate to say this but I too felt emotional at that moment.

Two days after I came to this unusual world. It looked like I came back in time to some medieval era but it wasn't so, rather as if I had entered some sort of a book. I confirmed that they were mistaking me for someone else but the thing was that the other person and I looked the same from the portraits hung on the walls, had the same name, talk about the way we had the same second name too. The only difference was our titles. Back in the 'real world' I was Jerinah Adline Ayano while here I was Jerinah Adline Celeste and believe it or not 'Celeste' was my actual mother's surname. It was unbelievable for me. Even if this was a book, how could I be in the story?

These thoughts lingered in my mind for the past two days now and I couldn't seem to find the answer.

As for the situation here, it ended that I had a memory loss.

"Lady Jerinah, the Royal Princess is here to visit you."

"Why is the Princess here?" I asked.

"Her Royal Highness heard of your condition and requested to visit you."

It was a fine day, well at least at that time. I wondered why a princess would come to visit me. Was this princess close to the other me?

I dressed myself up and entered the visitor's room. Upon seeing the person sitting there I sprinted.

"Juliette, You're here too?!"

I hugged her tight.

"Lady Jerinah you remember me?" Juliette asked.

"Of course I do, we were friends since forever! I never thought you were sucked into that unknown space too!!"

"Unknown space? What are you talking about?"

She looked at me confused. I slowly realized that this person must be another look alike too. The 'Juliette' from this world. To clear myself up I asked her title, she looked a little surprised as well as the maid in the room but maybe due to my so called memory loss, they didn't question me.

"It's Juliette Irene Anü Zografus."

I quietly sat down realizing it wasn't the Juliette I knew. 'But how could people look the same as well have similar names? Well that was the case for me. Was I in a parallel universe?!' At that moment, that was the best conclusion I could come up with.

As I observed, Juliette seemed to be soft spoken and very polite, she really did seem to hold the title as princess to her name. She was kind of similar to the Juliette I knew so it was kind of assuring.

After an hour or so, Juliette left. I sat at the visitor's room pondering upon certain things when the door burst open. 'What's that? Is it an ambush?!' I saw a silhouette, it was mother. I stood up to greet her when she started lecturing me.

"I heard how you behaved in front of the Princess today. You will start your etiquette lessons from tomorrow and I shall hear no complaints from you, Miss Jerinah Adline Celeste."

"Y-yes Ma'am."

'Was mother always this scary? What happened to that 'loving person' I met at the beginning?!'