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Chapter 1
The Dream That Revealed the Lottery Numbers (1)
“Ugh……”
The first thing I felt was a dull ache that seemed to run through my entire body.
Everything was dark, hazy, and blurry. It felt as though I were trapped in a nightmare, unable to move. My body was so heavy, like cotton soaked in water, that I couldn’t even twitch. I wasn’t entirely awake, either. It was almost as if this wasn’t my body at all.
Why do my palms hurt so much? And why is it so cold……?
That was when I heard a woman’s sharp, shrill voice inside my head.
—No way! Is this for real? Oh, my God…… This is unbelievable!
What? Who are you?
I wanted to ask aloud, but my mouth wouldn’t move. Even so, the woman’s voice responded inside my head, as if she had heard my unspoken question loud and clear.
—Hey, it doesn’t matter who I am. Just listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you. 12, 13, 15, 21, 35, 45!
Ah, it hurts. I’m dizzy……
—Focus! There’s no time to explain, so memorize them! 12, 13, 15…… Repeat after me!
Numbers……?
—Remember them! If you forget these, you’ll die!
The shrill voice grew louder and louder. Six numbers repeated over and over. Was this what people meant by dreaming of lottery numbers?
Even in my unstable, half-conscious state, as though I were caught in sleep paralysis, I began memorizing them.
12, 13, 15……
—Keep them to yourself. Don’t trust anyone! Go somewhere safe right away and hide. Understand?
21, 35……
—Fuck, aren’t you going to answer me?
Ah, would you please be quiet for a second? You told me to memorize the numbers!
The voice inside my head was certainly not an easygoing woman.
—Fine, you blockhead! Do not forget those numbers! Not a single one! Got it?
I got it, I got it.
While I repeated the numbers to myself a few more times, the voice continued chattering without pause.
—They’re going to come after you. Whatever you do, don’t let those bastards catch you! If anyone so much as lays a finger on you, blow their fucking heads off right then and there. Understand?
……Who’s coming after me?
—Whatever happens…… don’t let anyone……
The woman kept going on about whatever she wanted to say until her voice suddenly turned into a distant murmur and faded away.
My consciousness followed suit. The moment her voice grew distant, my mind began to blur, as though the two were synchronized.
Even if I woke up from this dream, I absolutely couldn’t forget the numbers. Clinging desperately to my fading consciousness, I repeated them again and again until the very last moment.
12, 13, 15, 21……
“……Forty-five!”
The moment I opened my eyes, I realized I was lying in an unfamiliar room.
The direction of the window letting in the light, the smell of the air, the color of the wallpaper gradually coming into focus, the picture in the frame, and every single piece of furniture in the room—all of it was unfamiliar.
“Ellie? Oh, thank God!”
“Are you feeling conscious again?”
Two foreign men I had never seen before were standing beside the bed, looking down at me and speaking English with strange accents.
But I had no time to wonder about any of that. I couldn’t afford to waste a single second. I had to write down the numbers from my dream before I forgot them.
“Let me borrow that for a moment!”
I snatched a small notebook and pen from the hands of the portly man standing beside the bed.
“Why is Ellie acting like this? Isn’t she saying something strange?”
“I wonder. Could she have learned some sort of Native American language?”
Upon closer inspection, the pen wasn’t a ballpoint pen at all. It looked more like a toy—a long metal rod with nothing but a nib attached to the end. But I didn’t have the luxury of being picky.
I tore a sheet from the notebook and hastily scribbled down the six numbers.
The little ink left on the nib ran out as soon as I wrote 12, but I pressed the remaining numbers into the paper with the tip, leaving indentations even if I couldn’t write them in ink.
……Done! I’m going to be rich!
12, 13, 15, 21, 35, 45
Looking at the numbers on the paper, my heart swelled with relief and excitement.
I hadn’t bought a lottery ticket yet, but just looking at those numbers made me feel as though I had already won first prize.
And why wouldn’t I? What could be a more convincing lottery dream than this? A dream in which someone actually called out all six winning numbers!
My ancestors must finally have decided they couldn’t bear to watch their poor descendant suffer any longer. With this money, I could pay off my remaining debts, settle my overdue rent, quit all those part-time jobs that worked me to the bone, and finally live like a proper human being……
I wiped the moisture gathering at the tip of my nose and raised my head. Once again, I heard a serious voice beside me.
“Perhaps she struck her head quite hard. There were certainly no visible injuries, but head trauma can sometimes……”
Oh, right. I’m not alone in here.
I carefully folded the paper with the numbers written on it and clutched it tightly so no one could see. Then I returned the pen and notebook to the portly gentleman and spoke as casually as I could.
“I think my head is fine. More importantly, where am I?”
Instead of answering, the man simply stared at me with a bewildered expression.
It couldn’t be because he hadn’t understood me. This time, I had spoken slowly and clearly in English so he could understand.
Is he pretending not to understand me? What kind of outdated racism is this, in this day and age?
Just as I was about to glare at him, a man who had been hidden behind the portly gentleman stepped forward.
“Ellie, don’t do this. You’re joking, aren’t you?”
I was the one who had no idea what kind of joke this was supposed to be. But one thing was certain: the moment I saw his face, I completely forgot what I had been about to say.
His features were so delicate that they almost made him look pretty rather than handsome. The way his light brown hair fell softly around his face, complementing his striking eyes, was absolutely perfect.
“Ellie?”
If the name he was calling me was short for Eleanor, then technically, it was my name. It was an English name I had briefly used when I was young and knew no better.
But that had been a long time ago. Surely no one in Korea even knew that name anymore?
While I wondered whether I was still dreaming, the older man approached with a thoroughly serious expression and lifted my eyelids to examine my eyes.
“Hmmm…… I don’t understand. How can her speech have become so slurred when there’s no external injury?”
“My speech isn’t slurred at all.”
Sure, I wasn’t a native speaker, so my accent might have been a little awkward…… But these people were speaking with strange accents themselves!
“Ellie, does anything hurt?”
“No, nothing in particular……”
But after being treated like a patient over and over again, even I couldn’t help feeling that something was seriously wrong.
What on earth is this place……? Why am I here?
Where did I fall asleep last night?
“Um, did I have an accident? Is this a hospital?”
Even after looking around, the room didn’t resemble a hospital ward at all. And why was there a foreign doctor here?
The older man had been speaking like a doctor this whole time, but he wasn’t wearing a white coat. At first glance, I had assumed he was dressed in a suit, but even that wasn’t an ordinary suit.
He wore an old-fashioned gray suit with a gray checkered bow tie. A rounded bowler hat sat on his head, and a pair of small, round spectacles rested on the bridge of his nose. His graying sideburns had been trimmed into sharp angles and grown wide down to his jaw.
Is he a con artist……?
The older man’s touch had begun to make me uneasy, so I subtly pushed his hand away. At that moment, the young, handsome man grabbed my hand.
“Do you remember what happened last night?”
His voice was gentle, if a little hoarse. His eyes, a beautiful shade of green, were filled with concern for me.
There’s no way someone like this could be a con artist.
He was the kind of handsome man who could easily put even a complete stranger at ease.
His clothes also had a distinctly old-fashioned feel, but they suited him so well that it almost seemed unfair to compare him to the older man.
He wore a brown three-piece suit, and a delicate chain, presumably attached to a pocket watch, hung elegantly from one of the waistcoat buttons, curving gracefully all the way down to his pocket.
“……Ellie? Ellie! What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
While I had been staring at him in a daze, he had called my name repeatedly and shaken my shoulders.
Something was definitely wrong. It was only then that I realized my own clothes were just as strange as theirs.
The reason was simple: the hand of the worried young man was resting on my bare shoulder.
“……What the hell is this?”
I was wearing a deep purple silk dress that left my shoulders and upper chest completely exposed.
I hurriedly threw off the blanket, revealing a magnificent dress that flared out beneath a tightly cinched waist. It was carefully decorated with frills and puffed out into no fewer than three elaborate layers.
“Wow……”
Even covered in dust and torn in several places, it was the sort of dress I wouldn’t dare wear even to a Halloween party.
“Am I still dreaming? Or have I gone insane?”
“Oh, poor Ellie. You’re safe now. I’m right here beside you.”
The handsome young man sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed at me with such tenderness that he looked as though he were watching a kitten that had lost its mother.
I stopped midway through pulling at my cheek and asked him,
“Seriously, who are you?”
At my bewildered question, the young man’s expression turned from concern to outright shock.
“……Are you serious?”
He looked utterly at a loss. Then, as though I might suddenly sprout wings and fly away, he lunged forward and wrapped his arms tightly around me.
“You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking already. I swear I won’t get angry!”
I found myself in the arms of a man I had never met before, but his voice sounded so desperate that I couldn’t bring myself to push him away.
“She may be talking nonsense because of the shock of losing consciousness, but it should only be temporary. Yes, young ladies tend to recover quickly.”
Even though the older man spoke indifferently, as if there were no need to make such a fuss, the young man refused to loosen his arms around my neck.
“Mr. Cassel, there’s no need to lose hope just yet. It’s quite common for someone who has fainted after falling off a horse to experience temporary mental confusion upon regaining consciousness.”
Falling off a horse?
I remained quietly in the young man’s arms, thinking.
I could understand if I had been hit by a car, but I had never even ridden a horse in my entire life. How could I have fallen off one?
“I understand that you’re worried, but even in cases far more serious than this, a person’s mental faculties usually return to normal once the injuries have healed. I’ve personally seen dozens of such cases.”
“So you’re saying there have also been cases where they never recovered?”
“Ahem! What I’m saying is that it’s far too early to consider sending your fiancée to a mental institution. Mr. Cassel, above all, I suspect this might all be an act……”
What? A mental institution? His fiancée?
I had been listening in hopes of finding some clue that would explain what was going on, but a chill ran down my spine. I immediately shoved away the arms that were holding me.
“What on earth are you two talking about?”
But in response to my outburst, the young man merely took my hand with a worried expression and gently patted the back of it.
Even then, he treated me as though I were a mentally unstable patient. He stood up and turned back toward the older man.
“Hey, you!”
A sudden surge of anger rose inside me. Perhaps the growing anxiety was spilling over and expressing itself as anger before I even realized it.
“I’m asking you a question! Why is nobody answering me? Where exactly am I? And who are you people?”
“Sigh…… Miss Walton.”
The older man let out a deep sigh at being interrupted. Then he glanced at me and spoke solemnly, behaving as though he were exercising extraordinary patience with a hysterical woman.
“This is a salon. A place Miss Walton frequents almost every day. Isn’t this the room where you come to rest when you grow tired of playing cards downstairs? Do you truly not remember, or are you simply exaggerating to get Mr. Cassel’s attention?”
There was no longer any doubt that these people were mistaking me for someone else. I might have recognized the name Eleanor, but I had never heard the surname Walton in my life.
I was just about to argue when a strange image suddenly flashed through my mind.
A room thick with cigar smoke. People sitting around tables, enjoying games of cards. Crumpled banknotes and gold coins scattered among vintage-looking playing cards. Half-empty whiskey bottles and shot glasses filled to the brim.
And then…… me, checking the two aces in my hand before lifting a shot glass and tossing its contents down my throat in one gulp, trying to hide how excited I was.
“Ellie, stop it. You really don’t remember me?”
The young man turned back toward me, looking genuinely hurt. His perfectly sculpted eyebrows and the corners of his lips drooped, while the dimple in his chin became more pronounced as he clenched his jaw.
“Tell me my name. Hmm? Stop torturing me…… Even you wouldn’t be so cruel as to play a joke like this.”
“……”
“Honestly, the moment you get even the slightest opportunity, you can’t resist driving me crazy. Ellie, you have no idea. You have no idea how hard I’m trying to restrain myself right now.”
For a fleeting moment, I thought I saw a coldness in his eyes that had seemed so affectionate. But then he began whining again, taking my hand and dropping to one knee beside the bed.
The way he looked up at me made us seem like lovers who had been devoted to each other for a very long time.
“I know I’ve hurt your feelings. But you know that, don’t you? If you want me by your side, I’ll stay right here for as long as you wish. In the past, now, and always, I’m still your man, Ellie.”
To my even greater astonishment, those childish words stirred a strange warmth deep in my chest.
It felt as though my body were reacting independently of my own will.
“Let’s not do this here. Let’s go straight back to our cottage. You can take a nice, relaxing bath, get some proper sleep, and you’ll feel better afterward.”
“No, wait a minute……”
“Enough. I told you I’d do whatever you want, didn’t I?”
As I grabbed his arm, which he was using to pull me up, a name suddenly slipped from between my lips.
“Ben……”
How I managed to guess it was beyond me. And yet, my mind already knew his name, and I felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity with him.
He lifted his head in a flash, a tumult of emotions passing through his eyes.
“That’s right! Ellie, it’s me! Oh, I can’t believe you pretended to forget me! You wicked woman! How could I ever escape you?”
He lunged at me, and before I could stop him, he began kissing me passionately.
