Chapter 2: The fine line separating dreams and reality

The rough shaking of the car knocked my head against the pane of the car window startling me awake. I groaned loudly as I felt a searing pain flood through the healing wound on my chest.

"Does it still hurt?" a soft female voice asked from the driver's seat directly Infront of me.

I looked through the driving mirror and stared at the reflection of my aunt as her emerald green eyes met my silver ones. She was a pretty young lady in her early twenties with crimson hair pulled into a stylish bun on top of her head. Her front bangs were pulled up and covered by her gold-rimmed diamond studded Giorgio Armani sunglasses with a black tint.

Her eyes were laced thick with worry which honestly warmed my heart at that moment eliciting a re-assuring smile from me.

"You don't have to worry much, Aunt Felicia. A wound like this will heal in no time."

I saw her nod before she turned her eyes back on the road focusing on following the lead cars and armored vehicles leading the Family convoy. Seeing as to how a rough bump on the road had woken me up, she now took great care in navigating the bumpy road in her Rolls-Royce Milano Fenice Ghost Diva which I was currently riding in.

My sisters and cousins had refused to be shuttled on the way to the desolate town where we would spend the remainder of our lives. Instead of being bored out of their minds riding in the backseat with me, they had opted to ride their personal special edition luxury cars to our destination and honestly speaking, I would have done the same if I wasn't as badly injured as I currently am.

I Leaned my head back onto the windscreen and pulled my black hood down over my eyes so that I could block out the light of the glaring sun.

I then plugged my EarPods into my ears and switched on the music in order to drown out the deafening roar of the rotors of the twelve attack helicopters circling around the convoy of luxury cars, moving trucks, military personnel trucks, armored combat vehicles and tanks.

The entire third branch of the Hassaikai Ducal Household had decided to permanently move out of the Imperial Capital following the massacre which had occurred a few days ago nd were heading back to the isolated town we had originally moved from.

My memories were faint regarding the reason why we had moved out of Lake water town back then when I was in the second semester of my first year in middle school and whenever I tried to think hard and remember about it, I would immediately fall unconscious from the harrowing pain in my head that accompanied any efforts to pry open any memories of the past. No matter how much I tried to ask my parents and sisters about it, they remained tight lipped prompting me to eventually give up after months of hopelessly trying.

I had long since given up on trying to remember and were it not for the incident that occurred in the capital, I would never have come back here. Its funny how life has a way of bringing me back to where I started after it had raised me up to startling heights before violently flinging me down to the ground.

I winced in pain as the wound on my chest started throbbing again when I recalled the dream I was having right before the shaking of the car startled me awake.

The reason why these dreams… or should I say memories of my time spent with 'her' were now resurfacing remained elusive to me and I was completely unaware of why I continued to fail to remember or to discern what her face actually looked like.

It had all started on the day when I roused back to consciousness finding myself far way from the street where I had fallen after I was gruesomely injured in a fight that I eventually won. I instead found myself tucked in my bed in the Hassaikai Family manor back in the imperial capital with my whole family and relatives watching over me and surrounding me.

When I tried to inquire about the fate of those who supported me and Helen during the incident when they tried to usurp my throne in Apex, I was instead met with confused faces and worried sympathetic eyes as they asked me who Helen was.

I was shocked to my core and utterly dumbfounded by their reactions and when I frantically inquired further, I ended up reaching the conclusion that there never was anyone called Helen and that I had been running the entire Apex underworld organization alone.

They thought me to be delusional and confused due to the trauma induced by the events which had happened prior, and so they heavily sedated me and left me knocked out in a deep sedated slumber which eventually saw me waking up three days later.

When I woke up, I wasn't stupid enough the bring up the topic again and for a brief while, I even started to doubt and question myself as to whether my family were right about the fact that I was being delusional imagining an imaginary person who had never been there in the first place due to the high levels of stress and trauma the incident had subjected me to, but no. The dreams I had were far too vivid and far too real to be something I merely pulled out of my ass.

With normal dreams, waking up would make the particular details become fuzzy and uncertain however, with these dreams, the details were etched so deep in my memory that I could not forget them even if I wanted to. It was almost as if I was fondly re-living something which I already had.

Fearing that I would cause much more undue trouble and worry for my family in regards to my mental health, I decided to lock everything up in my heart and live on with all my doubts hidden away beneath a false smile.

When I followed the aftermath and saw the miserable state Apex was in, I decided to finally leave everything behind and disband it for good. Although all those who rose up and took arms in defiance of my rule were brutally slaughtered serving as a deterrent to others with opportunistic thoughts, the incident had all but warned me that cracks can also form where you least expected them to form. 

The traitorous executives of Apex whom I had to personally put down were never dissatisfied or inconvenienced in any way by my rule, they simply wanted to have everything I that I had and wished to be in my position of power and authority. Trust is a fragile thing so easily broken at the slightest conflict of interests and I had come to learn of that fact the hard way.

I sighed as I reopened my eyes.

It is all in the past now. Its is now time to close the book on that dark chapter of my life and embark on this journey towards a new life and a new beginning.