Chapter 2: AN UNEXPECTED REALIZATION

Chapter 2 - AN UNEXPECTED REALIZATIONThe little girl, yes, little girl looking back at her appeared no older than five years old. She had waist-long fluffy grey hair that was straight but curled at the edges.

Aristia had three words after admiring the hair. [Soft, silky, smooth].

It was nothing like her headache inducing hair which took a lot of time and effort to untangle and manage despite lots of hair treatments and products, hence, the reason she cut it short. But she couldn't deny that short hair also looked good on her. She looked good in whatever hairstyle.

[Ugh. Narcissistic tendencies.] She rolled her eyes at herself and went back to admiring the girl in the mirror.

She had round doe-like violet eyes and pink lips. Her skin was fair and smooth and obviously very healthy. Her chubby, rosy cheeks made one want to pinch them. She was wearing a light pink night gown. Overall, she was really cute and adorable.

Aristia twirled, smiled, frowned, and imitated different facial expressions and body movements only to see the image in the mirror moving along with her.

But...

"What's going on? This is definitely not my body. Lucid dreaming? Okay, why would I dream to be a child that looks like an anime character?" Aristia asked in annoyance.

[Though I can't deny that this room is luxurious. What kind of dream is this?] She thought, looking around.



"Or maybe I hit my head and had a concussion, so I'm hallucinating. Just to make sure..." she stopped. "Ouch!"

[If this is a dream or a hallucination, then I shouldn't feel pain... right? Then why am I feeling pain?] She asked no one in particular after pinching herself.


[Why am I here? I really couldn't have fallen, right? Wasn't I in my room?] She thought incredulously.

She couldn't understand why the more she looked into the mirror, the more she felt like she had met the girl before her, like she was familiar, like she knew her very well. But she couldn't recall where she had seen her.

She was sure that she had never seen someone with the unique features of the girl in the mirror. [I mean grey hair? Not unless it was dyed or a result of old age. And I won't even ask about the eyes. Contact lenses?] She thought for a while.

"Ah!" Aristia gasped as she finally grasped the reason the girl seemed familiar. But it didn't make sense to her at all.

The night before, she had just come home from her fashion company very tired. She had read a novel her mother had suspiciously desperately insisted she read, out of boredom till three in the morning since she couldn't fall asleep, but she unexpectedly fell asleep just after she read the last Chapter and complained about the novel's confusing and unrelated plotline.

Weird.

That wasn't the weird thing though. It was the fact that she had felt a strange sensation wash over her body and thought she saw a flash of light through her half-closed eyes before she fell asleep. She had brushed it off as her mind playing tricks on her which, according to her, it never did.

[Was that related to... Ugh! I can't remember what it is.]

She felt like she was forgetting something but she just shrugged it off since she couldn't remember what it was she was forgetting.

The girl's features were described clearly in the novel, so Aristia thought that when she saw the girl in the mirror who had the same features described, her brain connected it to the novel's description of the girl in the mirror, thus, the sense of familiarity.

[Well, that's the only logical, if I can even call it that, explanation I can think of regarding this.] She thought.

It was a novel she read half-heartedly. The novel was about a girl who had the same first name as her, Aristia Amberale, the daughter of a Duke, Grand Duke actually, and who was pampered a lot by her family.

The novel started when the main character was seven years old, mainly due to a major event.

[Dear Aristia just happens to be the female lead.] Aristia rolled her eyes.



It wasn't like she was against the female lead role or anything, it was just that this female lead was too... weak.

[Weak? Weak is an understatement. According to the description provided in the book about her, I got that she was too delicate and fragile, even more than porcelain dolls." She scoffed in disdain in front of the mirror but still kept on staring at the the beautiful face looking back at her.

She got the confirmation she needed regarding the girl's fragility by looking in the mirror at the eyes that turned watery when she blinked and the lips that turned red when she bit them.

"But even so, I can't deny the fact that she's so cute. This is a blessed face. 'A face blessed by the gods.'" She quoted and cupped her cheeks while blinking cutely. She squeezed the soft face and kneaded it like a dough. It was addicting.

[The novel was called "The Heroine's Success." Lame title, I know. Literally explains the whole plot, though the plot had nothing to offer.] She rolled her eyes at the thought of the title explaining the plot.

It was written in the perspective of Aristia, but in third person.

Aristia, as the heroine, was loved wherever she went by whomever she met.

[That was an overstatement just for the sake of proving how loved and pampered she was.] Aristia rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time that day at the thought that nobody could ever be loved by everyone.

[Loved by everyone? What a joke! You'd have fans and anti-fans or haters too. There's also those who felt nothing; the neutral.]

"That's just the way of the world, it never ends till the end, then you start again..." She hummed. "Even I had haters, but I don't care anyway, since they're not people I care about." She shrugged nonchalantly, even though she knew her cold, devil-may-care attitude was part of the reason she had haters.