Chapter 24: A Perfect Life

Darkness filled Zeldryn's entire consciousness. There was no light, no sound, and no pain. The darkness that had slowly swallowed his vision now surrounded him completely, leaving him with no sense of how much time had passed. It might have been a single second, a minute, or perhaps far longer.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the shrill sound of an alarm.

RING! RING! RING!

A hand emerged from beneath a blanket and blindly searched across the bed until it found a phone.

“So noisy...” a man grumbled sleepily as he grabbed it and shut off the alarm.

The room became quiet again. After lying there for several more seconds, the man slowly opened his eyes and found himself staring at a plain white ceiling. There were no carvings, wooden beams, or luxurious decorations above him, only the ordinary ceiling of a room he knew extremely well.

Reka Saputra blinked several times before raising both hands in front of his face. His skin was clean, with no bruises, wounds, bandages, or pain anywhere to be found. None of that struck him as strange. As far as Reka knew, there was no reason his hands should have been injured in the first place.

He lowered them, picked up his phone, and checked the time. His eyes immediately widened.

“Shit. I'm almost late.”

Reka hurriedly jumped out of bed. There was no Hera in his memories, no Zeldryn Giorry, no Giorry mansion, and no mana. Even the novel Life Really Is Happy, Right? didn't exist anywhere in his mind. All Reka knew was that he had to go to work today, just as he had yesterday and every day before that.

He grabbed a towel and walked into the bathroom, where he showered as quickly as possible. Once he was finished, he changed into his work clothes, gathered his belongings, and left for the office.

The day unfolded exactly as usual. Reka endured the commute, entered the building, sat at his desk, and turned on his computer before working through reports, checking data, and preparing several documents. He even ended up helping with minor technical problems that weren't supposed to be part of his main responsibilities. Nothing about the routine felt unusual. Everything was ordinary, familiar, and exactly as it was supposed to be.

When lunch break arrived, Reka left the office and walked toward one of the places where workers in the area often went to eat. He ordered some food, found a table, and sat alone while passing the time on his phone. A few minutes later, his meal arrived.

Reka had only taken a few bites when a woman's voice came from beside him.

“Excuse me.”

He raised his head and found a woman standing next to his table. She was extremely beautiful. Her hair was neatly arranged and her clothes were simple, yet she still attracted attention without seeming to make any effort.

Reka glanced behind himself, found no one there, then pointed at his own chest. “Me?”

“Yes,” the woman replied with a smile.

Reka put down his spoon. “What is it?”

The woman looked slightly embarrassed before finally asking, “Can I have your number?”

“Huh?”

She gave a small laugh. “Your phone number.”

Reka stared at her in disbelief. For a moment, he wondered whether she was doing some kind of challenge with her friends, but when he looked around, he couldn't find anyone who seemed to be watching them.

“Can I?” she asked again.

Reka finally snapped out of his confusion. “Sure.”

The answer came out almost too quickly. He gave her his phone number, and after saving it, the woman smiled once more.

“Thanks.”

She left shortly afterward, while Reka continued watching her back for several seconds before returning his attention to his food. The corners of his lips slowly rose. Perhaps today wasn't going to be as bad as usual after all.

That night, a message arrived on his phone. It was from her.

What began as a simple greeting gradually turned into a long conversation. They talked about work, food, movies, music, and countless smaller things that didn't really need to be discussed. Somehow, none of it felt boring. One hour became two, and before Reka realized it, the night had grown late while he was still staring at his phone with a smile. It had been a long time since talking to someone had felt this comfortable.

A week later, the woman invited him to watch a movie, and Reka accepted. They watched it together, ate afterward, walked around for a while, and spent the rest of the night exchanging messages again.

Three weeks after their first meeting, she asked Reka to meet her somewhere relatively quiet. She stood in front of him for a long moment before smiling.

“Reka, I like you. Let's spend the rest of our lives together.”

Reka didn't answer immediately. A memory of his previous relationship briefly surfaced in his mind. Someone had once genuinely loved him, and he had thrown that relationship away because of his own stupidity, for a reason that now seemed unbelievably foolish.

Since then, Reka had never really entered another relationship. Yet now there was someone standing directly in front of him who was beautiful, kind, easy to talk to, and clearly interested in him.

Reka smiled. “Let's do it.”

He accepted her feelings, and from that day onward, his life began changing.

One month later, the woman bought him a lottery ticket. Reka didn't think much of it at first, but when the winning numbers were announced, he discovered that he had won. The amount was large enough to change his entire life.

Reka used part of the money to buy a house. It wasn't particularly big, but for the first time, it belonged entirely to him. He no longer had to live in a cramped rented room or worry about rent every month.

Three months later, another thing he had wanted for a long time finally happened. Reka was transferred to the IT division, allowing him to do the work he had previously only been able to watch from a distance. It was difficult at first, but he learned quickly, worked seriously, and gradually improved his skills. As his ability grew, so did his salary.

Four months later, his position became even better. People at work began treating him with more respect, while coworkers who had barely acknowledged him before suddenly started approaching him. Some even tried to get on his good side. Reka noticed the change, and unlike before, he found himself enjoying it.

Five months later, the woman who had remained beside him took both of his hands in hers.

“Reka, let's get married.”

He looked at her face and found no reason to refuse. His life was going incredibly well, and the woman standing before him was one of the biggest reasons everything felt so perfect.

“Okay,” Reka replied with a smile.

They got married.

Two years later, their first child was born. Reka held the small baby carefully in both hands, almost afraid to move because of how fragile the tiny body felt. His wife smiled from the bed while he stared down at their child for a long time. For the first time in his life, Reka felt that he truly had a family of his own.

Time continued moving forward. Ten years became twenty, then thirty. Reka was no longer an ordinary employee. His career kept rising, his investments succeeded, and the amount of money he owned continued to grow. Their house became larger while his children grew up and gradually found their own paths in life. Some found jobs, others built businesses, and eventually some married and started families of their own.

Reka watched all of it happen.

By the time he reached seventy-three years old, his hair had almost completely turned white and his body no longer possessed the strength of his youth. Even so, his life remained peaceful. The woman who had accompanied him since he was young was still beside him, and although wrinkles now covered both of their faces, she continued to hold his hand.

Their children had become successful adults, their grandchildren visited often, and money had long since stopped being a problem. Their home was almost always full of people. It was an easy and comfortable life, one filled with nearly everything Reka had ever wanted. By any reasonable measure, it was a happy life.

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Wasn't it?

Another ten years passed. At the age of eighty-three, Reka's body had become extremely weak, and he lay in bed while taking shallow breaths. His wife sat beside him, while his children and grandchildren gathered throughout the room.

Reka looked at each of them in turn. He felt no regret, loneliness, or sense of failure. He had obtained almost everything he had ever wanted.

With a faint smile on his face, Reka slowly closed his eyes. His final breath left his body, and everything became dark once again.

...

RING! RING! RING!

A hand emerged from beneath a blanket and searched for a phone.

“So noisy...”

Reka shut off the alarm before slowly opening his eyes. The same white ceiling greeted him, and when he climbed out of bed, his body was young again. His hands had no wrinkles, wounds, or signs of illness.

He found nothing strange about any of it.

Reka didn't remember ever being married, having children, or living until the age of eighty-three. As far as he knew, he simply had to go to work today.

What Reka didn't realize was that this wasn't the second time his life had begun this way. It wasn't the third or even the fifth. He had already repeated the same life again and again, following the same morning into the same meeting with the same woman, followed by the same lottery, career, marriage, children, old age, and eventual death. Each time his life ended, the alarm returned and brought him back to the same morning without any memory of what had happened before.

Without realizing it, Reka had already lived through that life forty times.

Nothing changed. Nothing deviated from the path already laid out for him. Whenever one life ended, every memory of it disappeared before the next began exactly the same way.

The forty-first loop came and went, followed by the forty-second and forty-third. Then came the fiftieth, the sixtieth, and several more after that. Through every repetition, Reka remained completely unaware of what was happening.

Eventually, the sixty-fifth loop began.

That day started exactly like all the others. Reka woke up, took a shower, went to work, finished his tasks, and left during lunch break. He sat at the same table and ordered almost the same food as before. The woman should have approached him a few moments later.

This time, however, something changed.

While waiting for his food, Reka opened a web novel platform on his phone and began scrolling through the homepage without looking for anything in particular. Several titles passed by until one of them made his finger stop.

The Life I Refuse to Waste.

“Hm?”

Reka opened the novel's page. Its rating was average, neither terrible nor particularly impressive, but the number of chapters immediately made him raise an eyebrow. The novel was already completed and had more than ten thousand chapters.

“That's ridiculously long,” Reka muttered while taking another spoonful of food.

He read the description and discovered that the story followed a young man who transmigrated into a novel. The premise didn't sound especially unusual, and according to several reviews, the pacing was extremely slow. Some readers loved it while others hated it. Several complained that the story spent far too much time explaining minor details, while others praised how alive the world felt, mentioning that its characters were introduced gradually, its locations were properly explored, and even ordinary daily life received considerable attention.

“Looks pretty normal,” Reka muttered as he continued scrolling.

Farther down, several comments began discussing the ending. Some readers had shamelessly posted spoilers, and one particular comment immediately caught Reka's attention.

According to it, the protagonist eventually ended up with more than ten women.

“More than ten?” Reka frowned. “That's insane. Way too many.”

He almost laughed, but his curiosity remained. Ten thousand chapters wasn't a small number. If the story had managed to survive that long and actually reach an ending, there had to be something that kept its readers interested.

Reka pressed Chapter 1 and waited for the page to load.

Before he could read even a single sentence, a familiar voice came from beside him.

“Excuse me.”

Reka raised his head and found the woman already standing beside his table.

From that point onward, everything returned to the same path. He gave her his phone number, they spent their nights talking, they went on dates, and eventually she confessed. The lottery followed, then the house, his career, their marriage, their children, their wealth, and finally their old age.

Reka died once again.

RING! RING! RING!

The next loop began.

During the sixty-sixth loop, The Life I Refuse to Waste never appeared. Reka lived his life exactly as usual, and the same was true for the loops that followed. The sixty-seventh and sixty-eighth passed without incident, followed by the seventieth, eightieth, and eventually the hundredth.

Everything had returned to normal.

Then came the one hundred and twenty-ninth loop.

Reka was once again sitting in the same place during lunch break, waiting for the woman who had not yet arrived. For some reason, he opened the same web novel platform he had visited dozens of loops earlier and began scrolling through its homepage.

A title appeared on the screen.

Life Really Is Happy, Right?

Reka stared at it. Something about the title caught his attention even though he couldn't understand why. It sounded slightly strange, yet his finger still moved toward it.

The novel's page opened. Reka glanced at the chapter count and found another ridiculous number before reading the short description. His finger then moved toward Chapter 1.

Before he could press it, his stomach suddenly cramped.

“Fuck... now?” Reka complained quietly.

He quickly left money for his meal, stood up with his phone still in hand, and hurried toward the restaurant's restroom. A short while later, he was sitting inside one of the stalls.

“That was close,” Reka said with a relieved sigh.

With nothing else to do, he looked at his phone again. The page for Life Really Is Happy, Right? was still open, so he pressed Chapter 1 once more.

The page began to change.

Before the first line could appear, a woman's voice came from directly in front of him.

“Excuse me.”

Reka froze.

'What?'

He slowly raised his head and found the woman standing inside the bathroom stall.

She was the same woman who was supposed to approach him at his table and ask for his phone number. Yet instead of waiting outside as she always had, she was standing directly in front of him inside the cramped stall, smiling with exactly the same expression as though there were nothing strange about the situation.

“Can I have your number?” the woman asked.

Reka stared at her with wide eyes for several seconds while his mind struggled to process what he was seeing.

“WHAT?! What the hell is this?! Who are you?!”

He instinctively reached out to push her away. His hand struck toward her chest, but instead of meeting flesh, his arm passed straight through her body without any resistance.

Reka immediately stopped moving.

His hand was now behind the woman's body, yet there was no blood, wound, or physical resistance of any kind. It was as though she had no real body at all.

Reka hurriedly pulled his arm back and stared at his palm. “What...?”

His gaze returned to the woman as his breathing began to become uneven.

“What is happening?”

She continued smiling without answering his question.

“Reka, I like you,” the woman said.

Reka's confusion only deepened.

“Let's spend the rest of our lives together.”

Something suddenly connected inside his mind.

Click.

Reka's eyes widened.

He had heard those words before.

“No...” he whispered as one hand rose toward his head.

An image appeared in his mind. He saw the same woman standing somewhere else, telling him that she liked him. The memory shifted, revealing their marriage, a house, and children.

Reka gasped and gripped the side of his head.

“I've...”

Another memory surfaced. The same woman appeared again, speaking the same words before leading him toward the same marriage and the same children. Then another life emerged behind it, followed by another.

Reka shook his head violently. “No.”

The memories continued piling on top of one another. He saw the woman's face repeated through countless moments, the same house, the same children, the same years of old age, and the same death waiting at the end.

Then he remembered the alarm.

RING! RING! RING!

Reka's eyes opened even wider as cold sweat began covering his forehead.

“What the hell...?”

He stared at the woman in fear while holding his head tightly.

“I've experienced this before. Not once, not three times, not five times...” His breathing grew rougher as more memories surfaced. “How many times has this happened?”

He didn't know. It might have been dozens of times, perhaps even more.

What frightened him even more was that he had no idea why he was only remembering it now.

Reka stared down at both of his hands. “This is like... False Awakening?”

His voice trembled as he spoke the term. It felt similar to suddenly realizing that he was dreaming, except this was nothing like an ordinary dream that lasted for a single night. Reka had lived entire lives spanning decades. He had gotten married, raised children, grown old, and died repeatedly, only for everything to be erased before he was forced to begin again.

Even after recovering those memories, however, enormous gaps remained. Reka didn't remember Hera, the Giorry mansion, or Zeldryn. He didn't remember losing his job, nor did he remember previously reading Life Really Is Happy, Right? outside of what had happened inside the loop.

The only memories that had returned were those belonging to the repeated lives.

That alone was enough to nearly overwhelm his mind.

Reka looked at the woman again. “This has happened over and over again?”

She gave no answer.

“What is happening?!” Reka shouted.

The woman continued smiling.

“Answer me!”

Nothing changed in her expression, but something behind her did.

The bathroom wall slowly began to darken.

Reka fell silent as he watched the white surface disappear. It wasn't simply changing color. The wall itself seemed to be erased as darkness swallowed it piece by piece.

The same darkness spread across the floor, climbed onto the ceiling, and consumed the walls surrounding Reka. The restroom vanished around him, along with every sound from outside. He could no longer hear people eating, vehicles passing, or anything else beyond the stall.

Only darkness remained.

Reka hurriedly stood up, no longer caring about his pants or the absurdity of where he had been sitting. His attention was entirely fixed on the woman in front of him as her body began to change.

The color drained from her skin while her clothing dissolved into the darkness surrounding them. Her hair turned pitch-black, and within seconds, the normal human figure that had been standing there disappeared completely.

What remained still possessed a humanoid form with two arms and two legs, and the shape of its body still resembled a woman. Yet its entire figure now seemed to be composed of the same darkness that surrounded them.

Its face no longer possessed human features. There was no nose, no mouth, and no visible skin. The only features that remained were a pair of sharp blue eyes staring directly at Reka.

He instinctively stepped backward. “Are you...?”

The question died before he could finish it.

The shadow tilted her head slightly, and the woman's familiar voice returned. This time, however, it seemed to come from every direction at once.

“Isn't this a beautiful life?”

Reka remained motionless.

The shadow slowly raised one hand and opened her palm toward him.

“Isn't this the life you wanted?”

Reka stared at her extended hand while fragments of his recovered memories surfaced once more. He saw the house, the money, the job he had always wanted, a beautiful and loyal wife, his children and grandchildren, and decades without failure, loneliness, or regret.

It had been everything he could have asked for.

A perfect life.

The shadow extended her hand a little farther, her sharp blue eyes never leaving Reka.

“Come back with me, my beloved Reka,” she said softly. “We'll be together forever inside the life you've always dreamed of.”