"Eliot."
That's my given name, passed down from my beloved father. My dad had a weird name—a name I had never heard before in my entire life and he was the only person I ever met who bore that extraordinary name.
Together, we shared the surname Page, even stranger. It's a rare name, but when you think about it, it perfectly fits our lives. My father filled pages with love and effort, a writer. And I? I'm the one who picked up the written love and effort of those writers, a reader, I was a reader for life.
Sigh… I'm thinking way too much about the past. I should just leave it behind. After all, a person who no longer exists can't be a writer, not anymore. The only thing left are his old books, none of them finished. He always stopped writing halfway through.
After sorting my thoughts about my father, I flipped the page on my web novel that I was reading since my father went missing.
"Huh?"
["I sincerely thank you for reading my novel. But be aware that what was written shall now unfold. Before that, I have a token of gratitude for you. Go to the place where everything started."]
What kind of token of gratitude is this? And what does "be aware that what was written shall now unfold" even mean? What about "the place where everything started"? Too many confusing riddles swirling in my head. I swear, it feels like it's going to explode.
No, I need to focus. The most important thing right now is the token of gratitude. I don't need to wonder what it is just yet. I need to figure out where to get it. Maybe it's the place where I'll finally meet the author of this novel?
Solving a puzzle means knowing all the pieces. So, what do I have?
The author's name is AuthorPage1234. The book's title is "The One Who Will Conquer the Tower of Worlds", and the chapter count is massive. 2421 to be exact. Let's start with the name. If I can find out the real name behind it, maybe I can find out who wrote all this and that might just lead me down the right path to uncover everything.
Author... The word echoes in my mind. It reminds me of my dad's name. Dosen. It means "the one who writes". That's basically the same as "author." And the surname? Page. Wait, no way. Could it be? Is the puzzle telling me my father's real name? Dosen Page?
But what about the number? 1234 a sequence of whole numbers. Maybe it points to a place.
I repeated the number over and over in my head, hoping it would unlock the secret.
Then it clicked. Dad had a second apartment. He always used it for writing. Makes sense, right? His name connected to authorship and pages. But how do the numbers fit?
I grabbed my jacket and ran to the nearest bus station.
"Ah, for fuck's sake, I haven't run this fast in ages."
The bus arrived, and I jumped on, quickly paying for the ticket and taking a seat. Thirty minutes later, I was on the street.
I scanned the buildings, looking at every number I saw.
1, 3, 10...
Then I noticed the 12th building was a large apartment complex. My heart raced as I sprinted to it.
If 12 was the building, maybe 34 was the apartment number.
I ran up the stairs to the second floor. At the end of the hallway was a door with a small sign: "The One Who Writes."
I found it.
I was just glad to have found some trace of him. But nervous too, what if something happened inside? What if seeing him or what's left of him would hurt more than help? Would I be angry for all the years lost, or happy just to be near him? My life had been shit, and the only escape I'd ever known was through reading, fleeing into the pages of this very novel.
I shook my head, steeling myself.
"I'll find out when I step inside."