Emilin's POV:

[Trust no one.] ​​

'...'

[Never believe.]

'Wha- what is happening?'

[No one will come.]

'Come? Come where? Where is this? Why is it so dark here? What are these voices?'

[No one will help.]

'Help who? Me? Why do I need help?'

[YOU HAVE TO BLOCK IT ALL OUT!]

'Block what out? What do I have to block out?'

'WHO ARE YOU?'

Questions came one after another, yet there seemed to be no answer. Never was there an answer to any of my questions. This darkness that seemed to only last a second, felt like the longest eternity. Before I knew it, I woke up, my eyes now wide open.

***

'Was it that dream again?'

'What was it about?'

"Is there something wrong Emi?" I turn my head to the side and see Theodore is there with a face full of worry. Then after scanning the room once over, I notice that there is no one else but him in the classroom anymore.

I take some time to reassure him that there was nothing wrong. But he didn't seem very convinced. There was nothing I could do about it either.

I would tell him if I knew...maybe I would tell him if I knew.

I've had multiple occasions where I would just wake up full of sweat and disorientated, I can tell that I most likely had a nightmare, but I just cannot force myself to remember what it was about.

Still, the answer was quite obvious. In this life, nothing would warrant such pressing nightmares and if the two years that I still remembered from my past life weren't the reason, then it had to be the 10 I had forgotten.

But why? What was so traumatizing that my own brain would rather me forget. So traumatizing that even after forgetting I would still have nightmares about it?

Even after years of pondering upon this problem, I still couldn't find an answer.

It was honestly best I stop thinking about it.

It was already the afternoon and I had slept through all my classes, as well as lunch, which was what I was honestly more worried about. I guess there were perks to not failing class, the teacher would let you sleep.

Theo took me to eat out after calling home to tell our parents that we weren't coming back. I agreed with his decision. It was about time that they had some alone time on their anniversary. Their anniversary was the same day as my birthday, so they were always trying to spend our time as a family.

We went out to eat at a rather casual restaurant that we were regulars at. Sometimes when we had work that we would rather our parents not worry about, we would tell them we had a school project and come here. They didn't really question it.

The atmosphere was always quiet, and despite the good food, the restaurant always seemed a little empty. There was a homey feel with the warmer colors of wood and vibrant green plants that were hung from the ceiling.

The waiter who was already familiar with us took us to our usual private room and left already knowing the order that we always asked for.

Though my birthday was a very special day to me, I still wouldn't put too much emphasis on one day. There were still emails I had to respond to and work I had to get done.

My computer was already out, and Theodore's didn't lag either.

Most of the 'spam' emails were ignored as I closed in on one contact who was labeled as "Xander". I couldn't bother reading all those other emails, if there was anything pressing Xander would end up informing me of it.

Before I opened his email, I uploaded one of the documents on my laptop to the website that was opened previously. And this time, I didn't forget to mute all my other notifications for the week.

This is what I call learning from my previous mistakes.

When I went to check my new messages from Xander to see nothing new I close my laptop and glance at big brother Theo, who then lifted his head from his screen to look back at me.

"Are you done?" I ask.

"Not yet, I want to build a few more firewalls just in case, I'm finishing up the 3ed sector of the 8th phase." He explained. Meanwhile, the food had already come in and so I picked up my utensils to eat.

The clams here were to die for, not literally because I still had to eat everything else that was ordered.

Never skip meals!

I can't believe I lost the opportunity to eat lunch, I had to make up for it during dinner.

After my first plate change, I see Theo join in as well. After finishing the meal, we decided to stay a while longer as there was no need to go home so early to disturb mom and dad's alone time.

"You uploaded another one?" I looked at my big brother Theo and nodded.

"It's good to keep a stronghold of the industry. I don't care too much about the medicine, but the leveraging power is quite good. I haven't taken out any of the big files yet, I'll leave it to when we are actually in trouble. Well ideally never, but that's unrealistic." Theo just nodded and didn't ask anything else.

"It seems I'm going to have a few visitors this week. I guess I'll have to push back the completion of phase 8 for next week." Theodore looked very excited about this development.

I could already see through his thought process. The appearance of other hackers that would be trying to break through his firewalls always made him ecstatic.

Every time they came, he could improve on the firewalls again and again.

There were always people looking into my identity, so it wasn't anything new.

Recently it didn't seem like many people were getting past the first firewall, which is when the alarm would be set off. Which was very suspicious.

"Don't get too complacent big brother. After so many years, I would be more surprised if they didn't start using other tactics. Have you ever questioned if they might not be sending these people who can barely break the first firewall to make you think you have already reached the top? You can't stop or they will take advantage of that." I had to lecture him a little as this involved our safety.

I see Theodore frown a little and waited until he nodded.

Suddenly the deafening sound of an alarm came out of Theodore's computer. If it weren't for the fact that we had asked the staff to not come into our private room after sending the food in, I'm sure the door would have long been knocked down.