Under the Oak Tree - Chapter 392 - 153

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

During one of our arguments, my younger brother taunted me, claiming that I only knew how to depend on guys to get me through MMOs. In a fit of anger, I was spurred on by his words and decided to defeat my brother without depending on anyone else. By some coincidence, a new game called “Second Life” was about to go on the market and thus I started from scratch as a player. What’s more, I was the first person ever to log onto the game. The beautiful GM told me that I could have one wish granted… Humph! I. Want. To. Become. A. Guy!Shit, I accidentally became too super-ultra-incredibly handsome, now there’s a beautiful GM with designs on my virtue, waaaaah…!… OH MY GOD! A girl wants to make me her trophy husband!Heavens, what a hottie… Wait, what? He’s actually GAY and he’s hitting on me?! Go to hell! When I’m a girl you’re not interested, so why the hell do you want me now? With an incredibly hilarious main character, incredibly bizarre companions, and an incredible journey of growing up and self-discovery, how will things pan out? Even God is playing a guessing game…

Life isn’t dramatic.

Takasugi Shinsaku once mentioned, “The mind to bring interest to an otherwise uninteresting world”, but if you’ll let me have my say, “An otherwise uninteresting world is also interesting”.

The world is just right with this level of boredom.

That is the conclusion to the results of my, Kagoshima Akira’s seventeen years of lived experience.

It’s not like anything’s ever going to happen.

I mean.

Witches from other worlds,

and cyber soldiers paying a visit from the future,

and psychics fighting under the instruction of research institutions

don’t exist, after all.

Alicia Rosalyn Von Heist is the youngest daughter of King Edward of Alvannia. She is an illegitimate child born from a maid in the castle her father has fancied. After her mother died when she was young her father took her home and ‘adopted’ her.