"I know...*hic* you won't believe me... I know..." 

Evren choked on his tears. He fell on his knees losing all the strength in his legs.

Seeing those heartwrenching silent cries of the smaller, Deimos's heart twisted painfully.

>>>He loves me...? What's this? I don't want to believe his words but seeing him like this...

>>>Is he telling me the truth? But how? Why? Evren's destiny is to fall in love with Farris no matter how toxic their relationship is... so why would he love me... just an extra in the novel?

Deimos crouched in front of the smaller and cupped his face, 

"Why... do you love me? From when?" He wanted to know the truth.

>>>If Evren is trying to trick me again I won't leave him this time...

Evren looked straight into Deimos's eyes still crying, 

"Five years..."

"What?" Deimos frowned.

"I have been in love with you for five years," 

Evren answered, biting his lower lips.

"Huh?" 

Deimos was dumbfounded.

"One day I had this very long dream in which an orphan boy who was already struggling with his life was being bullied by some students and I helped him, took him to the infirmary, treated his wounds and then he hugged me and cried a river. I was flustered by it but I still comforted him,"

Evren started.

Deimos's eyes widened hearing it.

>>>How does he know this? It happened in my past life. It was the first time I saw him, he saved me from the bullies... but how...?

"...after that, I never met the boy but he silently followed me. He was a little stalker but he didn't mean any harm. He just saw me with a twinkling smile on his lips from afar. He worked hard and even got into the same University as me and joined the same department. He took the same classes, study sessions, and assignment groups, and even entered as a cleaner in my boxing club."

Evren looked at the questioned face of Deimos and continued, 

"That boy followed me every day, everywhere waiting for me to notice him and smile at him for once. That was just how much he loved me. But I don't know anything about him.

"...And it was the last day of my University. The night before he baked some cookies in cute shapes, wrapped them in pretty covers, and decorated the heart-shaped box with a cute azure ribbon on top."

Now Deimos was damn sure that Evren was talking about him.

>>>But why did he dream of me? How...?

"He barely slept and hurried to the University at dawn and waited for my arrival for five hours. I was about to walk past him but he gently held my hand stopping me in my tracks. Then he... confessed. I don't why I am so anxious about it. I saw someone and became even more nervous, I pushed that boy heartlessly and ran after someone."

Evren held Deimos's hand tightly before continuing, 

"That boy...*hic*... sat there on the ground crying. After that, while he was aimlessly roaming on the road... he was..." 

He started crying and felt breathless.

"He was run over by a truck... he died... he... you died... the heart-shaped box you filled with love was crushed over by those truck's tires *hic* that purple ribbon was stained with your blood... there was a lot of blood around you... I... I am sorry *hic* I am sorry... I never meant for you to die... why didn't I accept your feelings? You loved me so much but I didn't even glance at you..."

Evren cried hysterically. 

Deimos also felt the pain he buried deep inside his heart hearing everything he went through from the smaller's mouth. He teared up along with him.

"When I woke up from that long dream...*hic*... I didn't know what to do. I thought it was a premonition of my future. You may think I have gone crazy but I felt like I should find you and then give back all the love you have longed from me..." 

Evren clutched his chest feeling the pain.

"I went to the same high school and searched for you. I didn't know your name but I thought I would find you. Days passed and I started thinking that it was just a dream but I saw you... again."

Evren's tears didn't stop as he continued to say,

"Remember your first national-level soccer game? I went to it with my sister and that was the first time I saw you. But you were not the same as that boy. You were happy, confident, and popular. I thought you were just someone who looked like the boy in my dream.

"...After the game was over everyone was trying to get an autograph from the players and my sister was also excited to get it from you," 

Evren paused as he fished out a hanky from his pocket and showed it.

Deimos seemed to remember something seeing the hanky as he took it in his hand. Evren continued,

"My sister, Eunha... she has bone cancer. She couldn't walk, so I offered to get the autograph from the players as there was too much crowd but she was stubborn. She said it has to be her and went to you in her wheelchair but people didn't give her space and she was about to fall-"

Evren was cut off, 

"When I caught her and scolded the crowd. Then gave her the autograph on her hanky." 

Deimos brushed the handkerchief lightly seeing the first autograph he signed and the words he wrote five years back.

The white hanky was filled with Deimos's signature and below were the words he had written to cheer up the girl,

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Wishing you a healthy and bright future ahead, Eunha.

P.S. Eunha's brother, please learn the rules of soccer soon, and don't bother your sister while she is watching the match. I hope you become my fan the next time we meet.

-Deimos Astaroth."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"I remember 'cause it was my first autograph. I was very happy to give it to her and see her smiling," 

Deimos stated as he looked at Evren now without any hatred or disgust.

Evren nodded.

"Seeing her smile like that brightly by you made me happier. After that day I started gathering information about you to confirm whether you were the same boy of my dreams. I got to know you used to live in the orphanage. I visited it and it was the same one that the boy used to live but the only things different are the boy didn't go through all the sufferings in his childhood."

Deimos listened carefully as Evren continued, 

"I... wanted to know more about you and in that process, I didn't know when but the more I learned about you the deeper I fell for you. When I heard that you joined our University, I was so happy that I could see you in person... closer. But when I saw you surrounded by so many, I thought I would never be able to..."

Evren looked down as he remembered how on the first day when Deimos came to the University he was on cloud nine and ran to meet him in person and make friends with him but he couldn't do it.

That day, Farris stopped him and locked him up in one of the classrooms after knowing that Evren had feelings for Deimos and threatened him not to meet with him if he still wanted to pay his sister's medical bills next month.

Evren promised Farris that he would never meet Deimos and cried that day in that classroom all alone till the evening.

After that, he stayed low and just saw Deimos from afar and never dared to approach him. 

But the day before the fresher's party his bullies cornered him at the staircase and were trying to rough him up.

Evren to get away from them begged them to leave him and that he would do anything. 

That was when those three bullies cooked up the vicious plan and said they would give a million won in return for confessing to Deimos and making a sex video with him.

That was when Deimos overheard them and left but Evren didn't agree to their plan. 

He never wanted to do anything that would harm the person he loved with his whole heart.

He thought he would somehow fool those three and warn Deimos about their plan and then escape but somehow those three found out about her sister who was hospitalized due to bone cancer.

She had already lost her legs and had to live in a wheelchair due to that damn disease. 

He had to work every day and night for her treatment but when Farris found out about her, he shifted her to the best hospital and started paying her bills.

At first, Evren didn't want to take Farris's money but seeing the improvement in his sister's health he couldn't let her shift back to the small hospital and let her live in pain.

That was how Evren became indebted to Farris and couldn't say or do anything against him even though he felt he was being throttled every day, he didn't complain and lived like that.

But those bullies taking advantage of his weakness blackmailed him, that they would kidnap and torture his sister if they didn't do as they asked. 

Yet after the incident with Farris, he totally forgot about the plan until Deimos approached him.

He reluctantly followed him into the room they had planned to ruin Deimos. 

He didn't want to do it but if anything happened to his sister because of him again he couldn't forgive himself, so he just submitted to his fate.

However, after hearing Deimos, that he knew of the plan from the beginning he was strangely relaxed and he wanted to take this chance to confess his bottled-up feelings and clear the misunderstandings that caused him to look at him with hatred which he couldn't handle.

Evren worded out everything about the situation he was in and how they blackmailed him using his sister and how he was forced to do it.

"I know it's hard to believe my words but it's the truth and my feelings for you are genuine. I am not lying... I love you... I love you so much, Deimos," 

Evren confessed again holding Deimos's hands desperately.

Seeing those honest swollen red eyes brimming with tears Deimos understood that he was wrong about Evren. 

He wasn't a despicable person who would take others' feelings for fun.

He realized that even though Evren was the main lead in the novel he had to go through so many painful things as it was the setting of his character's story just like all the other novels where female leads or the bottom leads or ukes of BL novels would have sad pasts to make the story interesting.

He was an extra but he suffered a great amount of pain just to fulfill his scene in the novel's plot. 

Then what about Evren? He was the protagonist and his life has been written, no matter what he does to go against that destiny he couldn't go beyond the storyline.

To achieve happiness at the end of the novel just in one line 'They lived happily ever after' Evren had to go through many tribulations all his life just to make the readers sympathize with his character.

Evren's sufferings were just read in some lines in the paragraph of a novel that has numerous pages.

He lost his parents and had to take care of his sister who has cancer. He had to work to the bone to pay for her medical bills. 

He had been bullied by Farris's ex-playmates. He was mentally tortured by the one he loved but still couldn't help but fall in love with him.

All these sentences were just sentences for readers but Evren had to go through all of those in reality. 

It was like he was a puppet played by the strings of the author having nowhere to escape and just hanging in there to those woven threads helplessly waiting for that last line of happiness and repeating that same ill fate again and again as the readers open the novel and start reading.

It was a vicious cycle and Evren was stuck in it unlike him who was just an Extra. 

Until now he thought only he was suffering but in front of what Evren went through it all seemed like a small hillock in front of Mt. Everest.

Deimos immediately hugged the smaller tightly as he cried, 

"I too love you... the boy you saw in that dream was me in my past life... you have found me, Evren."

Evren's eyelashes trembled as he heard him. 

He thought he had gone crazy for believing in a dream till now, searching for that person and falling in love with him without even knowing if that dream was true or not.

He hugged back Deimos and sobbed hard.

"You are telling me the truth, right? You are that... boy... you are the person who died because of me... I am sorry... I am sorry for being shameless enough to love you ...I am sorry."

"No, you are not shameless, Evren. I loved you then I love you now. I thought I had forgotten my feelings for you but I was wrong, I still love you," 

Deimos confessed as he broke the hug and wiped the smaller's tears.

"So that dream..." Evren also wiped off Deimos's tears.

"It was not just a dream. It was my past life as an extra in your story. I was given another chance by God and I changed my life. I thought I wouldn't get involved with you in this life but seeing how you got that dream, I suppose that God wanted to know my feelings for you and change our lives by going against the written destiny," 

Deimos answered cupping the smaller's face.

Evren smiled through tears, "I love you..."

"I too love you," Deimos replied.

"I love you..." 

Evren repeated feeling so many emotions burst in his heart.

"I love you more." 

Deimos also felt the same way, he felt like it was unreal.

He leaned and closed the gap between them as he claimed the plump lips of Evren with his soft ones.

It was a kiss... full of love and longing for each other.

The purest form of love that they couldn't get enough of... the night gone by with their unending confessions for each other.

Later all of them ended up meeting in the Wisteria Cafe,

Kyrell and Ziven closed the cafe and brought the drinks for Deimos, Evren, Nawel, and Farris.

Cyrus, the cheif of security guards of Deimos arrived there to inform his employer about the job of transferring the guardian rights of Eunha to him was successful and Evren was more than happy to hear it.

He hoped with the help of Deimos someday his sister would be free from that accursed disease and live happily.

Following, in everyone's presence Farris sincerely apologized to Evren for his toxic behavior, and Evren being the kind angel accepted it.

But Deimos was sour about it and glared at Farris for being such a bastard to his Evren but as Nawel talked out with him he became less hostile towards his favorite bro's boyfriend.

They all filled their glasses with beer and clanked them together with a loud cheer, 

"To the long-lasting love and happiness of ours!"

That day, they partied like there was no tomorrow breaking the tightly entwined plotline of the novel. Breaking? They completely destroyed it beyond repair.

But the author who was watching over the changes in the novel wasn't troubled but was happier than ever seeing the characters they created being the happiest.

Now the novel's last line wasn't 'Lived happily ever after'. 

It was kept empty as all the characters in the novel were now free to choose their own path and write their own stories to fill the blank pages.

They were no longer controlled by the author's words. 

There were no EXTRAS and no PROTAGONISTS in the novel anymore. 

They were individuals who had the freedom to live as the main characters of their lives.

─

•~❉᯽❉~•─