Chapter 79: The Question Louis Couldn't Ask

That night, Louis found Freya asleep at the dining table again. Her laptop remained open beside a half-finished chapter, and one hand rested near the notebook she used for private planning.

He approached quietly to close the computer.

The notebook shifted when he moved the charging cable.

A page became visible.

Louis had no intention of reading her private notes. Then one line caught his attention before he could look away.

"Original novel ending: Louis loses everything. Freya leaves. Ethan and Serena win."

He froze.

Below it were more headings.

"Events that changed after I arrived."

"Things the book never explained."

"Characters behaving differently from the original plot."

Louis didn't touch the notebook.

For several seconds, he simply stood there, trying to interpret what he had seen.

Freya moved in her sleep.

He immediately stepped back.

She woke a moment later and blinked at him. "What time is it?"

"Almost one."

Freya sat up and closed the notebook without noticing where it had fallen open.

"I fell asleep writing again."

"You should go to bed."

"Yes, Mom."

She gathered her things and walked toward her room.

Louis almost called her back.

The question was right there.

What novel?

What ending?

What did she mean by after I arrived?

But asking would require admitting he had seen something private. More importantly, he wasn't sure he wanted an answer given under pressure.

Freya paused at her door. "You're being weird."

"Am I?"

"Very."

She studied him suspiciously before disappearing into her room.

Louis remained in the living room.

For months, impossible explanations had been accumulating around Freya. Now he had seen words that seemed to confirm the impossible.

A novel.

An original ending.

Characters.

He remembered her joke at dinner: around chapter seventy-five.

Louis walked into his own room and sat without turning on the light.

If Freya believed their lives were a novel, there were several possible explanations. She could be using fictional terminology to organize real events. She could have suffered some psychological break after his bankruptcy. Or she could genuinely believe she had arrived from somewhere else.

None explained how she had changed overnight.

None explained the skills she suddenly possessed.

None explained why she occasionally looked at him as though she knew an ending he hadn't reached.

His phone vibrated with a notification from her writing platform.

Freya had apparently scheduled a chapter to publish automatically.

Louis opened it under the L account.

The chapter's heroine thought she understood the future because she knew how a story was supposed to end. Then her choices changed everything.

Louis read the final paragraph twice.

For the first time, he wasn't thinking about Freya's fictional heroine.

He was thinking about Freya herself.

And one question he couldn't yet bring himself to ask.

Who exactly was the woman sleeping in the room across from his?

Louis eventually placed his phone aside without commenting on the chapter. Across the hallway, Freya slept unaware that the secret she had guarded since awakening was no longer entirely secret. He still lacked an explanation, but he finally understood one thing: whatever had happened to Freya after his bankruptcy, she had been expecting his life to end very differently.

The next move would have to be careful. Too many people were now connected to the investigation, and a careless question could warn the person they were actually searching for. For the moment, patience remained their strongest advantage.