Reborn With a Money-Making System: Ruined Actress to Nation's Treasure-Chapter 161: I Don’t Want To Open My Eyes

I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. Damn, I didn’t even remember clearly how I managed to get out of the restaurant and suddenly ended up at home.

Home? Is this really my house? But why did the bed feel different and smell different? Where were all of my plushies?

The only thing I had been able to reach was something hard—wait, what? Did I touch a dick?! Oh... no, I didn’t.

It turned out I was just clinging to someone’s arm. But who? Oh, right... I remembered now. It was my husband.

Husband? Oh... right, he was the one who picked me up from the grill bar and took me away before Kai could drag me off and do something I didn’t want to think about any further.

"Helcia, are you okay?"

I opened my eyes slightly when I heard Lando’s deep voice right beside me. For some reason, his deep voice made something inside me wake up, and my lower body felt uncomfortable.

Disgusting.

Why was I acting like a whore in front of my own husband? We hadn’t even kissed properly yet, and just earlier, I begged him to touch me.

"I’m... disgusting," I whispered softly. I buried half my face in the pillow and cried a little because everything felt frustrating.

If I remembered correctly, a doctor had injected me with something. I faintly remembered her saying I would be fine. But why didn’t I feel fine at all?

"No, you’re not." Lando lay down beside me and pulled me into his arms, hugging me so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe. "You’ll be okay when morning comes. I promise."

I took a deep breath and held onto his shirt like my life depended on it. Honestly... it really felt like it did.

If the one beside me had been Kai instead of Lando, I didn’t want to imagine what horrible thing would have happened.

He would certainly rip my clothes off, but Lando, on the other hand... instead of taking advantage of my condition, he wrapped my body in a blanket.

He didn’t even give me another kiss after that one kiss because he kept telling me I shouldn’t ask someone for a kiss when I was drunk.

I moved closer to him, as if I wanted to hide inside his arms. His embrace felt warm, so warm that it erased all the fear I had in my heart, and warm enough to make me feel safe.

"You can try to sleep," Lando whispered as he gently stroked the back of my head. "Just close your eyes. When you wake up again, everything will be okay."

Maybe it was because he spoke to me in such a soothing voice—or maybe because of the mild sedative—but I finally managed to close my eyes and drift off to sleep.

I thought I would have a bad dream, probably about Kai or something dark. But instead, my dream turned out to be the sweetest dream I had ever experienced.

In my dream, I walked with Lando hand in hand. We followed the side of a river where the water looked so clear and cool. Not far from us was a wide field of green grass that could make anyone feel happy just by looking at it.

We then sat down by the river, having a picnic together while eating sandwiches and drinking strawberry juice. Oh, there were also so many sweets that I could never eat in real life!

After that, we lay on the picnic blanket. Lando read me a fairytale while I rested my head on his arm like a pillow.

The dream felt so peaceful and sweet that I didn’t want to wake up.

I was afraid that... what if, when I opened my eyes, Lando wouldn’t be there? What if I ended up in a place I shouldn’t be?

What if yesterday my brain only created false memories, and my husband didn’t actually pick me up?

What if I had actually been kidnapped and was now locked inside a dark, cold basement?

I didn’t want to wake up.

I really didn’t want to wake up.

I was scared to wake up.

But the Lando in my dream looked at me with such gentle eyes and whispered softly, "You’re fine."

He added, "Nothing bad happened to you, so... you can open your eyes now."

I was scared to open my eyes, but since Lando was the one who said that, I decided to believe his words.

I felt my consciousness return, and faintly, I could hear the sound of an air conditioner in the room. Even so, I still kept my eyes shut until my forehead wrinkled in worry.

What if... the Lando in my dream lied to me?

But then, I suddenly felt a gentle hand stroking my forehead, smoothing out the lines forming there.

The touch was too soft for someone cruel, so that person surely wasn’t someone bad. But... was it really Lando?

I still didn’t dare to open my eyes.

"Helcia?"

I held my breath when I heard that familiar voice beside my ear. He sounded like Lando, but Kai’s voice was also a bit similar to him. What if he was just imitating his brother’s voice?

I didn’t want to open my eyes.

"Helcia... are you awake?" he asked again. "Did you have a nightmare?"

No, Kai would never be able to imitate something this gentle. He wouldn’t even know how.

Slowly, I gathered my courage to open my eyes, and the first thing I saw was my husband’s face. He looked a little tired, and there were dark circles under his eyes, probably because he didn’t get enough sleep.

"Oh, you’re awake." He slowly formed a sweet, relieved smile on his face. "Good morning, my wife. Do you feel uncomfortable? Do you need anything?"

I opened my lips, but then closed them again. I wanted to say something, but for some reason, all the words I wanted to say died in my throat.

In the end, all I could do was cry.

Tears flowed down my eyes like the river I saw in my dream. My soft sobs broke into loud, ugly cries.

They sounded so terrible that I didn’t even want to think about how I must look or sound.

Why did I have to cry so hard?

The person in front of me was my husband, so why was I crying?

Besides, it was actually rare for me to cry this loudly. Sure, I had cried a few times in front of my husband, but never like this.

Right now, I cried as if every tear I had held back since I was little came rushing out. It felt like something had broken the dam inside my heart, and I couldn’t control my tears anymore.

I needed to stop.

I really needed to stop.

Back in the orphanage, the caretakers always told me that no one liked a child who cried too much. They told me to stop crying or no one would ever want to adopt me.

Well, in the end, no one ever adopted me anyway, but it was probably because I wasn’t good enough, or maybe because I still cried sometimes.

So I needed to stop my crying now... before Lando wanted to abandon me too.

But for some reason, it felt like an impossible task. I couldn’t stop crying even when my throat began to feel dry, even when my eyes started burning and turning red.

I couldn’t stop even when my chest grew so tight that it became hard to breathe.

"It’s alright."

Instead of abandoning me, instead of telling me to stop crying, Lando reached out his arms and pulled me close, wrapping my whole body in his embrace.

His arms held me firmly, as if he was trying to protect me from every fear inside my heart.

The moment I felt his warmth, my cries grew even louder. It was embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it.

"It’s okay," he whispered near my ear. "You can cry. I’m right here."

His gentle voice only made my tears fall harder.

No one had ever held me so patiently and so warmly like this before, without telling me to stop or to be quiet.

My fingers clung to his shirt, gripping it tightly as if he would disappear if I let go.

"I’m not going anywhere," Lando said softly, as if he knew what I was thinking. His hand rubbed my back slowly, trying to calm me down. "You’re safe."

"Really?" I asked.

I knew it was a stupid question. something random that I never actually planned to say out loud. But after crying for so long, it was the only word that managed to escape my lips.

"Yes," he said without even a second of hesitation. "Really."

"You’re safe with me," he added softly. "No one will hurt you. I won’t let anything happen to you."

I wiped my tears on his shirt, not really caring whether it would leave marks or not. I slowly lifted my face and looked him straight in the eyes. "Lando... thank you."