Welcome to the Garden of Psyche
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Q: "I can't find the light. Where is the sun?"
A: "Don't even mention that word."
Q: "Where is the light?"
A: "Beyond the shadow."
Q: "How long must I wait?"
A: "Not long now."
Q: "Why are the leaves wilting, turning black and dry?"
A: "Salt water is fatal. Do not sing that song."
Q: "The garden feels empty. Can I plant anything else?"
A: "Only one thing can be cultivated at present. Raise it to full growth, and I will let you plant whatever you like."
Q: "The tree ran away. What should I do?"
A: "Bring it back. Prune it. Comfort it well."
Q: "I'm lost. Where should I go?"
A: "Do you have somewhere to be? Why?"
Q: "I'm lost. How do I go back?"
A: " will ask you a question. Answer it correctly."
Q: "What is the black shadow that keeps following me?"
A: "Shadows are black by nature, and they follow objects. Or—do you perhaps see something every time you turn a corner?"
Q: "How do I enter Sector 42?"
A: "That is an incorrect approach."
Q: "How can I be operated?"
A: "It is for your own good."
Q: "Is there a way to make it grow faster?"
A: "If you're lucky, you may find fertilizer somewhere."
Q: "I can't wait to meet it."
A: "Neither can I."
Q: "Who is ?"
A: "It is a what."
A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:A:"It is the Unbroken.""It is the Unstron?g""It is the Ulti?mate""It is the Nam?el?ess""It is the Colorles.s""It is the Bloodles?s""It is the Countles?s"".It is the Selfless""It is the Shado?wl?ess""It is the Untitl.ed""What is it?""It is the Infinite."
A¿: "֍"
Q¡: "֎"
Q:
A: The Gardener.
Q:
A: Welcome to the Garden of Psyche.
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"This is……."
Hwang Juyeon was the first to speak once she'd read the FAQ through to the end.
"It looks pretty ominous, doesn't it……."
"Still, where else are you going to get this much of a heads-up in advance? By any standard, this counts as genuinely considerate."
There's a reason they hand you information beforehand. Just like there's a reason an open-book exam is called open-book.
"Or maybe they tell you precisely because knowing won't help you solve it?"
True enough.
But I…….
"A labyrinth never poses a problem that truly cannot be solved. It only poses problems that are difficult to solve."
If I know the answer, I can solve it. Again.
Over and over. Until I'm sick of it.
"It'll work out somehow. We cleared Happyland, didn't we?"
Only then did Hwang Juyeon nod.
Yu Hyeonjae rested a hand briefly on my shoulder in encouragement before letting it fall, and Lee Nahyeon, looking a little tense, clenched both fists and fired off cheer after cheer.
"Well, then……."
The instant I pressed it—
ARE YOU AWAKE
My consciousness split in two. The way two branches reach out from a single trunk.
The black screen opened in a slow circle at its center, like a pair of closed eyes easing open.
No—not the screen. I was the one opening my eyes.
A new world lay before me.
It was a strange sensation, like being inside a lucid dream—and the fact of it registered with vivid, unnerving clarity.
And yet, at the same time…….
I exist. In this garden.
I am the Gardener. Of this garden.
＊ YOU AWAKE
Script scrolled onto the pixelated screen. Words surfaced across the crisply rendered landscape.
Two of us, moving as one.
Meshing together in perfect harmony.
"Doesn't the character look a bit like you, Mr. Seon? The hairstyle and all. The clothes are totally different, but……."
"Mr. Seon Yuhan, you're all right with this, right?"
The voices of my companions drifted in from right beside me.
From beyond, a voice reached me faintly, as if from far away.
"I'm fine."
<YOU> I AM FINE
And at the very same moment, the other me stood motionless in a colorless void, nothing moving but his eyes.
A ceiling soaring so high its end was invisible.
The longer I gazed up into that endless darkness, the dizzier I felt—as if I were plummeting into a bottomless abyss rather than looking up at one. Ascension and falling share the same kinetic energy.
Beneath my bare feet, a floor of pale, ash-white marble.
A cold, hard sensation traveled up through my soles. Even meaningless contact draws its reaction.
Directly ahead, a jet-black vat.
A liquid black as ink filled the enormous vessel. Water splits into regret and hatred.
"What's that big black square thing? A shadow?"
Hwang Juyeon pointed at the black vat on the screen.
Through my other pair of eyes, I could see a faintly trembling black liquid inside the towering vessel.
"It's a vat."
<YOU> THIS IS A VESSEL
"How do you know that?"
"Does it look somehow different to you, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
"It feels like I'm in there too."
<YOU> I FEEL PRESENT HERE
"That sounds dangerous. If anything feels off, do not ignore it."
My real-world self nodded.
"There's something like a door down there!"
Lee Nahyeon pointed at the lower wall inside the square screen.
In the middle of the flat, straight-lined wall, a faint golden line glimmered.
LEFT ✛ RIGHT
＊ YOU TURNED BACK
It was a deeply strange feeling.
As long as I held down the 'BACK' button, the figure walked straight toward the door.
I was steering myself.
And there was one more oddity—trivial by comparison, but odd all the same.
Tap, tap.
Step by step, the figure made for the door.
Torches hanging on either side of the doorway served as the only light.
Tap.
When the figure reached the door, I lifted my finger off 'BACK' and pressed the round interaction button on the right side of the panel.
＊ YOU OPENED THE DOOR
Creeeak.
The faded golden door swung open with agonizing slowness.
"Whoa—don't tell me they want us to farm in a place like this?"
"Is this, what, some post-apocalyptic kind of setting?"
A broad open ground spread out before us.
A ruin, parched beyond words and desolate to its core.
The floor, once apparently paved in white marble, had shattered into pitiful wreckage, dark soil showing through the cracks, chunks of stone like broken gravestones jutting up here and there.
This seemed to be the front yard.
If the place I had just exited counted as the house.
＊ YOU CALL IT HOME
A deep violet sky—not blue, cloudless, empty of sun, moon, and stars alike.
Beneath that sky stretched the ruined front yard.
And ringing it all around, a wall rising high as the concrete face of a building, enclosing the house like a fence.
A barrier of a kind.
So in this prison of a wasteland, I was expected to till the soil, search for water, hunt for light, and grow a plant.
Click, ka-chik, ka-chik.
First, to get a precise read on the yard's dimensions, I hammered away at the directional buttons, poking around in every direction.
"Wow, this place is pretty big."
And then, before long, I stopped dead.
"Huh? What's wrong?"
＊ YOU TURNED RIGHT
＊ YOU TURNED BACK
＊ YOU TURNED LEFT
＊ YOU TURNED FORWARD
"I'm going to throw up."
<YOU> I FEEL SICK
This was no way for a human being to move.
"Ah. Right, that would be a problem……."
So I resolved to move with extreme caution from then on.
Straight lines only, wherever possible. Turning as rarely as I could. Always by the shortest route.
"Is that a well?"
Yu Hyeonjae pointed at a black circle ringed in gray.
＊ YOU TURNED RIGHT
Up close, it was indeed a well.
Not built from rough, uneven stones, but carved smooth—each stone's surface shaped by hand into a sleek, seamless ring.
There was no pulley, no rope, nothing of the sort to be seen.
Perhaps I would have to go find some.
But was there even any water in it?
Click.
The moment I pressed the round interaction button to peer down into the well—
"Huh?"
The pixelated character hopped straight into the well.
Which is to say, entirely without my consent.
"Shi—"
My legs had moved on their own.
<YOU> SHI
I was falling.
Down into a well without a single drop of water.
＊ THE WELL IS EMPTY
How very helpful of it to tell me now.
"If turning back time were truly possible, Mr. Seon Yuhan, what would you do?"
The sound of every bone in my body splintering and punching through my skin echoed at the edge of my hearing—then faded away like an auditory hallucination.
Honestly, farming was never supposed to be this hard.