The Strategy of Sleep
Geek asked once more in a trembling voice.
"What... what should we do now? From here on out?"
I pulled my laptop toward me. Then, I began to voice the thoughts I had been agonizing over all night, from yesterday evening until now.
"First, we need to organize everything that's happened so far."
At that, the others chimed in.
"Right."
"I think we need to clear things up, too," Minhye said.
Every eye in the room locked onto me.
In a way, this was a survival briefing.
"Everything starts with the scenarios I wrote. The first was based on the Pungwol Bridge urban legend. The second was yesterday's, based on the Jayuro Ghost legend."
I explained the details of each scenario once more, along with how I had resolved them. The common keyword was the 'contagion of sound,' and I detailed the opposing methods I had used to stop them. And finally, the crucial difference between the two incidents.
As soon as I finished speaking, Seyeon was the first to open her mouth. Any trace of curiosity or playfulness had long since vanished from her eyes.
"But... Minjun! There's something strange."
"Yeah? What is it?"
"With Pungwol Bridge, everything was resolved like a dream, and nothing happened in reality. In other words, it was all settled inside your dream. In the real world, there wasn't a single casualty, not even an injury. Like you said, only minor traces were left behind because you resolved it and restored the world to normal."
"Right."
Seyeon swallowed hard before continuing.
"But this Jayuro incident actually caused casualties in the real world. It manifested right here in the reality we stand on, and we all became aware of it. It was even all over the news. Why are the outcomes of these two scenarios so different?"
At Seyeon's sharp observation, Minhye and Geek nodded in agreement.
"Exactly. Why did reality get affected directly this time?" Minhye asked.
"Yeah. It's totally different from Pungwol Bridge," Geek added.
Their questions were the exact ones that had been spinning in my head all night, so I nodded.
"I've been agonizing over that all night, too. After turning it over in my mind again and again, I think I finally found the difference."
I took a brief breath before continuing.
"When I think about it, the first factor is the depth of my sleep. That's what changed."
I pointed at the laptop screen.
"First, think about Pungwol Bridge. I had just failed my pitching session, decided to take a leave of absence, and fell asleep in a state of utter exhaustion. It was a deep, natural sleep. I think that's why my consciousness was able to fully transition into that future time and space."
"Then what should we call that..."
"For now, I've decided to call it Full Synchronization. It's the easiest way to understand it."
I continued my explanation as gently as possible, as if giving a lecture.
"In a state of Full Synchronization, I experience the future where the disaster is set to occur ahead of time. Once I completely resolve the incident inside that dream, the moment I wake up, that horrific future is erased from existence. That's why only minor traces were left in reality."
Geek's chubby cheeks trembled as he spoke.
"Huh? Is it like a parallel universe or something?"
I remained silent, unable to give a definitive answer, but it was clear it was something along those lines.
The three of them exchanged glances at my explanation, and I kept going.
"But the Jayuro incident was definitely different."
"How so?"
I added in a low, raspy voice.
"I was awake. I even took sleeping pills to force myself to sleep, but it wasn't a deep rest. I was basically half-asleep, half-awake. I think the way this ability triggers changes depending on the depth of my sleep. Because I couldn't enter Full Synchronization in time, the curse didn't wait for me—it began to erode reality first. Let's call that Incomplete Synchronization."
"Ah, that makes sense."
I looked at Geek.
"Right? By the time I heard your story and grasped the situation, the disaster was already actively unfolding."
"So it had already started playing out in reality first!"
Silence fell over the room. Their faces looked as if all the puzzle pieces had finally clicked into place.
Geek was the first to react.
"Hyung! Then from now on, you absolutely have to get a good night's sleep! Full Synchronization! That's the best way! We'll set up the ultimate sleeping environment for you! Blackout curtains, white noise machines, how about that?"
I gave a bitter smile at Geek's earnest suggestion.
"It's not that simple."
"Huh? Why not?"
Geek looked puzzled, then pondered for a moment before slapping his forehead as if a better idea had just struck him.
"Wait, one more thing! If you just don't sleep at all, wouldn't that prevent the horror scenarios from ever becoming real?"
Minhye smacked Geek's arm, looking utterly exasperated.
"How is a human being supposed to go without sleep?!"
I let out a dry chuckle and spoke.
"Exactly. It's impossible not to sleep. And there's one more thing. If I fall into a deep sleep and trigger Full Synchronization, I enter the world of the scenario—the world of disaster—completely alone. That means I have to resolve everything by myself inside the dream."
"Whoa! Then you're basically the main character."
"If I went in with some overpowered cheat ability, sure, I'd be the protagonist. But I'm just a guy who happens to know the only way to break the curse. I'd have to convince you guys all over again inside the dream, convince the rest of the world... and what if I die first?"
"Then it's game over. The fixer is gone."
Seyeon sharply interjected.
"There's also the problem of not knowing which scenario will trigger. What if you just fall asleep blindly and a scenario too difficult to resolve comes up? In the worst-case scenario, like you said, you might die and never wake up from the dream. Then we all die, too."
"Not just us, but everyone in the world."
At Seyeon's and my words, everyone's faces stiffened. We couldn't just sleep blindly, nor could we stay awake forever.
That left only one answer.
"Which brings me to my point. From now on, we're a team, right?"
"Of course! Absolutely."
"Instead of blindly falling asleep, we prepare first, then I sleep. I want this to be our new strategy."
I turned the laptop around, showing everyone my scenario folder.
"This is the list of disasters heading our way. Our first mission is to analyze and prepare for all of them."
"How?"
"It's not that hard. I established the solutions and countermeasures in the scenarios a long time ago."
"Okay, let's start printing them out then, Sunbae."
From that moment on, we moved in perfect unison. Like a team that had been working together for years.
We cleared off one wall of Minhye's living room and began printing and taping up the list of over fifty scenarios. Like a briefing board at a criminal investigation headquarters, the wall was quickly covered in bizarre and horrifying titles.
"Seyeon, your role from now on is information analysis."
"Got it."
"Dig into the original urban legends behind each scenario, related incidents, academic papers—find any weaknesses. Before I enter a dream, I need to cram as much information into my head as possible so I can anticipate what kind of situation will unfold."
Seyeon nodded with a solemn expression. She was already using her laptop to access the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture and the National Assembly Library database.
"Geek, you're on tech support."
"Leave it to me, Hyung!"
"The settings I added when adapting these stories—the things I wrote down as 'solutions.' Specific sounds, lights, or specialized equipment to block the curses. We need to prepare and manufacture those in advance. Like I said, the keys to resolving them are already written into my scenarios."
Geek skimmed through a few of my scenarios, his eyes shining with admiration.
"Whoa, Hyung, how did you even come up with all this? You've got dozens of countermeasures mapped out for every single legend... these ideas are seriously incredible."
Even as he spoke, he was already running an audio synthesis program on his laptop, preparing to generate sounds of specific frequencies.
"And Minhye, you."
"Yes? What about me?"
"Field operations manager. And my guardian."
"Understood."
"Nothing too grand. Just keep an eye on me when I fall asleep."
I looked at Minhye with a serious expression. Minhye swallowed nervously, then clenched her fists.
"Don't worry. I won't let a single finger touch you, Sunbae."
With our roles assigned, I stared at the wall that had been transformed into a tactical board. In a way, those were dozens of different hells.
"We can't prepare for everything before I fall asleep again. Like Seyeon said, they'll trigger at random. What we need to do now is pick out the ones most likely to burst first, and the ones that are the most dangerous."
"Which ones are those?"
"The scenarios that have manifested so far were written relatively recently and had low star ratings. So, I'm thinking the next one to become reality will be the next lowest-rated scenario among my recent works."
I pointed to one of the papers.
"Doll's House?"
Seyeon murmured, reading the title.
"I think I've heard of this. Isn't it just that common ghost story about a spirit possessing an abandoned doll?"
I nodded.
"Yes. But my adaptation is a bit different."
I pointed out the core setting of the scenario.
"The curse doesn't feed on the doll itself, but on the guilt of the child who abandoned it. And that infected guilt spreads to other children through secondhand trading apps."
"Why do you think it's this scenario, Sunbae?" Minhye asked.
"Like I said, the rating is low. It's just the least appealing scenario. During the pitching session, the professors and seniors said my movies felt like child's play. Maybe that's why that bastard in my dreams who gifted me this curse—The Judge—is dragging out the stories I dismissed and deemed most trivial first, just to mock me."
Tension filled the room at my words. I spoke with determination.
"Let's get ready. Because once I fall asleep, we're going into this hellish doll's house."