Talking in One's Sleep
Drowsy. Garnet stroked the soft blanket, enjoying its velvety texture.
"Just a little more sleep..."
- "Garnet-bby. Rise and shine. A miraculous day is waiting for you. Let's start it with a bang!"
"Hehehe..."
Dazed. The blanket was cozy. The bed was soft. It felt as if she were sinking endlessly beneath the mattress, falling into a bottomless swamp.
She blinked, wanting to savor this leisure for just a bit longer. The weight of her eyelids was the weight of sleep itself. It was not the weight of the thick blanket that dragged a person down, but the weight of those paper-thin eyelids...
"A glass of milk... I wanna drink some..."
Clang—
The sound of a bell cut through the silence of the palace. The princess, who had rung the bell herself, flinched in surprise at the sound, then stared blankly into the empty space where the chime had echoed.
Sunlight streamed through the ventilation window. The dust motes dancing lazily in the sunbeams felt like a mobile spinning over a crib. She felt like she could fall right back to sleep at any moment. The world was a place so utterly saturated with sleep.
"Your Imperial Highness."
"Milk..."
Lethargic. Every time she woke from a dream, anxiety gripped her. She lost all motivation, feeling as if this world too would soon dissolve into nothingness. The hypersomniac princess. Taking a sip of the milk the maid brought, she suddenly realized she had no appetite. In the end, she handed the unfinished cup back to the maid.
...If I'm just going to waste the day sleeping anyway, why am I even alive?
She fell asleep to escape the nightmare of anxiety. Then she felt anxious because she had wasted the day sleeping. This world was a dream within a dream, woven together in the simplest of designs. A lazy cycle of waking up from a dream only to fall asleep inside another.
Just yesterday, she had been brimming with motivation. Having spent the day fully awake and active, seeing herself trying to crawl back into sleep now made her feel so small and pathetic.
The princess pulled the blanket over her head. It was pitch black. People often said they felt warmth in the light, but it felt like a cowardly betrayal that the darkness beneath the blanket could be this cozy and warm.
- "Stop overthinking, Garnet-bby. Don't be so negative."
"..."
And yet, there was something that even the darkness could not hide. A dream. A hallucination. Something created by the God of Wisdom and Dreams. An unidentified 'inner self' was glowing faintly in the pitch-black darkness.
- "Just because you're struggling to get out of bed right now doesn't make you a worse person than you were yesterday. There's no reason or need to compare. This is just a brief pause to catch your breath so you can charge forward even harder, a moment to recharge yourself so you can go even further."
"..."
The princess did not answer. It was foolish to listen to the words of a mere fake. A dream was just a dream. Just like this world... just like this very moment... it had absolutely no meaning.
- "If getting out of bed is a difficult challenge, then you are a person with the courage to overcome that challenge. You can start slow. Slowly pull back the blanket, slowly stretch, slowly yawn, slowly lower your feet to the floor..."
"So stupid..."
In that moment, Garnet let out a soft chuckle. Dreams had no meaning. They were meaningless... but precisely because of that, they held meaning for 'oneself' alone. How ridiculous. Didn't it just prove how pathetic she was if merely getting out of bed was considered a grand challenge? Then again, for a dreamer, that probably was the greatest challenge of all.
"Haaah..."
Garnet slowly pulled down the blanket. She wanted to sleep for just ten more minutes... but the more she slept, the sleepier she would get anyway.
"Gonna go wash my face..."
- "Good job."
The princess slowly climbed down from the bed. Even though the weather wasn't particularly cold, the air felt chilly the moment she left the blanket, making her shiver.
"Brrr..."
Somehow, she felt like today was going to be a good day. Because her bed had been so cozy. She couldn't remember it well, but she thought she might have had a good dream. It was one of the world's absurdities that the higher the chance of having a good day, the harder it was to leave the bed. Well, that was just how dreams were. Good dreams always ended at the best part, while nightmares only grew more vivid the harder you struggled to wake up.
"Walking makes me feel nauseous..."
- "That's proof you're becoming a better person."
"It's probably just a lack of exercise..."
- "That's exactly what's important. Doing what you lack."
"Hehehe..."
Garnet looked at Gigachad with a silly, goofy smile. She still looked sleepy, but it was the relaxed drowsiness of someone who had just woken up. She didn't look like someone about to fall right back asleep.
"You're so funny, Dream-buddy..."
- "Good job."
The princess was incredibly lazy. It wasn't simply because she was always drowsy. This palace existed solely to serve her. If she wished, she didn't even have to lift a single spoon herself. Changing her clothes, bathing, tending the garden, making the bed—there were dozens of maids in this palace to do all of that for her.
The fact that she changed her own clothes and walked down the hallways herself was only possible because she had decided, I will do at least this much on my own. In that sense, the princess could actually be considered quite diligent. Even when she wasn't working to resolve occasional natural disasters, she was diligent enough. Because she had absolutely no need to be diligent, paradoxically, she became an incredibly diligent person.
"I'm hungry..."
"I will bring your meal, Your Highness."
"It's okay... I'll go to the dining room..."
"Understood."
And everyone in the palace knew this. Only the princess herself considered herself lazy. But in the end, what truly mattered wasn't what others thought, but what she thought of herself, wasn't it? The princess was a lazy person. At least, in her own mind, she was.
"Ugh... I don't want to walk... Should I just go back and tell them to bring it to me?..."
- "You idiot. If walking is hard, sit down and rest for a bit. Then stand back up and walk again. If it's still too hard to walk even after resting enough, then it's fine to go back to your room. That would mean you're exhausted, which means you've walked hard enough to get tired. But right now, you're just whining."
"Too many words... Summarize it..."
- "You fucking asshole!"
"Hehehe..."
Because of this, the princess took quite a liking to Gigachad. Gigachad was her dream. Therefore, she could pour her heart out to him with pure honesty, even about things that were difficult to tell others.
"My brother is so stupid... I don't know why he works so hard with a brain worse than a goldfish's..."
- "Sounds like a brother with the wild beast energy of a fucking lion, huh?"
"He's just a total nuisance..."
Slowly but surely, she was losing her heart to this hallucination called 'Gigachad.' Perhaps she had needed a friend to confide in. No, she definitely did. After all, what one needed to heal a sick mind was to properly express one's own feelings, wasn't it?
"I should sleep early today..."
- "Good night, my daughter."
The princess was suffering from a sickness of the mind. It was a mental illness that could easily find anyone, making it feel pathetic and burdensome to open up about to someone else. She feared it would be dismissed as the whining of a spoiled brat, and she feared she wouldn't be understood. But in a dream, it was fine. In a dream, it was okay. Because dreams were deeply personal and private. She could whine as much as she wanted.
"Sweet dreams, Dream-buddy..."
And so, the princess truly needed an imaginary friend.
The princess received another task. It was about a massive plague that had broken out in the granary region. It was laced with a curse, meaning that if left alone, all the crops would die within a few hours. The nature of the nightmare was disease and famine. A nightmare of stuffing one's face with food until the stomach twisted, then vomiting until the gut turned inside out.
The princess hurriedly pulled out her diary and a pen from the nightstand.
"Ugh, I definitely had a nasty dream. What was it again?"
- "Take a slow breath and try to recall it calmly. A dream is just a dream. There's no need to recall the emotions and get caught up in them."
"Right. I just need to remember it slowly..."
"And it was probably a nightmare about a plague, my daughter."
"Huh?"
- "Since I am your inner self, calmly try to—"
In that moment, the princess stared blankly at Gigachad. Like someone who had just heard something completely unexpected, her eyes widened and her mouth parted slightly as she looked at the muscular man.
"Dream-buddy. Who did you just say that to?"
- "Hmm? What do you mean—"
"Ah. Aha. I see...?"
In an instant, the princess smiled drowsily. Like someone still trapped inside a dream.
"I wasn't the one dreaming..."
The princess nodded as if she had realized something. Her voice grew fainter.
"It wasn't my dream..."
Exhaling a breathless gasp like a dreaming girl.
"I wasn't the one dreaming..."
The corners of her mouth curled up into a grin.
"It wasn't my dream...!"
Her eyes curved up playfully, her skin was white as snow, and her pale lips looked delicate. Her pupils were softly dilated, as if she were a Sleeping Beauty who had just opened her eyes.
"Excuse me... by any chance..."
The Garnet Princess, who supported this Empire.
"...Are you dreaming right now?"
She was as beautiful as a dream.
Only a madman would truly believe this world is a dream. Anyone with a sound mind can distinguish between dreams and reality. No, there isn't even a need to distinguish them. It is enough to simply focus on the present and live life to the fullest.
Mistaking a dream for reality and doubting reality as a dream are two completely different matters, aren't they? Unless one is mentally ill, they wouldn't live their life harboring such unpleasant doubts.
And yet.