067. Dream (1)
067. Dream (1)
When I opened my eyes, I was in a classroom.
It was a classroom.
But I only realized that fact a little later.
It couldn't be helped.
The moment I opened my eyes, there was something filling my entire field of vision.
Rinne.
Rinne was slumped over her desk.
But she hadn't buried her face all the way. She was staring blankly at me, her face resting on her thin forearm.
She stared at me for a moment. Then her pretty crimson eyes curved into a bright smile.
"Han Si-hu awake?"
She asked, her tone strangely off-kilter.
That was when I snapped to attention.
"Are you supposed to call your commander by name, Rinne?"
More importantly, I needed to get back quickly.
I grabbed Rinne's hand and pulled her along as I said it.
That moment.
"What are you talking about? Commander? And who's Rinne?"
Rinne said something absurd.
I was dumbfounded and shot back.
"Who do you think. You and me."
"...I'm Yeonhwa, though?"
Huh?
I looked back at the girl whose hand I was holding.
But nothing changed. Rinne was still Rinne.
...No, I mean, I do know that Yeonhwa and Rinne are the same person.
But the body is different. The body.
In Yeonhwa's case, she was a delicate and sickly-looking black-haired beauty.
Rinne, on the other hand, used Kaguya Heavy Industries' Kurenai model as her body. In other words, she was a lively-looking beauty with red hair and crimson eyes.
In that sense, the girl in front of me was unmistakably Rinne from a physical standpoint.
And yet, that Rinne looked at me with suspicion and asked.
"Who's Rinne, for real? You're not confusing me with some other girl, right? That wouldn't be okay."
"...No, that's not it."
The two of them are the same person, I'm telling you.
More precisely, I suppose Rinne was the improved version of Yeonhwa.
Yeonhwa was bitten by a Legion and suffered phase erosion. There was no way for her to recover as she was, so her brain was transferred into a biodroid to survive.
That biodroid's common name is Rinne.
Yeonhwa, having become Rinne like that, lived as a military-affiliated writing biodroid who also worked as a light novel author, and was assigned to some base.
And as it happened, I was assigned as the commander of that base—
"What a stupid kind of dream you had."
Rinne cut me off dismissively while I rambled through the explanation.
I was dumbfounded.
"It was a dream? All of that?"
"I'm telling you it was."
Rinne answered immediately, then added.
It could only be a dream.
Because commanders were no longer needed.
The war that had once seemed endless was already over.
Before either of us had even been born.
"What? Then the Legions..."
"They disappeared, so the war ended, obviously."
Of course, it wasn't just the Legions that disappeared.
With the extinction of the Legions, biodroids, which used Legion remains as raw materials, could no longer be produced either.
As a result, there were no biodroids left in this world.
Only humans like Yeonhwa and me remained.
That, apparently, was how this world was set up.
'I almost got swept up in it.'
Get a grip.
What Rinne had just called a dream was absolutely not a dream. It was reality.
Rather, the world I was in—the world Rinne believed was reality—was the dream.
Rinne's dream.
More precisely, it was an illusory fabrication Eve was showing the sleeping Rinne after taking control of her.
That was the essence of this world.
Seen that way, I had plenty to be confused about.
Why had this girl's mental state regressed to her time as Yeonhwa?
And why did this world seem so ordinary?
Knowing Rinne and her light-novel obsession, I'd expected her to be enjoying some otherworld fantasy where she mowed down enemies amid nonstop crises.
But this world seemed like an extremely peaceful and boring slice-of-life setting.
In other words, it didn't seem particularly appealing.
I couldn't figure out what part of this world had Rinne so enthralled.
'This is troublesome.'
Even if I were to snap Rinne out of it by saying, 'Wake up! This isn't reality! You're being brainwashed by Eve!' like earlier, that wouldn't be the end of it.
To pull Rinne out of this world, I had to make her genuinely want to leave.
And to make her want that, I first had to convince her that life outside was better than life here.
Which meant I needed to identify what part of this world fulfilled Rinne's secret wish.
Only by figuring that out could I argue things like, 'I can make that happen for you outside!' or 'There are things far more precious than that in the outside world!'
Therefore, trying to persuade Rinne out of the blue at this point was a foolish move.
First... I needed to scout things out and investigate.
What Rinne was doing here. What exactly was going on in this situation.
Of course, I didn't have to figure everything out by thinking it through alone.
Since Rinne seemed friendly toward me in this world as well.
I could just ask the person in question, and I actually did just that.
"Hey, where are we and what are we doing right now?"
At that, Rinne answered with a hint of growing concern.
"What do you mean, where and what? We were waiting in the classroom until the entrance ceremony starts."
"Entrance ceremony?"
"Yeah. High school entrance ceremony. Today's our entrance ceremony day."
Rinne said that as if it were obvious.
But it didn't end there. Rinne's lips quivered as if she had more to say.
But she couldn't open her mouth right away. There were other students around us, and Rinne seemed to be mindful of them.
So Rinne brought her face close to my ear.
Then she leaned in and whispered something utterly outrageous in a soft, breathy voice.
"And one more thing... it's our first day as a couple."
"...What did you say?"
"Huh? You're not thinking of saying yesterday's confession was a lie, are you?"
"No, I mean, confession, what are you..."
I was bewildered for a moment.
"Oh."
And then, how should I put it...
I started remembering.
The things that had happened to me in this fake world.
In other words, the backstory assigned to Han Si-hu in this world.
So, here's the thing.
In this world, I, Han Si-hu, was not raised by Sion.
After all, it was a world without biodroids. Sion, who would have raised me, didn't exist.
However, since there were no Legions either, I didn't become a war orphan in the first place.
I was raised normally by my biological parents.
One day, I headed to the outskirts of Metropolis to run an errand for my parents.
Along the way, I ended up entering an abandoned mansion known as the Ghost House, where I met a girl who couldn't go outside because of her legs.
That girl was the one right in front of me. Hong Yeonhwa.
Just as it happened in reality, Yeonhwa and I quickly became close.
And just like in reality, we became a couple and went on dates (though I didn't properly understand the meaning at the time).
The difference was that, unlike the real Yeonhwa, who had suffered phase erosion, this Yeonhwa was paralyzed from the waist down.
Lower-body paralysis was treatable with surgery both in reality and in this world.
In that situation, this Yeonhwa had been postponing the surgery, genuinely worried about the prognosis.
But our dates finally gave Yeonhwa the courage to undergo the surgery.
Not only that, but we also made a promise to reunite.
—They said I can be discharged about a month after the surgery. So, let's meet here again exactly one month from now.
Yeonhwa and I locked pinkies and promised.
We promised, however.
Regrettably, I was unable to keep that precious promise.
By some twist of fate, my parents were transferred overseas the very next day, forcing our entire family to move abroad.
Without even being able to properly inform Yeonhwa.
...Of course, I tried several times to explain what had happened.
But I couldn't. Because we had never exchanged contact information separately.
I had no way to explain the situation or postpone, much less cancel, our promise.
In the end, I continued my life abroad carrying the guilt of having unintentionally betrayed Yeonhwa.
Then, it was roughly 7 years later when I returned to Korea.
When my parents were assigned back to Korea, I enrolled in an ordinary high school in Metropolis.
Then, at the pre-enrollment assembly in the school's main auditorium, something astonishing happened.
—Hey, you, by any chance...
—Huh? You, don't tell me...?
Yeonhwa was standing right next to me.
I was stunned at first. She had changed so much from the Yeonhwa I remembered.
It wasn't just that she had gotten taller, or that she was already pretty but had gotten even prettier.
Of course, she had changed beyond recognition in those aspects too, but the more important thing was something else.
Unlike her childhood spent living in a wheelchair, Yeonhwa was walking on her own two legs.
Of course, the surgery had succeeded.
At first, I had no idea how to face Yeonhwa.
Because I had betrayed her.
I'd broken our promise to meet and only reappeared years later.
I thought I had no right to act familiar and talk about childhood memories. If anything, I should have bowed my head and apologized immediately, but—
—I'm sorry.
For some reason, Yeonhwa apologized to me.
An apology for reasons I couldn't understand.
Yeonhwa explained the circumstances to me while I stood there bewildered.
It turned out she also hadn't been able to come to the mansion that day we were supposed to meet again.
The surgery itself had gone well, but rehabilitation took so long that she couldn't leave the hospital for quite some time.
In the end, she too hadn't been able to return to the mansion on the day of the promised reunion, and had felt guilty for breaking the promise.
In short.
—So we'd both thought we were the one at fault?
—Ah, I suppose that's how it was...
It was absurd.
It was absurd, but that was enough.
Because the misunderstanding was resolved in the end.
The misunderstanding was gone, and we'd reunited at the same school.
No, it wasn't just that it was the same school.
We were in the same grade too.
It was because Yeonhwa was two years older than me, but her enrollment had been delayed during the rehabilitation process.
On top of that, by sheer coincidence, we were both in Class 1 of the first year.
In short, we who had tragically parted ways in childhood met again as classmates.
And so.
Our reunion at the pre-enrollment assembly quickly brought us close again, as if we'd reclaimed our childhood friendship.
We caught each other up on the years we'd spent apart.
And we spent as much time as we could doing all the outdoor things we'd never been able to do together as children.
Then, eventually, we tried to pick up a plot thread we'd never properly resolved.
—You know, Han Si-hu.
—Huh?
—Are we still dating?
—...Huh?
So here's the thing.
On the day we'd last seen each other, we'd agreed to date without even understanding what dating really meant.
In that state, we parted without a proper conclusion.
In other words, we parted without parting.
So, depending on how you looked at it, hadn't we technically been dating throughout all those years apart?
Yeonhwa argued, absurdly enough.
—No, I didn't think of it that way.
—...So you dated a foreign girl during that time?
Well.
I had gotten pretty close with a few girls.
But I didn't date them. We just got along well.
That answer looked liable to get me butchered on the spot, so I simply said I hadn't dated anyone.
At that, Yeonhwa's face brightened up.
—Me too. Even when there were guys who liked me, I turned them all down.
That's what she said.
That because she was dating me, she had only thought of me.
I was dumbfounded.
We'd lived apart for nearly seven or eight years, yet she'd apparently stayed faithful to me all that time.
It wasn't even like we had seriously decided to date, just because of a promise shared between clueless kids.
Because of me.
The moment I realized that fact, a sense of responsibility kicked in.
I felt I had to take responsibility—as a man and as the person who was, at least nominally, her boyfriend.
Strictly speaking, she was the one who brought up dating first, but anyway.
...To be honest, I also thought I couldn't let this opportunity slip away.
Yeonhwa had always been pretty, like something out of a painting.
That Yeonhwa had grown up before I knew it into the kind of gorgeous older girl you'd only see in a dream.
And that beauty said she had feelings for me.
What reason was there to hesitate any further?
I manned up and said it.
—Then let's officially start dating from now on.
That was as far as things went yesterday.
No, to be precise.
That was as far as things were supposed to have happened yesterday.
Meaning, it's not real. It's nothing more than fake memories and a false narrative fabricated by Rinne for Eve.
I wasn't going to be deceived by it.
I wasn't going to be enchanted by it.
...That was me, however.
Rinne, completely forgetting reality and absorbed in this world, believed she had continued living as Yeonhwa without ever having become Rinne.
Therefore, naturally, she also believed that yesterday she received a burning love confession from me—
"Si-hu."
"Huh?"
"...I wike you."
Without a hint of shame, she was expressing her affection for me.
"What about Si-hu? What does Si-hu think about me?"
"No, well, that..."
"Wh-whisper it in my ear. The others might hear."
"...I-I like you too."
"N-nghhhh..."
For now, I played along with the atmosphere.
Even as I played along, I was utterly dumbfounded.
'This kind of thing is Rinne's dream?'
Not receiving a Nobel Prize in Literature as a light novel author.
Not defeating Legions as a soldier and protecting human lives.
Not even crossing over to another world, slaying a dragon, and saving a kingdom.
Being all lovey-dovey with me in the same classroom was her dream?
Eve dissected and analyzed her brain to find the scenario most likely to give her the biggest dopamine hit, and it was just a school romance?
Well, I mean, she did talk as if she had quite the romantic fantasy about high school life.
She had a deep interest in romance, and I guess she liked me (regardless of the time we dated as Yeonhwa) well enough.
Aren't you embarrassed, Rinne?
How are you planning to handle the aftermath?
No, seriously.
'How am I supposed to talk her out of this?'
Suppose I slapped her across the face to snap her out of it.
Would Rinne meekly admit she'd been indulging in such a pathetic delusion and agree to follow me out?
Considering her foul personality, wouldn't she be embarrassed and try to escape further?
Or just kick me out saying, 'Get out of my delusion!'
Whatever I did, I couldn't approach this casually.
More than that, this wasn't the right environment to grab Rinne and persuade her. There were too many students and teachers around; if we started arguing, things would definitely get tangled up.
I needed a chance for the two of us to talk calmly in private.
But at an ordinary high school—especially on the tightly controlled first day—there was hardly any chance for a boy and girl to slip away alone.
Was there no way?
I didn't have to think for long.
"Si-hu."
"Huh?"
"After the entrance ceremony, come over to my place."
Maybe it was because she was supposed to be my girlfriend. As if she'd read my mind, Rinne handed me an opportunity.
That was all well and good, but—
Was it okay to follow this girl?
If I followed her home after school, there would certainly be many opportunities for just the two of us to talk intimately.
The problem was, I had a strong feeling it wouldn't end with just talking.
"Go there and do what?"
At my question, Rinne's face turned bright red.
Then she twisted bashfully in place and said:
"Just... I want to stay with you..."
Hmm.
Hmmmmm...
I thought about it for a moment.
And before long, I readily agreed.
"Alright. Let's go together after it's over."