If I Become a Nightmare, Kill Me
In the interest of defending my own honor, let me say this up front: I had not come here with any sinister intentions. It was simply that Jihee's mother had died. Not that I was celebrating—far from it, it was a genuinely tragic thing—but a parent is a parent. I merely felt Jihee deserved to know the full truth of what had happened. There were keepsakes to hand over, too.
I'd never had any intention of sparing her life, granted, but even so, one does not pilfer a dead woman's mementos. They'd have been useless in my hands anyway. A+ rank material at best—hardly worth coveting. I'd only taken the thing in the first place because it struck me as something Jihee might find a use for.
Honestly, I could have tossed it out and no one could say a word. The moment it left my hands, ownership was hers. Well—it did feel like a bit of a waste. On the other hand, anything that kicks a monster's expectations out from under them leaves a certain sweetness on the tongue. Besides, I had no idea what the thing was even for. I'd never once heard of a succubus transmitting her power through a mana orb.
If anything, this wasn't a succubus's work at all—
Perhaps it was because I'd been chewing on that thought. When Jihee, still peering down at the orb in her hands, let a remark slip, it hit me like a spark flung straight into my eyes.
"So... if someone used this, could they become a nightmare?"
What the hell?!
"Gah! That startled me. ...Ah. Sorry."
But I couldn't help it. What Jihee had just blurted wasn't wrong, you see.
There were, broadly speaking, two ways for the so-called demons of the Christian tradition—the Children of Cain—to multiply their kind. One was the ordinary route of bearing children; the second was to elevate, or infect, others into demons. Vampires were the textbook case. No doubt the Queen of Nightmares had arranged the same for Jihee. Bestow mana upon her, and make her a nightmare. Half nightmare already, and her own direct bloodline at that—it wouldn't even be difficult.
Except.
"Why so sudden? You make it sound like something to look forward to..."
"Huh? Look forward to?"
"No—wait. You're asking because of your mother's expectations, aren't you."
There was no law saying she had to become one. That was the point—not everyone who came into contact with a nightmare's mana turned into a nightmare. A tangle of conditions had to interlock: the will of the demon bestowing the mana, the will of the one receiving it, and so on. Nearly identical to the conditions Tiamat had once laid out for her blessings. Then again, both hailed from the Middle East, so perhaps that much was only natural.
Failing that, the thing was nothing more than a lump of mana. Closer, if anything, to the miracle elixirs of martial arts fiction. Of course, if Jihee—half human, half nightmare—were the one to use it...
"Well, you said it yourself, didn't you? That if that situation ever came, I'd stand a good chance of turning into a nightmare just like that."
I had, hadn't I.
"Actually, there was one thing I never told you back then."
"And what would that be?"
"I... hate nightmares."
With that, Ryu Jihee broke into a soft smile. It was the same radiant smile as the first time she'd come up to that rooftop—one that bloomed like a flower.
"To be precise, what I hate is the fact that I'm a nightmare hybrid."
Hmm.
The reason, of course, I could guess. There was what I'd heard from Nam Sangwon, for one. And after the South Sea incident, exactly one person in this world could still claim to like nightmares. That one person had truly become a monster—and had died by my hand.
"So at first, I thought this: no matter what, there was no way I'd ever become a nightmare."
"'At first,' huh. And now?"
"Honestly? I don't know."
She hated nightmares. On that, nothing had changed. And yet.
"You're sick of it all by now, aren't you."
"Oh my. Right on the mark. How could you tell?"
Because someone had goaded you into feeling that way from the very beginning. Instead of saying it, I held my silence.
...Choi Seungjun's response had been swift, and more than that, effective. The swarm of tabloid articles picking apart Jihee's origins had been forced to shut their doors within a single day.
But. The truth had undeniably come out in a form its owner never wanted, exposing what she had never wished exposed. And regrettably, pulling the articles did not erase the wounds Jihee had taken. A press that flung malicious stories at her without a second's thought. People who burned her private anguish as idle gossip. Either way, it was enough to turn anyone's stomach. And that, surely, was precisely what the Queen of Nightmares had been aiming at.
As I said, there are many ways to turn a human into a nightmare. But most of them require the consent of the person concerned. So the queen had borrowed that organization's reach to stage a situation like this one. So that Jihee might turn toward the nightmare's side. And in the same breath, so that she would cast off every last attachment to human society. In that sense, you could call it a painstakingly crafted scheme. And even now, that scheme was still doing its work.
"You could make a weapon out of this, couldn't you?"
"...Well, you could. Though if you wanted to play to its actual properties, a charm against hallucinations would be the more practical route."
"I see. Then what would happen if it were used another way?"
"Another way."
"Oh, you know. Like, say, swallowing it whole like one of those elixirs?"
It wasn't impossible. As I said, that thing was, at bottom, a simple mass of mana. You might even call it a kind of mana crystal. Compatibility would decide the particulars, but swallowed, a body might absorb some portion of that power.
And if so. What if Jihee, daughter of a nightmare, used that thing like an elixir? What if she gulped it down raw to swell her own strength? What would happen then? I couldn't say for certain, but the compatibility could hardly be bad. She was the direct blood of the very nightmare who'd supplied that power.
Of course, she wouldn't grasp queen-class power in a single swallow. No one becomes the finest under heaven on cultivated energy alone. Even so, Jihee's own skill already sat around B-rank. If she could overcome the instincts and habits peculiar to her hybrid blood, she'd hold her own against any B-rank. From there, what if she gained mana on that scale—and the control to wield it? At the very least, she could reach queen-class.
The problem was that the compatibility wasn't merely good. It was good past the point of reason. The will of a queen bestowing her mana. The mana of a direct-line nightmare. And layered on top, Jihee's own wavering heart. In a word: there was a real chance Jihee would make herself a nightmare of her own accord. Judged on the conditions alone, it wasn't impossible. A rough estimate? Call it fifty percent. It might happen. It might not. About that.
"Eyy, you're glaring at me too hard, Teacher~"
"It'd ease my mind a little if you told me you were joking."
"Well, I'm not joking!"
"Then I can't afford to joke either, can I. I mean—nightmare or whatever, what you're describing is becoming a monster, no? And it's you we're talking about, Jihee."
"Oh my. How heart-fluttering."
Whatever else was true, I could hardly stand by while my own student auditioned for monsterhood. Not with the odds of her turning nightmare sitting at roughly even. As I'd said before, I found it hard to believe that a Jihee reborn as a nightmare could keep a human heart. Which is to say: nightmare Jihee would, nine times out of ten, end up preying on people.
I delivered it as flatly as I could. 'Don't use it,' or 'surely there's some other way to use it'—questions like those were hers and hers alone to settle. Bluntly put, it was entirely her own business. I had no reason to intrude and no right to meddle.
I was, of course, Jihee's homeroom teacher. Privately, I thought of her as my student. But. Seventeen years lived as a half-blood born into this age is not a story a man learns from skimming a student file or two. If she needed advice, I could give it. If she needed someone to wrestle through it with, I could put my head against hers. If she needed an ear, I would lend one. But. No one gets to pass judgment on another person's life armed with nothing but a homeroom teacher's name tag. Besides, I knew precious little about Jihee to begin with.
Of course, all of that held only so long as Jihee didn't become a nightmare. If she became a monster and reached to stain her hands with other people's blood—well, then putting her down would be the only answer. Past that line, it stops being a teacher's duty and becomes a hunter's.
"Geez, honestly, Teacher. You're terrifying, for real~"
So Jihee said it like a joke, hunching her shoulders in mock fright. And yet, right to the very end, she never once called it a joke. Kill you. Put you down. She couldn't possibly have failed to grasp that. Jihee was a nightmare's daughter. A child of a race that feeds on emotion could not miss the intent coiled in those words.
Which made it all the harder to understand her. Her behavior itself, broadly, I could follow. She needed power, it seemed.
Power, was it?
"Yes! I want power. Power enough to bring the world to ruin...!!"
A somewhat classical exchange. The kind of thing I've caught myself thinking under the blazing summer sun. Besides, it was that kind of era. The power of a queen-class nightmare. Having it certainly wouldn't hurt. Up to there, I understood.
So why on earth did she call me out here?
That was exactly the problem. A single day had passed since the incident wrapped. Even with every article about her origins struck down, Jihee had played hooky yet again. She wasn't so foolish as to believe that vanishing now wouldn't bring me to her door. Or perhaps she'd simply been feeling sentimental.
The real issue was the attitude Jihee had taken once she had that orb in hand. If she'd been hiding a heart that precarious, why call me out now, of all times? This wasn't one of the others. This was Jihee. She knew the rumors about me from my active days; there was no way she hadn't anticipated I'd come out swinging like this. Even if I hadn't handed over the queen's power, it would have been the same. I'd told her only yesterday that she'd likely plunge straight into nightmarehood—did she really think I'd start nodding along now?
"I know you hate monsters, Teacher."
Therefore. When Jihee abruptly opened her mouth with something that sounded utterly beside the point, I could more or less guess where she was going.
"Comparing me to them would be embarrassing, wouldn't it?"
"Well, I've never limited myself to a single species. I'm a specialist."
"Seriously, what is wrong with you..."
A light snort. And past that little scoff, as though tacking on an afterthought, Jihee whispered.
"Teacher."
"Yeah?"
...So, that was the shape of it.
Ryu Jihee. This young lady still hated nightmares. No—'loathed' might be the more precise word. Whether you'd call it trauma from the parent who abandoned her, or something else entirely, I couldn't say. Honestly, I believe the queen's offer would have withered on the vine even if we'd left it alone. There had never been any room for her to waver in the first place.
Which is why the queen had made her own moves. An appeal to the bonds of kin. An emotional gambit played as the Queen of Nightmares. And sabotage, to keep Jihee from ever putting down roots in society. She was only seventeen. Malice far too hideous for a seventeen-year-old girl to carry—and doubly so when it came from a parent. Choi Seungjun and I had thrown everything we had at smothering the flames, and she was still swaying.
Except. If the queen had overlooked one thing, it was Jihee's own loathing of nightmares. Call it a bonehead's blunder? Or no—going by the queen's manner, she may never even have known Jihee hated her to begin with. That unfounded confidence, swearing up and down that all she needed was to arrange a meeting with the girl. Perhaps the whole point of shaking Jihee had simply been to sand away her revulsion at becoming a monster. By deleting every option except the conclusion: become a monster.
So she was just a beast after all. Then again, it's not the sort of thing I should say in front of Jihee—for nightmares, abandoning their young is practically standard practice. More than anything, there was what happened at the South Sea branch. What happens when the nightmare race cradles malice in its breast? Anyone with ordinary sensibilities couldn't have failed to notice. Well. The queen herself had since made her exit. And thanks to that, Jihee no longer said she wanted to become a nightmare.
However. If you asked whether the wavering had fully settled—no. It hadn't. ...She was, in the end, a nightmare's daughter. People saw her that way, too. It was the kind of situation that drains away every drop of goodwill—and in truth, it had. But. Even so, she hated nightmares. Still.
That was why Jihee had asked me what she did. If she became a nightmare, could she keep her human heart?
Whoops~ What a slip. Should I have handed her the glib old teacher's line instead? 'You won't lose your human heart—but it's dangerous, so don't.' Had I done that, then far down the road, when Jihee faced an enemy beyond her strength, she might have swallowed the thing like some awakening item. Not that it would have worked.
A man does not lie—Park Woochan least of all!! Not that it was about honor. She was never going to miss one of my lies anyway. This was a nightmare's daughter. The currents of a heart she could read at a glance.
Well. That's how it went. In sum: Jihee had decided to put the question to no one but herself. Did she truly still want to remain human? Could she hold to that answer even after staring down a situation this goodwill-draining? Wasn't some corner of her whispering that she'd rather become a nightmare after all? Put plainly, this entire conversation had been nothing but the groundwork for that one question.
Hm. Honestly, I hadn't imagined she'd planned that far ahead. Call it impressive acting? No—I can't quite bring myself to praise it. Only.
Loathing nightmares to the point of revulsion, and yet the absurdity of that same blood running in her own veins. And in spite of it, an environment that affirmed her hybrid nature, unconditionally. And last of all, the true face of the nightmare race itself. With all of it laid bare before her eyes—what had Jihee truly been thinking?
I haven't the faintest idea. Not that I'm a half-blood myself.
Still. I nodded, slow. In this moment, for the man standing here, it felt like the only thing to do.
And then. At me, Jihee let a smile steal across her face. ...An expression that belonged to this moment not at all.
But before I could find a single word for it, Jihee tipped the orb in her palm into her mouth.