So, What Happened?
So?
Huh?
I'm asking what happened, is what I'm saying.
What happened? Nothing happened, that's what happened.
Afterward — the principal's office.
Choi Seungjun and I were enjoying a pleasant little chat about the events that had unfolded on the Academy rooftop that very day. The topic, of course, was this whole mess. More precisely, the string of incidents involving Jihee and her mother.
"Ha. You say that with an awfully entitled air about you."
"Oh, come on. There's a limit to how fast a person can digest an elixir, you know."
At that, Choi Seungjun let out a scoffing laugh, as if the very idea was beneath him.
Which, well — wasn't exactly a lie.
Because that's how it actually went down.
Gulp.
With that strange, awkward sound, the Jihee of my memory forced the orb down her throat. It had been big enough to bulge visibly past her neck, after all.
Having more or less been made to swallow it, Jihee eventually grimaced and delivered her verdict.
"Tastes awful."
"Hey, if you'd said it tasted good, that would've shocked me."
Paying my scolding no mind whatsoever, Jihee rubbed her own belly. She'd gotten it down, sure, but apparently her stomach wasn't thrilled about it.
Granted, we'd made a whole fuss about the power of a nightmare — but at its core, the thing was just a mana crystal. In other words, she'd swallowed a rock roughly its size, whole.
She wasn't a goat, and no one can stomach a bezoar of that caliber.
"Wha— whoa, what the—?!"
Still.
The effect, for what it was worth, had been immediate.
Mana roiled and churned around Jihee — and unlike the mana she usually commanded, I could see something ominous bleeding into the mix.
And then.
Even the mana that had been seeping out of her body gathered inward in a single instant, condensing within her—
"...Huh?"
Psssssh.
Like a cola gone flat, it all fizzled out into stillness a moment later.
"No, what is this?!"
Hardly surprising that she panicked.
It wasn't as if there'd been no change — Jihee's total mana capacity had undeniably increased.
But that was where it ended. Nothing dramatic, nothing transformative. Honestly, even the increase itself was negligible. If anything, I could sense that most of it still lingered inside her body, unresolved and separate.
"Oh, you scared me."
"Hold on, I'm the one still processing things here! No, seriously, what even was that?"
"Jihee, watch your mouth."
"That's not the important part right now, is it?!"
"Why so serious, Teacher? That hurts, you know..."
Anyway.
Even so, that's just how elixirs work by nature. Mana that was never yours to begin with — you can't expect good results just by shoving it in wholesale. Like the breath cultivation of old martial arts novels, there's a necessary process of drawing the elixir's mana into yourself.
The problem being, I had no idea how to do that.
"Hm? Why not?"
"Because I've never taken one."
It went without saying, but most elixirs were made from monster materials. From bear gallbladders on the modest end to a dragon's heart on the far end of the spectrum.
Which meant —
My combat power would actually drop, in my case.
Whatever mana I gained from eating an elixir, the self-loathing from having swallowed a monster's body would outweigh it several times over.
There were elixirs that didn't use monster materials, of course, but by the time you could get your hands on something like that, you'd already outgrown the need for elixirs entirely.
"Well. Work hard at it, I suppose."
And so, knowing nothing about methods for accelerating elixir absorption, that was all I could offer her.
And with that, the not-quite-a-reunion on the rooftop came to an end. Looking back on it now, it was a downright farcical conclusion.
"You're not really going to leave it there, are you."
"Of course not."
Easy to say — but the fact remained that the Queen's mana still lingered inside Jihee. She hadn't turned into a nightmare overnight, but conversely, we couldn't afford to let our guard down until every last drop of it was digested. We'd dodged the tragedy of putting down my own student with these hands, but in exchange, we'd taken custody of a bomb that might one day become the Queen of Nightmares.
"Could you use it the other way around? If it can turn someone into a nightmare, surely it could pull them back out of one."
"Not every left fielder makes a great infielder."
"Hmm."
Frankly speaking, it was impossible.
Sublimation into a nightmare is, in the end, a function for growing one's species. No way in hell would beasts be equipped with an ability that voluntarily neuters their own bloodline's expansion.
Turning Jihee back into a human would take a miracle on the level of the saints of old — and even then, for a half-monster like her, it would be an ascetic ordeal that burned away half her very body.
Functionally speaking, it was impossible, full stop.
"So that's what I'm asking."
"Hm?"
"The Queen's power. That's what you called it, but..."
"Well, it's not exactly a nightmare's native ability, no."
I could more or less follow where Choi Seungjun was going with this. I'd looked into it myself, half hoping for something.
But nowhere, in any legend, could I find a tale of nightmares exchanging power through orbs. Which meant the orb the Queen had handed over at the very end wasn't some innate nightmare faculty.
Like the martial arts Jihee had learned, it was presumably a technique her mother had acquired separately.
"The problem being—"
"—if it's a technique learned from other monsters, then..."
"It doesn't help us."
Tsk. Choi Seungjun clicked his tongue.
If the orb wasn't built on something nightmares were born with, then perhaps Jihee might have been able to wield the Queen's mana without any particular risk. That's what he'd been hoping, no doubt.
Still.
"It helps us, though."
"What?"
I'd only given it a cursory look, but I'd come away convinced it was a power originating from Eastern monsters. The cintamani, for instance — the treasure jewel cradled by an ascended dragon, the crystallization of inner strength cultivated through discipline. The orb the Queen had passed to me was, if you forced the comparison, something along those lines.
Except.
A cintamani is, by its nature, a vessel for numinous power. However you slice it, it's hard to imagine one built on a cintamani containing a nightmare's sorcery.
Unless that particular nightmare had warped the very foundation of the jewel itself, the realistic conclusion was that she'd used a similar-but-different technique. A fox orb, say.
Choi Seungjun's face went rigid.
"Right."
A fox orb fit the bill perfectly. The signature treasure of the gumiho — the Eastern nightmare known as the nine-tailed fox. A jewel that stores the vital essence stolen by the demon fox. Inside it supposedly resides the essence the gumiho has siphoned from others, or divine energy accumulated through cultivation. There are even legends that the foxes themselves wield power through it.
Moreover, according to various tales, a fox orb exerts its effects when swallowed. Consider the story of Tojeong Lee Ji-ham, who grasped the principles of the earthly world thanks to consuming a fox orb.
And if you asked when a gumiho had most recently made an appearance...
"So you think the Namhae branch incident was their doing too, that cabal?"
"Can't rule it out, can you? For all we know, she just picked the technique up from a gumiho she happened to bump into by chance."
"Er, I'd put that at under ten percent even being generous."
"So, for all practical purposes, near-certain. Encouraging, isn't it?"
"Isn't it, though?"
And that was exactly how it turned out.
The Namhae incident. And now this nightmare incident. If that cabal's schemes had been involved in both...
This would be a first.
The first incidents among all their crimes that had nothing to do with Hayeon.
Everything they'd engineered until now had, in some way, revolved around Hayeon's safety. Which made their movements easy to track — but at the same time, left the true aim behind them maddeningly opaque. I understood they were after Hayeon, but what did they intend to do with her once they had her? What was the cabal's ultimate objective? Answers to those questions had been nearly impossible to come by.
But.
If these incidents had truly unfolded under their auspices...
I might just get my answer.
And — mercifully for us — the two incidents shared one unmistakable common thread.
Namely:
Monsters.
"It's been barely a day since you handed over the gumiho's head."
That was Choi Seungjun's flat pronouncement. The gumiho had been controlling Guisusan, the Mount of Returning Water — and the nightmare, he said, had been too.
"Ah. Some massive Mongolian sandworm? Something along those lines."
Factor in their attempt to multiply nightmares on top of that, and the conclusion was all but sealed.
They're searching for a means to control monsters.
There was no other way to read it.
Once I made that assumption, certain pieces clicked into place. Guisusan, for example — the stronghold the demon foxes had made their own. At first I'd taken it for a simple fortress, but the most famous legend connected to Guisusan was actually something else entirely.
The Manpasikjeok.
An instrument crafted from a tree that had sprouted from the mountain's own ridge — a legendary flute said to drive off enemies and bring peace to the nation.
Used the right way, it might well be able to control monsters.
Driving off enemies — or, failing that, directing their movements.
Seen through that lens, the reason they'd finally reached for Jihee became crystal clear. They coveted the nightmare's power of fascination. Think of the Queen, who had even now held monsters under her command.
No — wait. Where would the Queen of Nightmares have even found a monster of that caliber to begin with?
Someone had to have cooperated with her.
Which raised the question.
Why?
That was the first thing that nagged at me. Why? Bluntly put — wasn't that cabal already in bed with the monsters? Why come looking for a means of control now?
I couldn't think of it any other way.
And there was more.
What about the monsters themselves?
A technique for controlling monsters is, to them, nothing but a leash around the neck. And yet the monsters were actively participating in the cabal's designs. For whose benefit?
Control the monsters. Was there another motive lurking beyond that one?
In a world where complete monster control would rank among the loftiest goals a terrorist could dream up... it was hard to imagine, but I doubted I was wrong.
Because Hayeon had a power like that, after all.
Part of her curse. Or perhaps something else entirely — the ability I'd christened the lure back when I couldn't yet perceive the cabal's existence.
Granted, by now it was nearly certain there was some other reason underlying even that power, but conversely, there was nothing to say Hayeon couldn't do it either. A curse is that kind of ability, after all.
Which meant the attempt to abduct her might well have been one piece of the same plan.
"Speaking of which — you've gotten quite the silver tongue, haven't you."
"Huh?"
"'Just a memento.' Surely you didn't actually let it go at that."
Only then did I realize he was talking about Jihee. And.
"Well, no. Of course not."
Asked point-blank like that, I had no other answer to give.
It went without saying, but from the cabal's perspective, a new Queen of Nightmares would be a development they'd welcome on some level. Seen through their eyes, Jihee had to look like a long game they might yet reacquire.
And despite that, the cabal had purged the Queen of Nightmares outright.
Why?
I could understand wanting the Queen alive — but there was no reason to go so far as to eliminate her while simultaneously ringing alarm bells in my head. It made far more sense to assume a different motive.
The orb the Queen had left behind, for instance. Could it be that what the cabal had truly feared was that object?
In fact, they'd moved to purge the Queen at the precise moment she handed the orb over to me. Which led to a paradoxical conclusion: there might be something inside that orb besides the Queen's mana.
At the very least, they clearly suspected as much. Otherwise they'd never have imposed such constraints.
If so—
The first candidate that springs to mind is, naturally, the Queen's memories. The knowledge of a matriarch who ran her entire brood. Information about the cabal could well be embedded in there.
That they suspected as much was a certainty.
Thanks to which, we now find ourselves saddled with the risk of a new Queen of Nightmares manifesting someday.
"No — for fuck's sake, you're hardly one to talk about risks, are you?"
"You mean the interview? Well — no matter how you slice it, that wasn't a situation where I could have lied."
He wasn't wrong. There was, frankly, no evidence anywhere that Jihee was a half-blood. But neither could we flatly deny it. If proof that Jihee was a half-blood ever came to light down the line, the Academy would have no defense against the charge of sheltering its own.
With that pronouncement, Choi Seungjun shrugged.
"Well. True enough."
And in the same vein, the cabal's true aim might have been identical. Extract Jihee to weaken the bonds on our side, and milk her for information about us in the process. A play for two birds with one stone.
"So?"
"Huh?"
"I can see you trying to glide past it with that oily grin, but do we actually have any reason to shoulder that risk?"
"And what would you suggest?"
"Roughly speaking — dig out whatever memories are useful, then dispose of her. In other words, purge Jihee. Or exploit her, the way you did the gumiho's head."
Watching him state it so matter-of-factly, I couldn't help a dry snort. If he'd meant it, I'd have lost my temper. But there was no chance he meant it. To him, this Academy was a display case for his personal collection. Risk and the like weren't even considerations — that was the whole point.
Still.
That was his position, not mine.
No doubt Choi Seungjun was curious in his own way: why does the butcher leave the possibility of a new Queen of Nightmares untouched? Is his hunger for information on that cabal truly so desperate?
Which is to say — he'd handed me the perfect opening to answer the question myself. Because Jihee was not going to become a nightmare.
And so, that was the only answer I could give.
"No. Really."
"Which is the exact opposite of what you told her, isn't it."
"Hey, I thought the same thing at the time, okay?"
Despite having swallowed the Queen's mana, Jihee had not become a nightmare. And having been present for all of it, I'd been able to confirm firsthand exactly why the transformation never came.
"She's just a born-and-bred high school girl."
"What?"
"One who hates nightmares, at that."
...Jihee was afraid. Afraid of whether she was a nightmare or not. Afraid that the nightmare blood making up half of her would one day consume her completely. Afraid that this whole affair might drag her all the way down into something barely distinguishable from a nightmare.
But watching her swallow that orb, I could say it with total conviction: that fear was simply the reflex of a half-blood. Literally, nothing more than the fact that the nightmare blood in her veins made her a little too familiar with a nightmare's instincts.
And yet, Ryu Jihee as a person was, at the end of the day, just an ordinary high school girl. Like that day when she'd stood trembling before Nam Sangwon and me, hiding her shaking legs behind a show of bravado.
Think of it as a human who woke up one morning transformed into a dog. Just as a human-turned-dog would instinctively understand a dog's mind, Jihee can understand a nightmare's.
But.
Even if becoming a dog meant you no longer felt moved by people, and your heart stirred instead at the sight of your fellow dogs — most people still wouldn't go breed with one.
Jihee was the same. As long as ordinary human sentiment remained in her, Ryu Jihee cannot become a nightmare.
What happened on the rooftop was, in the end, simply the proof of that. Because—
"She asked me to kill her."
"...What?"
"She said if she ever becomes a nightmare, I should put her down. ...And when I said I would? She actually looked relieved."
That's the whole story, in other words.
Nightmares don't dream. They don't indulge in hollow fantasies. A nightmare isn't the one who dreams — it's the one who gives dreams. Therefore—
What that girl needed wasn't some groundless reassurance that she would never become a nightmare. What she needed was someone. Someone who would take her head if the nightmare she so despised ever won. Someone who would reject a nightmare-turned Ryu Jihee utterly and without compromise.
A failsafe, if you like — a safety net in the real world. That's why hearing my answer left Jihee relieved instead of afraid. And thanks to that failsafe, Ryu Jihee could stare down the nightmare's mana and challenge it at all.
If I ever truly become a nightmare, please just kill me.
She'd said it herself.
...The gnawing doubt that she might one day turn into a nightmare — and paradoxically, that very doubt is what allows Ryu Jihee to stay human. And so, the moment she secured someone who would end her life should she ever transform—
—Ryu Jihee proved herself, by swallowing the nightmare's mana and refusing to become one.
Hearing all that, Choi Seungjun let out an unconscious groan.
"No, I genuinely have no idea what you're saying. Were you always this poetic?"
"You son of a bitch."
"Honestly? That stung a little."
And now he was just saying it to my face. Bastard.
All I could do in the moment was grumble. Fine — boiled down into terms even Choi Seungjun could follow, it went roughly like this:
She's a young lady who despised her own blood so thoroughly that she'd never once so much as held a boy's hand. Which means there's simply no world in which she could live the way a nightmare does — mingling bodies with men to survive.