Tonight, Your Dream Is Paradise
Because I eat dreams, you see~
A good dream is... like a chance that comes knocking when you least expect it.
The happiness and satisfaction you feel in a dream seem as natural and self-evident as your everyday life, and since the memory of reality never surfaces, you find yourself drunk on that happiness as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Inside a dream, you can't recognize it as a dream — so in a way, it's only fair.
Which is why so many people end up revealing both their most terrible things and their happiest, most beautiful ones in dreams, far too easily.
"And that applies to you too, Officer Dan."
On the days when the Night Sea opens and the fog rolls into the city.
Ordinary citizens shiver under their blankets in terror, but for civil-servant hunters, it's surprisingly not all that busy of a day. No — it's quieter and far easier to rest than usual.
Once the inspection of the Protective Wards is done, there's essentially nothing left to do. Unless some idiot walks out beyond the wards of their own accord, casualties rarely happen. And so the civil-servant hunters — Officer Dan Ahyeon in particular — get to enjoy a rare stretch of warm, cozy, well-earned rest.
"Haaah, I'm hungry."
I'm hungry.
A succubus's hunger arrives quite without warning.
Humans only feel starvation when they've gone without food, but the hunger of a succubus who craves vitality and life energy is deeply irregular.
There are times I burn through enormous reserves of energy hunting monsters and anomalies only to feel hungry a week later, and times I finish a meal and my stomach growls again before half a day has passed.
If you asked what a succubus eats, I would answer thus:
The succubus meal everyone imagines. That is exactly it.
Hm? You're asking whether I really feed on men's... essence?
Ugh, why would I eat that?
I can't speak for common succubi, but I am a beautiful Succubus Empress. Even in eating, one must be modest, dignified, and elegant.
'Now, what dream shall I sample today~?'
What I eat is dreams. And I'm terribly hungry. For some reason, tonight my hunger came on so suddenly my hands are trembling.
I'm not normally greedy. I don't even need to eat food to begin with — I simply take pleasure in the act of eating and in taste itself.
However, the vitality and life energy that form a succubus's very foundation are things I must consume. And the richest, most vivid source of a human's life and energy is the dream.
'Of course, I could always do a Forced Drain with direct skin contact... but then you'd die.'
I am a peaceful succubus who despises taking lives? Though the hideous ones are an exception.
So I spread my wings and drifted through the city's night sky until I arrived at a place familiar beyond familiarity.
—Knock knock knock.
Shilla Villa, 8th floor, the window. Behind it, a familiar face sleeping soundly.
Here I am~
"Officer Dan~ It's me~ Here I am, present and accounted for~"
"......"
Through the glass, I can see Officer Dan sleeping serenely.
Typical of a civil-servant hunter — worn down to the bone by another day of grueling work, her face etched with fatigue. She's sunk into a very deep sleep indeed.
But Officer Dan, I'm telling you I'm here? If you won't open the door, then I'll simply let myself in?
Truthfully, whether she answers, reacts, or screams at me never to enter — I'm coming in regardless.
—Click.
I flick my finger ever so slightly, and the window latch undoes itself.
Since life energy and vitality constantly saturate the air around me, I can channel them like telekinesis, moving objects from a distance.
"Officer Dan, sleeping right now, are you~?"
"...Zzzz..."
"You are sleeping, aren't you~?"
Officer Dan asleep is rather adorable. She'd twisted her hair up entirely out of the way into a little bun, and on top of that she was wearing teddy-bear pajamas, fused with her mattress into a single seamless being.
Fufufu. Does Officer Dan know?
She probably doesn't — that the location-tracking spell she cast on me only activates when I feel like permitting it, and that at all other times it lies smothered half-asleep beneath my own considerable mana and my resistance to magic, without so much as a whisper of an alarm.
Actually, even if she knew, it wouldn't matter. What would you do about it if you did?
Carefully, I loosen my hair and fold my wings, then bundle the soundly sleeping Officer Dan up snugly in her blanket.
If she stirred in her sleep and our skin touched too much, it wouldn't just be mana being siphoned — her lifespan could drain away. I have to be careful too.
A human's life and vitality, and the lifespan that lies beyond them — they are so sweet to me that even I, in the grip of hunger, might make a mistake.
"Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, sleeping so soundly~"
"..."
"You're asleep, aren't you? You're asleep, aren't you, Officer Dan?"
Okay. She is very asleep.
Then I'll gently settle myself down beside Officer Dan.
Dust doesn't dare cling to a Succubus Empress, so even lying here in my suit should be perfectly fine.
"Well then. Thank you for the meal."
—Nom.
I open my mouth and close it. The way you'd sink your teeth into a scoop of ice cream. Then I shut my eyes.
What I see is not darkness.
An unfamiliar dream — and yet a world brimming with happiness, where someone's ideals and paradise have come true.
"A dream is nothing less than a fleeting paradise that vanishes in an instant."
A world inside a dream, not reality.
The happy dream that I must see, hear, drink, savor, and devour. It is our Officer Dan's delightful dream.
"...Zzzz..."
"Officer Dan, you're sleeping even inside your dream?"
Well, she does say constantly that what she really wants is to sleep her fill.
The higher-ups summon her — a High Awakener — wherever they please, and the moment anything so much as breathes in the direction of an Awakener or a gate incident, they call her in without fail. When really, the only thing Officer Dan should have to worry about is me.
"Officer Dan~"
"Kyaaah!"
With that scream, Officer Dan springs awake from deep within the dream — and the scene shifts.
—As of today, the gate crisis has been resolved!
—All of humanity can now bask in a joyful, peaceful world!
—The gates' bounty, land, and resources remain untouched, ushering in an age where no one has to work at all! I'm quitting my job as an announcer and going home to goof off too!
"Yay! Yaaayyy!"
Officer Dan is cheering like a little child.
Ah, so this is the world you dream of? It does look like an ideal paradise. People at peace, no work required...
I turn my head, and there's Officer Dan at home, watching Helpflix, chicken spread across the table, a foolish grin on her face.
"Hehehe. Chicken. Chicken..."
"...Wait, why is the chicken green?"
Something's off. Has such a chicken ever existed? The green sauce gives off not just mint, but a faint aroma of chocolate as well. What an abomination...
And yet Officer Dan is eating that abomination with great relish?
And so Officer Dan's dream changes — very quickly, and very capriciously. That's the hallmark of someone who wants too much and carries too much stress in daily life.
Officer Dan must truly want a great many things. She wants peace, she wants to rest deep and long, she wants to while away her time in leisurely comfort — and she wants many, many others to live days as peaceful and happy as her own.
"Fufufu. Just like a child."
She's exactly as adorable as always. What a relief.
"Countless people hang themselves over the longing for a single paradise. There, wishes that could never come true and ideals that never could unfold as though they were natural and self-evident. Isn't that just fascinating?"
Do villains who wish for the world's collapse truly want only that?
A fiend who dreams of apocalypse and the fall of the gates might, just beyond that ruin, imagine themselves farming alone in a world gone quiet and still and peaceful.
A dream is the thing that makes all of it possible. And that is why, to a Succubus Empress, this place is both a feeding ground and a paradise.
"In a world where not even love lasts forever, what could ever speak of immortality? Endings are what make new beginnings possible — so we ought to be grateful even for our own fading. Just like..."
Yet a dream, for its single fleeting moment, is eternal.
"...Just like your dream and your paradise tonight."
The sun sets on paradise.
Before I know it, the scenery has changed again, and Officer Dan is smiling, holding someone's hand.
That hand was once her parents'. Once her friends'. Once the faceless, formless husband and children of some imagined future.
Ah, I'm jealous. What about me?
—Officer Jaehee! Did you have another wonderful day today?
—Yesss~ I filled my pay-by-weight trash bag all the way to the top and took it out properly~
—Excellent work!
Ah.
There I... there I am?
And here I was, about to demand why I wasn't in the picture...
Suddenly I feel wonderful. So Officer Dan's peaceful, happy dream had a place for me after all? By the way, dream-me is every bit me, isn't she? Beautiful. Perfectly identical to real-world me. One hundred percent... no, honestly, the real me is far more beautiful and charming still, but this much easily earns a passing grade.
—Gasp! No, wait, you sorted everything?! Even the food waste AND the plastics?! Officer Jaehee! Outstanding work!!
But still — to see me properly disposing of my pay-by-weight bags appear inside someone's dream of paradise... just how desperately did she wish for that?
Did Officer Dan feel a surge of pure happiness at the mere thought of me handling my recycling correctly?
'In other words... does that mean she's sad and angry that I can't even take out the trash properly?'
Hm. Next time, I suppose I should at least make an effort — move my own body and do my recycling properly.
But I don't want to.
A Succubus Empress clutching a garbage bag, grumbling and grudgingly sorting recyclables — there is nothing beautiful about that image. I cannot permit myself anything unbeautiful. Honestly, I just don't want to.
—Officer Jaehee, you can do it properly now even without me, right?
—Of course.
—Promise me. Even when I'm gone. You have to manage on your own, and, and... don't take on anything too harsh. Just like when you were with me...
—Don't worry, Officer Dan.
Dream-me wore a trustworthy expression. Officer Dan, though, still looked somehow anxious.
"..."
"Without me..." she says.
Does that mean that someday, Officer Dan and I might part ways and never see each other again?
It seems Officer Dan wants me to live properly, like a decent human being, even when she isn't there.
"If Officer Dan vanished from my life, then... um... I'd rather not imagine it."
Hold on, just a moment.
I haven't even begun to imagine a life without Officer Dan, and yet she's already living on the assumption of parting with me?
'I... don't like that.'
Is she planning to leave me?
Absolutely not. I haven't entertained so much as a flicker of parting from Officer Dan, and never once in my life will such a thing be treated as a possibility—
And yet Officer Dan wants to leave me?
Dreams are the bubbling up of the unconscious, a place where a person's wishes come true — could it be that Officer Dan actually dislikes me? She doesn't want to leave me, I refuse to believe it, right, despite how much I like her — separate from my feelings, does she utterly despise me — no way, that can't be true, and if it were I think I'd be very, very angry with Officer Dan, so please tell me you don't think that, and if you do then I'll have no choice but to get a little more aggressive, Officer Dan, so that means I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I—
Whew. I've disgraced myself.
Yes, I've decided to firmly abandon any notion of practicing recycling.
After all, if I can't even do that much, Officer Dan will have to keep staying by my side, won't she? That's how it works, right?
Therefore it is self-evident that a Succubus Empress must never, under any circumstances, lay a hand on the garbage.
Well then — I've lingered long enough. If I stay here too much longer... my allure and the scent of my heat would seep into the dream itself, turning the whole thing into an erotic dream.
Better to cut it off at exactly the right moment and go.
"Another fine meal. Thank you, Officer Dan."
—Nom.
A good dream is delicious.