A Wish Is a Hidden Desire
"So? Starting to understand now?"
At the man's — no, the genie's — words, I gulped down the water in my cup again, great swallows at a time.
"Fine. Let's get this straight. So you're telling me you're the genie of the lamp."
"Heh heh. Not a genie of the lamp, I keep telling you — the master of the lamp."
The genie clicked his tongue in response to my words.
"Fairy, master, whatever! The point is, you're the genie — isn't that what matters?"
"That's right. A being much like the one from the Arabian Nights."
"And you're saying you have no physical form."
"Correct. I exist only inside your head. That giant from the Arabian Nights is nothing but imagination. I slip into the mind of whoever rubs the lamp. I converse with that person alone, and grant their wishes."
"Okay. So I rubbed the lamp, and that's how you got into my head. Which makes me your master now, doesn't it?"
"No. No, it does not. I merely grant your wishes — you are not my master."
So, to sum up what this mystery voice chattering away inside my skull was claiming:
He was the master of the lamp I'd rubbed, a being who had been knocking about among humankind since ages long past — before human history was ever set down in writing. The very reason lamps have the shape they do, he said, is that humans imitated the form of this lamp, his own dwelling. Who made it, or how, even the genie himself — the lamp's own master — did not know. He had simply rolled among humans like that, granting their wishes.
Exactly three wishes. Three wishes for the one who summoned him by rubbing the lamp. A being who entered that person's mind, spoke with them, and granted what they asked. A being who had lived that way for tens of thousands of years already. And this time, I was the one who had rubbed the lamp.
"Hahaha......"
Laughing like a man who'd come unhinged, I slumped down into my chair.
"This is driving me insane... No — I'm already there. First thing Monday, I'm going straight to a psychiatrist."
None of it made any sense. A genie of the lamp — no, a master of the lamp — in the twenty-first century, the age of science and reason... If I had to lose my mind, couldn't I at least lose it over something befitting the times? A hypnosis app, a status-window app, some proper 21st-century delusion... But a genie of the lamp — no, the lamp's master... Did that not make absolutely no sense whatsoever!
One thing was certain: I was well on my way to madness. I didn't know whether gynophobia could spiral into full-blown psychosis, but a screw had most definitely come loose somewhere in my head.
"Tsk tsk... This is why latching onto a clueless fool is always such a chore."
"Shut up!"
"Fine, have it your way. I've only just come out into the world again, and I'd rather not have the man who rubbed my lamp treated like a lunatic... so consider this a freebie. Go on — tell me what you want. This one won't even count against your three wishes."
"Hahaha... So now my own hallucination is defending its sanity to me..."
Cornered in a situation this absurd, all I could do was laugh.
I had never known going mad could be so simple. So a person could just up and lose his mind overnight, huh... Well, fair enough — my fear of women had arrived out of nowhere one day too, so I suppose a psychosis could show up the same way.
"Hey, you're giving me a headache. Hurry up and say what you want."
The psychosis calling itself Genie urged me along, as though I were the one being a nuisance.
I only found the whole situation ridiculous. A hallucination, of all things, ordering me to make a wish...
"Oh yeah? Fine, Genie. Then let's see... Yes! Stack up a pile of cash on that table over there. Crisp ten-thousand-won bills. Say... ten million won's worth?"
"That's all? Come on, this is a freebie. Wish for something grander."
"Hahaha. See that? You can't do it. You only talk big because you can't. Which is exactly why you're a delusion."
Yep. Psychosis, through and through.
"Hm... Fine, then. I'll do it just as you ask. Ten million won!"
The genie's phlegm-rasped voice rang through my skull, and I could only stare at the table, eyes gone wide as saucers.
A bundle of ten-thousand-won bills had truly appeared out of nowhere and piled up on the table! As though someone had swapped a slide in a projector — in a single instant, poof, the money was stacked there!
"......"
"Well? And you still can't believe it?"
Impossible... impossible... impossible...
"What's so impossible about it? Then run off to a bank and see for yourself."
At the genie's prodding, I picked up a bundle of the bills with trembling hands. One note at a time, I went through them with shaking fingers... and every single one looked like the genuine article.
"Impossible... impossible... impossible... This is... impossiblllle!!"
Clutching a fistful of the bills, I bolted out of my officetel. A bank! No — it was the weekend; I had to find an ATM.
This is obviously just a wad of paper... I'd merely imagined the whole thing. Yes! I was psychotic... I was psychotic...
Beep. Your deposit has been completed.
Whirrrr. Click.
It was real. Real money. The machine accepted the million won I'd fed it as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and the transaction slip printed out crisp and clear: deposit, one million won.
"See? I told you I'm real. Why would you go around assuming you'd lost your mind when you're perfectly sound of it? Kukuku. Now then — what will you do? You went and blew your one freebie on this. Look here, I can grant any wish you like — don't you think ten million won was selling yourself far too cheap? Kukuku."
Genie... whether it was cheap is not the problem here...
A real genie... is inside my head right now...
"What do you mean, the problem? Keep it simple. You name three wishes, and they come true. That's all there is to it. Why do you insist on overcomplicating things? Honestly, humans really are... tsk tsk..."
The genie clicked his tongue inside my head.
So this... was not a dream. The genie was in my head. Only I could hear his voice. He said he entered the mind of whoever rubbed the lamp and granted that person's three wishes — whatever those wishes might be! — and that once all three were granted, he would leave. Unbelievable, and yet it was genuinely unfolding inside my own skull.
And as proof: the million won sitting in my bank account, and the remaining nine million stashed away in my closet. Past this point, disbelief was simply no longer an option.
"Take your time with the wishes. Don't fritter them away as heedlessly as you did that one — think them through, carefully."
Taunting me as he said it, the genie curled up and fell asleep inside my mind. I couldn't hear it clearly, but if I concentrated hard enough, I could just faintly make out the sound of him snoring in my head.
The genie woke up on my Monday morning commute.
"Hey. Given any thought to those wishes yet?"
"You live in my head — shouldn't you know better than I do?"
"Kukuku. Fair enough, I suppose... but a wish has to be spoken by the wisher himself. And you'd best quit talking to yourself, or people will start treating you like a madman. I'm inside your head, so just think at me. I'll read every word."
Shaking my head at the genie's shameless cheek, I turned to gaze out the subway window. Beyond the glass, there was nothing but darkness.
Wishes, huh... what would even be good...
Money? Fame? Eternal life? Eternal youth? And yet somehow none of it felt real to me. Granted, I still couldn't quite bring myself to believe a genie was living in my head either... but somehow those grand things felt even less real than he did.
Would a psychiatrist say this, too, was the work of the Confucian upbringing I'd received as a child? My grandfather had been enraptured by Taoism and Confucianism alike. In Confucian thought, man himself is treated as part of nature — and so everything obeys the old maxim that going too far is as bad as falling short. Nature is infinite, but the human body meant to hold that nature is finite. That is why man, though a vessel containing the boundless universe, stands between heaven and earth. And so a man must never greedily covet life or wealth in excess.
Perhaps because that teaching had been drilled into me from childhood, asking the genie for money or for life felt somehow like a sin.
"Kukuku. How virtuous of you. Such a good boy."
The genie had apparently read my thoughts, and spoke in a tone of open mockery.
Shut up. And quit reading my mind every five seconds.
"Kukuku. Can't be helped. How else will you remember where I live? Like it or not, your thoughts come wagging their tails right up to me, begging to be seen."
That damned genie... So thanks to the uninvited guest squatting in my skull, I wasn't even allowed to think my own thoughts anymore?
"Relax. Do you have any idea how many humans I've watched by now? Thoughts like yours are easy enough to predict. Kukuku..."
Then keep your predictions to yourself!
"Time settles these things anyway. Plenty of humans balk and refuse to believe at first, just like you. But in the end, every last one of them comes around to serving his own desires. Kukuku..."
Desire... human desire...
What is my desire?
"I can see it from right here, you know? Come on, don't hide it — be honest with me. Kukuku."
Shut up! Just shut up!
What is my desire?
It was an ordinary life I wanted. A life exactly like everyone else's. To work, to play, to want a promotion, to want more money... And yet I had no desire to say any of that to the genie — to ask him for a promotion, or for cash. I wasn't even sure those were truly my desires, and psychosis or not — whether this was real or delusion — asking for such things struck me as somehow shabby. Trivial.
If I had to name a desire... having my gynophobia cured, maybe? But I wasn't sure that was worth spending a wish on. It seemed like the sort of thing I could fix myself, given enough effort. It was a psychological problem at the end of the day — an illness that diligence might conceivably cure.
Though if anyone shot back, Then why have you been hauling it around for fifteen years?, I'd have had no answer.
My head was a snarl.
"Sooner or later, sooner or later. You'll be telling me your desire soon enough anyway. Kukuku..."
Ugh, shut up already! Then why don't you just figure out my desires yourself and grant them!
"Aw, now where's the fun in that? Kukuku... Take your time and think it over."