What Is Love?
"This chaotic energy feels just like a megacity — New York or Seoul."
Akhenaton had no idea what "New York" or "Seoul" meant, but he nodded along to Dojin's observation all the same.
"Yes. Thracia is most certainly a great city."
"What's a great city?"
Ella had switched targets. No longer shaking Dojin, she now clung to Akhenaton, eyes sparkling as she fired off questions about everything under the sun.
He had answered her faithfully ever since the orbital elevator, but the endless barrage had finally worn him down. Looking thoroughly fed up, Akhenaton shook his head.
"Ahem — if you would step aside for a moment, Miss Ella. Now that we have arrived in Thracia, I must cast a reading."
With that, he drew a crystal orb and a deck of cards from his bag.
"…You're casting a reading? So you really are a fortune-teller."
"It is to guide the god along the proper path."
He floated the crystal orb and cards into the air, murmured something under his breath, and his eyes flared blue.
"Hmm. There. O God — you must board that vehicle. Fate itself is leading the way."
Dojin tilted his head and pointed a finger at a green vehicle idling on the shoulder of the road.
"That car? Out of nowhere? How do you even know whose it is?"
"That is the vehicle of a worker who accepts oxygen and conveys passengers to their destination. Let us go. I shall attend you."
So… a taxi, basically.
As a prince, Akhenaton had clearly visited Thracia more than once; he seemed to know a great deal about the place.
He's just saying we should take a cab to our destination, and somehow making it sound complicated.
Dojin had no idea where to go in this city anyway, so he watched Akhenaton stride ahead with complete confidence — then followed at a more measured pace.
On the shoulder, the vehicle hummed and hovered slightly on magnetic suspension. Akhenaton opened the rear door and climbed in as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Dojin and Ella piled in after him. The doors sealed shut, and the driver twisted around with a warm, easygoing smile.
"Welcome aboard! This is Dipangdal — I'll get you to your destination safe and sound, folks!"
The moment Jeong Cheol-min appeared on screen, academy student Lee Si-yeon let out a shriek.
"Eugh! Principal?!"
These days, White Blood had become so popular that if you weren't watching it, you couldn't even hold a conversation. Si-yeon had been streaming the newly released episode on her laptop at home when Jeong Cheol-min's unexpected appearance nearly knocked her out of her chair.
He had been cast so abruptly, and he had been too embarrassed to brag about it at the academy himself — figuring everyone would find out soon enough — so he had told no one.
"S-so that's why he hasn't been around the academy much lately. This is insane!"
Of course she had to share this bombshell with her academy friends. She was about to screenshot the scene and drop it into the group chat when someone beat her to it — a photo was already up.
The others had clearly started watching the second it dropped. In hindsight, it was only natural.
And the craze wasn't limited to young people, either.
Manager Oh's relationship with his daughter had grown a little strained once she hit her teens — until a coworker recommended White Blood. After he asked her to hook it up to the TV, their bond had rekindled with surprising speed.
"Huh? Since when do you care about dramas, Dad? You only ever watch the news."
"What are you talking about? Your dad likes fantasy too."
Truthfully, the last time fantasy had been the mainstream of world cinema was back in the early 2000s — when Manager Oh was young. The Dwarf and the Ring. The Magic Broom. The Ellis Chronicles.
That was the era when novel-based fantasy films — things that had only ever lived in the imagination — suddenly poured out as CG technology took off.
Watching the episode his daughter put on, Manager Oh drifted into nostalgia.
By contrast, the hero movies currently dominating Hollywood felt far removed from true fantasy. Urban fantasy — modern settings with specially powered heroes — put all its weight on the characters themselves. Every focus locked onto the "hero character," which made it fundamentally different from fantasy, whose premise was curiosity about an entirely new world.
Tonight Manager Oh had even skipped a company dinner just to rush home for the new episode.
"Dad's home."
"Welcome back! Hurry up, Dad — everything's ready!"
The moment he opened the front door, his middle-school daughter greeted him with pure delight. The laptop was already connected to the TV, cued up and waiting for the play button.
"Ohhh, well done. That's my girl."
Manager Oh dropped onto the sofa the second he got home, and his daughter hit play.
His wife emerged from the bedroom, took one look at the two of them, and let out a soft snort of laughter.
"Honestly, what has gotten into you two. Suddenly thick as thieves."
Father and daughter both looked at her and raised a finger to their lips in perfect unison.
"Shh!"
White Blood was starting.
"Akhenaton. Where are we going?"
"A lodging I frequently used when I visited as an envoy of River for diplomatic functions."
Dojin nodded at the explanation.
The magnetic taxi carrying Dojin and his companions sped into the heart of the city. Along the way, the irrepressibly sociable Ella struck up a conversation with Dipangdal — and the driver, it turned out, was something of a chatterbox himself, laughing and answering every question.
"Uncle Dipangdal, who's the person in that frame?"
Ella pointed at a photograph hanging beside the driver's seat.
"Hmm? Haha. That's me and my friend Emiline, back when we were young."
Dojin rubbed his chin. The ride into the city center was dull enough, and this was the first photograph he had seen since entering this body — he had been staring at it for a while already.
"I assumed she was your wife."
Ella turned to him at once and launched into another round of questions.
"What's a wife?"
"…"
Wasn't that a bit much?
Civilization gaps could explain a lot of ignorance, but not knowing what a wife was?
Too lazy to answer himself, Dojin simply looked at Akhenaton, silently delegating the problem — only to find Akhenaton wearing the exact same curious expression as Ella.
"O God. What is a wife?"
"What kind of question is that? A wife is a wife. A spouse. A partner. Someone you're married to. Someone you love."
Both of them still looked completely blank.
"…Don't tell me this world has no concept of marriage? Ella, you must have parents. That's how you were born."
"Ehh? I just… appeared by myself!"
Dojin's expression twisted into something deeply unsettled. He turned to Akhenaton and demanded an explanation.
"What is she talking about, Akhenaton?"
"Well. Most red blood cells do not know how they came into being. I was taught that our Great Mother, Hematopoiesis, shaped us and sent us down into the world."
Dojin understood the structure of it instantly.
"I'd almost forgotten you people are cells."
Ever since entering the trade city of Thracia — a place whose civilization level was nearly identical to modern society — he had briefly lost track of that fact. Of course red blood cells wouldn't marry each other and produce more red blood cells.
And the "Great Mother" Akhenaton spoke of was perfectly clear.
Hematopoietic stem cells. HSCs.
Located primarily in the red bone marrow at the center of bones, hematopoietic stem cells were the stem cells that generated every kind of blood cell.
"So this is a universe without love."
He was not usually the sentimental type, but a famous twenty-first-century science-fiction film floated into his mind — the one that claimed the only thing that could transcend time and space was love.
"What's looove?"
Dojin looked at the questioning Ella and shook his head.
"…I don't know. You have no idea how philosophical that question of yours really is."
Her questions made him think of his little sister — growing thinner by the day on her hospital bed. Perhaps it was because Ella and his sister overlapped in his mind, just a little.
He was inside his sister's body, and yet, paradoxically, it had been six years since he last saw her.
"Well. Love isn't only Eros, either. Love is wanting to see someone. Missing them so much it hurts when you can't. Wanting to give them something even if it means sacrificing what's yours."
"Heeeh."
At that exact moment, Dipangdal's vehicle arrived at their destination.
"We've arrived, folks."
Akhenaton pulled several oxygen orbs from his pocket.
"Thank you for the comfortable ride. I added a little extra beyond what we agreed."
"Oh my, you didn't have to do that! As expected of a foreign noble — such generosity! Thank you!"
Dojin had assumed the formal speech was just how Dipangdal talked to everyone, but then he remembered: Akhenaton was a prince. Watching him casually use informal speech with the driver felt strangely novel.
Once they stepped out, Akhenaton led them toward the grand front entrance of a large lodging house.
"We will stay here for now while I inquire about passage to Cardiac."
"We're taking a ship?"
Akhenaton pointed a finger at the sky and nodded.
"To reach Cardiac, one must take a ship. Ordinarily, identification would also be required — but I will handle that somehow."
Dojin followed the line of his finger and saw, far in the distance, a procession of spacecraft flying in formation.
"…Those are ships?"
Bringing Akhenaton along had been the best decision he could have made. How on earth would he and Ella — who didn't even know what a city was — have secured a vessel on their own?
Following Akhenaton's lead, they entered the lodging.
The massive establishment was indistinguishable from a modern five-star hotel. As they stepped inside to check in, a female red blood cell who looked every bit the hotelier approached with a smile and a polite bow.
"Welcome. It is an honor to have you visit us again, Prince Akhenaton."
Then a male red blood cell in a crimson bellhop's jacket came forward and gently took the luggage from Akhenaton and Ella.
The second her Pilates class ended, Seo Ji-eun had raced home and thrown herself into the drama — only to nearly jump out of her skin.
"Eehh?! Unnie Han So-hyun?!"
The hotelier on screen was Han So-hyun.
"Huk. And Son Jin-uk too?!"
The bellhop was, of course, Son Jin-uk.
Seo Ji-eun had always admired Han So-hyun as an actress, but after learning that Han So-hyun was the one who had recommended her for Sketch, she had become a full-blown fan.
"This is crazy! Ah, Yeon-woo, whyyy?! I could've done a cameo toooo!"
Seeing Son Jin-uk, Han So-hyun, and Ryu Yeon-woo all framed on the same screen was more than she could bear. She grabbed her phone and began typing in a fury of pure envy.
Bzzzt—.
Bzzzt—.
His phone buzzing repeatedly, Yeon-woo paused the episode of White Blood he had been monitoring.
"Hmm? Ji-eun unnie?"
He opened the messages, read them, and huffed a quiet laugh.
Yeon-woo tapped out a reply with a light touch of his finger.