The Nightmare of Disqualification
I was already halfway through my morning coffee when the notification hit. Not the polite little chime of a Slack message or the polite buzz of a phone alarm. This was the deep, resonant thrum that only ever came from inside my skull. The one that felt like someone had reached into my brain and twisted a screw. I set the mug down slowly, coffee still burning my tongue, and looked straight at the black ceiling of my tiny Seoul apartment. No window. No light. Just the familiar hum of the city that never quite slept and the faint smell of yesterday’s ramen. Classic me. Always the guy who brought his nightmares to breakfast.
“System,” I said aloud, voice flat. “Status.”
The air rippled like heat above asphalt. A slim, glowing interface unfurled right in front of my eyes—white lines, blue text, the same font I’d been staring at for four years now. I didn’t need to touch the screen. I just thought the words and the system answered. Always had.
Name: Jitae Kang
Level: 87
Title: Dream Hijacker
Affiliation: Independent (formerly Succubus Company)
Current Health: 47 / 47
Mana: 2,314 / 2,314
Status: Succubus Disqualification: 87%
Lucid Dream Mode: ACTIVE
Seventy-seven percent. I laughed once, short and dry, the way I always did when the numbers were bad. Seventy-seven percent and the thing was still ticking. Seventy-seven percent and I was still breathing. Seventy-seven percent and I hadn’t died yet, even though every night I handed over pieces of myself to her.
She. The succubus who used to call me “Oppa” in the sweetest, sultriest voice imaginable. The one whose real name I still didn’t know but whose shadow I now carried like a second heartbeat. I used to think it was just a job. A very strange, very addictive job. Now I wasn’t so sure.
The apartment was silent except for the distant clatter of a motorbike outside. I stood up, stretched, and caught my reflection in the darkened window. Tall, sharp jaw, the kind of face people noticed on the subway but never remembered. Twenty-eight years old and already feeling older than the city. I rolled my shoulders, cracked my knuckles, and headed for the door. Today was just another day of pretending I wasn’t slowly dissolving into the one thing I was supposed to control.
The train ride was the same as always—packed, sweaty, someone’s phone blaring K-pop at maximum volume. I leaned against the pole, eyes half-closed, and let the system scroll through my daily interface like it always did. Quests. Shop. Mailbox. The last one was from the Succubus Company’s ghost account. No sender. Just the subject line in glowing pink:
I tapped it without thinking. The notification bloomed in front of my face.
I almost dropped my phone. Cute. Like the message was from a friend. I shoved it back in my pocket and stepped off the train at my usual stop. The street was the same gray strip of Seoul—scooters weaving through puddles, a woman selling tteokbokki from a cart, the smell of fried dough cutting through the exhaust. Normal life. The kind of life that felt like a lie I kept telling myself.
I walked three blocks to the old warehouse district and let myself in with the key I’d earned the hard way. The place smelled of dust and ozone, the way it always did before I started my day. Fluorescent lights flickered once, twice, then steadied. The server racks lined the walls like silent soldiers. I plugged in my laptop, opened the dream interface, and the screen lit up with a soft blue glow that matched the color of her eyes when she was angry. Or maybe when she was pretending to be. I never could tell anymore.
“System,” I said, “connect to Company server.”
The connection pinged. Not the nice, polite one I used to get when I was still on payroll. This one felt… colder. Sharper. Like someone had sanded the edges off my interface just to watch me bleed. I ignored it and dove straight into the main menu.
The world around me didn’t change, but the edges sharpened. I could feel the code of reality brushing against my skin like silk. Inside my skull, the dream space unfolded exactly as I wanted it to—my own apartment, but bigger, brighter, the walls lined with shelves of glowing artifacts and the faint scent of her perfume still lingering on the sheets. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the empty spot where she used to sit. The sheets were still warm. I could feel the indent. I hated how much I liked that.
“You’re really good at this,” I muttered to the empty room. “Hijacking a company that feeds on human desire. Bravo, Kang Jitae. You’re basically a metaphor for the whole damn society.”
A soft laugh escaped me. Dry. Self-deprecating. The kind of laugh that kept the tears from falling. I stood up, walked to the window of the dream, and looked out over the metaphysical skyline. Below me, the city of Seoul flickered in neon and shadow, the same streets I’d walked that morning, but here they pulsed with dream energy. I could see the threads of people’s wishes, their fears, their wants, all tangled together like a web I’d woven myself. Power tasted better when it was stolen.
The server rack in the real world mirrored this perfectly. Every time I logged in, I was rewriting the fabric of their dream economy. Not stealing money. Stealing the ability to dream. Stealing the soul. I felt the guilt flicker sometimes—like a candle in a hurricane—but I pushed it down. Guilt was a luxury I couldn’t afford anymore.
I opened the central dashboard and scanned the current operations. The Company had been moving fast lately. Too fast. They’d been trying to pull off something big—something that involved mass extraction. I didn’t know the details. I only knew that if they succeeded, every human who’d ever paid for a night of pleasure would wake up without the ability to dream at all. No more lucid dreams. No more escape. Just the cold, grinding reality they’d been building all along. And I was the only one who could stop it. Or at least slow it down.
I rubbed my temples. My head was already starting to ache. The disqualification process was eating away at me one percentage point at a time. I could feel the edges of my humanity softening, like paper in water. Soon there wouldn’t be an “I” left. Just the dream. Just the puppet wearing my face.
“System,” I said again, softer this time, “give me a status on the extraction timeline.”
The interface flickered. A new window slid in, sleek and metallic, the color of old money and bad decisions.
Target: 12,000 human dreams
Extraction rate: 87% of current human baseline
Risk to Operator: 13% chance of permanent Disqualification
Warning: This extraction will require a new vessel to maintain continuity.
New vessel. The words landed like a slap. I knew what that meant. The Company had been building human puppets—people who looked like the dreamers they were harvesting from. People who would wake up tomorrow and have no memory of the last few hours. Just holes in their heads and a faint echo of my voice inside their skulls.
I slammed my laptop shut. The sound echoed in the dream apartment like a gunshot. I paced the room, bare feet hitting the cold floor, and stopped at the window again. Below, the city waited. People going about their lives, laughing, arguing, fucking in the dark, dreaming of better tomorrows. I was about to steal all of that from them. All of it. And I was the only one who could.
My reflection in the glass looked back at me—sharp, tired, eyes that still held a little light. For now. I whispered to the empty room, “You don’t get to win, you hear me? Not today.”
But the system didn’t answer. It never did when I needed it to. It just waited, cool and patient, like it already knew the ending.
I opened the interface one last time, checked the clock, and saw that four hours was all I had. Four hours to find a way in, to plant the virus I’d been working on for weeks, to make sure the extraction failed. Or at least made it so painful they’d think twice before ever trying something like this again.
I exhaled, long and slow, and let the dream around me fade. The real world rushed back in—train, street, coffee shop, the smell of rain. I looked at my watch. Still four hours until the next major operation. Still four hours until I had to decide whether I was the hero or the villain of my own story.
I smiled, small and tired. “Whatever,” I said to no one. “I’ve been playing both parts for years now. Might as well finish the script.”
And then I walked out into the Seoul morning, heart hammering, mind already calculating the next move, while somewhere deep inside me something darker stirred. The thing that used to be a woman. The thing that used to love me. The thing that was starting to look like the only thing that had ever been real.