Chapter 65
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 65
Chapter Title: Dream Within a Dream
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Subway Dream (7) - Free Final Round
[Ah, ah, we are announcing again─]
The chilling announcement continued to echo. Meanwhile, the passengers remained frozen solid, like wax figures.
No one on the subway moved. It was like looking at a collection of corpses.
Moreover, the current scene matched the one Ju-hee said she saw in her dream.
An indescribable sense of dread took precedence. I had to get out of here, right now.
*Clank.*
*Clank, clank.*
However, the passage connecting to the rear car was firmly locked. No matter how hard I pulled, not even the slightest gap would form.
"Dammit..."
The subway rattled on without stopping, heading somewhere unknown.
Giving up, I searched the car. But Dayeon and Ju-hee were nowhere to be seen.
I was left all alone here. The moment I realized that fact, a chill ran through my entire body.
The terror of solitude crept up my spine like a spider.
"I'm losing my mind."
The shiver down my spine was so intense I muttered an awestruck curse. It felt like the only way to hold on to my sanity.
Anyway, where did the others go? I swallowed dryly and tried to get a grip.
*Crackle─ Crac-crackle─*
Just then, a grating, static-filled voice crackled again from the ceiling.
The same eerie-voiced announcement as before began to play.
[This station is Gouging~ Gouging Station.]
...Gouging?
What kind of a station name is that?
Just as I thought that, all the passengers in the car shot to their feet.
As if on cue, they walked forward and formed a neat line.
The sight was utterly bizarre.
"For fuck's sake..."
What in the world was about to happen? I didn't know, but I was certain it was something terrible.
Soon, the rattling slowly subsided. The subway train had come to a halt.
Did it stop because we reached our destination?
But the subway doors remained tightly shut.
I tried pulling them just in case, but like the connecting passage, they wouldn't open.
*Clank.*
*Clank, clank.*
And so, despite having arrived at the station, I couldn't escape this subway car.
─*Screeeech*
The door at the front of the subway car creaked open. A sinister shadow fell inside.
...It was a grotesque creature, the likes of which I'd never seen before.
Should I call them dwarves?
A line of monstrous beings, barely reaching my waist, filed in.
In their hands, they held saws that looked like they were for carving wood.
The dwarves approached the passengers lined up in the center of the car.
Then, they lopped off the hand of the man at the front of the line.
But they couldn't cut it off completely. The blade got stuck when it hit the bone.
I guess bones are just that tough.
It didn't sever easily. So they sawed back and forth, like cutting a block of wood.
[Gouging♪ Gouging♬]
As they sawed through the bone, the dwarves hummed a disturbing little tune.
Listening closely, I realized it was the song that plays when you transfer subway lines.
They hummed along to their own rhythm as if carving up a person was some kind of thrilling entertainment.
Finally, the man's hand fell off with a thud. They had successfully gouged it out with the saw.
[Gouging~ Gouging~]
The dwarves started tossing the hand back and forth to each other, cackling amongst themselves.
"Fucking hell..."
I couldn't help but be horrified by the sight.
Even for a dream, I never imagined it could be this cruel.
I slowly backed away, searching for a way to escape this space.
But nothing in the subway car was working.
"Why won't anything interact!"
I was fiddling with a useless handrail when the announcement echoed from the ceiling again.
*Crackle─ Crac-crackle─*
[This station is Scooping~ Scooping Station.]
The dwarves put away their saws and pulled out spoons from their pockets.
They looked like the sporks that children who can't use chopsticks use.
What on earth were they going to use those for?
An ominous feeling washed over me for some reason.
The man who had been at the front of the line was now dead, and it was the second person's turn.
A woman in a suit, looking utterly exhausted, stepped forward.
The dwarves raised their spoons and began to scoop out the woman's eyes.
[Scooping♪ Scooping♬]
A sticky mass came out of the woman's eye socket. But the optic nerve, connected to the brain, held the eye firmly in place.
The woman's eyeball didn't fall out but dangled precariously from her head.
It looked like it could drop at any moment. Bloody tears streamed down from it.
"Ugh."
It was such a horrifically painful scene that I instinctively grimaced.
[Scooping~ Scooping~]
The dwarves, completely unfazed, yanked on the woman's eyeball. The optic nerve tore with a snap, like a piece of overstretched gum.
The eyeball popped out of the woman's head and hung limply.
It looked like one of those cheap gummy candies you'd find at a corner store near a school.
The dwarves seemed pleased with the woman's惨状, cackling just as before. They tossed the eyeball into their mouths and chewed it to a pulp.
I could hear the popping sound as the juices of the eye burst. Then, one dwarf spat crudely onto the subway floor.
The spit was a grotesque mix of blood, pupil, and iris, boasting a bizarre color.
"What the actual fuck..."
Then, the subway announcement played once more, right on cue.
[This station is Hacking~ Hacking Station.]
But it didn't end there. The announcement crackled with static, then transformed into a bizarre voice and began to play.
[For your information, this is the final station. We sincerely hope all passengers have a comfortable death. Farewell.]
...The final station.
And death.
The powerful words were seared into my mind. It was painfully obvious what this meant.
"Don't fuck with me."
I rushed to the subway door. I pounded on it, ready to shatter the window.
But no matter how hard I hit it, it didn't budge. It was just like the classroom windows.
Meanwhile, the dwarves pulled out several kitchen knives from who-knows-where and held one in each hand.
Then they charged at the people standing in line.
[Hacking♪ Hacking♬]
The subway car instantly turned into a vision of hell. People collapsed left and right. It was a bloodbath, a scene too gruesome to watch.
The dwarves stabbed relentlessly with their kitchen knives, never stopping their humming. Each one followed their own rhythm, creating a harmony of sorts.
...It was a cacophony. Before long, everyone in the line had fallen.
Now, I was the only living person on this subway.
There was no means of escape. I wrestled with the door until my palms were raw, but it was all for nothing.
If it's come to this, I have nothing to lose. I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice filled with rage.
"Stay away, you bastards!"
But the dwarves paid me no mind and slowly shuffled closer.
...This was bad. They weren't like Nabi, someone I could reason with.
"Dammit."
I let out a low sigh of despair. Even that was drowned out by the dwarves' humming and vanished into the air.
[Hacking~ Hacking~]
I don't remember much of what happened after that.
The dwarves rushed me indiscriminately, bringing their kitchen knives down without rhyme or reason.
*Thump.*
*Thump, thump.*
*Thump, thump, thump.*
And in my fading consciousness, I heard a faint announcement.
[We would like to thank all passengers for using our train♪ Please mind the gap between the train and the platform when boarding or alighting♬]
With those last words─
*Thud.*
My vision went black.
"Ugh, ughhh!"
I let out a scream like a wild animal and shot upright.
When I came to my senses, I was lying on a hospital bed.
"Right, it was a dream..."
A dream.
What had just happened was a dream. The moment I realized that, my legs gave out from under me.
I clutched my heart, which had shrunk to the size of a pea, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank god, thank god it was a dream..."
I let out a series of relieved sighs. Still, I couldn't seem to calm down.
It just went to show how shocking the events of the dream had been.
I clutched my pounding chest for a long while before I finally regained my composure.
This second chapter.
It was tough from the very beginning. I had no idea how I was even going to survive, let alone make progress.
By the way, why weren't Dayeon and Ju-hee in the dream?
"Don't tell me I was the only one who fell asleep?"
For multiple people to have the same dream at the same time, there was a condition.
We all had to be sleeping in the same bed.
We had fulfilled the 'one bed' condition, but it seemed a problem occurred with the 'falling asleep' part.
I had fallen asleep too early. Because of that, I was the unfortunate one who experienced the dream alone.
"So that's what it was."
The situation was so ridiculously simple it was absurd. To put a person through all that just because they fell asleep a little early.
Still, in a way, it was a relief. I was the only one who had to experience that horrific sight...
It was as if I had taken on the mental trauma that Dayeon and Ju-hee would have suffered, all at once.
"So are they not asleep?"
I suddenly looked around to find Dayeon and Ju-hee.
But something was strange.
I couldn't see them.
I was sure the three of us had been huddled together on the same bed.
"...What the."
It was only then that I noticed the strangeness of this place. In fact, from the moment I first opened my eyes, Dayeon and Ju-hee had been gone without a trace.
I was left all alone in this hospital room. Bewildered, I sat up.
"Jin Dayeon? Han Ju-hee?"
I called their names plaintively, but no answer came back.
I checked under the bed and in the bathroom, wondering if they were hiding from me.
"Are you hiding in here?"
But there was no trace of Dayeon or Ju-hee anywhere.
"...Guys?"
It was just like the subway. There was no one around but me.
"Answer if you can hear me...!"
I tried to raise my voice, but my cry in the silence was swallowed by the air and disappeared.
My mind went blank. I thought I had finally escaped that wretched nightmare, but...
"No way."
I was alone again.
What did this mean?
After experiencing so many strange phenomena, I had developed a sort of intuition.
"It can't be..."
...I was trapped in the dream.
**
The inside was pitch black.
A red light seeped in through the windows.
On top of that, the floor was constantly rattling.
To put it mildly, the facilities on this subway were terrible and utterly uncomfortable.
"I want to get off already."
Dayeon pouted, her cheeks puffed out as she voiced her complaint. By her side were her two friends.
The model student, trembling in the corner, and the clumsy oaf, sleeping soundly and snoring away.
It was a combination that didn't fit the dark, empty atmosphere of the subway at all.
Still, it was possible because they had all gathered together and fallen asleep in one bed.
"I'm glad everyone made it into the dream."
To get straight to the point, the plan for multiple people to enter the same dream at the same time was a success.
However, the result was far from ideal.
Ju-hee was terrified and trembling the moment she entered the dream, and...
Lee Hyeon, despite having entered the dream, was still snoring away soundly.
The expression on Hyeon's face was not good. If you listened closely, he was even talking in his sleep.
"Hey, guys... where are you..."
Dayeon gazed at the cute boy muttering nonsense.
Hmm, is he having a nightmare?
If he were dreaming of me, this would all be solved.
But there was something strange. Wasn't this subway currently Ju-hee's dream?
If so, why was Hyeon still dreaming in the middle of it all?
"Hmm..."
Dreaming within a dream. There was definitely a technical term to describe this...
Dayeon thought for a moment. She recalled the contents of a book she had read in the school library.
"Ah, I remember."
Suddenly, a lightbulb went 'ping!' in her head.
Dayeon let out a small "Aha!" and slapped her fist into her palm.
A dream you have inside another dream.
That was─
A Dream Within a Dream.