Aslan
Aslan
Angie stepped into the city — a place that defied every scrap of Knowledge her medieval mind could draw on.
Streetlamps pushed back the creeping dusk, flooding the streets with light, and she stared in wonder as the night recoiled and gave way. No one on the sidewalks seemed to be in any hurry. The cars cramming the road were the same, and she watched them with the wariness of something her Knowledge couldn't begin to explain.
Students spilled out of cram schools in chattering knots, heading home. Office workers who'd gotten off early walked with faces set in mild, vacant boredom.
Among them all, Angie wore an awkward expression.
`I can't understand a word they're saying.`
She stood there trying to parse the speech of passersby, and they shot her sidelong glances in return.
Golden eyes. Hair like a scarlet sunset. Colors almost nonexistent in Korea.
And the armor she wore was striking enough that people murmured as they passed.
"Is that a costume?"
"Maybe there's some kind of event."
Angie couldn't grasp even that much. Her expression crumpled toward tears.
Not a single word made sense. Not a single written character was legible. She was illiterate to begin with, and the signs plastered everywhere were in Korean.
It wasn't even the Imperial tongue common across Geladrion — nothing she could guess at from context. She wandered through the throng, then retreated to a corner and sat down.
`I'm scared...`
Her life wasn't in danger, but incomprehensible things pressed in from every side. Fear of the unknown crawled over her like cold tendrils.
Her appearance drew eyes. Sharp, handsome features, vivid hair, vivid irises — people couldn't help but look.
And because everyone was looking, eventually someone called the police. It didn't take long after the report for a patrol car to pull up and two officers to approach.
They stopped in front of her where she sat, still trying to make some sense of the situation.
"Are you all right? You've been sitting here a while. Did you lose your luggage?"
She didn't understand the officer's kind words. All she could produce was a blank uh, what? in response.
The officers were just as lost. Communication broke down, and the man looked troubled. His female partner couldn't identify the language Angie was speaking either.
After racking their brains, the two finally relaxed when the girl let out an ah and produced a wallet.
Fortunately for her, the wallet held both a student ID and a national ID card. The officers checked the address and guided her into the patrol car.
The words didn't connect, but they didn't think she'd shown them the wallet for nothing.
Angie climbed in without resistance and let herself be carried. The car, humming with faint vibrations, was a truly astonishing object to her.
The nighttime road glowed scarlet, then shifted through a dozen colors every time the headlights of passing cars swept over it.
That painted road rushed past, and Angie's eyes went wide at the speed she felt in her bones.
She clasped her hands together in her lap, fingers fidgeting, and let the patrol car carry her toward Aslan.
*
A short while later, she stood in front of a door flanked by the two officers. Before an unreadable number: 605.
The doorbell rang. The door opened.
In words she couldn't follow, the officers and the boy beyond the door exchanged speech. When the exchange ended, the narrow gap of the door swung wide.
The figure revealed on the other side matched the photo in Angie's wallet exactly.
A younger, softer version. Eyes black.
Aslan.
His eyes flew open at the sight of her face.
Then they slowly closed. A faint, bitter smile flickered at the corner of his mouth — subtle enough that only the girl standing before him would recognize it.
"...So this was the dream after all."
Words only Angie could understand.
The language Lee Hyun-woo had been forced to learn just to survive after falling into Geladrion.
The Imperial tongue.
The unfamiliar foreign speech sounded close enough to what the girl had been speaking that the two officers gave a perfunctory farewell and left.
Once they'd gone, Lee Hyun-woo managed a bitter smile.
"Come in."
That was when the girl finally knew for certain: the boy in front of her was Aslan.
Certainty broke the frozen grip of fear and confusion. She threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around him.
Pressed against his chest, she could feel his heartbeat. His breath brushed loosely against the nape of her neck. A sniffle. The sound of someone barely swallowing back tears.
"Uh, Angie?"
Joy, anxiety, terror, bewilderment — the tangled rush of emotion spilled past Angie and flooded Lee Hyun-woo's mind. The feelings came through with such clarity they threatened to unbalance him.
`What's happening?`
He thought it, and Angie answered.
"What's happening to you? You're... so much smaller. No muscle. How much have you suffered...?"
If even his eyes had turned black, then surely he'd endured unimaginable hardship. The girl's thoughts echoed through Lee Hyun-woo's awareness.
No need for spoken conversation. He frowned slightly, then patted her back.
The body pressed against his was warm and soft, but this wasn't the moment to register such things.
It didn't take long to calm her and gently pry her off. Angie scowled, trying to hide eyes that had reddened a little, and struck her usual brash pose.
Lee Hyun-woo started to offer a gentle smile and explain.
That it wasn't what she thought.
"Then what is it?"
She picked it up before he could speak, cutting his thought off mid-stride.
A hazy certainty in his chest. He hesitated.
Was it all right to tell her? Would she be able to understand?
More pressingly — if the girl went berserk, could he handle it? Every doubt drifted straight through her head.
"Explain it to me. I'll stay calm."
She set her jaw and planted her hands on her hips as if to prove it. A pose meant to show harmlessness. The intention was so transparent that Lee Hyun-woo read it instantly. He still couldn't identify the reason for this mental link, and it gnawed at him.
But the hesitation didn't last. What was the point, if she could already hear his thoughts?
A lie would be obvious the moment he tried. And this was a grudge he'd held for twelve years.
Something he could never tell anyone. Something no one would understand even if he did.
If he could finally get it out — with overwhelming, undeniable conviction behind it —
Then this was an opportunity.
Lee Hyun-woo closed his eyes, let out a quiet, humorless laugh, and exhaled as he gestured toward the table.
"Sit down. I'll get you something to drink."
Angie went and sat. Lee Hyun-woo opened the refrigerator with practiced ease, pulled out juice, found a glass, poured, and set it in front of her.
She might reasonably have suspected poison, but the girl only studied the clear glass with interest before drinking without hesitation. She drank and thought:
`It's good.`
Lee Hyun-woo caught the thought and let out a faint, unguarded laugh. He waited until she set the glass down and settled in to listen.
When she did, he spoke.
"I'm not from Geladrion."
"...What's Geladrion?"
As he prepared an answer, a flood of stray thoughts washed through both their minds — maps, fragments of history. Fleeting noise.
Lee Hyun-woo pulled a simple answer from the current.
"The world you live in. The one we were just in, until a moment ago. That's Geladrion."
"Yeah?"
She sipped her juice. He nodded, a little taken aback by her calm. She pressed on evenly.
"...So if you're not from Geladrion, then what?"
"From here."
He paused — more precisely — and added:
"The world this dream you're seeing... is sort of based on."
The girl didn't fully grasp it, but she could make vague inferences from the conjectures bleeding through Lee Hyun-woo's thoughts.
This world was something like a fantasy, a dream, or a constructed reality.
Even without understanding what any of that meant, she accepted it.
Her acceptance seemed to settle something in him.
"You've probably seen it on the way here. This world is different from Geladrion."
Angie didn't answer. She let the impressions from the journey rise to the surface.
No shared language, yet the people had been kind and orderly in their own way.
Above all, no one had the look of someone terrified, afraid for their life.
Unlike anyone in Geladrion.
They were just busy with their own business, their own paths.
Lee Hyun-woo watched the images surface in her mind and nodded.
"Why do you think that is?"
"...Uh, because there aren't monsters?"
"No. Even without monsters, there are always beasts just as dangerous, or humans worse than beasts. Every world has them."
She supposed so, and set the empty glass down. Lee Hyun-woo looked at her as he answered.
"It's because of the gods."
He went on.
"You've probably felt it, traveling with me. The greed of the gods, their monstrous nature — that's what makes Geladrion a place where survival is barely possible."
"...Hm, I guess so. So what? Why are you telling me this?"
Her guileless question meant she still didn't understand, even though Aslan's thoughts were streaming into her.
Aslan considered her question for a moment.
"This world isn't like that. And I wanted to tell you — that's why I'm like this."
Unlike Aslan's, Lee Hyun-woo's arms were thin. He had exercised, but not the muscles of someone who'd spent every day cutting down monsters, men, and priests just to survive.
"A child gets to be a child. No one has to be a warrior. A world where you don't have to become vicious just to stay alive. I mean... I can't claim it's true for everyone, but broadly — a world where you don't have to struggle for survival. I was born in that world. So I'm like this."
A body that hadn't known combat. A body that hadn't needed to. And yet that same Lee Hyun-woo had fallen into Geladrion and fought to survive. Angie absorbed the meaning and glanced around.
"So is this a dream?"
The world Aslan was born into. Hard to understand, harder to believe — but the girl trusted Aslan. Trusting him, she repeated the words she'd heard at the doorway.
Aslan read the question's intent with perfect clarity and let out a bitter smile.
Behind the smile, a fleeting wish stirred through the girl's consciousness.
Lee Hyun-woo wished — even if Angie herself was a dream — that this could be real.
The conflicted, unguarded wish reached Angie. Her gaze stilled. Her pupils trembled.
Hurt flickered across her face, but she pressed her lips shut and said nothing.
"...A dream, probably."
Lee Hyun-woo had read every step of that reaction and answered, letting his eyes fall with the weight of apology.
"Because if it isn't, Angie... there's no way you'd be here."
Angie kept her lips sealed for a moment, then spoke.
"Then what do we do?"
He lifted his head. She was looking at him, steady and direct.
"I don't know how this dream happened... or what this world really is. But I don't think I'm supposed to stay here."
It was a vague intuition. She continued.
"To leave... what do I have to do?"
In her honest heart, she didn't want to go. But Lee Hyun-woo felt it too — she had to. A dream couldn't last forever.
So he sat with the silence for a while, then answered.
"I have an idea."
"What?"
"I'll go through the same thing I went through before I fell into Geladrion."
"Uh, what are you going to—"
"See for your—"
Before he could answer Angie's bewildered question, a stomach growled between them.
Angie's face went red. She scratched the back of her head.
"Ah, shit... embarrassing."
Lee Hyun-woo let out a soft laugh, picked up the wallet Angie had brought, and stood. A familiar weight. A familiar shape.
"Let's go out, get something to eat, and figure it out. I'll explain while we're there."
The mention of food brightened the girl's mood. She rose and followed him toward the front door. Aslan was right behind her, stepping toward the entryway, when —
"...Hyeon-u, where are you going?"
A man's voice.
Deep and resonant. Eerily like Aslan's own. He stopped in his tracks and drew a sharp breath.
Lee Hyun-woo knew that voice with a chill intimacy.
It was identical to his father's.
His dead father's.
He forced an answer past his throat.
"Out. Gonna grab dinner with a friend."
"Oh? Need any money? You could go somewhere nice..."
"N...no, it's fine. I'll... be back."
Lee Hyun-woo bit his lip, squeezed his eyes shut, answered, and stepped outside.
Angie followed him out and saw him standing there with his eyes tightly shut, breathing hard.
Through their linked minds, she understood a beat later.
The voice just now — it was Lee Hyun-woo's father.
A firefighter. A man who was already dead.
The dead have no voice.
But the voice she'd just heard was unmistakably a dead man's.
The truth of it sank into Lee Hyun-woo's bones. He covered his face with his palm and groaned.
"Damn it..."
His laugh was hollow, caught somewhere between grief and a sickening confusion as he struggled for composure.
This dream was clearly no ordinary dream.