Aslan
Aslan
It was less than a five-minute walk from the apartment.
Lee Hyun-woo took Angie with him and headed to a fast-food restaurant.
The yellow M on the classic red sign looked strangely unfamiliar to Aslan.
A fast-food place he hadn't seen in twelve years. Lee Hyun-woo stepped inside and placed his order, the ritual somehow both familiar and alien.
An odd sensation settled over him, as though his own limbs didn't quite belong to him.
But the actual ordering was simple. Once it was done, he sat down facing Angie.
A meticulously detailed dream. Right down to the smallest touches, it stirred nostalgia in Aslan—so that he could be Lee Hyun-woo, not Aslan.
And so Lee Hyun-woo looked at the hamburger with anticipation. A well-cooked patty slathered in sauce—a sauce that could pass for bulgogi marinade.
It wasn't his favorite burger, but for someone who hadn't truly tasted anything in at least six years, it was something precious.
Lee Hyun-woo picked up the burger carefully and bit into the unwrapped side. The lettuce hit his front teeth with a crisp crunch and split; the pickle squished under the pressure.
He tasted nothing. He chewed anyway, refusing to let disappointment take hold, telling himself it might come through if he just kept at it.
But even after chewing, there was no flavor. Only the faint textures of sauce, patty, and bun drifted across his tongue.
Lee Hyun-woo closed his eyes with a bitter smile.
Equalization had its share of side effects. The magic's very purpose was the maintenance of test subjects, so side effects were inevitable.
Most of those side effects were life-threatening. Lee Hyun-woo had dodged them all while abusing Equalization.
He'd tricked enemies with a severed arm, taken heavy hits on purpose to deliver a fatal counter.
The result was that Lee Hyun-woo—Aslan—had lost his sense of taste. That had been six years ago.
"It really is a dream."
The words came out bitter, heavy with the emotion swirling in the mind of Aslan, dressed in the shell of Lee Hyun-woo.
Angie, who saw and heard and felt all of it, read the room for a moment before speaking.
"Um, well... it's tangy and sweet and good. The meat's good too. Uh... what's it called... the bread's warm and soft, feels nice."
The girl, sauce smeared around her mouth, went on floundering through a description. She drank some cola and announced it was sweet and fizzy, then tried with great effort to explain how the burger held several flavors all at once.
Listening to her, Aslan realized she was trying so hard for his sake—the man who had lost his sense of taste.
"Thank you."
"No, I mean... that's not. I don't know what you're thinking, but it's not like that."
She fumbled, embarrassed that her concern was so obvious, but to anyone watching it was plain she was thinking of him.
Aslan let out a quiet sigh and finished the burger, and the girl gave up on her explanations to focus on her own food.
The conversation lapsed into silence, and after a short while the silence broke again.
"So you've been living on delicious things like this your whole life?"
"...Well, sometimes?"
"Then this place must be a paradise. No gods, no monsters—must be really nice to live here."
Aslan gave an awkward smile at her innocent remark.
"It's not exactly like that. People still die, after all."
Even without gods and monsters, people still died. By accident or by intent.
No human could escape death, so Aslan's thoughts inevitably turned to his father.
The girl, linked to him through their mental bond, glimpsed the image that crossed his mind.
A man with a gentle face—more like Aslan than Lee Hyun-woo, but with traces of Lee Hyun-woo visible in some features. She instinctively knew this was the owner of the voice she'd heard earlier.
"...Who was that just now?"
Aslan looked noticeably emotional, pained even. It wasn't something she could let pass without asking.
Angie didn't know him well. What she knew of Aslan was only a sliver.
She wanted to know him.
Aslan, for his part, didn't want to speak.
It wasn't that he didn't want to.
He just felt that if he started, he wouldn't be able to stop.
After a hesitation, he let out a breath and asked,
"Do you want to hear?"
She answered honestly.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"...Because I don't really know you."
Done with her burger, the girl crumpled the wrapper as if it fascinated her and went on.
"I want to know you well. How you got so strong, why you're so kind. I want to know. That's why I want to hear."
The girl fixed her golden eyes on the boy in front of her. On the boy who had fallen into a game he'd played at nineteen and wandered for twelve years.
Mentally, he was no longer a boy, but he still looked like one—Lee Hyun-woo.
Lee Hyun-woo lowered his gaze for a moment, then opened his mouth.
*
Lee Hyun-woo's father had been a firefighter.
Lee Hyun-woo had been proud of him, and his father had taken pride in his work, too.
Ever since Lee Hyun-woo was little, whenever he asked why his father did it—whether he wasn't afraid of fire, how he could rush into the flames to save people—his father would answer with a gentle smile.
"When I step into a burning building, I think: 'Right now, I'm the only one who can save the people in here. No one else can do this.' That's why I do it."
Lee Hyun-woo would press him: weren't there other firefighters? Didn't they respond as a team?
His father would laugh and say,
"Of course there are other firefighters. Plenty of them. But still... when there's someone right in front of me, I'm the only one who can save that person, aren't I? I can't just pass it off and assume someone else will."
Lee Hyun-woo had agreed, and his father had smiled. Smiling, he'd said,
"Son, you become the kind of person who does what needs to be done."
Lee Hyun-woo never forgot those words.
How could he?
No son could forget the last words of the dead.
His father died saving people at an accident site. All that remained to fill the cold, empty space was a funeral portrait draped with two black ribbons.
Aslan had been thirteen years old when his father passed.
"...Then that voice."
"I don't really know either. But it's clearly not a pleasant dream."
The subway train rumbled into the station. The massive thing moved like it was alive, and Angie flinched inward, her shoulders hunching slightly.
"After all, someone who's already dead can't be at home."
Still, deep down, a part of Lee Hyun-woo wished that voice really was his father.
He wished all the misfortunes he'd suffered had only been a dream.
A childish wish—one he could only indulge because it could never come true. Knowing that, Lee Hyun-woo sighed and stepped through the open doors.
"What's this?"
"A subway. Just think of it as a carriage that runs underground."
"Oh... subway...."
Angie repeated the word in clumsy Korean, marvelling at it, and Lee Hyun-woo guided her to a seat and sat down beside her.
Despite the evening rush, the subway car was noticeably uncrowded.
Whether it was because time meant nothing inside a dream, or because twelve years had weathered his memory, he couldn't say.
Only after Angie had leaned against his shoulder did the train begin to move.
Beyond the rattle and jolt, a vibration seeped up through the floor, the seatbacks, the plastic of the chairs.
People around them read books in silence or stared into their smartphones.
Aslan watched the scene for a while, then spoke lightly.
"After my father died, my mother said only one thing: help people only as long as your own life isn't in danger."
Lee Hyun-woo could understand the emotional pain his mother had suffered after losing her husband. He'd suffered it too; understanding was only natural.
So he kept himself safe. At least while he was on Earth.
After falling into Geladrion, Aslan had stopped sparing his life. Survival was the priority, but when that wasn't possible, he'd use even his own life as a tool without a second thought.
Angie, who knew that, looked at him with a puzzled expression, but Aslan simply gazed out the window. Without turning his head, he glanced at her and gestured toward the view with his eyes.
"Wow."
Where Lee Hyun-woo had pointed, the Han River lay.
Countless cars streamed over the flowing water. The bridge spanning it was a colossal structure beyond anything a medieval mind could conceive.
A massive bridge built of steel. As Angie took it in, a thought finally formed in her mind.
Earth—dotted with monumental architecture beyond Geladrion's wildest dreams, where people lived in peace.
Geladrion, by contrast...
"It's wrong."
Lee Hyun-woo cut in, reading her thoughts. The girl gazed at him. His black eyes held a conflicted depth entirely different from when they were teal.
"You see it now, don't you? Without me, if I don't act... if I can't prove what's wrong, the people of Geladrion won't even know something is wrong."
They'd just be exploited helplessly and die. His bitter murmur was heavy with sincerity.
"If I don't do it, no one can. I'm the only one who remembers this world. If I give up fighting... Geladrion will never change."
Angie offered no argument against those somber words. She didn't have one. Looking at a world without gods and monsters, she believed him.
"...So where are we going?"
Angie watched the passing scenery as she asked, and Lee Hyun-woo replied offhandedly.
"Remember what I said earlier?"
"Earlier? Which...."
"That I had an idea."
Angie made a soft sound of recollection.
"You said you're doing what you were doing before you fell into Geladrion."
Aslan nodded.
"Where we're going right now is the last place I was before I fell into Geladrion."
After that, Aslan fell silent. Angie said nothing more, just watched him out of the corner of her eye.
She wondered what he was feeling, what he was thinking. Her glances kept drifting to the side of his face.
The subway shuddered to a stop, and even after they got off, Lee Hyun-woo said little, quickening his steps. He simply led Angie somewhere.
At least ten minutes—maybe more—passed before Aslan stopped.
It was a pedestrian path tucked between hills and mountains. He came to a halt at the railing and looked out at the streets just beginning to glow with the orange wash of evening lights.
There were few people around, nothing remarkable. Just a quiet walkway. But it ran along a sheer mountain slope, and the drop below was considerable.
So empty and unremarkable that even Angie, who knew nothing of Earth, stopped in bewilderment.
Seeing her expression, Aslan leaned against the railing.
"Before I fell into Geladrion, the last place I was... was right here. Specifically, I fell from here."
Angie's gaze dropped. The walkway traced the mountain's edge at a dizzying height.
No matter how you looked at it, it was a fatal drop.
Angie opened her mouth. She wasn't sure why.
"Aslan...."
The boy who had become Aslan, Lee Hyun-woo, gave a bitter smile and shook his head.