A Doctor in Wonderland
"You can't even raise your voice? You can't even tell them to take their hands off you?"
We sat there with drinks in our hands and no thought of tasting them, locked on the screen. Lovers in Berlin — a legendary drama that had once peaked at a 51.5 percent audience share, the kind of number that carved itself into history.
The heroine had been snubbed at a party, and the hero had taken her by the hand and pulled her out of the hall.
"I wanted to scream, I really did! But that man is your friend..."
The heroine's eyes glassed over, and a single tear slipped free and rolled down her cheek. Watching her, the hero only grew angrier.
"I held back for your sake!"
"If anyone's holding back, it should be me!"
"Kku-ing, that acting is insane."
We were all in awe. The hairstyles and costumes had that slightly dated look of an old production, but the performances chewed through every last bit of it and spat out gold.
"That man is mine! That man is my lover! Why can't you say it?!"
"Ohhhhhh."
At the male lead's thunderous cry, we all slapped the sofa at once — hands and front paws alike. Now that was a drama.
"Looking like this, how could I?! Surrounded by people like that, how am I supposed to say it?"
The heroine's tear-choked words left the hero speechless. He had never once stood where she stood, and so he had never known.
"I can't humiliate you just to salvage my own pride."
"He's right. You could see it that way."
"Kku-ing? How would Master know that?"
"You think I started out like this? I clawed my way up from the bottom too."
Errand boy. Herb seller. Potion peddler. The work piled up, the skill followed, and the rank climbed with it. And at the very end...
"In my case the genders were flipped, though. She was a princess."
"Kku-ing? That's actually kind of wild."
The jealous squabbles in a drama looked like child's play next to what went on inside a palace. Real poison and real knives flew every single day, and most of them never showed their faces.
"Oh?"
The hero, who had been standing still while the heroine wept, walked toward her without a word, took her face in both hands, and then—
"Kku-oooooh."
I had not known Samsaek could make a sound like that. Was that a drunk uncle or a Spiritual Beast?
The hero kissed her, and both of them let their eyes fall shut. The sweetness of the kiss and the salt of the tears running down her cheek filled the frame together as the soundtrack swelled.
The kiss closed the episode. We slumped back into the sofa, making those throat-scratching groans that only drunk middle-aged men should be allowed to make.
"Ahhhhh. That's the stuff."
"A drama that made history really is different."
"Hey, Master, can I ask you something?"
"What."
"When are you going to kiss that human woman Lee Chaerin the way those two just did?"
I nearly sprayed my strawberry latte across the room. I clamped my mouth shut just in time and saved it.
"What are you talking about? Why would she and I—"
"Kku-ing, don't humans start dating if they see each other enough?"
"That's a drama. You're the one doing that internet broadcasting thing — you don't even know that?"
"Still, doesn't that Lee Chaerin come around way too often? She's here every few days."
"Is she? Has she been coming that much?"
Come to think of it, every time Chaerin showed up she brought the liquor I liked. I glanced at the corner, where the bottles had stacked themselves into a small mountain. There were, in fact, a lot of them.
"I heard she's got a mountain of work and she's ridiculously busy. She even comes by late at night after she's done, every single time. You don't think that's a little weird?"
"No chance. Someone at Lee Chaerin's level — an S-Rank Hunter — she's just coming because she wants someone to talk to."
If anything had been off, I would have noticed. All she ever did when she got here was complain that the day had been brutal, or that her little sister was driving her up the wall.
She just needs somewhere to talk it out.
It wasn't as if I could tell her stories from the other side — from Belial. And I barely left the house here on Earth, so I mostly just listened. I had never gotten any other impression from it.
"There's no atmosphere like that. You're sitting right there every time. You'd know."
"Kku-ing, that so? Yeah, I guess there wasn't any of that dramatic vibe like in the show."
Samsaek was a Spiritual Beast, and he had never been through a human romance, so his master's word seemed good enough for him. Still, lately that human named Chaerin had felt a little off — like she was in a foul mood, even angry... Must have been my imagination.
Master really is smart.
"She's like a little sister. A little sister."
"Yeah? If Master says so, then that's how it is."
"Hm?"
An alert chimed on Samsaek's watch. He tapped the notification, and the live rankings from first through tenth unfurled down the screen.
"Master! Something fun just hit the live HunTube chart."
An alert like that meant a new live video had broken into the real-time top ten on HunTube, the largest video platform on the planet.
"Now what. Is there anything you don't do?"
"Kku-ing, even an internet broadcast has to follow the trends."
It was a platform on a global scale, with countless people clawing for attention — and even so, this stream stood out from the title alone.
"Some alchemy something-or-other just went up?"
"Did it?"
An alchemist? Come to think of it, I had barely heard the word since coming back to Earth. Which meant the profession was not exactly popular — and yet here was a title like that.
I looked interested enough that Samsaek hooked his watch up to the television and put the video on.
"This one is known as Wang Chun, the greatest scientist in the world."
"Oh, he's coming out swinging. Judging by the speech, old-school Chinese?"
An old man in a monocle and a white lab coat appeared, and the first words out of his mouth were already interesting. It had been a while since I had seen someone this full of himself.
"Kku-ing, no wonder it cracked the top ten. I need to learn from this. That is what they call high-tier aggro."
"...Watching you adapt this well sometimes, I honestly don't understand how Spiritual Beasts nearly died out."
"Kku-ing, Master should try harder too. I did not survive all those years on luck and reading the room. Kku-ing."
He was taking that as a compliment.
"Of late, impious tidings have sullied these ears. This one cannot but lament."
"That old man is... a lot."
"Kku-ing, these days they call that a bit."
"This one seeks the wretch who, by mere fortune, stumbled upon a scrap of knowledge."
"That HunTube thing is something else too. People actually watch a guy come out and talk like that?"
I really had been gone a long time. I could not get a handle on what people found entertaining anymore. Still, the age had changed, and I would have to change with it.
"They can't touch anything anyone uploads, so garbage like this keeps popping up. That's what makes it fresh. Same as the auction house."
Who even ran the place? The whole world had torn itself apart looking, and no one had ever caught so much as a tail.
"The cur who dared insult this one is the bastard who brewed those D-Rank and F-Rank fifty-percent potions... ahem. The fellow."
Right. Just as Samsaek had said, there was something clumsy about it — so it really was a bit. And yet something felt off. The story this man was telling was strangely familiar.
"He's talking about Master."
Samsaek, ever helpful, put a bullet in the confirmation himself.
"The rabble dares claim We have been outdone by some wet-behind-the-ears whelp. We hereby demand a contest of supremacy. Leave a message upon this account."
"What are you going to do, Master?"
"Ignore it. Why would I waste my time on that. Give it a bit and a rock-head like him will forget the whole—"
"And We shall visit punishment upon Joseon Pharmaceuticals, who dare peddle the potions of that lowborn thing."
"....."
The sheer lunacy of it sent a spike of irritation through me, and my brow knotted on its own.
"What the hell is this guy's problem?"
"Here. Look at this, Master."
Samsaek pulled the live comments up beside the screen.
Of course. The video was already unhinged, so the live chat had left the road entirely and gone straight into orbit.
"Looks like he's a villain named Wang Chun, kku-ing."
Even with comments rocketing past too fast to read, Samsaek plucked the useful pieces out of the flood as if he had been born to it.
"A villain, huh..."
Villain sounded grander than it was. In Union terms, it just meant someone who had stepped outside the lines — a criminal, nothing more. There were people who wore the label because they had no other choice, and then there were people like this lunatic, who were the label itself.
"Now what."
This time the call came in on my watch. The caller ID said Director Kang. Hadn't he said they were running some kind of workshop today?
"Karen, sir! Have you by any chance seen the video on HunTube?"
He was out of the office and he had still called this fast. The video really was running hot.
"Just watched it."
"You don't need to concern yourself with this at all, sir. We have our partner guilds, and if we hire mercenaries we can more than handle it."
Right. If Director Kang was saying that, there was no reason to pick a fight with some cheap thug. Whatever the man wanted to shout about, I could just stay home and watch dra—
"We hear he is some lowborn called an alchemist. From whence has such a rootless, base creature sprung?"
The man was drunk on his own speech. He rocked on his feet and swept both hands through the air as he talked. He might have thought he looked magnificent. To me, he looked like someone learning to swim for the first time, thrashing in the water.
"The issue is one's roots. As befits a people sprung from a paltry tributary state, he is vulgar beyond measure."
"We have nothing to worry about, Karen, sir."
"Alas! The fault of ancestors who sowed filthy seed, no doubt. Pitiful is the upstart who prospers on a stolen formula — yet We, too, have Our dignity."
Something about the way this man talked was starting to sit wrong. The language kept climbing, and Samsaek began stealing little glances at my face.
"..."
"Karen, sir? Are you still there?"
"In Our mercy, We shall spare the whelp his life. But We shall prevent that filthy seed from spreading, and thus do the world a service. Submit quietly to the blade."
He made a pair of scissors with his fingers and snipped the air. Was he talking about turning someone into a eunuch?
A low grind of enamel.
"M-Master?"
Maybe it had just been too long since anyone had come at me like this. My teeth found each other on their own.
"That bastard's good at exactly one thing."
"...Master? You okay?"
"He is, without question, extremely good at pissing people off."
If you could hear that from a man like him and not get angry, you were a houseplant, not a person.
"Master. Breathe. Breathe. Big inhale, then let it out."
"Huu... huu..."
I did as Samsaek said, dragging the air in and pushing it out, and the heat went out of me almost at once. Right. I was not going to take a cheap hook like that.
"Nice try."
Seeing me settle, Samsaek finally let out a breath of his own.
"Director Kang. Tell the president to handle it howev—"
"What was that?"
An explosion tore through the other end of the line, followed by Director Kang's scream, and then the call went dead.
"Director Kang?"
"Lest he fail to come, We shall lend a hand at once. If he does not appear, every last insolent whelp here shall die. Come alone, or they die all the same."
The picture cut, and the camera found a single building standing in a quiet stretch of outskirts.
DREAM VISION CENTER
The building where Joseon Pharmaceuticals was holding its workshop.
"Aaaaaaah!"
"Please, help us!"
A flare of light, and then figures in full-body coverings appeared. The people from Joseon Pharmaceuticals screamed. The attackers did not care. They drove everyone into a single cluster with threats and open violence.
"Director Kang?"
"Kku-ing?"
The camera had whipped past too fast, but we had both seen the face that flashed through the frame. It was Director Kang — the same man who had been on the phone a moment ago.
My expression went cold.
You dare lay a hand on people close to me?
The watch chimed again. This time it was the president of Joseon Pharmaceuticals.
"You're watching the video, I take it? Don't you worry. We'll handle this ourselves."
"Forget it."
"Forget what, exactly?"
"I'll contact that bastard and get his location. Just make sure he can't run."
"...Understood. We'll be ready."
"Samsaek. Fire off one of those DMs or whatever they are."
The world really had changed. Or rather — the dimension had. I was living through a situation this bizarre, and I was doing it with a private message.