Even a Nightmare Is Still a Dream #1
Two weeks had passed since the married women's hell incident. Overtime, heading home, going to work—the endless loop. Even amid that daily grind, the Friday night commute home was pure bliss.
“Manager Jo, you're here! As a huge benefactor to our Married Women's Hometown Association, here's half a grilled mackerel on the house!”
“Take our pomegranate juice too!”
The married women merchants loaded me up with freebies. Sure, I'm human—it felt nice to get some goodwill. But recalling how I'd earned it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
“Won't finish this by tomorrow.”
Lost in such thoughts, I arrived home, brimming with cacti.
─Whirr!
─Whirr!
Whirr!
Cacti greeted me right from the entryway, melting away my mood in an instant. This weekend, gotta pamper these plants.
“Jo, you're late.”
“Yeah, overtime today... Whoa! Lady Melinoë!?”
Melinoë
Perfect and Beautiful Goddess
Lady Melinoë sat on the sofa, fiddling with the TV remote like she owned the place!
“Lady Melinoë. What brings you here? Word is you're under house arrest.”
“Jo, two weeks back, you tangled with that foreign fairy—the elf—in some nasty business. They might come after you, so I came to check your safety first.”
The elf in question was Prince Zagreus's second wife. She'd faced probes over the women's association scandal and shady deals, coughed up a massive fine. Must've stung like hell. I'd half-braced for payback, but nothing. Credit to Lady Nixdoty and the married women's pull.
“Jo, you spotted me and loaded up on groceries. Perfect. I skipped dinner too—let's eat together.”
Dinner with Lady Melinoë? Thinking about it, we'd never shared a meal. Booze? Yeah, first meeting. That's when my life went straight to hell.
“Might as well show off my skills specially.”
Lady Melinoë donned an apron, brimming with zeal. A goddess cooking? Nervous... but thrilling.
“Lady Melinoë, you cook too?”
I'd majored in Greco-Roman myth, master's and all. With cash and free time, I'd have chased a PhD, maybe professorship.
How'd I end up here?
Anyway, goddess grub? Every guy's fantasy.
“Jo, nothing's impossible for a perfect and beautiful goddess. I'm certified a master chef. Watch.”
She plunged her hand into thin air, yanking out a thick tome labeled Goddess Fundamentals.
The table of contents flashed “Goddess Cooking Methods,” “Wicked Mistress Defense Tactics,” and more. Intriguing—but she whisked it behind her back.
“Jo, this is for goddesses only. Mortals glimpse it, their brains fry black from the forbidden knowledge. Careful.”
She fired up the stove, pot bubbling away.
I showered, changed, sorted my work bag in the meantime.
‘She’s making dinner for me. That saves time.’
Living alone as a single guy in society naturally makes you appreciate home-cooked meals.
Eating out or ordering delivery doesn’t help you recover stamina as well.
In that sense, I was honestly—though it was humiliating—very much looking forward to Lady Melinoë’s heartfelt cooking.
At the same time, a long-forgotten dream of mine also resurfaced.
‘My dream was to get a normal job, get married, and live happily.’
In an era of skyrocketing real estate prices and fierce job competition,
even dating had become something not everyone could do, let alone marriage.
Building a family through dating and marriage had been my dream.
In that sense, the current situation felt like a preview of that dream.
‘The problem is that it’s Lady Melinoë.’
What complaints did I have about Lady Melinoë?
Honestly, speaking coldly, Lady Melinoë was the most beautiful and stunning woman I had ever seen.
Including all the other goddesses.
That was exactly the problem.
‘Jo Iseo, you must not develop even the slightest feelings for Lady Melinoë.’
I am human.
Lady Melinoë is a goddess.
The two of us were never meant to be connected from the start.
Moreover, I had to escape this Soul Society and return to the surface world.
If I left behind even a small lingering attachment to this place, it would be hard to take that step.
# # #
─Kkyueeeeek!
─Kyaaaaaaaak!
─Kill me! Kill me!
A bright red boiling broth like lava.
Inside it, chopped fish pieces were screaming.
“Jo Iseo, you like spicy and refreshing flavors, right? I specially made a very spicy and refreshing spicy fish stew. I made a lot, so you can eat it for a long time.”
A goddess’s cooking truly transcended common human sense.
It was a twisted nightmare of a spicy fish stew.
I took one bite, and surprisingly… it tasted good?
Lies.
It was so bad that my face scrunched up.
“Lady Melinoë, I heard you were acknowledged as a good cook. Exactly who acknowledged you?”
“Of course, it was from my father, the Chairman, the foremost authority on gourmet food in Soul Society. He said my cooking was an extraordinary delicacy. By the way, not just anyone can taste my cooking.”
And so our dinner began.
Lady Melinoë elegantly lifted her spoon and took a sip of the broth.
“Mmm, even though I made it, it really is delicious.”
Does she have weird taste buds?
Of course, I couldn’t dare think something so disrespectful.
Saying it tasted bad felt like it might get me dismantled, so I had no choice but to force all the bubbling stew down into my stomach.
Watching me, Lady Melinoë fidgeted with her fingers.
“I’m glad it suits your taste. Actually, this is my first time making a dish with so much red pepper powder, so I was a tiny bit unsure how it would taste. Though I was confident, of course.”
“Cough… I see.”
“Jo Iseo, they say people from your hometown like things this bright red and spicy, right? Come to think of it, I haven’t heard much about what kind of person you were on the surface. Or how you ended up writing a thesis on nymphs.”
“That’s…”
I recalled events from long ago.
The reason I wrote a thesis on nymphs.
The reason I chose Greek mythology as my major.
Perhaps it was the root cause that led me to get a job at “Happy World” and suffer like this.
“When I was seven years old, on my birthday, my father gave me a book as a present.”
It was a comic version of 《Greek Mythology》.
It was drawn to appeal to children, and the moment I opened one volume, I was completely hooked.
While other kids my age were into dinosaurs or cars, I became obsessed with the gods, heroes, and monsters in Greek mythology.
“So, what is the surface like? Do the stars really twinkle so high up that you can’t even reach them? I heard mortals even launch huge lumps of iron into space.”
Lady Melinoë seemed very curious about the surface world.
“Have you never been to the surface, Lady Melinoë?”
“I’ve lived only in Soul Society ever since I was born.”
She stood by the window and looked up at the ceiling of the underworld.
The ceiling of Soul Society was embedded with lapis lazuli, carnelian, and diamond lights that sparkled like stars.
Lady Melinoë gazed at them with eyes burning like a gentle campfire.
“Those jewel stars were placed by Facility Team Director Daedalus to mimic the shape of the sky. But I have no way of knowing if they really sparkle like real stars.”
“If you’re curious, you could go out and see for yourself.”
As a mere employee, I was banned from going out to the surface, but Lady Melinoë was an executive and a princess.
She should be allowed to go out at least once, right?
Who knows, maybe I could even tag along with her for a surface outing.
But Lady Melinoë shook her head.
“When Father was inaugurated as Chairman, Lord Nyx and Lord Erebos handed over their authority on the condition that Father would be bound to the underworld. Therefore, their descendants—Zagreus and I—were also bound to this underworld.”
I see.
In other words, by being bound to the underworld and becoming a complete god of the dead, the Chairman received recognition of his legitimacy and right to rule from the primordial gods.
And that binding extended to his children, Prince Zagreus and Princess Melinoë.
That was why, when Lady Persephone returned to her parents’ home, Lady Melinoë couldn’t follow her.
“Then, Jo Iseo, it’s getting late. Let’s lay out the bedding.”
Wait a minute.
“Are you… staying over at my house tonight!?”
“It’s late. Who knows where the rebels might be lurking. Even for me, wandering the streets at this hour is dangerous.”
“That may be true, but Lady Melinoë! Isn’t it a huge blemish for someone aiming for the CEO position to spend the night at an employee’s house…?”
“I am a perfect goddess. No one saw me on my way here, so no one will know I’m here. Also, I left a ‘Ghost Clone’ at my temple.”
“A ghost clone?”
“It’s a new ability I gained after my shares exceeded 15%. I can gather ghosts and create a clone that looks exactly like me. Like this.”
Round, round—
Lady Melinoë summoned a ghost and kneaded it with her hands to create her own appearance.
It was small, like a doll.
“Master! I am Melinoë!”
“This is Mini Melly. If I gather more ghosts, it gets bigger and smarter. Now then, Mini Melly, go spread the bedding and bring out the pillows.”
“Yes!”
It was the moment when my sweet, honey-like Friday night rest turned into a nightmare in an instant.
# # #
“Ahem.”
The CEO, whose very name was terrifying to utter, cleared his throat in front of a certain door.
He feared neither lightning nor anything else, yet for some reason he felt nervous standing in front of this door.
“Melly, I have something to say. May I come in? It’s already been two weeks since you received house arrest for fighting with your sister-in-law. I’d like to talk about what comes next.”
Creak—
When the door opened, his daughter Melinoë was sitting on a chair.
Chairman Hades swallowed hard at the sight.
‘Her angry expression is exactly like her mother’s! Blood really doesn’t lie!’
He had to calm her anger quickly.
Otherwise, something terrible might happen.
So the Chairman held out the box he had been hiding behind his back.
“This is a special honey candy made with Bashkir honey from the surface. Of course, I know you don’t like honey candy at all. But I had nowhere else to put it, so I thought I’d leave it here—”
Glance.
After checking her reaction, the daughter who had seemed extremely angry reached for the candy box and began shoving the candies into her mouth one after another—wadadadadada.
‘D-done! Her anger’s gone! But… something feels off. My daughter never shows anyone else how she eats candy because…’
The Chairman’s daughter, Melinoë, was a nymph.
However, she herself refused to acknowledge that fact and hated it.
‘She believed the reason she lost the succession race against her older brother Zagreus was because she wasn’t a complete goddess, but a nymph.’
Seeing his daughter frantically eating candy like that felt extremely suspicious.
─Huu huu…!
─Huu huu…!
─Huu huu…!
She started making strange sounds, and then, like a cotton doll unraveling, she scattered into countless ghost souls.
Seeing this, the Chairman’s anger shot up to the top of his head.
“Melly, you tricked me! Using the same trick as your brother! Did you pick up bad habits from Zagreus? No—this isn’t Zagreus’s doing!”
The place where the house-arrested Melinoë would go.
There was only one place the Chairman could think of.
Flames roared in the Chairman’s eyes.