Chapter 26: Rest
Chapter 26: Rest
I wanted Han Ye-ji to get some real rest—something soothing, something visually pleasant, something that would help her decompress.
A muscle monster over two meters tall that fires red tracking lasers from its pectorals instead of breasts?
Not exactly healing. More like a waking nightmare.
Given her tastes, though, the damage was already done.
The first Fragment of Nightmare had been successfully retrieved. The second, I'd given up on before I'd even solved the first puzzle.
The third Fragment of Nightmare... I had a feeling I'd surrender the instant we made eye contact.
A fresh wave of temptation washed over me—the urge to abandon the fragment-collecting project entirely, the one I'd shelved because I still had no idea what to do with them.
"Lying around the house feels kind of weird."
[Lethargic Nightmare requests the third drama on the second page of the list.]
"Oh, sure, I'll put that on."
Han Ye-ji, who'd tossed her uniform aside and was sprawled on the sofa in her underwear, picked up the remote.
I wanted her to rest for at least half a year, and she didn't argue. It wasn't like she was a workaholic or her family was destitute. With an Incarnation's stipend coming in, two people could live on it just fine as long as they weren't splurging. There was no reason to refuse half a year off to make memories with family.
Before she became an Incarnation, she'd worked part-time to cover college tuition and help her little brother, but now the stipend was generous. Between both parents' national-hero insurance payouts and her own Incarnation status, she said the total came out to roughly an office worker's salary. Two of the four family members were Incarnations, and two were dead—so that explained the math.
A painfully formulaic drama was starting on the TV. A pretty-boy protagonist who insisted he was ordinary, surrounded by a sea of beauties. Classic makjang, with the genders flipped.
An allegedly middle-class guy living in a two-story private estate, a gorgeous chaebol heiress chasing after him—it was all so familiar it gave me chills.
I was watching, mildly entertained, as the protagonist's Incarnation father-in-law used telekinesis to splash coffee in the male lead's face, when the front door opened.
"Noona, I'm home—whoa, put some clothes on!"
"Hey, your sister just got back after a year of busting her ass and the first thing you do is nag?"
"Then at least take your socks off properly!"
Han Ye-ji's younger brother, still wearing his schoolbag, had burst in and yelped at the sight of her lying on the sofa in her underwear.
A complete reversal from a year ago, when his sickly body had made his movements sluggish and his voice soft. Watching her brother grow healthier and livelier—something Han Ye-ji must have felt in her bones—she just grinned and turned her back to him on the sofa. The smooth, slender line of her spine ran between her bra hook and her panties.
"Ugh, what do you even have to show off, walking around half-naked?"
"You think I'm doing it to show off?"
The response to that slender figure was, naturally, nothing but the mutual contempt of siblings close in age. As if to demonstrate what a properly functioning brother-sister relationship looked like, the two kept grumbling and bickering.
Han Ye-ji held her ground, staying flat on the sofa, while her nagging brother picked up the uniform scattered across the living room floor. Not out of consideration—more like curiosity, or like he was handling something dirty, pinching it between thumb and forefinger and holding it up.
"Ugh, an airhead like this is an Incarnation? Phone and TV both on at the same time, total bum."
"Don't turn off the TV. The Constellation's watching."
"The Constellation? This thing?"
Behind the squabbling siblings, the scene playing out on screen was a heroine and her father fighting over how she was about to ruin the family over a man.
Apparently the drama was infamous even in this world for being trashy, because the look on the kid's face as he froze with the remote in his hand left me with nothing to say.
I wasn't watching for the artistic merit, either. I'd gotten curious after seeing a GIF on the same internet Han Ye-ji browsed and asked her to put it on. Who wouldn't be curious about a telekinetically-propelled steak slap and the male lead blocking it with a barrier?
The Authorities Incarnations received came in plenty of odd varieties, but there were also heaps of basic psychic powers and magic I recognized. Maybe that was why dramas like this felt so surreal to me. The gender-role swap wasn't a big deal—just think of it as recasting the actors—but a high-teen romance protagonist openly using superpowers in a modern setting? Getting out of a taxi and flying because she was running late? It went beyond refreshing. It was absurd.
Sure, I'd occasionally see people using Authorities on the street, but never that blatantly. Whether because of the reverence people had for Constellations and Incarnations or because of the almost worshipful treatment they received, nobody really used them for trivial things. The drama's reputation for trashiness was partly because it had been criticized for exactly that—wasting Incarnation powers on nonsense.
Opinions had clashed fiercely: some asked whether it was acceptable to reduce an Authority granted by a Constellation to mere broadcast material, while others claimed the Constellations themselves had enjoyed it. The controversy had only boosted the ratings...
Honestly, I doubted the Authorities were the point. The other Constellations probably tuned in because they were just as curious about the steak slap as I was. I was from Korea, famous for makjang dramas, and even I'd gotten curious enough to have it put on. How shocked must the Constellations from fantasy or martial-arts worlds have been, never having seen anything like it?
"What's the big deal? I heard other Constellations enjoyed this drama. Isn't it popular with guys?"
"Probably popular with old men, not guys. How many high-schoolers do you think love trash-talking makjang dramas? Move your big head, seriously."
"Then why are you watching?"
"You said the Constellation's watching. I'm curious too, so I'm watching with you."
I looked away from the screen as the provocative scene ended and a cheap melodrama kicked in.
Han Ye-ji, still fully committed to holding her position on the sofa, and her brother trying to shove her off. Neither of them let go of their smartphones through the whole struggle. On the tiny screen, that streamer from yesterday was shrieking his way through a new game.
Why that stream, of all things...
A horror-game specialist. It was exactly the kind of content Han Ye-ji would have watched during her busy grind of part-time work and studying. My only concern was whether it'd come back to haunt me. I should just be grateful today's game seemed like a relatively normal horror game, with no freakish muscle-monster girls in sight.
Then again, had I not already seen it all? Could anything really be more horrifying than two-meter-tall twin-tailed muscle girls firing lasers from their nipples?
[Constellation Lethargic Nightmare remarks that the sibling affection is heartwarming to watch.]
"Whoa, the Constellation really is watching."
"What, you think I faked being an Incarnation?"
I surrendered all hope regarding Han Ye-ji's taste in streams and settled in to watch the sibling warfare.
※
"Siblings close in age are DNA-engineered to kill each other"—that was the saying a guy I knew who was always fighting with his younger sister used to trot out constantly. It held true for these two, accomplished and decent as they were.
Han Ye-ji, the eldest daughter, was an Incarnation the entire world looked up to. Even before her contract, she'd been a reliable young head of the household—parentless, juggling studying and part-time work. She wasn't ranked first in the continent or top of her class, but for a girl working daily shifts at a convenience store, she'd been a solidly high-ranking model student.
Her younger brother—whose name I still didn't know—had turned into a fairly handsome guy once the sickliness faded. Han Ye-ji was striking herself, so the two of them made a matching set of good-looking siblings. And judging by how his fingers never stopped tapping at his smartphone, unlike his sister, he seemed pretty sociable.
An eldest daughter who gave up her free time to work part-time for her brother's future. A younger brother who'd done housework since elementary school to help his sister out. Deep bonds, a clear understanding of each other's struggles, and a mutual awareness of that understanding—
"Hey, are you insane, eating two drumsticks in a row?"
"Hey? You've really got no manners with your sister. I just got back from a rough time, I can eat a little."
"You call it rough when the Incarnation Academy cafeteria's quality is all over the internet?"
—Not that any of that stopped them from fighting.
They'd gotten hungry, microwaved some frozen food, and were already at war at the dinner table over the chicken they'd ordered. Watching a girl who used to cuddle up and act spoiled, who used to smile goofily at anything you asked, now raise her voice while clutching a drumstick... she didn't seem much like a young woman, just a kid.
Well, it was a peaceful scene either way.
"Oh, noona. Word's all over school that you became an Incarnation... did you get any Authorities?"
"Authorities? I do have some, but... they're kind of hard to show off."
"Like what?"
The drumstick war ended, and the two kept talking as they slowly picked at the leftover chicken. Showing off Authorities... I supposed having a friend's older sister who was a superhuman was endlessly fascinating to students.
Did she even have Authorities she could show off, though? Starting with Sweet Lucid Dream, most of the Authorities I'd gotten for Han Ye-ji were shooting-related. One that boosted her vision and steadied her breathing to assist her aim. No dream connection, so no discount—I'd only bought two of them, each costing tens of thousands of points. And since they were talents and Authorities that didn't manifest outwardly, there was no way to demonstrate them.
"It's Lethargic Nightmare, right? I've only got dream-related stuff and better eyesight for shooting. How am I supposed to show that off? If you asked nicely I could give you a Nightmare, though. Want me to put a Nightmare in your head tonight?"
"As if I'd ask for that. I was a little curious, but too bad."
Their bickering was exactly what you'd expect from kids their age, and it left a warm spot somewhere deep in my chest.