Chapter 46: Human Relationships
Chapter 46: Human Relationships
From what I'd read online, I was apparently a very unusual case among Constellations.
There was the royalty of a ruined nation.
A Tyrant driven mad by war.
A survivor with PTSD from the apocalypse.
Constellations who walked the way of the sword—none of them ever really meshed well with their Incarnations.
Some took hierarchical systems for granted, others considered themselves beings superior to humans,
and still others minimized contact with their Incarnations to focus on their own training. The range of attitudes was broad.
A Constellation like me, with a modern mindset and a relaxed attitude, was rarer than you'd think.
My attitude mattered, sure, but the fact that I only had two Incarnations probably struck people as odd too.
Most Constellations, the moment they scraped together enough points, scrambled to buy a contract and snap up promising talent.
Souls overflowing with potential were a dime a dozen anyway—no need to spend heavily on sponsorship when they'd grow on their own just by surviving the battlefield.
From that perspective, someone like me who only kept two Incarnations on inland duty and periodically descended to the surface in person
was treated like a zoo animal. A rare exhibit.
Women's interest in a handsome face was part of it, but the real draw was probably the Constellation himself.
There were a few other dream-related Constellations besides me, but unlike me they were Dream Demons through and through—
they contracted with countless Incarnations and communicated through mass dreams, but beyond that had no special interactions to speak of.
So that's why everyone was so curious about me.
The more my existence spread through the internet and word of mouth, the longer my avatar's duration lasted.
Was a Constellation's status growth separate from training in dreams—did rising in the ranks affect abilities directly?
A nice, tidy game stats window would've been a godsend, but with nothing like that I had to feel everything out by instinct. It was a little frustrating.
Had I at least shed my diapers by now?
"Have a pleasant day, Constellation!"
"Good afternoon!"
Familiar faces dipped in quick bows as they passed.
From the neighboring team's leader to Han Ye-ji's direct superior—rank made no difference. Everyone who knew me flashed bright smiles and greeted me.
Today I'd been summoned into the lobby and was moving away from the offices instead of toward them, so I was running into a lot of people.
I stepped out of the building to join Han Ye-ji's team for a meal—we hadn't exchanged names yet—and walked the main street during lunch hour.
The district was packed with restaurants, so naturally it was packed with people.
There must have been other company offices besides Han Ye-ji's guild building,
because instead of young crowds, middle-aged women in suits clustered in groups, powering through bowls of gukbap.
A section-chief type with some years on her was herding her people into a pork gukbap joint, and I caught a glimpse of a sharply dressed man behind them looking absolutely appalled.
Wandering the streets and taking in the sights, I'd reached the meeting spot before I knew it.
We'd left the gukbap-and-set-meal streets behind and entered an area with more pasta and sous-vide—Western Continent-style restaurants.
The shift in cuisine made the shift in clientele obvious: fewer suit-clad aunties, more casually dressed younger diners.
"I'm not late, am I? I felt like a walk, so I came on foot from the company lobby."
"Not at all—mealtime is flexible."
She'd dodged saying I wasn't late and instead pointed out how flexible lunch hours were, which meant I was late after all.
I couldn't summon my wallet or smartphone along with my avatar, so I'd navigated by gut feeling and strolled over. Must've lagged a bit.
Once my abilities improved, I'd be able to summon objects too. Counterfeit bills or not, money was out, but I did miss my smartphone.
"So, which restaurant?"
there was an unspoken custom that women simply understood and forgave a man being a little late to an appointment, so it didn't really matter.
Especially if the man was handsome enough to have stepped out of a dream—and a Constellation unfamiliar with human society to boot.
The three faces greeting me so warmly didn't carry a trace of shadow.
I couldn't have been that late, right?
I looked over the three women standing side by side.
Han Ye-ji was tall and had built up some bulk from training. A beauty whose sunny disposition and clinginess brought a big, retriever-like dog to mind.
Not that her senior and junior were any less striking.
Short and slight as she was, Jeong Ah-rin—the senior—was a classic cat-eyed beauty with sharply upswept eyes.
and Namgung Hui, the junior, was even bigger than Han Ye-ji, with well-defined muscle and a cool, sharp-featured face.
Did this thing called talent include looks? Just watching the three of them chatter and bicker
filled a corner of my chest with satisfaction.
Though, there were some differences.
"Should've ordered one more after all?"
"If you're still hungry, want some of mine?"
Han Ye-ji, unfazed by my presence, had ordered enough for herself plus extra sides.
Namgung Hui, bigger than Han Ye-ji, was fastidious about self-management and had filled up on chicken breast and salad.
But Jeong Ah-rin had a bigger appetite than her frame suggested—she'd emptied her pasta bowl far quicker than the rest of us and was now fiddling with her fork.
'Ah. Did they come to a pasta place because of me?'
The restaurant was a Western-style establishment. Or, to put it in this world's terms, a Western Continent cuisine spot.
The menu had familiar items like pasta and salad, but also dishes I'd never seen—bread and noodles jumbled together with cheese.
I'd been too distracted watching three beauties chatter through their meal to notice.
Now that I thought about it, this was a gender-reversed world.
Wasn't this the equivalent of three male office workers demolishing cream pasta at lunchtime for the sake of a female guest, instead of their usual gukbap?
Framed that way, I felt a little guilty.
I'd have been perfectly fine with a pork gukbap or a set meal—haejangguk from some homestyle joint wouldn't have bothered me at all.
"Never know when we'll get called out. Gotta eat hearty."
Maybe it was because of her small frame, sandwiched between a lively 170-centimeter athlete and a muscle-bound gym woman who looked at least 175.
Or maybe I'd gotten drunk on my own roleplay as the Constellation and benevolent Dream Demon.
Absentmindedly, I portioned some of the pasta I'd been tasting into her bowl.
Well, I was an avatar anyway.
Eating food and drinking beverages didn't make me full or hungry.
I wasn't a masochist, so I'd turned off things like the pain-response function. My avatar was built for convenience.
My real body was lounging in bed dozing off right now, so this wasn't a meal—it was sampling.
For sampling, half a plate of pasta was plenty.
"Ah, um..."
"Yes, thank you."
The next moment, the table's atmosphere went stiff and awkward.
Han Ye-ji stared at the pasta with a complicated expression.
Namgung Hui's face turned scarlet as she started poking at the leftover vegetable scraps in her salad.
And Jeong Ah-rin, with a working-adult senior's sense for the room, accepted the pasta without a fuss.
Maybe it was the sight of their senior wolfing down half a plate of pasta as if nothing had happened,
but the two who'd been flustered regained their composure in an instant.
Quick enough that you'd only notice if you were watching faces instead of joining the conversation.
Still, a knot of feeling must have remained.
Maybe it was innocence that belied her size and exterior, but
the junior, Namgung Hui, couldn't shake the flush from her face over something as small as an indirect kiss. Fine, I'd let that slide...
But Han Ye-ji's face was broadcasting that she'd just figured out what she wanted.
※
And sure enough, had my thoughtless gesture made Han Ye-ji envious?
"Eat up."
"...Yes, my Constellation."
Han Ye-ji's dream, which usually took place in her living room or bedroom, had transformed into the lunchtime restaurant from today.
Was she that envious? I gazed at her gently, and her face flushed red—she knew how transparent she was.
This wasn't her unconscious mind; it was a lucid dream, and she'd been practicing dream control for well over a year now,
and yet the restaurant refused to vanish from her dreamscape.
I hadn't even hand-fed her—I'd just shared some of my food. Was that really enough to make her this jealous?
Unlike reality, we sat facing each other at a booth table with dividers, eating.
Pasta, salad, soup, steak—dishes I recognized and dishes I didn't, all spread across the table, free to pick from.
it wasn't just eating.
I sliced a chunk of what looked like whole-grain rye bread into thin pieces, dunked one generously into something between a stew and a soup, and held it out.
"Here, open up. Ah~"
The moment she saw the piece of bread nearing her lips, her red face flushed so dark it nearly went black.
Usually, clinging to me and getting petted and coddled was something she initiated herself,
but having me do something like this for her—was she really that weak to it?
Or maybe it was just mortifying, like having her feelings exposed.
Maybe because it was a Western Continent-style restaurant, there were lots of long, narrow breads that were easy to feed someone.
Instead of grilled meat or fried dishes, you could hand-feed things like this. Good for teasing and good for feeding—what's not to like?
Han Ye-ji's face had gone past red to near-black, but knowing she couldn't escape me anyway, she lapped up the food with quick little bites.
Starting with the long bread, moving to a flat square biscuit, and on to the cherry tomatoes nestled in the salad.
They were a little angular for cherry tomatoes and yellow instead of red, but what did that matter?
"Here, napkin..."
I fed her the fruit with my fingers, brushing against her lips.
Sauce naturally smeared onto my fingertips, and the flustered Han Ye-ji held out a tissue.
Naturally, I had no intention of taking it. A creamy white sauce with a rich, savory scent.
"Hm, nuttier than I expected."
A quick lick of my finger with my tongue, and the savory richness of milk filled my mouth.
Soy milk, not dairy?
I savored the blended cream sauce, wondering what was in it, and before I knew it she'd sidled up right next to me.
At some point, the dream-table had cleared completely.