Chapter 67: Understanding
Chapter 67: Understanding
Only after swallowing the fragment did I learn how long it took to digest.
Like an anaconda coiled for days after a massive meal,
that violet-haired Dream Demon was slowly dissolving inside me.
'Strange sensation.'
The knowledge surfaced naturally, like suddenly remembering on a summer day that you'd stuffed a ten-thousand-won bill into your puffer jacket pocket for fish-shaped pastries.
How to wield magic power, Dream Demon habits and typical appearances, fragmentary memories.
Basic knowledge of a species that looked exactly human but wasn't — all of it settling neatly into my head.
And only once I'd fully absorbed that knowledge could I understand the Dream Demon race.
Dream Demons are, quite literally, inhabitants of a dream world.
They aren't called that because they handle dreams.
They're called inhabitants because they live inside a dream world.
Elves exist. Dwarves exist. Sci-fi super-soldiers exist. So why aren't there other prominent Dream Demons?
They're all inside the dream. That's why you never see them.
They don't emerge and interact with people the way I do.
Just as ancient ritual priests met divine beings in their dreams,
a tiny handful of gifted individuals who can wield Dream Demon magic wander the dream realm and make contact with Dream Demons.
Points? Constellation duties? What do any of those have to do with them?
To a Dream Demon, if you've got a basic bed in a one-room apartment, you can do anything inside a dream.
Unlike me, who couldn't even learn lucid dreaming without points, they're adept at manipulating dreams from the start.
So there's scarcely any reason to raise an Incarnation.
Just lie on that one-room bed, eat the zero-point food from the fridge, and keep dreaming forever.
The polar opposite of me — I use lucid dreams as a place to rest and actually want to remain in reality.
gaining the knowledge didn't completely resolve my curiosity.
Most notably, I still didn't know why the bastard I killed had started rampaging in the first place.
His actions looked pathetically clumsy, but the reason remained a blank.
Unlike me, turned from human into a Dream Demon, this guy had been one from birth.
He could have just dreamed away in his room. Instead, he chose to become a Fallen Constellation,
braved the risks of descending into reality, and wagered his life on — what, exactly?
Attacking part of the Eastern Continent suppression unit?
Wasn't that like hijacking an airliner to crash it into some nameless mid-sized company in a satellite city instead of a metropolitan trade center?
If he held a grudge against the suppression squad, he'd staked his Origin and his life on it.
Staking your life for nothing in return — experience tells me the answer is not to try understanding lunatics who do that.
It drives me insane with curiosity, but what can you do.
'Now what do I do about this one...'
Right now I had bigger worries than curiosity — namely, figuring out what to do with Lee Ha-rin.
'She's a severe case.'
Lee Ha-rin, who'd even enrolled in a military academy just to understand Constellations and Incarnations, was now at the central Academy on the continent.
More graduate researcher than student, she spent her days buried in ritual magic — studying it, performing rites, collecting fees.
The problem was the way her lucid dreams were wavering. That signaled a worry so enormous
it was shaking her dreams, shattering her focus on research, wrecking her daily rhythm.
When she's skipping meals, cutting sleep, and even abandoning the daily web-surfing Constellation fangirling, all I can do is sigh.
'Is this what it feels like to be the parent of a thirty-something unemployed shut-in?'
Lee Ha-rin's dilemma could be summed up in one phrase.
Career path.
"Haa... only a month left."
Watching her gnaw on an empty coffee straw and claw at her scalp was downright exasperating.
Her usual posture involved burying her face in magic circles and ritual implements, turtle-necked in a way that made me worry about her spine, mouth slightly agape with a blissful grin as she studied.
Now, her material-laden desk held nothing but a few sheets of paper, viciously scratched over with a ballpoint pen as though she'd rewritten the same thing a dozen times.
Write with the pen, smudge it out with correction fluid, scribble over that, write again, scrub scrub scrub—
until the page was an illegible mess.
Objectively, it was an enviable dilemma, but Lee Ha-rin was so deadly serious about Constellations that the stress was consuming her.
For someone with the rare trait of ritual magic and a talent correction to boot, there were broadly two paths.
The same choice every other Incarnation faced: the continental borderlands or the interior.
Become a mage who performs safety-blessing rites for soldiers marching to the front lines at the continent's edge,
or head inland and continue facilitating communication between Incarnations and Constellations as she did now.
For most Incarnations, talent dictated the choice, but ritual magic was versatile enough to serve in more places than you'd think.
Anyone else would weigh it simply: the interior means big money; the borderlands mean devotion to the Constellations.
Set a criterion and pick. But Lee Ha-rin was a hardcore Constellation otaku.
Incarnations she wouldn't meet if she went inland.
Incarnations she wouldn't meet if she went to the front.
Those two anxieties were tearing her mind to shreds.
Because one of the greatest joys of becoming an Incarnation, for her, was getting to meet other Incarnations in person.
Her staggering drive — the drive that made her enroll in a military academy and endure training just because she loved Constellations — was useless in this situation.
She clawed at her scalp. Drank beer she'd never touched before.
Her muttering to herself multiplied. She'd go for a morning run, get lost in thought, and veer completely off course.
"If I join the war effort, I'll have almost no interaction with the interior-based non-combat Constellations..."
"No, but if I go inland, my contact with gods from continents other than the Eastern one will dry up too much."
"The front lines have joint extermination operations where you frequently cross paths with the Northern and Southern Continents — especially Lord Incinerating Tyrant..."
"But thinking about it that way, couldn't I just aim for a diplomatic posting within the interior track?"
"No, what if the diplomatic work makes me neglect the Eastern Continent Incarnations? That would be putting the cart before the horse..."
Morning, noon, and night, her thoughts changed, and she muttered every single one of them aloud. I couldn't not know even if I'd wanted to.
Seeing that degree of indecisiveness, the solution was obvious.
I'd just decide for her.
She wasn't Han Ye-ji, but Lee Ha-rin would also follow whatever I, her Constellation, commanded.
So her agonizing ended today. I'd visit her dream tonight and settle it.
※
Han Ye-ji followed orders because she had no particular desires of her own. Lee Ha-rin had far too many.
This is good, that is good — I'll do whatever you command, Constellation!
But you haven't commanded anything yet.
That appeared to be her psychology.
Left alone, she'd agonize until she'd postponed earning her Academy graduation credits. If I decided for her, she'd follow gladly, without a murmur of complaint.
With that in mind, I entered the lucid dream, where I found her still deep in turmoil.
Piles of documents flanked her on both sides, crammed with the profiles of Constellations and Incarnations.
"Ugh... ughhh..."
One step to the left, and the Constellation files on the right fluttered in a sudden wind.
Startled, she took two steps right — and with a low rumble, the left stack began sliding away as if about to vanish.
The slightest movement sent both piles into a precarious clatter. Lee Ha-rin's face crumpled.
Frozen in place, maintaining a precise dead center, she was straining every muscle just to hold still.
Arms stretched wide like a scarecrow, desperately bracing — the sight pulled a snort of laughter out of me.
To me it looked like farce. To her, it must have felt like tragedy.
"If it's tormenting you that much, how about I just tell you what to do?"
"Constellation!"
The moment she heard my voice, she whipped around and beamed.
Then she sprinted toward me without a care for whether the documents scattered or tangled in her wake.
I saw the world brighten behind her as the paperwork dissolved soundlessly away.
I expected her to barrel straight into my arms, but she skidded to an abrupt halt right in front of me.
Thinking even a hug might overwhelm her, I ruffled her hair gently — and only then did she rest her own hand over mine.
I stepped forward and pulled her face against my chest the way I'd embraced Kim Ha-eun.
She inhaled sharply with a soft huff, then went rigid.
She was even holding her breath, as if exhaling against a man's chest was too much pressure to bear. Adorable beyond words.
I poked her in the side with my free hand — a quick jab — and finally she let out a whoosh of air.
Honestly. We'd already done everything there was to do in bed late at night, and now she was getting shy.
Maybe letting her rest in lucid dreams for a while, since she'd been buried in study every day, was making her revert to old habits.
"What's got you so tangled up?"
"Well—"
Her eyes sparkled as she opened her mouth, and I had a sudden foreboding thought.
Ask an otaku to explain their obsession, and you're not getting out of there quickly.
Even inside a dream, her story didn't end until her mouth had gone bone-dry and I had to summon a glass of chilled water.
It really reminds me of asking my seven-year-old nephew to name all the dinosaurs.