Chapter 7: Sweet Dreams (Part 2)
Chapter 7: Sweet Dreams (Part 2)
After I gave Han Ye-ji the gift of lucid dreaming, our daily routines shifted, just a little.
Days were spent running herself ragged with training, and nights found her in bed the instant the clock hit midnight.
She used to push through the fatigue, studying or working on assignments well past twelve. Not anymore.
"What'd you order?"
"I went with the brown sugar latte."
Han Ye-ji was steadily falling under the spell of the lucid dream.
And honestly, wasn't it cruel enough that she studied and trained all day without piling dream-world drills on top of it?
Better to let the dreams be a place of genuine rest — mental care and recovery — so she could pour everything into her waking hours.
She didn't seem entirely convinced the man she met every night was her own Constellation, so she kept up this delicate, covert-clingy act.
Was it a lack of affection, tangled up with that particular intensity of teenage lust? Whatever it was, the physical contact had gotten absurd.
"Oh, that one's really good. Want to get one and share?"
"Sure, let's do it."
A beautiful woman nestling up against me like she was starving for affection, plus a dream where I could taste dozens of different foods for free.
Naturally, I was slipping into that shared lucid dream with her every time she laid her head down at midnight. Not that I'd complain.
Most dreams were set at home — tonight, it was a café.
Except, she didn't dream about a café all night long. Case in point:
A strange, muffled rush of noise — shwoom — filled my ears, and without transition I was no longer in a café but in a living room.
The dead giveaway was the table: instead of that awkward café table you have to hunch seventy degrees to use, a properly-height sofa table now sat in front of me.
The TV was playing what looked like some famous movie scene — a man and a woman in a rough, desperate kiss.
Seeing how often that clip showed up in her dreams, it must've left quite the impression.
The café scene — us sitting across from each other noisily sipping coffee — had evaporated entirely. Now the sound filling my ears was water hitting the shower floor.
I got up and opened the fridge. This time, instead of meat, it was packed with fruit and snacks.
The trees outside the window looked spring-or-summer green, but the fridge bulged with fruit as if seasons didn't exist.
I pulled out a beautifully colored Hallabong, split the peel with my thumbnail, and a sharp, sweet-tart aroma stung my nose.
God, this was good. First decent food, and now fresh fruit and vegetables.
I came from a world where a single can of cola decided whether someone lived or died.
Fresh produce? That was something you couldn't even compare to a human life, because it simply couldn't be found. You can trade and fight over things that exist — but what was the point of talking about objects nobody had ever seen or held?
I was halfway through savoring the chilled Hallabong when Han Ye-ji emerged from the bathroom, bathrobe draped loosely around her.
Beyond the cloud of hot steam — thick with mingled shampoo and body wash — she padded over, plodding step by step, and plucked the fruit from my hand.
Not with her fingers. With her lips.
"Ah, sweet. Guess it is the season for Hallabong after all."
Getting a little pent-up, are we?
My fingers had gone numb holding the cold fruit, and against that chill I felt it — a soft, warm, yielding sensation.
Maybe it was the hot shower or her naturally high body temperature, but the imprint of her lips seemed branded onto my fingers.
Dream Han Ye-ji was half-drunk on the dream itself. Anybody watching her now could tell.
Sitting across from me at a café, chattering over coffee, then showering alone and walking out — calling this a lucid dream felt wrong.
One thing was certain: she was closing the distance between us, step by step.
Day one, it was barely a back hug.
And now? Here she was in a half-slipped bathrobe pressing her lips to my fingers.
Over the span of a single week — seven dreams — I had morphed steadily into a soft-featured pretty boy with a full six-pack, some kind of perfected superhuman.
Han Ye-ji, meanwhile, had been inching closer with progressively lighter and lighter outfits.
Was it gratitude toward me, her Constellation, that kept ratcheting her expectations higher?
"Hm? What's wrong?"
Her eyes, a little clearer now, gazed intently at me.
I'm no eunuch. No reason to kick over a meal that's already set on the table.
Past the loosely tied bathrobe sash, the modest swell of her cleavage was visible.
I reached out, let my palm rest there. Warm — no, nearly hot — body heat, and the pounding thump of her heart.
Before I could fully appreciate the softness of her breast, the world rippled.
"Uh, uh?"
As Han Ye-ji stammered in confusion, reality shifted.
My ears popped, the TV drama OST from the kiss scene cut out, and what I saw now wasn't the living room or the kitchen — it was a bedroom I'd never seen before.
A large bed, a single mood lamp glowing dimly — and there I stood, also wearing a bathrobe.
Before I could even survey the room, a hand seized my wrist. I had zero intention of ruining the mood by resisting, so I let myself be pulled along and lay down on the bed.
A luxurious, plush sensation wrapped my whole body — I was idly wondering how many points a bed like this would cost when —
What the hell?
Han Ye-ji, face blazing scarlet, loomed over me, frozen stiff as a board.
The sight dredged up a certain mercenary's stupid joke from my memory.
He'd been griping during a joint supply run — said it'd been so long since he'd spent a night with a woman that he'd woken up from a wet dream with no memory of it at all.
"What's wrong?"
"No, I just — uh... C-can I touch you?"
Suddenly formal speech. Did she only imagine I was her Constellation when things got sexual?
Now I understood why people compared a blushing face to a boiled octopus.
Han Ye-ji — red to the point of combustion — hesitantly reached out.
Her fingers parted the bathrobe and pressed hot against the bare skin of my chest.
Whether it proved this was a gender-reversed world or just reflected her own training, her long, slender fingers weren't as delicate as I'd expected.
A few calluses, a certain rough texture — yet distinctly different from a man's hand.
She stood there frozen in an awkward half-crouch, so tense I could hear her swallow.
Kneeling beside me where I lay sprawled out comfortably, she gently ran her hands across my chest, so I decided to just let her do as she pleased for a moment.
Her face searing red. Her wavering eyes darting frantically between my face, my chest, and what lay below.
Her wrist flinched away as if she'd pressed too hard and panicked.
A subtle tease was fine, but I'd been abstinent for so long that my patience was wearing thin.
So I grabbed that fleeing wrist.
"Uh, uh?!"
What exactly was so entertaining about pawing a flat, featureless chest?
Personally, having a woman go after my nipples wasn't my thing, so I guided her hand down. Lower. Lower still.
Pushing the robe aside, toward the thing that stood towering upright.
"H-hot..."
She murmured, mesmerized, as she grasped my pillar of flesh.
My cock, which had wilted slightly for fear she'd come to her senses and squeeze with full force, surged upright again, drawing strength from her body heat.
Startled by its twitching, impatient response, she yanked her hand back as if she'd been burned.
"What, not going to touch it some more?"
Was it some strange chemical reaction — a virgin's shyness and teenage lust fusing into an unholy catalyst?
Her eyes swirled with breathless urgency, but her hands trembled and couldn't seem to approach me.
At the sight, I stretched my arms out and pulled her into an embrace.
"C-Constellation..."
"There, there. Good girl."
Whether it was the dream's influence or my own surrender to the mood, I found myself pat-patting the back of her head where she'd tucked herself into my arms.
The heat of another person's body — so starkly different from my own — and the sleek smoothness of her skin.
I bit down hard on the sensation that my head was about to combust from arousal and kept stroking the back of her head.
It was a strange feeling: my body, but not entirely under my command.
Ah, right — this is a dream. The moment I surrendered to that realization, a floating, weightless sense of release washed over me.
And in the midst of that, Han Ye-ji burrowed inside my bathrobe, buried her face against me, and just breathed in and out, over and over.
Again and again, so many times I could feel every ghost of her breath carved onto my skin.
"That's right. It's been hard, hasn't it? You held up well."
I lowered my right hand from its patting and grabbed her ass. Soft flesh filled my palm.
She sucked in a sharp, ragged gasp — hihk — face still buried against me.
The reaction was so utterly adorable that I brought my left hand down too and wrapped it around her waist.
I kneaded that nicely shaped ass, gaze turned down toward the figure in my arms.
Han Ye-ji, pressing her naked body against me with the desperate enthusiasm of a puppy in heat, met my eyes.
Her tear-brimmed gaze seemed to churn with every emotion at once.
Relief and lust and guilt and yearning, all tangled into a look of impossible complexity.
Seeing a naked beauty in my arms with eyes like that — I didn't care for it.
So I tightened the grip of my right hand on her ass.
Like kneading fine bread dough — clench, release, clench, release — I worked the plush flesh, gradually shifting position.
"C-Constellation, I'm sorry..."
"What are you sorry for?"
As I listened to her panting and continued moving my hand, my fingertips found something wet and sticky.
It wasn't water the bathrobe had missed. It was slick arousal, slowly leaking from her excited core.
Naturally, I slid my fingers into the cleft from which that wetness flowed.
Hot, slick inner flesh clenched around each knuckle.
Maybe it was too intense for a high school girl — she was hiccup-sobbing — but I looked down at her face and pressed firmly against that textured inner wall.
"There now. You can let go once."
"Ah, aah — C-Constellation, I'm sorreee —!"
The thin voice broke mid-word, tearing free from her throat as a scream.
At the same instant, her body in my arms spasmed wildly, robe falling open.
Her inner walls clamped down so hard around my fingers that the blood couldn't flow.
A surge of hot liquid gushed out, drenching my hand.
The moment I saw that gratifying response, I curled my fingers and pulled them out with a slick, smooth motion — and the world shattered into pieces.
"Oh, what the fuck?"
Amid the dissolving chaos, I woke up.
On the screen above my studio apartment, I could see Han Ye-ji clutching her soaked blanket and underwear, the picture of despair.