Chapter 75: Half-Piece
Chapter 75: Half-Piece
A fair stretch of time had passed since I'd gotten one over on the Unfading Giant Tree.
"Fair stretch" by my reckoning, anyway. For her, it might have been too brief—no letter had arrived yet.
Han Ye-ji and Lee Ha-rin had both settled into their places, so the one I'd been watching with growing interest lately was Kim Ha-eun.
More precisely, Kim Ha-eun's body.
"No, seriously—her training volume shot up that much and she's still not putting on any muscle?"
"Honestly, I think muscle would look really unpleasant on this body."
"Well, yes, but... Incarnations don't operate on pure science, so I suppose it can't be helped."
The Incarnation of Beating Lionheart kneaded Kim Ha-eun's forearm between her fingers.
That pale, plump flesh squished between thick fingers like a lump of glutinous rice cake.
Kim Ha-eun's physique didn't seem to change from that state at all.
Watching her train, her stamina had shot up enormously.
The classic "big three" lift numbers kept climbing,
her running speed and endurance had soared—yet her outward appearance hadn't shifted a bit.
No bulky muscle developing; her forearms weren't even showing the whisper of definition.
'Is that the Dream Demon's influence too?'
Just as my own body shifted to match what my Incarnations desired,
had Kim Ha-eun's body gotten locked into the provocative shape I had in mind?
She'd been spending six hours a day in the gym building herself up ahead of her Academy admission, and her muscle mass hadn't budged a single digit.
And this wasn't from eyeballing her or palpating her with my hands—she'd had an InBody test done, and that was the result.
"Well, her stamina has definitely improved, so that's something. I did want to sculpt her figure a little—shame about that. Enrollment's next week, so we'll have to wrap things up soon, right?"
"Yes, next week. That's right."
The two of them chatted as she set the barbell down with practiced ease, as if this had all become routine by now.
They'd been tossing around terms like "the 500 club" and gifting her sports apparel, yet the body stayed indecently soft.
To a man's eye, it was a body you'd want to wrap your arms around. To another woman's eye, it probably just looked like pasty, featureless flesh.
The gym manager's disappointment was visibly keener than Kim Ha-eun's own.
"Well... I guess I can't put up before-and-after photos. I'll just have to hang up the Incarnation's name."
"Nothing to be done. This is the body my Constellation bestowed on me."
"True. Looking at how fast her stamina's climbing, it's a body anyone would envy. Genuinely blessed. You said her Constellation is from the Dream Demon line?"
It wasn't that the body I'd crafted for her was extraordinary—Kim Ha-eun simply handled magical power with a genius-level aptitude that sent her baseline fitness skyrocketing.
Once she entered the Academy and started learning close-quarters combat, she'd probably hit the ceiling of that particular talent quickly.
However you sliced it, Kim Ha-eun was a genius at manipulating magical power, not a physical prodigy.
Call it a friendship forged in iron?
The two exchanged goodbyes and parted ways.
On her way home from the gym, Kim Ha-eun turned her steps toward the market street—
to load up on cola-like sodas, fruit beers, jerky to chew on, and snacks to toss in the microwave.
"Ugh, liberation from chicken breast at last..."
Her deeply moved mutter hit me right in the core.
The gut-deep joy practically radiated from her, all the way over here.
A peerless figure that held steady whether she exercised or lazed about.
But the gym manager kept dragging her around insisting she could build muscle, so she'd been forced into a parallel diet regimen.
As if her personality would change just because her body had transformed and she'd become an Incarnation—she'd been a bookworm who did nothing but study at a desk.
She possessed desires more intense than most, sure, but she didn't know how to voice those wants and push her own agenda.
That was Kim Ha-eun in a nutshell.
Cabbage salad with apple on the side in the morning, chicken breast and brown rice for lunch, sweet potato with boiled eggs and roasted paprika for dinner.
She'd choked it all down without a word of protest—how miserable must she have been?
The gym manager was a woman too, but the goodwill of someone packing lunches by hand to help left no room to dig her heels in and say no.
[Constellation, Lethargic Nightmare recommends the apple cider over the lemon beer.]
[Constellation, Lethargic Nightmare requests the cheongyang chili pepper pork jerky.]
From the looks of it, she was quietly slipping alcohol into her basket too—couldn't let my Incarnation drink alone.
I nudged in with a message, and she turned her steps to grab the snacks I wanted.
Our drinking tastes seemed to match: light, sweet beer over hard liquor.
After watching her retreating figure head home with a basket stuffed full from shrimp-flavored chips to jerky, I formed a Clone on the spot.
Straight to Kim Ha-eun's house—a place that felt a touch too spacious now, having once housed a family of three.
I left the firmly shut inner bedroom alone, cleared the laundry strewn across the living room table, and made a place to sit.
"Welcome back."
"...I'm back."
I took the bags from her hands as she returned the greeting with an odd expression.
Months had passed since she'd signed the Incarnation contract and started training, but sorting out her heart appeared to be a work in progress.
Well—her parents had died in an accident, both at once. That wasn't something you just shrugged off.
I switched on the TV, flipped to some variety show channel, and spread the snacks out across the sofa table.
Mildly bland shrimp chips meant for dipping in something like kewpie-mayo, savory potato chips,
spicy cheongyang pepper jerky and boneless chicken feet, greasy but impossible-to-stop-eating mac and cheese.
Three minutes in the microwave, and an endless tide of munchies conquered the table.
"Is it okay to drink like this?"
"You know your own body, don't you? If you eat, it doesn't turn into fat—it turns into magical power."
A spread that would make your arteries scream, but what did it matter?
Just as her muscles refused to grow no matter how much she exercised, her body refused to gain fat no matter how much she overate—that was a Dream Demon's trait.
Because the true body resided inside a dream.
And because that dream-body could manipulate the dream to strip away any unwanted flesh.
With a crisp, refreshing hiss, the beer can opened. A sweet apple scent tickled my nose.
As I downed the sweet brew—more fruity perfume than alcohol—an involuntary sigh of satisfaction slipped out.
Watching the entertainers on TV laugh and chatter, we chewed jerky and drank beer without speaking.
Until Kim Ha-eun opened her mouth.
"Constellation, I..."
A single sentence, tossed out as if it were nothing.
"Do you think I can do this right?"
A question identical to the one Han Ye-ji had asked.
But the weight behind it didn't even begin to compare.
Han Ye-ji's burden had stemmed from a lost sense of purpose.
She'd grown up an orphan, living a life where next month's part-time paycheck mattered more than her hopes for the future.
So for her, the pressure wasn't about short-term training—it was about her entire long-term life plan.
Kim Ha-eun's burden also began with a lost purpose, but the timing of that rupture was different.
Unlike Han Ye-ji, who'd been an orphan since childhood and grown accustomed to it, less than half a year had passed since her parents died.
"Killing monsters—a lot of them, just helping to kill as many as I can... Is it okay to move forward with a weird goal like that?"
She murmured softly, eyes on the TV.
I'd been helping her vent her stress inside dreams all along—had it still not been enough?
"I'm an Incarnation now, and I don't even know if it's right to keep drifting along like this."
I could taste the negative emotions welling up out of her.
A disconnect born from how sharply what I'd assumed differed from what she'd actually been thinking.
I still hadn't fully adjusted to this world, it seemed.
The reason for Kim Ha-eun's turmoil was a blind spot I hadn't even considered.
"Hey, Ha-eun."
It was about idolizing Incarnations.
"Yes, Constellation?"
Back in Han Ye-ji's past, there'd been a homeroom teacher who lost her mind and grabbed a parent by the collar for insulting fallen Incarnations and soldiers.
When even a corrupt teacher trying to bury school violence had the veins standing out on her neck over it, that told you everything about society's baseline perception of Incarnations.
"You're thinking of Incarnations as something far too lofty."
Kim Ha-eun's turmoil was heavy—but simple.
Is it okay to become an Incarnation with nothing more than a mindset like "I want to kill a lot of monsters"?
Seriously—me, of all people? With a thought like that? Is a trivial motivation like that really enough to become an Incarnation?
Her talent had surfaced so abruptly that she'd started doubting herself.
In the end, the doubt eating away at her stemmed from an excessive, near-worshipful reverence for what an Incarnation was supposed to be.
She saw Incarnations and Constellations as flawless, noble figures—so she questioned whether someone like her deserved to stand among them.
A road both Han Ye-ji and Lee Ha-rin had already walked.
The pressure of being an Incarnation. The angst born of overblown loyalty toward a Constellation.
Only now did my third Incarnation stop looking like some monstrous prodigy and start looking like a rookie.
"You're my Incarnation, aren't you? Look at me. Serve me. Follow me."
That snow-white skin, the flush of intoxication glowing red across it,
the heavy hips pressing deep into the sofa, the huge breasts that even loose clothing couldn't hide.
I set my beer down and ran my hands over her entire body.
"Didn't I tell you it's fine? I—your Constellation—am giving you an order."
I pressed into her with my fingertips.
The feel of sinking into high-grade, immaculately packaged glutinous rice cake.
A top-tier female body that, used as a body pillow, could probably let a man sleep eighteen hours a day.
I prodded her forearms and thighs, then let my hand travel upward toward her chest, tracing beneath her chin.
Her violet eyes, swimming with confusion over what this situation even was, stared back at me.
"Let's help our stifled little Incarnation play freely."
I reached out and grabbed one of the drinks on the table.
The strongest one among the alcohol she'd bought—the kind where they'd gone on about blending brandy into the wine or whatever.
"Strong" only in the ballpark of soju, but stronger than the beer.
I held the wine in my mouth and kissed her before she could fully parse what was happening.
Her soft lips parted naturally, and I slipped the fruit-scented liquid across with my tongue.
Cupping her cheeks—her eyes had flown wide enough to split at the corners—I did it again.
I watched the hard liquor, mixed with saliva, slide down her throat.
Her pale throat bobbed as she gulped it all down.
The smell of alcohol wafted up from her pink, slightly parted lips—a soft "hah" of breath.
"Move according to your desires. Do what you want. I have never commanded you to march to war and lay glory at my feet. If you want to kill monsters, kill them. If you want to command people with power and gold, do that. Whatever you do, the fact that you are my Incarnation will not change—"
Before I could finish, her lips found mine again.
That warm, yielding flesh—like it had been steeped in fruit juice—knocked roughly against my gums.
I smiled at her as she huffed rough breaths through her nose and opened my mouth to meet hers.
Tongue tangled with tongue.
Her whole body grew feverish, the heat clouding her head into a haze.
In the end, she—who still needed to breathe, unlike my Clone body—was the one to pull back first.
That snow-white skin had flushed crimson. Her cheeks, her ears, even the nape of her neck.
As I stroked the reddened nape of her neck and the pale swell of her chest, she gasped for air and managed a question.
"Rather than going out to hunt monsters... would my parents have wanted me to succeed in society? They only ever told me to study hard and get a good job."
"Then don't head to the battlefield. Look into business ventures an Incarnation can pursue instead."
Come to think of it, Lee Ha-rin was making a living through ritual magic, wasn't she?
I tossed the answer off lightly as the thought crossed my mind.
Her eyes, her grip tight on my shoulders, fixed on me without wavering.
"...Whatever I want?"
"That's right. Whatever your desires dictate."
Those violet eyes glinted darkly.