Not a Hallucination
“You're seriously a hallucination, right? If I'd made you up, there's no way you'd be this annoying.”
“A hallucination? Haha! Why wouldn't I seem real? I'm offended~. I am real.”
My ears felt like they were bleeding.
I wanted to tell a doctor about these symptoms right away and find a solution. I couldn't get counseling until the hallucination ended, which meant I had exactly one option: wait it out.
“Fine, then what are you? Why are you here?”
Adapting to incomprehensible situations was nothing new to me. I spoke with an air of giving up entirely, and the Fog circled around me with what could only be called delight.
“I didn't come here — you came here, human!”
“Why do you keep calling me that. Are you not human?”
The Fog's eyes went wide as if I'd said something unimaginable, and it burst out laughing with the strangest sound I'd ever heard. Watching it pull such an exaggerated expression — one that looked ready to pop its eyeballs right out — a subtle revulsion began to creep up on me.
Yeah. Now that I looked closely, it really didn't seem human.
“Of course not! I'm part of the race that manages the factors!”
“Factors?”
“Hmm, maybe 'race' isn't quite the word? Who knows how many of us there are~. I think I talked to someone a few centuries ago, but that was so long ago I forgot! Heehee!”
That was not the kind of thing one should say so cheerfully.
The brighter the Fog smiled, the worse my mood got.
“Okay. So what do you mean by 'factors'?”
“Ooh, you're curious about factors! Let me explain!”
In an instant, the Fog transformed into the shape of a blackboard.
A piece of chalk floated into the air and began swimming across the board at breakneck speed.
“You know how humans go through miserable events and happy events? Those all happen because of misfortune factors and happiness factors!”
On the blackboard appeared a drawing of a smiling person and a crying one. The chalk drew reckless clusters of white particles beside the smiling figure and black ones beside the weeping figure.
“Humans with lots of happiness factors attached have good things happen to them. Humans with lots of misfortune factors attached have bad things happen. See?”
“……”
“Humans seem to think all these events unfold according to some neat chain of cause and effect. So naive, haha! Anyway, I manage the flow of these factors so nothing gets tangled up. So? Make sense?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded halfheartedly, too tired to care. At that, the Fog shifted again — this time into the form of a boy who looked about my age.
Looked like a kid from the class next door. Had it read my memory again?
“I've never seen a human like you! I've met plenty of oddballs, but still.”
“Why? What's different about me?”
I answered absently, wishing this moment would just end, and the Fog leaned its face in close to mine. For a split second, the eyes of a boy I'd never spoken to in my life flashed red.
“I can't see you!”
“What?”
“Exactly what I said — I can't see what you look like! The misfortune factors are covering every inch of you.”
The Fog giggled and said, fine, here, look for yourself.
And then it turned into something that… looked like a person.
I couldn't be certain it was human because black particles clung to the entire body in dense swarms, blurring its silhouette into something barely visible. Honestly, it looked like thousands of barnacles crusted over a rock with not a single gap left between them.
In a word: disgusting.
“…Okay, I get it. Change back.”
“Okay!”
The Fog snapped back into the boy's form. Thank goodness it at least obeyed when spoken to.
“I've seen plenty of strange humans over the years… but you're the first one completely buried in misfortune factors like this!”
“So all those terrible days I've had — that's just because I'm covered in misfortune factors?”
“Exactly! Top of the class. Haha!”
A crown formed at the tip of the Fog's fingers and settled neatly onto my head.
“This is praise and a reward, all in one!”
“Don't need it.”
“Aww…”
The moment the Fog made a sullen face, the crown crumpled right along with it and vanished as if sucked back into its fingertips. Watching it plop down on the floor and sit there studying my expression, I let out a sigh.
Hallucination or not, it had been a long time since I'd talked to anyone this comfortably.
“Thanks for the explanation.”
“…! Heehee! Oh, and I helped you when you got hurt, remember!”
Before I could ask what on earth that meant, the Fog came stomping over.
“You were supposed to get hit by a car and hurt really, really badly! If I hadn't found you in time and shaken off your misfortune factors, you'd have been seriously injured!”
“You did that?”
“Yep! That was my first time touching a human body! Oh — wait, is that why you ended up here?”
“You've been saying I 'came here' this whole time… but I can still go back to where I was, right?”
The conversation was stretching longer than I'd expected, and an uneasy feeling began to stir. I asked quickly, and thankfully, the Fog shook its head.
“Pfft, no! You'll be going back any minute now! Your body's starting to blur!”
“Really?”
“Yep! I hope we meet again. This was so much fun!”
The moment the Fog's eyes lit up, every sound around me went muffled, as if water had flooded my ears. Then the Fog vanished, sucked away toward somewhere I couldn't see, and I felt my own existence scattering with it.
And I opened my eyes.
By the time I came to, it was the morning after the accident.
I hadn't felt any pain when I woke, and the test results, apparently, came back clean. A cut on my cheek and a bruise on my side — that was the full extent of it.
For someone who'd been hit hard enough by a car to go flying across the road, it was an unbelievable outcome. The doctor said it was nothing short of sheer luck.
Sheer luck. Was there a word that suited me less?
I started to let out a hollow laugh, then caught myself — the Director was standing right beside me.
“Yeonjae, are you really sure you should be discharged?”
“Yes. The doctor said I'm fine, remember? I'll gather my things myself, Director.”
After my talk with the doctor, I went straight through the discharge paperwork. The Director, who kept hovering at a careful distance as if afraid to come too close, asked whether I'd consider staying one more night.
And pay a day's hospital bill for it? I told her I was fine so many times that she finally nodded, her face still clouded with worry.
So it wasn't a hallucination after all. Just one hell of a vivid dream.
I'd dreamed about the Fog, a creature that could change its shape at will. Honestly, I still couldn't quite believe that all those vivid sensations had been nothing but a dream — but the simple fact that I hadn't been standing in the hallway muttering to myself was enough to satisfy me.
When I asked whether I'd said anything strange in my sleep, the Director quietly assured me I'd only slept. She seemed curious about what I'd dreamed of, but after a moment's hesitation, she didn't press.
I filled out the paperwork for the hit-and-run at the police station, then went back to the orphanage. It was an ordinary day.
The problem was that night, when I met the Fog again.
“Whoa! We really did meet again! I'm so glad!!”
“Sure.”
Despite my lukewarm response, the Fog rejoiced without end and raised an absolute ruckus. Literally a ruckus — it leapt high into the air, slammed into something, staggered back to its feet, and then spun around and around me in dizzy circles.
It was the kind of spectacle that made a word I'd never even had occasion to use — menace — spring unbidden to mind.
But I was too tired to engage, so I simply ignored it.
“So dreams really can be this vivid.”
“I keep telling you I'm not fake! We're talking right now, aren't we?”
The place where I stood was the same black space from yesterday. My five senses were just as sharp as before, but I wasn't worried about whether this was a hallucination — I could clearly remember lying down in bed to sleep before ending up here.
“How can a dream be this real?”
“If you keep ignoring me, I'm gonna get mad, human!”
I ignored the Fog as it fussed in front of me like a child in full tantrum, and marveled, once again, at the power of the subconscious. I wasn't in the habit of dreaming — I usually slept deep and dreamless — so the whole experience was simply fascinating.
Is this what it's like for everyone? Living through dreams this vivid?
It was strange, yes — but knowing it was only a dream left me perfectly calm.
“You said yesterday — the misfortune factors, or whatever — you shook them off me, and that's why I got hurt less.”
“Huh? Did I?”
“It's late, but thanks. I honestly barely hurt at all.”
“…! No problem! It was nothing! That kind of thing's easy for me!”
The Fog's face — cheeks still puffed and swollen — brightened instantly.
It hadn't been anything meaningful, just a dream, but watching that smiling face wasn't entirely unpleasant.
The Fog giggled and crouched down beside me.
“You said the misfortune factors are what bring bad things into my life?”
“Yep!”
“Then could you peel them off one more time?”
I'd been turning over yesterday's conversation in my head and said it without thinking much of it. Even when the Fog sprang up like a jumping bean, shouted “Of course!” and laid its hands on my body, I truly thought nothing of it. It was just a dream — what was the harm?
With a delighted expression, the Fog mimed peeling something off of me, plucking invisible things from the air around my body.
Apparently it was removing the misfortune factors, but since I couldn't see a thing, it looked exactly like a mime doing street performance.
After shaking and plucking for a long while with no sign of finishing, I lifted my head — and found a face that clearly read something's not working here.
“Something wrong?”
“Hmm… Last time they came off with just a pop the second I touched them… why won't they now?”
“If it's not working, let's stop. You're making me carsick.”
“No way! I can't even remember the last time I had this much fun!”
The Fog's eyes flashed.
It was the look of a wild beast watching prey try to flee right before its eyes. Meeting those madness-tinged pupils was, honestly, a little terrifying.
“Ugh, they really won't come off…. Oh! Then how about this — I'll tell you what's going to happen to you tomorrow, and you dodge it all!”
“You can even see that?”
“Yep! If I read the flow of the factors, I can tell what kind of event will happen, when, and how!”
“That's amazing. You're impressive, you know that?”
“…Heehee! Okay, then I'm going to tell you every event lined up for tomorrow, so listen carefully! Whoa, if this actually works, that's huge!”
The next night, I met the Fog in the dream again.
It must have been waiting a long while, because the moment it spotted me, it came sprinting over from the corner where it had been sitting.
“Human! Why didn't you dodge anything? I couldn't take my eyes off you — I thought I was going to die of frustration!”
“…Hey.”
“Hm? Did your body freeze up? So it really was impossible after all?”
The Fog piled ten words onto every one I managed to squeeze out, fussing up a storm. I watched it for a moment, then opened my mouth slowly.
“This… this is real, isn't it.”
“Huh?”
“This isn't a dream. It's real. It was real all along.”
“…? Are you still going on about that? I told you already.”
Even as the Fog reacted like I was dredging up settled business, I couldn't get the words out easily. Goosebumps crawled over my skin.
No way. If it was vivid enough to mistake for a hallucination, I should have doubted it at least once.
Every event the Fog had predicted in last night's dream had happened today, exactly as told.
When I woke up that morning, the last thing it had said to me came to mind, and I'd smiled without meaning to.
The strange feeling started when I smacked my head hard against an open cupboard door while clearing away breakfast.
My brain rattled violently; I couldn't even make a sound, barely managing to breathe — and in that moment, the boyish voice I'd heard yesterday floated up from memory.
You're going to hit the cupboard door hard while you're cleaning up after breakfast! It's going to swing open right when you get up, so make sure you watch the shelf carefully when you rise!
Yeah… got it.
Listen properly for once! Why do you keep daydreaming!
I'd thought it must be coincidence.
Truthfully, since I hadn't been listening properly, I'd remained unsure of myself until the afternoon.
But the events kept unfolding, one after another.
Exactly as the Fog had said.