“Pia?”
“Phephe!”
Following the puzzled voice, a lively cry ensued. Kang Sihyun, watching as a small fantasy creature flapped its tiny wings, furrowed his brows in confusion.
“Why is Pia here?”
“I told you. It'll be helpful.”
"To save Lee Hamin?"
"Yeah."
"Then that means Lee Hamin is still alive."
"...Huh?"
The boy momentarily wore a defeated expression. After revealing his confusion, he quickly averted his gaze and began humming an unfamiliar tune. His nonchalant demeanor oddly instilled confidence. It was a moment when Sihyun's tension eased, thinking Lee Hamin might still be alive.
"Just in case, I'm telling you, don't get your hopes up too much."
"What?"
"You don't know whether the person you'll end up saving will be a corpse or someone alive."
"......"
"I'm just telling you so you won't be more disappointed if it turns out differently than you expected."
The boy, abandoning his pretense of not knowing, gently soothed Sihyun's emotions with a nonchalant tone. It was a cruel form of consideration.
Indeed, the possibility the boy mentioned couldn't be dismissed. Sihyun, suppressing his excitement, hesitated, then petted Pia.
"...So how exactly is Pia going to help?"
"You'll see later. I need to step back for it to use its abilities."
The boy's icy gaze met Pia's. Though there was nothing but an empty floor, he seemed to be kicking stones. This time, it was his turn to complain about how he wasn't crying this time. The fact that he still thought Lee Hamin was alive relieved Sihyun.
"I'm just telling you because I thought you might be wondering, but don't complicate things too much."
"What?"
"You think about too many things. Sometimes, just keep it simple."
"......"
"I'm done answering your questions for today. I'll leave now. Next time we meet, it'll be your turn to ask questions."
"Questions I should've asked?"
"You have a lot of questions, don't you? Like about Mana Collisions."
"...Ah, then about Mana Collisions--"
"Oh no! Trying to kill two birds with one stone is cheating! Hurry up and go, shoo!"
Sihyun wanted to ask while the opportunity arose, but the boy squinted his eyes. Like a wrestler pushing his opponent, he pushed Sihyun's back firmly. As Sihyun was pushed and stumbled, it felt like a sinkhole opened up beneath him.
He must not be intending to push me down there.
He thought it wouldn't be right since there was decency involved.
Suddenly, his back was pushed.
"Then see you next time! Don't worry, I'll protect you from your nightmares until then!"
The boy, waving goodbye cheerfully, escorted Sihyun. As he lost his balance and began to fall downward, Sihyun turned his head urgently to look at the boy. The boy who seemed to have been dropped from above smiled innocently, his mischievous face raising questions in Sihyun's mind.
What do you mean by nightmares again?
The question disappeared into his closed lips.
“Phephe!”
While holding onto Pia tightly to avoid dropping it, it cried out cheerfully. In sync with its cries, the scene before him flickered once. The change in the dream's background was instantaneous.
"......"
The dark and cozy black space quickly transformed into a damp, humid, pitch-black void in the blink of an eye. The change happened so fast that Sihyun couldn't keep up. Suddenly, the air, as familiar as it was suffocating, enveloped Sihyun. The ground beneath his feet writhed.
A sensation unforgettable as if it were etched into his mind.
The Shadow World.
Since the fusion, it had been the place that bestowed upon him the most terrifying memories.
"How did...?"
"Phephet!"
Unable to fathom how he ended up here, Kang Sihyun let out a sigh. Eve, who had been nestled against him, gestured somewhere with her short wings. At first, Sihyun couldn't decipher her signal properly, but after Eve cried out a few more times, he followed her lead to wherever the small creature was guiding him. Whenever they walked a certain distance, she would make a sound again, signaling him to stop and indicating the opposite direction. It seemed like 'puff' meant forward, 'stop' meant stop, and 'puff-puff' and 'puff-stop' meant left and right, respectively.
After following for a while, he picked up the rhythm, and their pace quickened. Eventually, they arrived at a place within the shadow world where the exact location couldn't be gauged.
There, Eve pointed to the ground.
"Puff-puff!"
A short, sharp cry echoed, and the surroundings began to darken as if black ink were being poured out, rendering the sight pitch black. Even eyes accustomed to darkness were rendered useless. It was a moment of confusion for Sihyun, who called out to Eve.
"Dreams now show everything..."
The tone was familiar, enough to make Sihyun pause and look back, halting his initial urge to walk forward blindly. Every nerve was attuned to his sense of hearing.
"After lucid dreams, it shows what you want to see, is that such a dream?"
A boy, sounding puzzled, approached Sihyun. With the mention of dreams, Sihyun snapped back to attention and looked at the boy with trembling eyes.
Hamin appeared surprisingly intact for being in the shadow world. It was neither entirely real nor entirely fictitious; rather, it was subtly realistic. Sihyun chuckled at the two words Hamin had just uttered, trying to make sense of the situation based on them. Though not certain, it seemed like Eve had somehow led him into Hamin's dream.
"Why can't you speak?"
That meant the boy before him, who was initiating conversation, was also a part of Hamin's consciousness.
"Kang Sihyun?"
"......"
Meeting the vivid violet eyes, Sihyun felt a lump form in his throat. No words came out. It wasn't that he had nothing to say; it was more like he had too much to say and couldn't choose. After several failed attempts to respond, Sihyun finally managed to produce a sound after a long while.
"... Are you alive?"
It was a sentence uttered after tens of seconds of silence, driven by the fear of hearing a negative answer. With each passing moment of silence, the fear of hearing a negative response grew. Hamin pinched Sihyun's cheek in response to his repeated hesitation to respond, then closed his mouth. The boy, who had blinked blankly for a few seconds, soon chuckled softly. It was a simple laugh, yet it conveyed various emotions.
"Then I must be dead."
The tone was familiar, causing Sihyun's voice to lower even further.
"... How's your body?"
"I'm not sure about my body, but it seems my lifeline is on the edge."
Is this real?
The boy, seeming unaware of what had happened, waved his hand in front of Sihyun. It wasn't like he couldn't see, so why was he conducting an irrelevant vision test? Finding his reaction odd given the circumstances, Sihyun let out a forced chuckle before swallowing his breath.
He was still alive. That much he was certain of.
He couldn't say for sure how it had happened, but it seemed like Eve had the ability to intervene in people's dreams. Or perhaps she could show various things through dreams.
Come to think of it, when he had a nightmare before the field trip, Eve had cried bitterly before he fell asleep. As the thought occurred to him that perhaps that dream, too, had been something Eve had shown him, the dream he had after the laboratory incident came to mind.
Gigantic eyes.
A world turned into a battleground.
A city where screams never ceased.
It was still vivid as if it had just been drawn.
If the dream he had before the field trip was a precognitive dream shown by Eve, what was that dream on that day? What was that dream, still sending shivers down his spine?
Suddenly, his scalp tingled. The eerie sensation brushed past his mind sharply, and as Sihyun blinked, he focused on Hamin's voice calling his name.
He shook his head to clear his cluttered mind.
He had to deal with what was in front of him now.
"It's so vivid for a dream... Normally, dreams become increasingly faint once you wake up. But why doesn't this one?"
Maybe it's because you're here.
He said hesitantly, and added, "We should probably check on that too." Sihyun's shoulder twitched. Although the comment about waking up was meant lightly, it felt heavy to Sihyun.
"... Do you regret it?"
It was a question he had wanted to ask since he had survived alone. It might not be relevant in the current situation, but he still wanted to ask. He was curious about his clear answer rather than his own speculation.
Hamin looked at Sihyun cautiously upon the cautious question. A brief silence ensued. His lips curled slightly upward.
"No."
As soon as the answer was heard, the space shook.
Realizing that their conversation was at an end based on his experience conversing with Hamin, Sihyun urgently opened his mouth, surprising Hamin. Ignoring the children who had awakened in surprise, Sihyun, with determination, removed the loosely draped eye patch and turned his head toward the firmly closed door of the infirmary. With a sudden movement, the children who had blinked sleepily woke up, startled. Despite the curious gazes of the children, Sihyun stubbornly stared at the closed door, then clenched his fist.
Pia.
He needed to find that little figment, who should be in his room by now.
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