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Join the ServerThe boy’s hair was scattered tangled across his face, obscuring his features at first, but looking closer, Yun-jo realized he was wearing a carved wooden mask.
When Yun-jo lightly tugged at the thin cord fastened behind the boy’s head, the mask slid down toward his chin.
The face revealed beneath was delicate and pale, with fine, soft features that gave him a strikingly young appearance.
At most, he looked fifteen or sixteen years old.
Suddenly, the boy let out a faint, ragged sigh.
Yun-jo’s gaze reflexively dropped to the boy’s lips.
They were severely cracked and bone-dry, standing in sharp contrast to his drenched clothing.
He had no idea how many grueling hours the boy had been lying here, but it was clear he had not tasted a single drop of water in all that time.
The blazing sun overhead shone furiously, hot enough to wither grass down to its very roots.
Yun-jo reached down to his hip for his canteen.
On a scorching day like this, carrying fresh water was essential.
Sure enough, a sturdy flask filled to the brim hung securely at his waist.
He unfastened the leather strap holding the canteen cap and closed the distance between them, muffling his footsteps against the hot flagstones.
He had no intention of waking the unconscious boy.
Although he did not feel any immediate threat, a lingering instinct in the back of his mind warned him against making unnecessary contact.
Taking care not to touch him, Yun-jo carefully tilted the flask and let a few drops moisten the boy’s parched lips.
The boy’s lips twitched faintly in response.
Yun-jo tilted the canteen again, letting a small stream trickle down.
He repeated the motion several times until the boy finally swallowed a mouthful.
An involuntary sigh of relief escaped Yun-jo’s chest.
…At least he won’t die like this.
After carefully feeding him a few more drops, Yun-jo straightened his back.
In that exact moment, the boy’s eyes snapped open.
Pale, striking eyes locked directly onto Yun-jo.
The irises were faintly ringed with crimson and glowed with a distinct, golden hue.
Yun-jo had not expected him to regain consciousness so suddenly, and he flinched, instinctively taking a step back.
‘Uh, I…’
Flustered, Yun-jo stammered out a few broken words before realizing the boy remained completely silent.
He did not speak, nor did he scream in terror at the sudden sight of a stranger standing over him.
Was he mute?
No, that was not it.
He was simply entrusting his fate to the intruder before him—even if that intruder proved to be an enemy—much like a helpless young animal submitting to the dark.
He lacked the raw will, or perhaps the sheer energy, to do anything to preserve his own life.
When Yun-jo quietly raised the canteen, the boy’s gaze shifted to the container.
Soon, a faint, flickering light passed through his golden eyes, and his focus returned to Yun-jo’s face.
‘…’
Yun-jo loosely fastened the canteen’s strap, set it down within the boy’s reach, and offered a subtle nod to signal that he was taking his leave.
Throughout the entire process, the boy stared up at him without blinking a single time.
Yun-jo took another step backward.
Then, without warning, the boy reached out a trembling hand and grabbed Yun-jo’s sleeve.
His pale fingers lightly brushed against Yun-jo’s wrist, gentle as a sway of willow branches grazing the nape of a neck.
Yet the contact felt chillingly sharp and vivid, as though he had touched pure ice.
The instant their skin met, Yun-jo felt a sudden, terrifying realization take root.
Something was deeply wrong.
It was an unnerving, unnatural sensation—the feeling of touching a entity that should never be touched, of bridging a boundary that ought to remain sealed.
His conscious mind could not immediately identify the problem, yet a primal alarm screamed inside his head.
He could not remain in this place for another second.
The moment that realization struck, Yun-jo felt his entire body yanked violently backward, as if an unseen hand had gripped him by the back of the neck and dragged him into the abyss.
The boy’s slender figure rapidly receded into the distance.
His field of vision narrowed to a pinpoint, and soon, everything faded to black.
Jeong Yun-jo was jolted awake from his shallow sleep at the crack of dawn when a nurse pushed a gurney into his room and shook his shoulder.
As he offered a groggy morning greeting with a swollen, sleep-deprived face, the nurse smiled down at him.
“Did you have a good dream?”
“No, I couldn’t really sleep…” Jeong Yun-jo mumbled in reply.
He had prepped everything to fall asleep early, but sleeping inside a sterile hospital room was too uncomfortable, making rest elusive.
He had tossed and turned all night, only managing to fall asleep shortly before daybreak, clocking less than an hour of actual rest.
Naturally, he had not experienced any dreams.
“You really should have slept a little…”
The nurse offered him a sympathetic smile.
“Well, you’ll be under general anesthesia soon anyway, so once the sedative kicks in, you can sleep soundly.”
“That’s actually what worries me. What if I start babbling weird things under the anesthesia?”
“Ahaha, do you talk in your sleep when you dream?”
The nurse burst into a light laugh.
Jeong Yun-jo replied with a half-joking, half-serious tone.
“I’m not joking. My dreams are extremely vivid. When I wake up, I genuinely can’t tell whether I actually slept or not.”
“Don’t worry about it. Plenty of patients talk nonsense when coming out of anesthesia, and honestly, we can barely understand what they’re saying anyway. Besides, what’s so bad about a few strange dreams? They’re just dreams, after all.”
“…”
After pausing to consider her words, he offered a small nod.
“You’re right. They’re just dreams, so who cares.”
Due to his attending surgeon’s tight schedule, the procedure was set for early in the morning, requiring them to move quickly.
As he carefully transferred onto the transport gurney, the nurse spoke up.
“Alright, I’ll start moving you now.”
“Oh, wait a second.”
Reaching out from the gurney, he fumbled under the flat pillow on his hospital bed, pulled out his old smartphone, launched a familiar game app, and slipped the device back underneath the pillow with its screen left on.
He then offered the nurse an awkward, embarrassed smile.
“Just trying to ensure I have a good dream.”
The nurse did not seem to grasp the correlation between an active mobile game and pleasant dreams, but she returned his smile with an expression that clearly said ‘kids these days.’
She likely assumed he was simply a hardcore gaming addict, but he did not bother to correct her misapprehension.
Attempting to explain the truth would be far too complicated, and revealing the full story would undoubtedly get him treated like a lunatic.
Even if she did not judge him as insane, she would almost certainly recommend immediate psychiatric evaluation.
While the nurse’s guess was slightly off the mark, it was undeniably true that he was strangely tethered to the game.
Jeong Yun-jo was simply terrible at lying.
That was why, when she asked him earlier if he experienced strange dreams, he could not bring himself to deny it.
Because he truly was living through impossible dreams.
And this phenomenon had been recurring for three full years.
The setting of these dreams was always remarkably consistent.
Within the repetitive, daily existence he experienced night after night, the people inside that world always addressed him by a single, familiar name.
It did not take long for Jeong Yun-jo to comprehend the exact nature of his visions.
In those dreams, he was Yun-jo—the exact same character he had created years ago in Eternal Sun.
When that realization first struck him, Jeong Yun-jo had been so utterly dumbfounded that he simply laughed at the absurdity.
The reason behind these recurring dreams was blatantly obvious without needing deep analysis.
It was because he believed his character’s circumstances were vastly superior to his own broken reality.
It was better in every imaginable way, requiring no point-by-point comparison.
Above all else, that character possessed two perfectly functional legs.
Yet, even if he longed to escape his miserable reality, dreaming of living as a video game avatar while well into his twenties—not even a middle schooler anymore—felt pathetically embarrassing to admit to a soul.
Initially, he resolved not to dwell on it, dismissing the visions as meaningless nighttime fantasies.
He assumed the phase would pass in a matter of days and fade from memory.
However, as with most things in life, reality refused to conform to his desires.
The dreams he expected to fade within days persisted, repeating themselves dozens of times over.
Furthermore, contrary to his expectations, the dreamscapes grew increasingly detailed, concrete, and terrifyingly vivid with every passing night.
The alien world that had initially felt unfamiliar gradually transformed into a comfortable domain, until it eventually felt just as real as his waking life.
He watched time flow and seasons shift within that world, leading Yun-jo to meticulously count the passing days.
In the blink of an eye, three full years slipped away.
Jeong Yun-jo turned twenty-five in reality.
Yun-jo turned twenty-five in the dream world as well.
At some point along the way, Jeong Yun-jo naturally came to view the Yun-jo inside his dreams as an extension of himself.
Falling asleep to enter that world became an essential part of his daily routine, no different from commuting to a job or attending class at a set hour.
He even found himself secretly anticipating that nocturnal escape.
He fully recognized it as a pathetic cop-out from reality.
Perhaps he truly suffered from some deep-seated psychological disorder.
Yet, at the end of the day, every human being dreams when they sleep.
There was only one distinct difference between his dreams and everyone else’s: he was acutely aware that the moment he opened his eyes, he would be forced to return to his broken physical body.
And he did not mind that arrangement at all.
Lying on the cold operating table, watching a needle pierce his skin as he waited for the intravenous anesthetic to take hold, he turned his head to glance at the wall clock.
Whether the sedative acted faster than usual, darkness claimed him almost instantaneously.
The clock hands he fixated on right before losing consciousness indicated that it was not yet eight in the morning.
The world of Eternal Sun shared the exact same passage of time as reality, yet certain fundamental mechanics functioned in complete opposition.
For instance, the cycle of day and night was entirely inverted.
While darkness fell across the real world, brilliant daylight bathed the other realm, and vice versa.
The exact same rule governed his dreams.
The progression of seasons and the speed of time remained perfectly aligned, yet day and night were reversed.
If the real Jeong Yun-jo drifted off to sleep in the early morning, his counterpart in the dream world would be watching the sun dip below the horizon right around this hour.
It was early summer, right around the summer solstice, when the sun reached its absolute peak.
Though the hour of Xu had progressed past its first half, the setting sun had not yet fully vanished, hanging at an angle over the distant mountain ridge.
As the distance closed, the silhouette of an approaching carriage trailing long shadows grew increasingly clear.
At the head of the procession sat a magnificent carriage with an octagonal roof drawn by four horses, followed closely by three heavy cargo wagons pulled by two horses each.
Beom-il, who had been craning his neck to peer down from the high ridge, let out a low, gravelly growl.
“Grrr…”
“The roof is octagonal. That belongs to a high-ranking government official.”
In the lands of Baekyang, ordinary commoners were strictly limited to traveling in flat-roofed carriages.
Only state officials were permitted to ride in carriages crafted with flared eaves.
From twelve-angled roofs onward, ownership was restricted exclusively to members of the imperial family, while the prestigious sixteen-angled roof carriage was reserved solely for the emperor and his empress.
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