Chapter 8: The Lotus Pond at Dawn

As soon as he entered the hospital room, the nurse asked him curiously, seeing him reach for his phone.

“Were you expecting a call?”

“No, I just need to look something up.”

He opened the browser and typed in the address for the user community. Since it was run by the company, he could find game manuals and official setting materials there. He searched for “Manra” in the settings section.

Search results: No results found.

“…….”

That wasn’t particularly surprising.

Jeong Yun-jo had searched for this word before. A few times people had called him Manra, and he wondered if it meant something in the game, so he had tried looking it up. Back then, the result had also been zero. He checked again in case it had been updated since, but as expected, nothing came up.

He also searched on regular portals, not the game community, but there were no notable results either. Only trivial posts like “Taiwanese ramen is delicious” showed up.

Manra. A word he’d never heard before.

If it was a term used only in the game, there should be some setting for it, but no matter how much he searched, it wasn’t in the setting materials.

“Is it just a nickname…?”

If it was simply a nickname people gave him, it made sense that it wouldn’t show up in searches. He had thought that before and let it go. But even so, why “Manra” specifically? That was still a mystery.

Finally, he set the search scope to the entire board and entered the same word again.

Searching the entire board took quite a while because of the massive amount of data. Jeong Yun-jo stared blankly at the spinning arrow. He had done this before too, and there had been nothing then, so he didn’t expect much. But surprisingly, something came up this time.

Search results: 1 result in Free Board.

Title: Who is Manra? (4)

Content: People are praying to Manra for something?

Comments:

• I think it’s a god’s name.

  ↳ Huh? First time hearing it. Is it important?

  ↳↳ It’s just a name people say when making a wish. Like, ‘Oh heavens and earth’ for us.

  ↳↳↳ Wow, I’m a total veteran but I’ve never heard that before.

It was a recent post, less than a month old. From the content, Manra seemed to be a local deity that only appeared by name in the game world. Since few people had heard of it, it was probably a name mentioned very rarely among NPCs.

Only then did he understand why people called him Manra. The setting of the game was an ancient Eastern country in an unknown era, and people were very superstitious. They must have mistaken Yun-jo, who roamed deep mountains with a tiger and occasionally appeared near villages, for a mountain god.

The mystery was finally solved, and he felt relieved.

Manra was indeed a part of the game’s setting. It just wasn’t important enough to be on the website, and few knew about it.

It was strange that even settings he didn’t know appeared in his dreams, but he didn’t dwell on that. He must have read about it somewhere in passing. Maybe during the beta test, or in a document the manager showed him. That must be why the unfamiliar title “Manra” followed him into his dreams.

Feeling refreshed, Jeong Yun-jo took out his phone from under the pillow, turned off the still-running game, and logged out.

He had only been awake for a few hours, but he was already drowsy again. Thanks to the painkillers, the pain wasn’t severe even after the anesthesia wore off. It hurt, but it was bearable. The dizziness from the antibiotics was stronger.

His discharge was scheduled for tomorrow, and lying around made time pass slowly, so he welcomed sleep.

Jeong Yun-jo took out the old phone again and held it in his hand.

As far as he could tell, there were a few rules to this dream.

The first dream occurred when he accidentally fell asleep with the game running. The same happened the next time. After that, it became a habit to run the game on the old phone before sleeping.

Also, the dream always started at the point he had last checked before falling asleep.

When he launched the game, a prompt appeared asking if he wanted to reconnect to the last location he logged out from. Usually, the dream started and ended at Yulsi Mountain, and this time was the same.

Connect to Baekyang, Bukryeong, Yulsi Mountain? [Yes/No]

“…….”

Jeong Yun-jo thought for a moment, then brought up the location change option. A list of coordinates for places he had moved to at least once in the game appeared on the right status window. He scrolled through and selected one.

Connect to Baekyang, Wonkyung, Imperial Palace?

Near the south gate, a market was held every morning, bustling from the hour of the tiger to the hour of the snake. Yun-jo, mingling with the crowd, grabbed a passing low-ranking official and asked.

“Where did the nobles from Wonkyung go?”

“They went to the encampment outside the west gate. Why do you ask?”

“I missed seeing them yesterday, so I thought I might catch a glimpse from afar. Did you see them?”

“Ah, don’t even mention it. They dislike commotion so much that the feast the magistrate held yesterday was canceled. If you value your life, don’t think about getting close!”

The official warned sternly.

“Yes, I understand.”

Yun-jo smiled brightly, and the official coughed a few times before leaving.

‘An encampment outside the west gate….’

He had been living on Yulsi Mountain for three years, so he roughly knew the location of the old encampment. It was about two hours’ walk from the west gate. Starting from the south gate of the fortress, it would take at least three or four hours. Of course, that was at a normal pace. Yun-jo reached the encampment in less than half a sijin.

The outer gate of the encampment was firmly closed. On the second floor of the gate tower, patrol officers sent from the magistrate’s office were standing the dawn watch. Seeing them from a distance, Yun-jo decided to circle around the wall and enter through the rear garden.

The patrol officers on the gate tower were probably stationed there reluctantly; in an encampment with nearly twenty buildings, they wouldn’t patrol all the way to the rear garden. The high wall would be difficult for an ordinary person to climb, but for Yun-jo, it was a piece of cake.

He climbed onto the wall, looked around, and when he saw no one, he lightly jumped down.

The rear garden of the encampment.

Even though it had been empty for a few years, it didn’t feel abandoned, since it had been used as a government office until recently. A large zelkova tree stood to one side, and in the center, a square pond had a pavilion and a belvedere connected by a bridge. The building visible in the distance across the pond must be the main hall. With its windows tightly shut, it seemed the owner hadn’t woken up yet.

It was early morning, so the lotus flowers in the pond hadn’t fully bloomed. The dawn scenery felt unfamiliar, as even the color of the air was different. In the three years of dreaming this same dream every day, he had rarely experienced such an early hour.

Deciding to wait for the owner to come out, Yun-jo settled in the belvedere that faced the main hall.

As he sat blankly, quite some time passed. The sun rose, the cold morning air retreated, and the lotus buds, which had been opening one by one, were in full bloom when a shadow fell over the water surface.

“What are you doing there?”

“You’re here!”

Yun-jo stood up happily and stepped down the pavilion stairs in one stride.

The owner of the main hall, appearing among the white flowers of the silk tree, stood across the bridge. It was the Young Master from yesterday.

In the bright light, the slender lines of his body made him look clearly youthful. The boy, who seemed at most seventeen or eighteen, wore light white clothes and the same hat as yesterday. The cloth hanging over his head had been changed to something lighter, but his face was still hidden.

Yun-jo openly showed his disappointment.

“I wanted to see your face.”

“…My face?”

“Yeah. Why are you wearing that?”

Yun-jo pointed at his own head, and the boy stared at him silently.

With no way to read his expression and no answer forthcoming, Yun-jo grew impatient and urged again.

“Hey? Are you listening?”

“Your speech…”

“My speech?”

“…Very unusual. You don’t sound like a local.”

“Ah.”

Yun-jo flinched and shut his mouth.

Of course it sounded strange. Even more so for use with a person of higher status.

He had indeed been speaking too casually without thinking. He knew his speech was quite different from the common parlance here, but since he rarely had long conversations with anyone, his usual tone had slipped out.

If he tried to awkwardly imitate a historical drama speech, he might get away with a line or two, but it would soon become obvious. A brief silence fell over the pond.

Yun-jo looked at the sun-glittering water surface, then let out a huff and sat on the railing of the belvedere.

“Fine, if you don’t want to show me, don’t. It’s good for UV protection anyway….”

He said it as if he were letting it go.

He looked very comfortable sitting there, but in reality, the railing sloped outward, and if he lost his balance, he would fall—a dangerously precarious position. The boy’s gaze briefly touched Yun-jo’s toes, which nearly grazed the water surface, then fell away.

“You didn’t answer my question. What were you doing here?”

“Nothing. I just came to see your face.”

“…….”

Thinking he was dealing with someone impossible to reason with, the boy stared at Yun-jo for a moment, then simply turned around. Yun-jo called after him.

“Leaving?”

“…….”

“Hey.”

No answer. Yun-jo clicked his tongue and stood up.

A loud splash! echoed through the quiet rear garden.

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