This Is A Dream

Deep in the night, Delma, who had sat nursing Chloe, lost her fight with weariness and fell asleep slumped across the bed. Even so, the smallest sound jerked her head up, and she would check whether Chloe was all right, over and over again.

“Delma…”

The voice came to her through her sleep. Delma’s brows drew together, and then she started like someone scalded and snapped her head up.

The lord, who had slept a whole day through, was sitting up in bed and gazing quietly at her. Relief washed in, and behind it a rush of feeling that blurred everything in front of her. Delma scrubbed hurriedly at her eyes with the back of her hand and studied the lord’s gaunt face.

“My lady! Are you all right now?”
“Yes. I am sorry. I gave you a dreadful fright, did I not.”

Her throat stung even as she spoke, but Dong-hui did what she could to keep the pain off her face. Of the two of them, it was Delma who looked more like the patient. Delma went on touching the lord’s forehead, her cheeks, the backs of her hands, checking whether the fever had come down.

“I am quite all right, so go and get some proper sleep.”
“I am all right too. But why did you say nothing at all, when you were as ill as that?”

Worried as she was, Delma did not trouble to hide the reproach in her face.

“And me too stupid to know that my lady was ill.”

Delma turning it on herself like that only made Dong-hui sorrier.

“I was not ill. It came over me all at once on the way back. I am truly all right now.”

Dong-hui deliberately raised an arm and made a show of flexing a muscle. She meant it for a display of strength. To Delma’s eye it was no more than a limp waggle of the arm.

Still, to see her open her eyes and speak, even like this, set Delma’s mind a great deal more at rest. The world had gone dark on her before; now she could breathe a little. Then she caught Chloe forcing a smile, and her face changed like someone catching herself out.

“Are you not hungry? You have had nothing since yesterday. Shall I fetch you some hot soup, at least? The Dural soup has come out beautifully. The head cook made it by some new method, and you cannot think how rich and nutty it is. Shall I bring some?”

Delma coaxed, wanting so badly to get something, anything, into her.

But Chloe only smiled weakly and shook her head.

“No, only some water. I do not think it would sit well if I ate now.”
“Yes! Oh — the doctor said my lady must take her medicine as well once she woke. It is a medicine that may be taken on an empty stomach, and my lady is to be sure to have it.”

Left to herself she would not have wanted the medicine either, but Dong-hui nodded, wanting to lighten Delma’s worry even a little.

The lord had barely finished nodding before Delma held out a cup of water and one round pill. A little smaller than a cheongsimhwan¹, deep green, it gave off a very strong smell of grass. The smell alone was enough to turn her against it, and she was still wondering whether to leave it after all when Delma’s pleading eyes settled the matter for her. Dong-hui put the thing in her mouth and chewed.

“Ugh!”

It was so bitter that every hair on her head stood on end. Next to this, the tea she had been given at the village chief’s house in Enol had been positively charming.

“You must not spit it out! You must take the whole of it. If it is too hard to swallow, shall I dissolve it in water for you? It will make a greater quantity, but it will go down a good deal easier.”

Delma must have been certain the medicine was about to come straight back up, because without a moment’s hesitation she spread her palm open under the chin of the lord, whose whole face was screwed into a grimace. Dong-hui shook her head quickly. Even if the stuff had tasted of alien zits, she could not spit it into Delma’s palm.

“Ah c’n ee’ ih.”

Afraid that opening her mouth wide would make her want to spit it out after all, Dong-hui spoke with her lips barely parted. Delma had been watching all this as though the lord were being very good about it, and the moment the medicine was down and the lord was dragging in a hurried breath, she held out a small hard candy.

Dong-hui got it into her mouth and rolled it about with all the urgency of a woman clamping on an oxygen mask. Only then did her mercilessly crumpled face smooth out a little. Delma pressed another cup of hot water on her, and the water smelled fragrant.

“Thank you.”

Dong-hui blew on the water, white steam curling up off it, and drank it slowly. It was not hot enough to scald her tongue, but it was more than she could swallow down all at once. She had been afraid that medicine so bitter would leave her stomach burning too, but the doctor was evidently no quack, for her stomach sat easier than it had before.

Delma waited until Chloe had drunk the water down and held out the empty cup, then laid her back in the bed. She handled the lord as though she were a glass that would break at a touch: careful as she took hold of her, careful as she laid her down, careful as she drew the covers up over her.

Dong-hui made a quick show of falling asleep, so that Delma could go back to her own room and rest in comfort.

Delma felt the lord’s forehead, drew the covers right up to her chin, and yawned without making a sound. Then, after checking her over once more, and once more after that, she went back to her room.

Only once she heard the door close did Dong-hui sit slowly up. She had taken this world’s medicine, but she was uneasy about it all the same.

“I had better take something for the fever, at least.”

Dong-hui dragged legs as heavy as steel rebar over to the front door and stood there.

— Beep. Beep. Beep…

But before she could so much as key in the four digits of the door code, everything in front of her went black, and Dong-hui crumpled straight to the floor.

A little while later.

Above the fallen Dong-hui’s head the blue status window rippled, and the silver-haired man came bursting out of it. An hourglass shedding blue light spun round and round on the back of his hand, larger than the one before and deeper in color.

The sentence was carved across the status window with uncommon weight on the two syllables of ‘Taechang’, and the whole screen blinked wildly.

“Shut up.”

Taechang whipped his head round and glared at the status window as though he meant to smash it to pieces, his jaw grinding tight.

The status window went on needling him, but the man only glared at the screen in irritation and kept any further foul language behind his teeth. Instead he crossed to where Dong-hui lay on the floor and stood looking down at her with a frown. Whether he really had to touch that thing was written plain across his face. He had no stomach for it at all, and he glanced several times at the hourglass turning on the back of his hand before he knelt down beside her, unwilling to the last.

Taechang swung an arm as though he had had quite enough, and the blinking status window vanished.

He gathered up the fallen Dong-hui’s head and cradled it, then closed his free hand hard around the hourglass on the back of the other. He sighed, and the hourglass, clouded and unsubstantial a moment before, took on body and settled into the man’s grip.

Still gripping it, Taechang flicked the lid open with his thumb. More than half the blue light in the upper chamber had already run down.

He raised the hourglass to his mouth like a wineglass, and the blue light inside came gulping down past his lips. Only when the upper chamber had emptied did Taechang shut the lid tight.

Brows drawn hard together, he turned his eyes now on Dong-hui, who lay with hers squeezed shut.

Taechang took her chin in one hand, and her closed mouth fell slightly open. He brought his face down close to her parted lips and opened his own a little. The blue light he had been holding came welling into her mouth. Its color had faded from what it was at first, but the blue was brilliant still.

Almost all of it had crossed over when the status window appeared above them again and gave the back of his head a poke. His lips were parted to pass the light across, and so they came down full on Dong-hui’s. Startled, Taechang tried to pull away at once, but for some reason his lips clung to hers like a magnet and would not come free.

That was the exact moment Dong-hui opened her eyes.

She found Taechang sucking away at her lips, and her eyes flew wide.

“Mmph! Mmmph!”

Taechang felt just as hard done by. He had not the slightest wish to be putting his lips against this half-witted user’s. Yet anybody looking in now would plainly take him for a man who had thrown himself on a senseless woman with the filthiest of intentions.

Her eyes huge, Dong-hui was on the point of biting down hard on his lips when the man’s shape began to fade, fainter and fainter, and slid away into the status window. Her fine strong teeth snapped shut on nothing but empty air.

Cheated of her purpose, Dong-hui sprang up and made a grab at the status window still hanging there. The blue screen rippled, and brilliant rainbow-colored letters began to squirm and writhe across it like earthworms. In an instant the deep furrows went out of her face and left it dazed.

“What a goddamn dream…”

Dong-hui’s voice had cut in out of nowhere, and the rippling status window stopped dead and froze where it stood. And Dong-hui, blinking slowly, crumpled to the floor just as she was and fell asleep.

The status window hurriedly rounded the thing off with “it is a beautiful dream,” and a moment later, in a crackle of static, it vanished too.

It was only natural, then, that Delma, coming to the bedchamber the next morning the moment she opened her eyes, should be horrified to find the lord asleep on the floor.

By the time midday came round, Dong-hui had recovered completely. Recovered was not the word for it; she was fairly flying.

“Delma, what is that medicine? What is in it, to work as well as that? Filthy foul taste to it, though.”

Dong-hui was convinced she owed the whole of this recovery to the green pill. She had meant to fetch something off the convenience store’s shelf of household remedies, but she had been too tired and had simply fallen asleep.

Delma, in high spirits all round at the lord’s recovery, answered brightly.

“It is a medicine made by the doctor who came from Fron. By all accounts a person whose medical skill is famous far and wide.”
“Is it now? It does seem to work, at that. I feel so light.”

Dong-hui twisted round at the waist as though she could not believe it, then swung her arms about as well. Her whole body was brimming over with strength. She felt for all the world as though she had leveled up.

Level up?

All at once something struck Dong-hui as strange, and in her mind she called urgently for the status window.