Chapter 36: Nothingness

Having a nightmare was never a pleasant experience.

Of course, that much was obvious.

How could it feel good when your precious sleep time—the one time you’re supposed to be at peace—gets disrupted?

Besides, humans were, by nature, creatures with a strong need for sleep.

Appetite, lust, all kinds of desires.

Out of all of them, wasn’t the hardest to resist the desire to sleep?

Just look at me—I can’t even stay awake during class.

It’s not that I’m weird. It’s just that human beings have powerful sleep drives.

In any case, what I meant was that humans have a pretty intense craving for sleep.

Which also meant that the discomfort caused by nightmares interrupting that sleep could be overwhelming.

“······Ah.”

Roughly translated, that meant I was in a really bad mood right now.

Swish—

I groped around the bed with my hand.

I was trying to find my device, which I must have tossed aside somewhere after glancing at it briefly.

“······Why is this what I grabbed?”

What I ended up grabbing wasn’t the device, but the book I borrowed from the library—Fixing the Barn without cows.

Maybe this was the reason I had a nightmare.

I read it too intently, focused too hard, and my brain overloaded.

That’d actually be a relief.

If I only skimmed it and still overloaded, it’d mean I was just dumb.

Not that I’m saying I’m smart, either.

But admitting I’m dumb bruises my pride.

I have pride, too.

It hurts to be called stupid.

I’m human too, you know. A person.

Click—

Having failed to find my device, I had no choice but to turn on the lights in my room.

“······There it is.”

And there it was, finally catching my eye.

Seriously, how did I sleep for the device to end up halfway stuck under the pillow?

I guess I’ve picked up some odd sleeping habits without even realizing it.

That’s strange.

I didn’t have any weird habits back when I was taking sleeping pills.

Maybe I should start taking them again.

Then I wouldn’t be flipping the whole bed just because I couldn’t find my device.

With that thought in mind, I checked the time displayed on the device screen.

5:30 a.m.

Still plenty of time before I had to head to class.

“······Seriously, what is this?”

Usually, my body is desperate to stay asleep—so what the hell made it start functioning so early today?

It wasn’t because of the nightmare.

Even on nights when I had nightmares, I still managed to get up at 8 just fine.

Ever since I stopped taking sleeping pills, the nightmares had returned—like regular, unwelcome guests.

But a guest showing up doesn’t mean the host leaves the house.

Sure, you might greet them, but that doesn’t mean you abandon your own place just because someone dropped by.

That’s common sense, right?

Well, anyway—

The point is, the nightmares weren’t a big deal anymore.

“······What do I even do now?”

More than the nightmare, what was bothering me now was the simple fact that I had nothing to do.

Think about it.

What would a fresh-faced academy girl have to do at 5:30 in the morning?

I’m not about to go out and start running laps around the training ground.

Even Kim Soo-ho wouldn’t be that into working out.

······Or would he? Maybe he would.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t even know how my own thoughts were flowing right now.

I was just voicing whatever popped into my head.

There wasn’t any deep meaning to it.

That’s just how my life was these days.

Like a stream flowing downstream—I was just a small twig drifting with the current.

Me changing wouldn’t change the direction of the flow.

Me changing wouldn’t make the river flow any faster or slower.

That’s why I hadn’t dropped out of the academy, either.

Maybe it’d be easier if I did.

If I dropped out, I wouldn’t have to deal with clingy imperial princesses or being bullied on campus.

But that was all.

I couldn’t find any real reason to drop out.

Why bother?

Drop out or not, I’m going to die soon anyway.

Quit the academy—still die.

Stay in the academy—still die.

The process might differ slightly, but the result is the same: I die.

So why go through the hassle of dropping out?

Especially when I already know that nothing will change either way.

Ultimate nihilism.

Is there any better phrase to describe what I’ve become?

I knew this wasn’t the healthiest mindset.

For the average person, life was far too beautiful to live with an outlook like this.

But for me—no, for Seo-yeon—this mindset made perfect sense.

Only Seo-yeon, with so little time left to live… no, only I could think this way.

Everyone else was normal.

Only I was the outlier.

And it’s hard to be the outlier among normals.

But even harder to break away from them completely.

So I didn’t do anything.

I wasn’t the kind of fool who volunteered for hardship.

“···.”

I stood still, staring at the spotless mirror in front of me.

Maybe it was just my imagination,
but my hair looked even whiter than before.

That’s a good thing.

It means time is moving forward.

It means I can feel that passage of time with my whole body.

At least, I’d like to think so.

---

In the end, I left the dorm earlier than usual.

Sigh.

Do I really need to start taking sleeping pills again?

But if I do, I might end up oversleeping and getting marked tardy.

Still, the appeal of sleeping pills was undeniable.

They knocked me out right away.

I didn’t even have to distract myself with devices or books—it just put me to sleep. That was a huge benefit.

The only problem was what came after.

I wasn’t the type to enjoy writing apology letters for being late.

And I especially wasn’t someone who enjoyed kneeling with my hands up as punishment.

At least other students had magic to help them endure it.

Me? I couldn’t even use magic.

So the best course of action was to not end up in that situation at all.

It’s bad enough getting punished for being late—

I really didn’t want to be hauled off to the infirmary coughing up blood on top of it.

That’s just pathetic.

And if I got caught by that crazy b*tch, she might torture me again.

And of course, there were the side effects of the sleeping pills to consider.

“······Like it matters.”

Honestly, I didn’t care much.

The only real side effect would be building up a bit of tolerance, right?

Wasn’t even worth worrying about.

Just meant I’d need to take a higher dose.

If I upped the dose to match the tolerance, I could fall asleep just like I did when I first started taking them.

Though, I vaguely remembered hearing somewhere that overdosing on sleeping pills could be dangerous.

“This too… whatever.”

Even that didn’t really matter to me.

It’s not like I planned on living a long life anyway.

What’s the big deal if my already short lifespan gets cut even shorter?

“······I’ll need to buy more.”

From what I remembered, I was nearly out of sleeping pills in the dorm.

Even if I had any left, I couldn’t be sure they were still usable.

Medication had expiration dates, you know.

I wasn’t dumb enough to forget something like that.

As I thought about where I could get more, I strolled leisurely down the academy halls.

Current time: 7:30 a.m.

Still quite a bit of time left before homeroom.

“Should I go to the library or something?”

Maybe I really should kill time at the library.

The Starfrost Academy library had the perk of being open 24 hours.

I vaguely remembered hearing something about it.

Like, the books had some kind of magical protection so no one could steal them.

That’s why they could keep the place open all day, right?

“······Who told me that?”

The person who told me that… I couldn’t remember their name at all.

Was it my homeroom teacher?

No, she’d never shared info like that.

Wasn’t the school nurse either.

She was always holed up in the infirmary taking care of sick students.

It wasn’t Heroine #2, either.

She only started clinging to me after the group project—Christina and I didn’t speak a word before that.

And it wasn’t Han-Sia.

That lunatic kept up her saintly image by doing volunteer work in public—she wouldn’t waste time hiding out in the library.

“······Seriously, who was it?”

No matter how hard I thought, no clear answer came to mind.

And as if drawn by some invisible force, my feet carried me toward the library.

There was no real reason.

Maybe I hoped going there would jog my memory.

Or maybe I just didn’t have anywhere else to go right now.

It didn’t really matter.

For an academy student to visit the library, that was perfectly normal.

Even if I wasn’t going there to study, it was still natural for a student to walk into the library.

“···.”

“······Seo-yeon?”

And meeting someone inconvenient there, like it was fate?

That, too, was all too natural.

Felt a little hollow, though.

So it’s you again, huh?

– Seo-yeon, did you know?

– Hm? Know what?

– This library’s open 24 hours a day.

– Really? Then let’s come here together all the time!

A memory I really didn’t want to recall drifted past my mind.

“Good morning. Nice day, isn’t it?”

“···.”

I forced a light greeting, trying to hold down the churn in my gut as I faced the protagonist standing before me.

Hello, protagonist.

I’m the extra—Lee Seo-yeon.

Did you eat?

I didn’t. Just saying.

How hollow of me.

Asking a question and answering myself like this.