episode_0001

‘♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪’

“…………Uh!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Today, again, I had a nightmare. I opened my eyes, quickly looked around, and clamped a finger between my teeth. As the teeth marks become clearly engraved on my fingers, I feel a throbbing pain. This act is by no means self-harm, it is just something I do as a habit since I have been in a dream more than once when I wake up.

The alarm is ringing loudly. It has been ringing non-stop for 30 minutes, so if I wasn’t sleeping alone, someone would have gotten angry. Preparation time is tight. If you are late any longer, your grade will be at risk, so you must prepare quickly and leave.

#

I finished my preparations just in the nick of time and avoided being late. I’m tired and the lecture doesn’t even enter my mind, but I don’t want to fall asleep. Because I often have nightmares… This life started in middle school.

The neighborhood I lived in at the time must have been really bad, so my whole family, including me, spent each day with things not working out, fighting with each other, and our emotions deepening. And I suffered from nightmares every single day.

One day, while I was climbing the stairs, a woman with arms and legs that appeared to be 2 meters tall glared at me and chased me like crazy, and the dream began. As I was running away, the rooftop door was locked and I was caught by the woman. And the woman folded her arms and legs in bizarre ways and hugged my body. It hugged me, smiled a creepy smile, and licked my cornea with its meter-long tongue. No matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t move and I couldn’t even close my eyes. I woke up from the dream only after being sober for a long time.

One day, I woke up and went to the bathroom, and I dreamed that my friend had squeezed in through the narrow window, which could barely fit an arm, and was chasing me with a knife.

One day, I woke up in the middle of a crowded street. All of those people had no eyes, nose or mouth, and when I saw them, I screamed and they surrounded me in an instant. They had eyes on both hands, and they put their hands on their eyes and looked at me like a monkey. The first few rows had their hands at eye level, the back row had their hands between their legs, and the further rows had their hands raised in the air and looked at me. Dozens and hundreds of eyes were blinking at me, watching my every movement.

Because they had no nose or mouth, the sound of their footsteps stopped, and there was silence where not even the sound of breathing could be heard. I wanted to leave that place, but there was no room left anywhere. They seemed to get more excited the more I became scared, so they waved their eye-covered hands to both sides to narrow the siege. And in the end, countless hands wrapped around me in a dome shape, and I had to face their eyes wherever I looked. I screamed like crazy and crouched down to avoid looking any further. And at some point, I woke up and stayed up all night for several days to avoid continuing that dream.

Although the content of each dream was different, it was specific enough to be vividly remembered long after waking up. A few years later, I moved and my family’s situation improved a lot, but even now that I am a college student, this nightmare has not let me go. And recently, there has been a peculiarity in which the people who appear in my dreams are fixed as several women whose faces I have never seen. How much suffering do I have to suffer to get out of this hole?…

“Hyeonwoo, the lecture is over. Your complexion is not good. Are you okay?”

“Uh…uh! It’s okay, thanks for waking me up”

“I feel like I’m not feeling well these days, so take care of yourself, I’m leaving”

“Goodbye”

Was my body just sleeping while I was lost in thought? When I came to my senses, my arms and neck felt numb as if I had been in the same position. I’ve been able to endure so far, but now I feel like I’ve reached my physical and mental limit. I don’t believe in superstitions, but should I at least meet a shaman?…

It was a really tiring day today, and I am slowly dying in this situation where sleep is not able to provide comfortable rest. “I live today with the groundless hope that I will be able to sleep comfortably today”, but I realize every day that it was a vain hope in the end.

#

I came home, to a single room with no one to welcome me… Because I don’t do anything other than the bare minimum necessary for living, my house is more often messy than neat. I was hungry because it was time for dinner, but I was more tired, so I just brushed my teeth, got into the blanket I couldn’t remember when I washed it, and closed my eyes.

#

‘……………………………………………………….’

“Uh…!!!!!”

Is this a dream or reality? I woke up in a hallway of a building I had never seen before. I wanted to immediately understand the surrounding situation, but the best I could do was not to collapse at the sight of the terrible-looking woman standing in front of me.

The woman in front of me looked like she had the skin on about half of her face torn off in a messy manner. The eyeball, which had even its eyelids torn off and was exposed, was staring intently at me in front, and the large scissors in the woman’s hand were pointed exactly at the center of my face.

I instinctively felt that the woman in front of me was aiming at half my face, and I tried to move my body. However, his body did not move as expected, and only when the scissors came right in front of his nose did he force his still legs to move and run away.

The woman began to follow me at a very slow pace, perhaps toying with me. And he was getting faster little by little by increasing his stride length ever so slightly. My legs weren’t fully relaxed yet, but since that woman might act on her whim and run quickly, I diligently widened the distance between me and ‘it’. And when the distance became distant and its appearance became faintly visible, I completely relaxed and ran quickly.

‘Squeak, squeal, squeal, squeal’

Every time I walk, I hear a loud noise coming from the wooden floor. Seeing as it rings abnormally loudly and as far away as possible, it seems to be a device to inform ‘it’ of my location. There seems to be no point in hiding somewhere, and I guess I’ll just have to keep walking until I wake up from the dream…

#

“Black…….Black…….”

I walked for a long time, losing even the concept of time, but there was no exit in sight. And now, before my eyes, a woman is sobbing, with long black hair in pigtails, big breasts, and a beautiful appearance that cannot be hidden even though her face is slightly hidden in her hands.

Clearly, my mind was sending warning signals that there was a high possibility that it was a hostile creature, but even in this situation, I was drawn to the sight and walked step by step toward the crying woman. As I got closer, I saw that her Achilles tendon had been torn by something and half rotted away.

Looking at the neglected situation, the situation was so serious that it was surprising that he did not die from bacterial infection, let alone walking. Could this also be the work of ‘it’? After confirming that it was an injured and incapacitated woman, I relaxed my guard and tried to talk to her.

“Are you okay there?”

“Uh…… Uh!!!!!”

“Don’t be alarmed, calm down, if you scream, the monster will come”

“Monster… Water? ……. Could it be… Are you talking about that monster with… half of its face….. ”

“Yes……”

“By any chance… are you… trapped here too…?”

“Then you too……”

“I don’t know why I’ve been trapped in this place for months… and this bridge too… from that monster. ….. I’m injured… Please… I can’t walk anymore… Please… …. Please help me……. Please……. Please……. When I wake up from my dream….. Do whatever I ask you to do. I will do it……”

“Yes…?”

I calmed her down as much as I could and asked her about the current situation. From what I heard roughly, she was said to have been trapped here for several months. I wonder if I might also be trapped here for several months… She is claiming to be in the same situation as me, but I don’t know if this is true or false.

But even if it’s a lie, if you abandon this woman now and hear even a small scream from somewhere, you may continue to suffer from guilt. So I looked around, confirmed that the monster had not come yet, and held out my hand to her.

“Can you wake up? Come with me”

“Yes……Thank you so much……”

She took my hand. Thin and bloodless hands, and a heavy weight that is different from what it looks like. It doesn’t seem to be her weight, and it is probably due to the bag on her shoulder that is filled with something. He seemed to have lost most of his strength, but I was impressed by the fact that he was holding his bag tightly as if he didn’t want it to be taken away. I’d like to ask him what he had in it if I were to talk a bit as I walked around.

#

I walked and talked to her for a while. Her name was ‘No Yu-jin.’ She said she was trapped in this dream just like me and had been drifting for several months. However, the difference between the situation and mine was that she even brought her parents with her, and she had no intention of asking about their whereabouts. Because parents are not meant to let their children die…

Although the wound was severe, they urgently tore my clothes and wrapped them around the wound as much as possible to secure it, and they picked up a discarded mop pole and used it as a walking stick, so I was able to walk reasonably well, even if it wasn’t fast.

“Is it worth walking?”

“Yes…. Thanks to you, I’m a little better…. I lost…”

” That’s good, but that bag looks heavy. What’s in it? ”

“This is…. Do you want to know…?”

“Speaking If that’s the case, you don’t have to talk about it”

There was a long silence, and it seemed like he was hesitating, but in the end, Eugene opened his mouth.

“I didn’t tell you, but… my parents… died while protecting me… who lost my legs when they saw the monster… As for the wound… it happened at that time… it’s a wound… I ended up running away… but I went back later just in case… I thought that my parents might still be alive… so I went back there… but in that place… ugh. …. Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Are you okay, Eugene? Take a deep breath, we don’t have to talk anymore.”

Eugene began to feel nauseous, as if he had just imagined something terrible. He felt sorry for asking something pointless. In this situation, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to escape if ‘it’ came, so I picked up Eugene and went into a nearby room to stabilize him.

“Are you feeling a little better? I think I asked something pointless, I apologize.”

“No… Mr. Hyunwoo… is a lifesaver… Actually… in this bag… .. It contained my parents’ severed heads… Then… I went to the spot… and there were my parents’ bodies… under the neck. It was… completely turned into minced meat… and its head was cut off… with only half of its face cut out. ……. I was scared……. More than anything else…. The fact that I was the only one left in this place….. So, at least the remaining body parts.. ….. I carried it with me… I felt like I would go crazy if I didn’t do this… And since my parents sacrificed themselves to save me… I had to survive up to my parents’ share. ….”

“It must have been very difficult…”

During the conversation, Mr. Eugene suddenly took out a small snack from his pocket and held it out to me.

“…….!!!!! Why are you suddenly bringing this up?”

“Hyeonwoo, please keep it… I’ve received help so far… but if I get in your way, please end my life with this…”

“Don’t say things like that! We have to survive together”

” Out of debt to my parents… I tried to survive longer… but it had nothing to do with you… ”

‘Squeak, squeal, squeak, squeak’

While I was arguing with Mr. Eugene, I heard a soft sound of footsteps on the floor from afar. I had a hunch that ‘it’ was coming… So after carrying Eugene on my back, I quickly ran in the opposite direction from where it was coming from.

‘It’ followed me much faster than when I first saw it, and the more I ran, the more I ran, the more I started to feel out of breath, and I thought I was in a dream. And, judging that I would soon run out of stamina and not be able to run away, I slowly lowered Yu-jin, took out my sword, and faced him head-on.

“Run away…….”

“I… I… will protect you, Eugene, even if you have to crawl, run away…”

‘It’ must have realized that we couldn’t run away quickly, so it approached at a very slow pace. The torn half of the face looked grotesque, but the remaining human face approached with a gentle smile, making me feel even more scared, and my legs were giving out. But I decided to be brave.

‘puck’

‘!!!!!!!’

I prepared for the next attack, intending to fight the monster, but I was struck in the back of the head with something blunt and fell down. After falling, my gaze naturally turned upward, and there I saw Eugene holding the bag with both hands and spinning it around.

“What is this…..”

‘Tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk’

“Aaaaa!!!!!!!!!!”

Mr. Eugene smiled lightly, and instead of answering, he poured the contents of the bag on my ribs. What was inside was a brick, not a human head, and it was only then that I realized that I had been deceived by her. Mr. Eugene lifted my half-fainted body up and walked towards it. And then ‘it’ put a pair of scissors between my eyes and cut out the skin on my face little by little. Blood spattered and it was painful, but I didn’t wake up from the dream, and after suffering for a while, I lost consciousness.

#

‘…………………………………………’

“Aaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

As soon as I came to my senses, I screamed and looked around. Fortunately, the surrounding environment was my room. The strange thing was that three of my friends were on my bed. I couldn’t remember why my friends were in my house. But to the point where those questions didn’t matter, I desperately wanted to talk to other people to get rid of my fear of dreams.

“Hey guys, I just had a nightmare. Would you like to hear it?”

“Suddenly he wants to talk about his dream~”

“Well… I can’t hear scary things…”

“You must have been very scared. Should I hug you for a moment to calm you down?”

All three of us had different reactions, but I didn’t care and started talking about my dream. It was a long-winded dream, so I talked for about 30 minutes, but I didn’t feel like everyone was listening, and I kept talking for a while longer because I thought I should just talk to myself.

“It was a dream with something like this. Guys, if I tell you to go back to sleep, can you wake me up? I’m scared that I’ll have that dream again.”

“…………………………………………”

“…………………………………………”

“………………………………………….”

“Why isn’t everyone saying anything……”

When I finished talking about the dream, my three friends lowered their heads as if they had made a promise and seemed to ignore everything I said. I felt bad about this attitude and made them raise their heads with my hand. When I raised my head like that, all three of them had their eyeballs missing, and when they saw my embarrassed expression with blood flowing in the empty space, they started laughing from ear to ear.

“Hahahahahahahahahaha Do you think someone like you can run away from a dream?”

“You can’t run away from us for the rest of your life hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

“Hahahahahaha just die~ Even if you die and become a ghost, I will torment you every day!!!!!”

The three of them continued to laugh loudly, grabbing my body and tickling me like crazy. When they started tickling me, I started laughing with the same tension as them, even though my body was frozen with fear. And only then did I start to recognize it. I realized that all the people who appeared in my dream now were specific people who had appeared in my dream not long ago… As a last resort, I bit my tongue and tried to wake up from the dream.