Chapter 1
“Kylian!”
“Yes.”
“Rats– Even rats will bite a cat when cornered!”
Of course, that rat was me.
‘If you keep acting this scary, I can snap at you too!’ I couldn’t say that, so I just spoke in a roundabout way. No matter how much I reflected on it, I couldn’t think of what I did wrong, but he was definitely angry.
“I see…”
“Ye-es.”
“Then I’ll have to bite Arya.”
“What?”
‘What are you talking about?’
“I was kidnapped, and I lost my memory, but Arya was spending time with another guy in the same room, weren’t you?”
“Ah… that…”
“Besides, when I came back, something like this…”
“Aak!”
My body shuddered from the pain as he touched my ear again.
“You’re wearing something like this.”
“Th- then if you bite me, will your anger be released?”
“Yes. I think so.”
He brushed his hand over my hair, the color of blood. My tied hair was loosened by his action and scattered around my shoulders. He gently grabbed the loose hair behind my neck with one hand and,
“Nngk-!!”
He dug his teeth into my neck.
“Ah! Du- Duke!”
My body recoiled in surprise as he chewed the nape of my neck. Forgetting how to breathe, I stood still, startled by the sharp touch of his teeth.
“W- wai- waa- aa- it…!”
However, any resistance was truly futile. Because he wasn’t listening to me at all.
Her life was pretty smooth. She wasn’t bad at studying, and she was able to graduate from a university that was beyond her abilities because she was lucky and did well in the test. She was also able to get a good job without difficulty thanks to the professor who cared for her too much and quickly established herself as a prosperous office worker. But maybe because she was accustomed to such a smooth life, she had to pay the price for living so comfortably up until that day.
The lunch break at the company she worked for was one hour. She had to use that hour to stop by the bank because it was the day the savings account expired. She was going to use that money to return the money from her mother’s flower shop, paying up from the monthly rents to the deposit lease.
After sending the money to her mother, she rushed to work again. It was broad daylight, and she was caught in a car accident. As she saw the car approaching, she noticed the driver dozing off as if sleepy.
Strangely enough, there was no pain, all she felt was her body floating in the air. At the same time, there was no sense of body strength. As if all the senses in her body were completely dead and she couldn’t feel anything. After falling back to the ground, all she saw was a rainy sky. The traffic light blinking in the rain looked painfully garish.
Her awareness began to fade as if sinking into water.
As if falling into a bottomless swamp, feeling helpless and tired, she felt her mind blurring and she fell asleep.
“…ess– in… ess!”
The next thing she heard was a hum as if someone was talking to her under the water.
“Princess!”
Eventually, when she realized that it was real and not some waterlogged dream, her vision brightened as if she had just woken up from sleep.
“Huh?”
“I’ve taken care of what you ordered.”
“What?”
“Here you go.”
A strangely dressed, brown-haired man handed her a key as he finished speaking. Whether he was afraid she wouldn’t receive it, he placed it in her palm, squeezing her grip, and said,
“I don’t know anything. Nothing.”
“Pardon?”
The first person she saw was saying strange things to her.
“Ex- excuse me!”
“You can go downstairs with that.”
“What? Why me?”
“Please hurry and go ahead.”
His speech was rather forceful, but somehow he was trembling. So, the weak-hearted woman couldn’t just coldly throw away the key and demand an explanation of the situation. Because he looked troubled too.
“I’m going down… does that mean you’ll stay here?”
“Yes.”
With such a firm way of speaking, it was unlikely he would explain to her why she had to go down the stairs. Above all else, his clothes were strange. He was dressed like a medieval knight.
So, out of hope, she looked down at her own clothes thinking ‘No way’ and,
‘What is it?’ She was wearing a loose gown. The hair flowing down her shoulders was bright red like rubies. ‘My original hair was dark brown, almost black!’
“Hurry up and go down.”
“Ah… Yes.”
Somehow, she decided that it would be better to follow his urging and go downstairs than to be alone in that shady place with him, so she went down the stairs. The sound of her creaking footsteps echoed through the walls. As if there was water near the place, the sounds rang loudly like walking inside a cave. There were lights all around, but the place seemed to be unmanaged. There were many spider webs near the ceiling, and the walls were full of dust. She was afraid of going down those stairs. As she pondered for a second, thinking about going up again, she stopped because of the key in her hand.
I definitely was in a car accident. So… is this a dream?
‘Come to think of it, I was hit by a car and lost consciousness. People say you can dream when you’re in that state. Probably this is the dream.’ With that thought in mind, she wasn’t afraid to descend anymore.
‘If it’s a dream I can wake up from anyway, wouldn’t it be good to have some fun? I Just hope it isn’t a terrifying dream.’
But if you look at it as if you’re just dreaming, your body will be fine. She smiled, grabbed the key, and started down the stairwell.
“This is a dream. So it’s okay.”
She wiped her chest and laughed deliberately. She always said that laughing made her feel better, even if it was a fake laugh. So, although she was afraid, she decided to enjoy this dream.
She wondered if it was because of the book she read before she died that she was having this sort of dream. She liked those kinds of books, so she read a lot. But how can dreams be so different from imagination? The skirt was a lot heavier than she had thought, and she felt uncomfortable as if her waist was tightened with something. The hair that flowed down her back was soft and had a good texture, however. She wanted to see herself, but it didn’t seem she would find a mirror nearby. So, holding her skirt’s hem with both hands, she reluctantly walked down again. She could see her shadow waddling back and forth as if it had become a duck. The skirt was so large it could be a goose.
“Hehe. It really looks like a duck.”
The shadow was funny and she purposely uttered silly words. That was her way to relieve her tension. ‘Obviously, this is a dream, and I am having an interesting dream. So don’t be afraid and continue down these stairs.’ She tried so hard to think that way. However, her heart was beating loudly as if her body already knew she was forcing herself to endure this scary dream. She tried to deceive her body with her head, but her body was already trembling with fear. A very terrifying dream. She tried to fool her head but her body, which couldn’t lie, was already shaking hard.
“I hope I don’t have sleep paralysis again…”
She had always been on the weak side. Maybe that was the reason she often had sleep paralysis. She had never seen a ghost in person, but whenever she experienced the paralysis, her body felt as if a real ghost was pressing down her whole body. When she was in college, even when she fell asleep on her stomach in the classroom, she experienced it.
“Mo- mooom!”
The stairs were slippery and she fell, but the thumping sound felt more shameful than painful. No one was watching, even though she knew she was embarrassed because of how silly she sounded while falling. Her tailbone hurt badly, and her ankle hurt, too. She was relieved there was no one nearby, so no one would have seen such an unsightly appearance.
Thinking positively, she stood up. Suddenly, she questioned whether she really had to go down, so she looked at the place she had started. However, the door seemed blocked as if she couldn’t return, and on the stairs, only the dim shape of the door could be seen as if the light had gone out as soon as she left that level.
Light below, darkness above.
She knew because she had many terrifying dreams. If she climbed back to the dark, something terrible would appear. Usually in the dreams she had while she had sleep paralysis, something happened whenever she went to the dark side.
Maybe that’s why she was heading downwards, like a survival instinct. She hinted to herself that it would be a race-like dream that ended only when she reached the bottom. She forced her trembling body down the stairs. After falling once, she continued focusing her efforts not to fall again. Surprisingly, the heels she was wearing were too high, and she was worried that the stairs might be slippery for those shoes each time she took a step.
If it’s a dream, I can light up the LED lights. Nothing was clearly visible, perhaps because of the dim light.
“No. I’m glad the light is on, even if it’s dim.” Thinking like that, she found her way to the bottom landing, and this time she saw a door. She clenched the key in her hand. ‘It seems like he gave me the key to open it.’
Growl~ She was startled by the sound and stiffened. Behind the door, there was a sound like a beast. ‘What if this is a nightmare? What if a monster appears the moment I open the door? No, I’d rather be a monster. What if it’s a ghost? No! I hate monsters and ghosts…! But that guy told me to open this…’
“Maybe, if I open this, I will wake up?”
With that thought, she tightly gripped the key she was holding. Even if she took a deep breath and thought about it again, it really seemed her dream would end if she opened the door. Because the nightmares she had were often like that.
“It’s… it’s not… scary at all… it’s not scary… ugh… scary…”
She was a coward. A coward who never walked in the back alley at night because she was afraid of cats. A coward who runs when hearing steps behind her. But she had to wake up from her dream.
It is said that a person who died came back to life from the crossroads of life and death because he followed the place full of light, so it must be like that.
She thought hard. Taking a deep breath, she put the key in the keyhole, closed her eyes, and turned it. When she heard a ‘clack,’ she quickly removed her hand and crouched down.
10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds… After a few minutes had elapsed and not a sound came out, she slowly opened her eyes and peered inside.
There she saw iron bars.
And beyond those bars,
A handsome man in a black uniform was lying unconscious on the floor.