HACKED 70

Beyond my hazy consciousness, the sound of fabric rustling reached me. Shortly after, something was flung over my body.

The cloth was too thin to be called a blanket. Something like a string attached to the fabric slid down, tickling the nape of my neck. Thanks to that, my mind, which had been wandering through sleep, snapped awake.

“This is…”

I fumbled near my neck, grasping the string as I blearily opened my eyes. What I had been sleeping under was a silk garment. A durumagi with tiger embroidery stitched in gold thread against a pitch-black background. And the string I held was the goreum.

“Myeong, you’re awake.”

San Gun was leaning his upper body slightly forward, looking down at me. Having draped his entire silk durumagi over me, he was left wearing nothing but a plain black short-sleeved t-shirt.

To think that face is the first thing I see upon waking. I missed the timing to react because I wasn’t fully awake, but I was inwardly startled. In particular, those amber pupils with extremely small pupils are something I can’t get used to no matter how many times I see them.

It is by no means just me being strange. If anyone woke up to find a beast watching them with eyes flashing from a distance where they could reach out and touch them… wouldn’t anyone be startled?

“…Did you cover me with this?”

Since I had just woken up, my voice came out low and husky. A chronic headache pricked inside my head. I pressed my temples with the heels of my palms, waiting for the drowsiness to fully dissipate.

When I regained my senses, I realized I was leaning back, almost buried in the sofa. What was the last thing I was doing? I didn’t have any specific memory of trying to go to sleep…

“The terminal is here. I picked it up since you dropped it.”

San Gun pointed toward the table. The terminal, with its screen turned off, was placed there neatly. It seemed I had dozed off and dropped it while looking at it. I felt a wave of shame.

‘What is this? I’m not some person falling fast asleep on the subway and being a nuisance to the person in the next seat…’

“Thank you for… Aaack!”

As I turned my head, a scream escaped me involuntarily. Perhaps because I had slept in an uncomfortable position, I had a cramp in my neck.

“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden? You’re wailing just like a chick being carried off by a wild dog.”

“I need a patch, a medicated patch… Ah, right. There are no patches here.”

“…”

Instead of answering, he stared at me intently. I could read many emotions in those eyes. Wonder, pity, patheticness, and so on…

Only then did I realize I had said something stupid. It seems my blood isn’t circulating to my head properly yet because I’m not fully awake. The sense of shame grew even stronger.

If I slept on the sofa, it’s not like I slept that uncomfortably, so why is my condition like this? When I was young, I was fine even if I fell asleep face-down on a 24-hour fast food restaurant table, and I was perfectly okay after spending the night curled up on a park bench. Is this what it means to get older?

“Please take your clothes back. And in the future, you don’t have to cover me with things like this.”

To think the luxurious attire of a 5-star Incarnation, which I only used to see on a game screen, was used as a mere blanket for me. It’s to the point of being overwhelming. I carefully lifted the durumagi that had been draped over my body, making sure not to crease it, and handed it to San Gun. He gave a shrug and took the garment.

“Since you were sleeping without even a pillow or a blanket.”

“It’s not that I slept because I wanted to. Truly.”

I desperately made excuses. My intention was to appeal to the fact that I hadn’t been slacking off on purpose, and that I had merely dozed off while working. However, San Gun furrowed his brow as if something displeased him.

“Why don’t you sleep?”

“Pardon?”

“Watching from the side, you seem to sleep about once every two days. Often, you sleep even less than that.”

“…”

Did I? I didn’t know. I never specifically cared about things like my sleep cycle. Since time isn’t very important here, there are many moments when I don’t even know if it’s day or night.

“Get some sleep. Please. Myeong, you’re so high-maintenance. Do I have to look after your sleeping now too? Hmm? Do I have to hold you and pat you while singing a lullaby?”

I felt a chill imagining myself being held in his arms and listening to a lullaby. Rather than seeking sleep that way, I’d rather be hit in the head and knocked unconscious.

“No. You don’t have to do that, and I’d really prefer if you didn’t…”

“Then why don’t you sleep? Are you protesting because something is bothering you?”

“Because there’s no need to.”

At my answer, one of his eyebrows shot up. The proverb ‘touching a sleeping tiger’s whiskers’ came to mind. I hurriedly added more before his temper exploded.

“Don’t I no longer need to look after things like meals or sleep regularly? Even so, sleeping diligently on purpose is a waste of time. It’s more efficient to do other work during that time…”

He looked at me, looked at the empty air once, and then looked at me again. The furrow between his brows showed no sign of smoothing out.

“Myeong. Remember this one thing.”

“What is it?”

“A person can only be a person if they live like one.”

“I’m sorry, but is this a philosophy class?”

I tried to interject timidly. This was the maximum amount of rebellion I could muster. However, San Gun didn’t even pretend to listen and only said what he wanted to say.

“A person doesn’t just have ‘things they must do’. The more you act only based on necessity and duty, the further you move away from being a person.”

Unlike his usual self, these were quite abstract and difficult words. So the point is that, right? Don’t worry too much about efficiency and just sleep if I want to.

“It’s not that I’m forcing myself to stay awake when I’m sleepy. It’s just that I usually can’t fall asleep easily.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can barely sleep unless I take sleeping pills. Quite apart from being tired, I really can’t fall asleep. But there’s no medicine here.”

I don’t know when I started suffering from sleep disorders. Since it’s been like this since I first wore a school uniform, it’s certain that it’s been about half the years I’ve lived. Maybe it’s even more than half.

In my ignorant youth, I just stayed up all night, and after becoming an adult and earning money through my own power, I was prescribed medication. Even so, my condition didn’t get better; instead, it grew worse as time went by. When I came to my senses, I found myself with a body that couldn’t sleep properly without sleeping pills.

‘Heh heh, I’ll make your body so you can’t live without me.’

It’s a line like an obsessive male lead in some high-rated romance novel, but the subject is medication. Just by slightly changing the subject, the genre instantly flipped from romance to a social exposé documentary. They are similar in terms of being bleak, though.

Yes. It’s sleeping pills. Not things like sleep inducer or sedatives, but sleeping pills. The kind where you can’t get a prescription for more than 28 days at a time, where driving or operating machinery is forbidden for several hours after taking them, and where cases of side effects are often reported in the media. That’s the reason why, even though I hated being around people so much, I didn’t drive and stubbornly commuted to work via public transportation.

Even after falling into this world, my insomnia didn’t get better. Usually, in creative works, if you move through dimensions, they neatly reset these kinds of pathetic chronic illnesses… but I didn’t have anything like that.

‘If that’s the case, they should have let the medicine move through dimensions with me. What am I supposed to do if they just toss my sickly body here all alone?’

What is the contrapositive of ‘A healthy mind dwells in a healthy body’? It is precisely ‘If the mind is sick, the body also suffers.’ And that is exactly me.

So the cases where I fell asleep in this world… most of them were when I actually fainted and lost consciousness or dozed off briefly because I couldn’t overcome the fatigue. When was the last time I slept for a long time?

‘When I did something similar to sex with those guys?’

Even while saying I hated it, I hated it with my mouth, I slept soundly while leaning on the lethargy immediately following a climax after faithfully feeling pleasure. Organizing it like this makes me look like real trash.

“I can only sleep for about two hours at a time, but even then I keep dreaming and suffering from sleep paralysis…”

I expected another nagging about my unhealthy sleep pattern. However, San Gun asked a somewhat out-of-the-blue question.

“Dreams? What dreams?”

‘Why is he asking that? Did I talk in my sleep while I was out?’

I reflexively traced back my memories. I think I was dreaming something just now… but I couldn’t clearly remember what kind of dream it was.

It was similar to when I dreamt about the Incarnation named ‘Yeon’. It was something that sank faintly into the depths of my unconscious, a dream that wouldn’t surface until I obtained a direct clue in reality.

“…I don’t know.”

“Is that so? If you don’t remember, then fine.”

Whether it was just a formal question, San Gun quickly changed the subject.

“Anyway, sleep properly from now on. Don’t make me nag you twice about this kind of thing.”

“Well. I’ll try, but it’s not something that goes according to my will.”

“Pick one. Which do you prefer: you falling asleep voluntarily, or me making you fall asleep?”

“What happens if I pick the latter?”

“If I suck all your energy out, you’ll sleep well just like last time. Wouldn’t it be enough to just knock you down and make you come a few times? Since you’ll enjoy it and it’s good for me too, it’s a win-win.”

His yellow pupils scanned me from head to toe. It was a gaze that didn’t even think of hiding its desire. It was just like a predator measuring the angle for a hunt with prey in front of it.

‘Now he’s just tossing lines out without the slightest filter. Ah, was there never a filter to begin with?’

It was a great relief that there was no one else here but us. I quickly countered before a more high-rated comment could come out of him.

“I’ll go to sleep like a knife from now on. I’ll set an alarm for 10 PM, no, 9 PM and sleep.”

He only nodded after receiving my confirmation that I would regress my bedtime to a toddler’s level. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to fall asleep at 9 PM… but I’ve escaped the immediate crisis.

As I let out a sigh of relief internally, he added with a strangely proud air.

“I was going to throw a fucking fit, but I held back. My temper has died down a lot, hasn’t it?”

‘I don’t think you specifically held back.’

The voice of my heart rose to the tip of my chin, but I suppressed it tightly. This is what true holding back is.