Chapter 41
<How to Wake from a Dream>
He was the one who created a world through a contract with Abraxas.
The person who saved my life and made me both a hero and god of that world.
And the brother who, despite his own struggles, reached out and became family to me when I was young and had no one left by my side.
All of these described Brother Kyung-woo.
Beyond the window, the night view reflected on the river spread out widely. Perhaps because it was summer, even late at night, people who hadn’t gone home were enjoying night time picnics, creating a lively atmosphere on the green grass by the riverside. It was peaceful.
Awakening from sleep, Ja-hyun raised his upper body, lowered the blanket, and asked in a drowsy voice.
“Brother, are you okay?”
His brother, who had been still all this time, came closer and embraced him tightly. From that somewhat awkward, cool touch, he recalled something. Ah, this is a dream. He was dreaming right now.
“Of course, I’m fine. I woke up too early and ended up waking you too.”
Even if it was a dream, Ja-hyun didn’t mind. He hugged his brother back and patted his back gently. Unlike what he had worried about, today his brother seemed perfectly fine. He heard his brother whisper in his ear about sleeping a bit more and having a delicious lunch later.
From the situation, this seemed to be a dream from when his brother was somewhat better.
It was only in the past few months that his brother had started showing notably strange behavior. Since it wasn’t very noticeable at first, Ja-hyun realized too late that something was wrong with his brother.
His brother would act normally most of the time, but occasionally behaved like someone in confusion.
Sometimes, he would prevent Ja-hyun from leaving the house for a week at a time. There wasn’t any particular reason or incident that caused this – he acted as if this situation had always been the norm and was perfectly natural. By then, Ja-hyun had vaguely realized his brother was unwell, so he didn’t correct him and instead adapted to his brother’s behavior.
Well, even if his brother wasn’t sick, if he asked Ja-hyun not to go out, Ja-hyun wouldn’t really feel like going anywhere anyway, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable.
In truth, there were many more serious incidents.
Like talking about events that never happened, or mentioning places they’d never been to as if they had visited them together.
If his brother had been the type to meet other people before or someone who might have had affairs, he might have seriously misunderstood. He would have been anxiously wracking his brain trying to figure out who his brother could be thinking of when saying such things.
But…
‘Brother… surely… he couldn’t have met anyone besides me.’
And that was because, well, Brother…
Brother…
…was a vxrgxn.
Of course, there wasn’t anything wrong with that. He had lived such a busy and difficult life, and various circumstances had piled up. Rather, Ja-hyun liked even this aspect about him – the fact that his brother hadn’t met anyone else but him.
Though he never said it out loud for fear of appearing crude, he had always thought this way. He possessed enough dating sense to know that it was terrible to celebrate being someone’s first while not being their first yourself, let alone voice such thoughts. That might work in novels, but not in reality.
Anyway, that wasn’t what mattered now. Later, he became certain that these incidents were also symptoms of his brother’s condition.
He hadn’t remained idle either. As soon as he realized something was wrong, he employed various methods to determine the exact cause.
Naturally, he went through the procedure of tracking down healers and psychic ability users worldwide, practically threatening them for help, and convincing his brother to undergo health examinations.
Eventually, after much effort, he roughly discovered what his brother’s problem was. The reason for his brother’s strange behavior was… a side effect of visiting the Akashic Records, the universal repository of knowledge, with a mere human mind.
He didn’t know exactly what his brother had seen there, because his brother never told him. His brother said he didn’t want to talk about his struggles for fear of worrying Ja-hyun. While this made Ja-hyun feel grateful and fond of his brother, it also filled him with regret and sympathy.
What he did know was that when ordinary human minds make contact with that place, they typically collapse. Though his brother pretended to be fine, he had actually been somewhat injured. This manifested as nightmares.
Therefore, the first solution he devised was a method to suppress his brother’s nightmares.
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