"Have you ever had a dream?"
The female host extended her microphone toward me, smiling seductively in her light office attire.
For a brief moment, I almost answered that my dream was standing right in front of me already.
And it was pretty big, too.
But I quickly regained my composure and repeated the line I had practiced countless times before.
"My dream is actually very simple. It's to-"
...
Beep.
Beep.
I sat outside an operating room.
Or more accurately, in front of one.
Doctors and nurses moved frantically beyond the glass while I stared through the tiny window in the door.
Beeeeeeep.
Only then did I realize another sound was coming from my phone.
My editor.
Apparently he needed the manuscript urgently.
"Already?"
Too fast.
Everything these past few days had happened so absurdly fast that the entire sequence could probably be summarized in a few sentences.
Or maybe I only thought that because my mind could no longer keep up.
I hurried into the restroom and opened the Notes app on my phone, desperately searching for the draft I was sure I had prepared earlier.
"I saved it, right? I definitely wrote it. Didn't I? Where the hell is it? Where is it?!"
Grinding my teeth, I slammed my fist against the restroom stall hard enough to shake the divider.
Hopefully nobody minded.
I shut the stall door, but it refused to lock.
Had I broken it?
Probably.
Sitting down on the toilet seat, I finally decided not to submit anything at all.
To hell with the money.
"Ahhhh... fuck."
I sat there blankly, staring into nothingness while trying to forget this fake, exhausting reality.
But the harder I tried to sink into emptiness, the louder my head buzzed.
Like a bottle of cola being lightly shaken.
My thoughts slowly fizzed apart into meaningless fragments and half-remembered songs.
Softly.
Gently.
Like a tide slowly swallowing a shoreline.
And then the only thing I remembered was someone screaming.
Someone grabbing me.
Someone pinning me down.
I didn't understand what was happening.
I lifted my eyes.
And saw that the restroom mirror had shattered into thousands of pieces.
...
Have you ever dreamed before?
Dreamed of escaping reality and living inside something softer.
There are lives we long for.
Lives so beautiful that we ache for them.
So we reach toward fiction, toward the thin space where dreams and reality stand only one step apart.
Someone once said that reading a novel was like living another life.
And dreaming a dream was like becoming another person.
My name is Joe.
I heard those words absentmindedly during a business trip once.
And I decided to try it.
Hm. Why not read a few novels? I thought.
Classic literature was too long.
Too dry.
So I started with web novels instead.
"Oh, this is fun."
I read trending stories.
New releases.
Old completed works.
...
"But why does everything feel so simple?"
That excitement I felt from the first few novels slowly transformed into confusion.
Everything felt familiar.
A regressor.
A transmigrator.
An overpowered protagonist.
A weak protagonist pretending to be strong.
Someone who already knew the future.
...
No, there are still more stories out there. More lives to experience.
So I searched through different tags instead.
...
Eventually, though, even web novels began to exhaust me.
I tried reading classics afterward.
Some were incredible.
Some were incomprehensible.
Some I dropped halfway through.
Some left me wondering why nobody else had discovered them yet.
But the feeling was no longer the same.
When I read web novels, there had been something intoxicating about them.
Even when the characters were predictable.
Even when I already knew how the story would end.
They still made me dream more deeply.
...
Maybe I should try writing something myself.
The thought came naturally.
After all, my life was painfully repetitive already. Trying something new couldn't hurt.
So I started writing familiar types of characters.
Sometimes more unique ones.
Sometimes clichés.
I walked in circles day after day, imagining scenes, personalities, stories.
I dreamed about worlds where I could become those characters myself.
Become part of the story.
But come on.
That kind of fantasy only works because it stays fantasy.
I liked those kinds of protagonists, sure, but I could never become one.
I'd lived long enough to understand that dreams were beautiful precisely because they weren't real.
And then one day...
I leaned against my desk.
Work reports were scattered everywhere. My computer screen still displayed unfinished tasks.
I took a sip of coffee.
Comfortable.
I hadn't slept in over a day.
What I needed now was a long sleep.
Whenever exhaustion hit me, I always found myself wondering something.
Why are readers and authors so obsessed with stories about transmigration, reincarnation, and standing above everyone else?
I always knew the answer.
I just kept delaying it.
Because thinking about it wouldn't change anything anyway.
I let out a long yawn and glanced at my phone.
Past ten at night already.
Sleeping for a bit should be fine, right?
My eyes drifted toward the wallpaper on my phone screen.
Several people stood there.
But none of them had faces.
...
"SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE!"
"There's a dead person here!"
What the hell?
I was only trying to sleep.
Who died?
I tried to push myself upright and open my eyes.
Darkness.
Ah... everyone...
...
Who am I?
I touched my face and felt something horribly sticky.
Like wet mud.
No.
More like thick black tar.
I tried opening my eyes again.
At first there was only darkness.
Then slowly, light returned.
A gray world stretched around me.
But within that world, only one color existed.
Red.
Burning red.
My name is Ron Irus.
Who am I?
I tried to stand.
Then collapsed immediately.
My legs had already burned into charcoal.
But that wasn't the worst part.
Right before me sat a pristine white birthday cake with a single candle still standing atop it.
Covered in human skin.
Bodies surrounded it.
Dozens of them.
Burned into ash.
Yet some faces somehow remained intact, frozen into expressions so empty they barely looked human anymore.
Something had happened here.
Something terrible.
But I couldn't properly see it.
This blurry-eyed fool could only see the raging flames swallowing layers of human flesh.
I opened my eyes wider.
No.
They had already been open the entire time.
And then suddenly, I understood.
I reached toward the piece of skin draped across the cake and slowly stretched it between my fingers.
Strange.
Familiar.
Then I placed it over my face.
Like putting on a mask.
I am Ron Irus.
Ron pressed the skin-mask firmly against his face while black blood and thick oily fluid slowly glued it into place.
But soon afterward, he could no longer see clearly.
His body felt hollow.
Weightless.
As though every ounce of strength had already drained away.
Then he collapsed onto the floor.
And blood spread beneath him like a river.