Chapter 187 - The Addict IV

"Does it hurt?"

The anomaly spoke to the fetus.

"Do you still want to be born, even after this?"

Its voice sounded kind at first. That alone was quite strange. Every pose anomalies struck was normally nothing more than an awkward imitation.

And yet this anomaly was doing a remarkably skillful job of pretending to be human. It had copied a human appearance, echoed a human voice, and mimicked human behavior.

"The world outside is full of lives like these, you know?"

SPLASH

Without hesitation, the anomaly plunged its forearm into the amniotic fluid and stirred it.

"...!"

The water composing the fetus flickered in a multitude of colors. Images began to play across its surface as though it were a television screen, like film running through a projector.

A scene of Jeong Seoa's mother suffering. The sight of her father stressing over how to run the bakery.

Her uncle, her aunt, her father's cousin's wife, her great-uncle and great-aunt. Scenes of suffering among the blood relatives connected to the tiny fetus named Jeong Seoa were being broadcast in their entirety.

"Eek. Those aren't ordinary images."

Fairy No. 264 whispered quietly beside me.

"That's definitely the unhappiness and pain they would have had to feel if they hadn't eaten Dopamine...! Every single color is saturated with emotion...!"

Birth, aging, sickness, and death.

From humanity's most trivial misfortunes to its most devastating, everything Dopamine had erased in the waking world was transferred intact to the fetus.

Its transfer complete, the anomaly exhaled and shook off its hand.

"Jeong Seoa."

"..."

"Even after this, do you still want to be born into the world?"

THUMP

The heartbeat sustaining the fetus's dream dwindled. Its rhythm weakened, its sound subsided.

But it was still beating. Jeong Seoa had not yet let go of the will to live that had persisted for twenty-five weeks.

The anomaly, however, had not finished speaking.

"Of course, there's a way to avoid that pain."

It stroked Jeong Seoa.

"You can eat Dopamine too."

The fetus's body heaved violently once.

"Then you can pretend all the unhappiness and pain filling the world don't exist. Like your mother. Like your father. Like everyone else living in this world now."

"..."

"Why should you have to take the bomb? It's not your fault the world's like this. All you did was get born. You can just pass it down too."

Once more.

"But if you do, you'll be the first generation to do it knowing all of this."

DRIP, DRIP

The mass of water composing the fetus's body shrank as well. Droplets fell from the surface of the amniotic fluid, as though an aged skin were peeling away.

They were tears.

The fetus, which had not even acquired arms or legs yet, knew no way to weep other than this.

From outside, we had concluded that the fetus gradually shrank until it disappeared.

The truth was different.

The child made of water was simply crying itself slowly out of existence.

"Yes. You've made the right choice."

The anomaly touched its tongue to the droplets that had fallen from the fetus, then lapped them up like a hamster in a cage.

"There's no need for you to do it. No reason to shoulder unhappiness yourself, or knowingly pass sin down to the next generation. So...? Hm?"

The anomaly paused in drinking the amniotic fluid and tilted its head.

"This isn't the right dream, is it?"

At that moment, its right arm was severed. A strike from my sword had sliced clean through its forearm.

"Ah."

SPLAT

The severed forearm turned to water in midair and spilled onto the floor.

Only then did the anomaly wearing Jeong Seoa's face glance sideways at me.

At this point, Fairy No. 264 let out an "Eek!" and fled somewhere. That little thing really was useless in a fight.

"...!"

But the anomaly spared the fairy not even a glance. Surprise spread across its face. It seemed to recognize me, and its reaction seemed genuinely human.

"Undertaker?"

"You know of me?"

"I'd have to close up shop if I didn't know the local fixture."

"You're remarkably articulate for an anomaly. That tongue of yours runs on like you actually possess intelligence."

"Ahaha."

The anomaly laughed. That laugh, at least, was an extraordinarily faithful reproduction. A voice that truly sounded like an innocent child's laughter rang through the darkness of the dream.

"Because I'm human! Of course I have intelligence!"

"Oh? So you're a human, not an anomaly?"

"Right, right. Because I..."

The anomaly spread both arms. The one I had severed had already regenerated.

"Because we feel pain and unhappiness."

Like a statue of the Pietà, the anomaly lifted the fetus into its arms.

"Of course we're more human than those fakes outside who no longer feel pain, unhappiness, or responsibility—who don't want to feel them."

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

Its reasoning, at least, was genuinely human.

"You call only those who are more miserable, who suffer more, human, and cherish them, don't you?"

My family is more unhappy. My circumstances are more pitiful. My teacher is more frightening, my company harsher, my country more wicked.

Competing over the depths of their unhappiness was something humans enjoyed, and something only humans could do.

Had been able to do.

"You've lost the right to be human."

In this age of rampant Dopamine, it was also something humanity had lost.

"Now we'll become the humanity of a new era."

At that moment, I looked at Jeong Seoa in the anomaly's arms and spoke.

"In a world where no one is born?"

"Dreams. Reality. Only the layer changes."

I see.

Was it saying that the new human world would unfold within dreams?

At that moment, I felt I understood where the children who had never been born had gone.

But.

"You're wrong."

I raised my sword as I spoke.

"Not everyone is eating Dopamine. So you cannot strip humanity of its right to be human."

The anomaly sharply furrowed its brow, as though I were playing word games.

"Well, sure, the Sword Marquis's rice fields and distribution network don't reach all of humanity. But you should know, Mr. Self-Proclaimed Anomaly Expert. Discussing that sort of 'practical reality' when you're talking to us has no meaning at..."

"Noh Doha."

The anomaly faltered.

"He doesn't eat Dopamine. He refused to eat it even before he knew there were side effects like you."

"..."

"If you know my name, then naturally you know about Noh Doha, and you know he doesn't eat Dopamine. Am I wrong?"

After a silence, the anomaly ground its teeth.

"... He's a freak. An oddball. He can't represent humanity."

"In some respects, I agree."

I swung my sword again. Once more, one of the anomaly's arms flew off.

"But not with the rest. He alone can represent humanity."

And this time, the severed arm did not regenerate.

The anomaly's argument had crumbled before the counterexample that was Noh Doha.

"Ghk!"

It backed away, apparently trying to flee somewhere.

But this was my dream. It might have entered as it pleased, but that did not mean it was free to leave.

SHING!

I immediately sent out a slash, severing one of its legs. The anomaly toppled backward, its remaining foot still moving to flee.

I caught Jeong Seoa in my arms at the same moment the anomaly looked up at me.

"N-no..."

It trembled violently.

"Please don't kill me. I don't want to die..."

I had cut down countless anomalies by now. Humans, too.

Those with mouths, tongues, and vocal cords often begged for their lives when faced with my blade.

I never listened. I had lived long enough to know well that being born human and looking human did not make someone human.

Much less when it was an anomaly like this, merely mimicking humanity, begging for its life.

And yet.

"Why?"

Before I knew it, I found myself asking.

"Wasn't that what you told Miss Jeong Seoa yourself? That the world held nothing but pain and unhappiness, nothing but bombs passed down from above? Then why bother begging for your life?"

"That's..."

The anomaly's voice trailed away.

As though its fluent arguments until now had been a lie, it said nothing more. Its tongue was still. Its expression had vanished.

Only its eyes.

The anomaly was looking at Jeong Seoa in my arms. I realized that a kind of envy—no, longing, rather—dwelt in that gaze.

"..."

Yes.

If the anomaly had spoken as fluently as before, I would have swung my sword immediately.

It did not. I could not easily cut down a being that carried pain and unhappiness, chewed them over, yet refused to take the easy escape into death. A being that longed for life.

Especially when a certain damned old bastard did that sort of thing far too easily.

But I knew what I had to do.

I also knew how to do it.

This emotion would subside. My hand would move forward. The anomaly would be subjugated.

I knew that in just ten seconds, it would happen.

But.

But even so.

"I have something to ask you."

I lowered my sword.

"Hm...?"

"If you claim to be human, then I ought to ask you this."

JINGLE

The sound of a bell flowed through the dark space. Its source was the bracelet around my wrist, from which hung a silver bell.

Showing the anomaly the very reason I had acquired the epithet Undertaker, I asked:

"Do you want to escape hell?"

6

Originally, [Time Seal] worked only on humans.

The reason was simple. The ability only worked if the other party consented: "Yes, please use that ability on me!"

A sort of contract, you might say.

Thus, using [Time Seal] on a nonhuman species was nearly impossible.

Most anomalies merely imitated human ways of thinking and human language. They did not understand them in any true sense.

They could not sign their consent on a contract.

But.

"Do you want to be at peace forever?"

"..."

"I can let you live the happiest day of your life for all eternity. You complained of unhappiness, claiming you shouldered the misfortunes of countless people. You should be able to imagine how sweet an offer this is."

If an anomaly truly considered itself human.

If, moreover, that anomaly had somehow come to understand human thought and language.

"But in exchange, you will be forgotten by every human. No one will remember you ever existed."

"..."

"Except me."

If such an anomaly existed, then naturally it could be sealed within a gravestone of time.

"Ah."

The anomaly murmured.

"If I asked whether even the happiest dream was nothing but an illusion..."

"You said yourself that dreams and reality were no different. So that would contradict your own argument."

"You're right. Checkmate."

The anomaly murmured.

"I see. If I say no here, I'm giving up being human. And if I agree, I'm subjugated."

The anomaly stared steadily at me.

"Cruel human."

"I asked you a question."

"Truly cruel."

When a person killed themselves, we called it suicide.

Then what should we call an anomaly allowing itself to be subjugated?

Shouldn't that be called suicide too?

"... Until now, I've dreamed only of unhappy lives."

The anomaly's gaze had turned skyward.

"I talked about pain being the human condition and all that, but I didn't want to be unhappy either. I wanted to live knowing only happiness, like the humans outside."

The anomaly lowered its gaze from the sky to Jeong Seoa in my arms, then looked at itself—the image of what Jeong Seoa would look like grown up.

"Now I want to live a happy dream."

"Because I'm human."

I nodded without a word.

JINGLE

The moment the silver bell rang for the last time, the anomaly in Jeong Seoa's form burst apart.

Its flesh became pitch-black liquid and flowed onto the floor. On the wet ground rose a perfectly transparent crystal gravestone.

Yes.

For the first time, I had witnessed an anomaly commit suicide.

7

There is an epilogue.

"Dopamine? What's that?"

Once the anomaly underwent [Time Seal], people lost every memory of Dopamine, as though it were only natural.

And memories were not all they lost.

"Dang Seorin. Can't you see the rice covering that plain?"

"Hm? What are you talking about? It's just wasteland."

"..."

People could no longer perceive Dopamine at all. Even when rice-opium grew before their eyes, even when I processed its grains and held them out, they perceived only empty air.

The fact that no children had been born for the past two years was considered merely something very strange.

No one remembered that Dopamine had caused the crisis. Not the Saintess, not the Sword Marquis.

"How is it, Aryeon? Don't you feel really happy?"

"N-not at all. I feel just like normal."

Even more surprisingly, forcing someone to eat Dopamine produced no effect whatsoever.

It had once been a crop expected to save human civilization, a food everyone carried around and ate.

Now I was the only person left in the world who knew Dopamine.

"Hmm."

Perhaps in the next run, even the Sword Marquis's discovery of Dopamine and bringing it back would never happen.

For some reason, I felt bitter. One day, while making Noh Doha tea, I suddenly asked him:

"Commander Noh Doha. Suppose there were a food right in front of you that made you happy when you ate it, with no side effects—or at least none that were known."

"Do you mean spicy fried chicken...?"

"Whatever it might be... Would you eat it?"

Noh Doha adjusted his glasses. The dangling chain jingled hysterically.

"I don't know what bullshit fit has come over you this time to make you ask that crap... Are other people eating the damn thing too...?"

"Yes."

"Hmm..."

He was on his second consecutive all-nighter. Pressing around his deeply shadowed eyes, Noh Doha spoke.

"If there were only enough for me, I'd eat it all and be done with it... But if everyone else were eating it too, well... I don't think I'd eat it...?"

"Why? Everyone else is eating it."

"Hah... Well... Because I'm the sort of hipster who gets pissed off when a genre I was into alone goes mainstream...?"

"Certainly."

I nodded at once. The reason made perfect sense.

That was why I could not understand what happened next.

"Commander, why did you suddenly hit me on the head?"

"I was just talking bullshit, and it annoyed me that you actually bought it..."

"That was bullshit?"

"What else would it be...? Fuck, what do you take me for...?"

Shaking his head, Noh Doha set down his teacup and spoke in a considerably more serious voice.

"If everyone's taking that whatever-it-is happiness pill, someone has to not take the damn thing so we can prepare for an emergency."

Hmm.

Having actually cornered the anomaly thanks to that very choice, I truly had nothing to say. Yet precisely for that reason, I could not help asking:

"You can give up certain happiness right in front of you for a precaution that may or may not prove useful?"

"What the fuck are you saying, you bastard...? Ever since you came to find me, that sentence you just said sums up my whole life... Have you got no self-awareness, fuck?"

"Now that is certainly true."

I resolved to make Noh Doha tea more often from now on.

8

A second epilogue.

One day, after cleaning up the remnants on the lowest level of Dream Within a Dream, I suddenly went up to the dream's second level.

The scenery there changed every time I dreamed it.

But a single crystal gravestone always stood in a corner of the landscape.

'Looks like I'll be living with graves buried even in my dreams now.'

As an experiment, I touched the gravestone.

Normally, when I ran my hands over a gravestone's surface like this, the happiest day of the human sealed within unfolded like virtual reality.

So now, the happiest moment for that Dopamine anomaly should have been recreated—

But something rather surprising happened.

["Do you want to escape hell?"]

["..."]

["Do you want to be at peace forever?"]

What repeated within the anomaly's dream was none other than the scene of me confronting it.

I blinked blankly. Why?

'Ah.'

On reflection, it was only natural.

The anomaly called Dopamine had never possessed any happy memories to begin with. Until its subjugation, it had subsisted entirely on human unhappiness.

In other words.

["Until now, I've dreamed only of unhappy lives."]

["Now I want to live a happy dream."]

This was the anomaly's only happy memory.

["Because I'm human."]

JINGLE

In the dream within a dream, in Dream Within a Dream, the anomaly left those final words behind, then burst apart and died.

Just before dying, it wore a beaming smile.

For this anomaly, the happiest day of its life was the moment it committed suicide.

"..."

Watching the anomaly happily commit suicide over and over without end inside the dream, I could only acknowledge it inwardly.

Here was an anomaly that was human, all too human.

-The Addict. End.