At the rooftop of the broadcasting studio, from where the evening sun shining far in the West, enveloping the surrounding with golden hue could be seen.
Sunah and I were leaning against the railing and looking at the scenery in the far, the sky that stretched beyond horizon.
“Sunah is Yandere.”
“Yande…re?”
“Yes, Sunah is Yandere.”
“….”
At my statement, Sunah made a confused expression as if she couldn’t understand what and why I was suddenly saying this.
“You were hiding a box cutter in your pocket… and now pretending as if you don’t understand.”
“I, I got caught…”
Before I could comprehend, Sunah took out a pink boxcutter from her pocket and slowly approached me.
“Joo, Joon… From now on, Joon will be living in my refrigerator…”
Slash. Slash.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”
* * *
“Uh, what?”
When I opened my eyes with a startle, it was still midnight.
I was in my bed, inside my room.
The bluish light emitted by the full moon outside seeped through the curtain and fell into the room, making the dark room partly visible to my eyes.
“What time is it?”
As usual, I checked the time by opening the Status Window.
[2019, March 19 | Tuesday, 02:07]
[Lee Joon – Number of Attempts: 2]
[Ghost Story Points: 136]
[Causality: 10%]
It was past 2 a.m.
I still had five more hours before waking up.
‘That’s a plus.’
Everytime I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that I still had a long time to sleep before waking up, I felt like I had achieved something great.
In a good mood, I fell back to sleep again.
“Sunah is Yandere.”
“Sunah is Yandere.”
“I, I got caught… Joon will live in my refrigerator…”
Slash. Slash.
“Uh, what?”
As I opened my eyes once again, it was still midnight.
I was still in my bed, inside my room.
The bluish light emitted by the full moon outside seeped through the curtain and fell into the room, making the dark room partly visible to my eyes.
“What time is it?”
As usual, I checked the time by opening the Status Window.
[2019, March 19 | Tuesday, 02:07]
[Lee Joon – Number of Attempts: 2]
[Ghost Story Points: 136]
[Causality: 10%]
It was past 2 a.m.
‘Huh, I can still sleep for five more hours before waking up.’
Everytime I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that I still had a long time to sleep before waking up, I felt like I had achieved something great.
“Sunah is Yandere~”
“Yandere?”
“Sunah is Yandere.”
“I got caught, Joon…”
Slash. Slash.
“….Mmm.”
Once again I woke up, and it was still midnight.
The full moon was glowing outside, enveloping the room with its unearthly bluish glow.
‘What is it? It’s still dark… I think I slept for a long time.’
Was it because I kept tossing and turning while sleeping?
I felt like I had slept for a long time, but I still feel sluggish, as if I had run a marathon. I felt tired, as if my fatigue was not relieved at all.
I opened the Status Window to check the time.
Pop.
[2019, March 19 | Tuesday, 02:07]
[Lee Joon – Number of attempts: 2]
[Ghost Story Points: 136]
[Causality: 10%]
“Huh, not even a minute passed. I just fell asleep and woke up.”
Although I wanted to wait a little before falling back asleep, I couldn’t beat the sudden rush of sleepiness and fell back to sleep.
“Sunah is Yandere.”
“Hey, I think I had the same dream earlier…”
“Huh…?”
We were standing at the roof of the broadcasting studio. The sun was setting in the far West, painting the sky beyond the horizon red.
A destroyed city could be seen under the reddish sky.
Sunah, who was standing beside me with a boxcutter in hand, looked at me with confusion.
“Is it a dream?”
As I learned from Gyeongwon in the ghost story of Dreams Within Dreams, I did a reality check to know if I was dreaming or not.
I started doing the number of actions that he described to distinguish dreams from reality.
I twisted my arms and fingers in an odd angle but I still didn’t feel any pain, and they were perfectly fine. After that I covered my nose, but I could still breathe just fine.
“Joon, what are you doing…”
“I see. So, this is… Haa, this is a dream.”
I twisted my arms and fingers, easily bending them without feeling any pain.
And I could breath even after covering my nose completely.
This proved one thing.
“I’ve had the same dream three times already.”
The Sunah in my dream tilted her head in confusion.
“I see.”
That explained it.
I nodded to myself and concluded.
“However, even if I wake up every time after the dream, time doesn’t seem to pass and I keep having the same dream.”
“This is a dream. Sunah, you’re not a real person either. You’re just a fake person created by my subconscious mind.”
“I… I’m a fake?”
Sunah mumbled with a blank expression.
“Yeah. Anyway, I’ll have to wake up as quickly as possible and check things again. Sunah, will you stab me like you did before?”
The easiest way to wake up from a dream was-
To die right away.
In the dream, I’ve been killed by Sunah.
After waking up, I checked the time and fell asleep again. But I kept repeating the same dream again and again, and I also kept waking up repeatedly.
And strangely enough, no time seemed to have passed in the process.
“Come on, quickly. Kill me!”
I stretched my arm out and stuck my neck out to Sunah.
However, Sunah flinched and stepped back.
“What are you doing? I want you to kill me!”
“How can I kill Joon?”
Sunah shook before asking.
“You did a good job earlier!”
“But I never did that…”
That’s right.
Sunah couldn’t remember killing me because the dream had started from the beginning again. Although it was the same dream, because I kept waking up and repeating the dream, the Sunah in the dream was also a new one everytime.
“Is it even possible?”
Perhaps because I was in a dream, but I felt like my brain wasn’t working.
I didn’t know what was happening but I had to make Sunah kill me.
“You stabbed me well earlier! You have to help me to wake me up quickly. Stab me!”
“You can jump from the roof…”
“That’s scary!”
“I, I don’t want to… I can’t do that.”
Sunah flinched back like a scared hamster and stepped back several steps. She was still holding the pink boxcutter, I wonder what was stopping her from stabbing me with that like she did in my previous dreams.
“This…. won’t do.”
I guess I have no choice but to jump off the rooftop.
Slip.
Once again, I stood on the railing of the broadcasting studio with my shaking legs.
Even though I had jumped from the same place before to solve a ghost story, I still couldn’t gain the courage to jump down unhesitatingly. However, I had to do this even if I felt extremely scared.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes tightly and jumped from the rooftop.
“Ahhhhhh!!!!!”
“Ahhhhuh?”
I thought I screamed as hard as I could, but when I woke up, I was just panting.
When I opened my eyes, it was still the middle of the night.
I was on my bed, inside my room.
The full moon was glowing outside, enveloping the room with its unearthly bluish glow.
I felt like I had slept for a long time, but I still feel sluggish as if I had run a marathon. I felt tired as if my fatigue was not relieved at all.
I opened the Status Window with sleepy eyes and checked the time.
[2019, March 19 | Tuesday, 02:17]
[Lee Joon – Number of Attempts: 2]
[Ghost Story Points: 136]
[Causality: 10%]
Before when I checked the time, it was 2:07 a.m. but now it seemed 10 more minutes had passed.
What does that mean?
I was so sleepy that I couldn’t comprehend what was happening to me. I tried to shake my head to shake away the sleepiness, but it didn’t work at all.
Everytime I woke up from the dream, the time was the same as before, as if it had not passed at all.
Then, I fell asleep again and the same dream reoccurred.
However, the fatigue that should have gone never went away. Rather, I felt more and more tired each time I woke up.
Where was this fatigue coming from?
My body.
My body was getting heavier and heavier by the second. I needed to get rid of this heaviness.
Finding and eliminating the source of this feeling of heaviness was the only way to recover from this fatigue. However, I couldn’t think straight with my mind feeling foggy.
Zzz.
I sat up in my bed and kept thinking what I should do. Even so, I fell asleep while sitting but my consciousness was quite aware of my surroundings.
My head tilted sideways as I dozed off.
Suddenly, I heard a strange sound of someone moving coming from the living room as I was dozing off. My eyes opened with a flutter at the sound.
Creak-
Tap.
When I strained my ears to hear, everything was quiet again.
Did I hear it wrong?
Tap. Tap.
No.
Someone was there.
I could hear footsteps approaching my room over the closed door of my bedroom.
The sound of the socks rubbing on the floor as someone walked.
The footsteps were approaching slowly, one step at a time, as if afraid they would be caught if the sound was a bit harsh.
From the carefully stepped footsteps, I was sure that it definitely wasn’t one of my parents.
Who would walk so cautiously in their own house?
Someone was in my house.
Slip.
Slip.
The sound of the footsteps were getting closer.
‘If I try to lock the door now, I’ll be caught because of the sound of the door locking.’
I moved cautiously and arranged the blanket carefully on the bed.
I made the blanket in a way as if someone was sleeping under it. After stuffing one of my pillows underneath, I carefully slipped from the bed.
Creak-
Slip.
Stop.
Just as I finished arranging the blanket, the footsteps stopped right outside my door. As slowly and silently as possible, I went on my knees and slipped under the bed.
Click.
Slowly, the owner of the footsteps turned the doorknob.
At the same time, I also held my breath and crawled more under the bed so that my figure won’t be visible.
Click.
Creak-
Just before the door opened fully, I managed to pull my legs closer and curl my body under the bed, hiding completely.
The door opened completely, revealing a figure almost invisible in the darkness.
From my position in the narrow field of vision from under the bed, I could only see the person’s ankles.
The person was wearing a long trench coat.
I could only see the end of the long coat dragging on the floor from my position.
Sneak.
The person in the long coat slowly entered the room.
Then, they stopped right in front of the bed.
The feet of the strange person, wearing black socks, stopped right in front of my face.
Slowly, I covered my mouth and nose with my hands, so that the sound of my heavy breathing wouldn’t leak out.
Instead of breathing through my nose in fear that the burglar would hear it, I opened my mouth wide and began to breathe in slowly.
Stab!
Suddenly, the burglar jumped on my bed.
Stab, slash.
Then, he began to stab mercilessly on the blanket that I had carefully laid behind.
Stab, slash.
Above my head, the bed was shaking as the person kept stabbing.
Lying underneath it, I closed my eyes tightly as the bed rocked at each stab.
The strange person was stabbing the pile of blankets and pillows that I had put earlier, not knowing that there was no one underneath them.
The burglar stabbed the blankets for a long time before stopping and slowly coming down from the bed. Then, he left my room like that, and didn’t even bother to close the door.
“Haa, haaa.”
Only then did I exhale and collect by breathing with a surprised heart.
Creak-
Click.
Then, I heard the sound of the door of the master bedroom opening and closing as I was collecting my bearings.
“Who is it?”
Before I could comprehend what was happening, I heard a voice coming from my parents’ room.
Stab.
Stab.
The sound of shuffling and something falling was heard. Then soon, everything became quiet again.
“Don’t… Don’t tell me, my parents.”
Before long, the sound of footsteps passing through the living room was heard again. The burglar strode through the living room and towards the front door.
Then the sound of the front door opening and closing was heard.
Click.
As soon as the sound of the door lock was heard.
I scrambled out from under the bed and headed for the master bedroom.
“Oh, Mom and Dad!”
I stormed through the half-opened door of the master bedroom.
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
Through the half open door, I could see the mangled and bleeding body of my parents, dying with their eyes open.
My Mom’s body was lying in bed, and my Dad’s body was lying halfway on the floor.
The moonlight that seeped through the curtains lit up their dying faces.
“Haa, haaa.”
No, no, no, no.
“Mom, Dad… Mom, Dad…”
I broke down in front of my parents’ corpse, mumbling on the verge of insanity.
“Oh my God… Oh my God, no… this isn’t happening… Haa.”
The feeling of about to lose my mind slowly gripped my sanity and reasoning. I felt like my head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight. Everything felt distant and vague.
Creak-
Suddenly, I heard the sound of the front door opening behind my back. When I turned around, the burglar from before was standing in front of the door.
“Foolish boy, I was only pretending to be gone.”
The bloody knife in the man’s hand shone at the pale moonlight as an unnatural voice slipped through the mask.
“I didn’t have the right number of victims. I knew you were under the bed.”
“Huu, huuu.”
As the man approached, I slowly stepped back. But I couldn’t hold the harsh words that slipped from my mouth.
“Bitch, you punk. You killed my parents.”
However, the man approached me with the knife in hand, gleaming in the dark.
“Question No. 9; You sneaked inside a house and murdered a couple whom you had a grudge against. But then, you found their child hiding under the bed who had nothing to do with your purpose. Without remorse, you killed the child too. Why?”
“Huu, huuu.”
The unnatural voice, without any emotion or ups and downs seeped under the mask. I couldn’t comprehend if the person was a man or woman only by the voice because he was also wearing sunglasses and a hat along with the long trench coat, hiding his appearance completely.
“An ordinary person would answer because he was afraid that the child would report him to the police. But a psychopath would say something different.”
“Bitch, you bitch.”
I looked around in a hurry and tried to find something to use as a weapon.
Groping in the dark, I tried to find something that I could use against the man. But unfortunately, I had backed inside my parents’ room, just beside their bed and could only find pillows and blankets.
As I stared at the man in horror, the man reached to me in a flash and plunged the knife in my stomach without hesitation.
“Hahahaha!”
The unpleasant foreign feeling of something digging deep into my skin, and the cold metal touch inside my stomach, along with the unbearable pain made, my head spin.
“The psychopath would say, so that the child could reunite with his parents in the afterlife.”
[You’re dead.]
[Starting from the previous checkpoint.]
[Loading…]
“Suhah is a Yandere…”
Hold on.
I was once again standing at the roof of the broadcasting studio.
Sunah, who was standing beside me, holding a boxcutter.
“Joon, what’s wrong?”
She looked up at me with confusion as I stopped mid-sentence.
I see.
So that was what happened.
For the past few times that I had repeated the same dream, I had been dying while sleeping.
The checkpoint of that time was updated to 2 a.m.
At that time, I had been sleeping and dreaming of Sunah killing me.
Then at 2:07 a.m., I died in my dream as Sunah stabbed me and I woke up from my dream. Then, I checked the time through the Status Window before falling asleep again.
At 2:17 a.m., just 10 minutes after I fell asleep, thinking that I had 5 hours left to sleep.
A burglar or robber of some sort broke into our apartment and killed me while I was asleep.
Then I went back to 2 a.m. again, repeating the same process as well as the same dream.
Therefore, although my mind went back to 20 minutes before, my body was still asleep. So even though I kept repeating the same dream, I felt tired each time the process was repeated again.
“…. Phew. Sunah, it was nice to see you again.”
Saying that, I hopped on the railing of the roof without hesitation.
“Joo, Joon… Where are you going? Joon!”
“There’s a bastard I must teach a lesson. Bye.”
“Don’t go! Don’t go, Joon!”
As Sunah screamed desperately behind me, I closed my eyes and jumped down from the roof again.
“Aaaahhhhh!!!!!”
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