When the Nightmare Lets Go

“Gasp…!”

Jeongyun sucked in a sharp breath and jolted upright in bed as if springing up.

Tears and sweat poured down, soaking into the crumpled blanket.

Jeongyun blinked rapidly.

He’d thought that the bed might be drenched in blood, since that was where the blood-soaked woman had been, but there wasn’t a single trace on the blanket before his eyes.

“Are you okay? Can you hear my voice?”

A voice pierced Jeongyun’s ears as he panted.

It was the very same voice that had forcefully torn apart his darkness moments ago.

Jeongyun slowly turned his head.

At first, he didn’t know who it was, but the moment his eyes focused, he realized.

The one who had pulled Jeongyun out of that hellish nightmare was Jin Seha.

Again.

“How… how did you….”

A voice scraped its way out.

His throat hurt as if it had been clawed apart, from screaming for help while his mouth was forcibly shut.

But that kind of pain didn’t matter right now.

“How….”

There was so much he wanted to ask, yet the sentences wouldn’t form easily.

It felt like part of his consciousness was still wandering inside the nightmare.

Jeongyun didn’t give up and kept asking.

Through his still-distorted vision, he saw Jin Seha’s face, drained completely pale.

Seha seemed to roughly understand the question and opened his mouth.

“I just… heard something….”

In truth, there had been no sound.

But Seha couldn’t exactly say that he’d suddenly felt something strange and opened the door, so he said that instead.

He had planned to just go back.

Since he hadn’t sensed anything, he’d thought he’d wrongly suspected someone who was sleeping peacefully and was about to go rest himself.

But strangely, his feet wouldn’t move.

A corner of his heart kept feeling uneasy.

It was as if someone was constantly shouting at him to open the door, telling him that Cha Jeongyun was in danger.

Seha hesitated.

The last time he’d barged in to help Jeongyun during sleep paralysis, hadn’t he just gotten cursed out for it.

Today, he’d already stirred Jeongyun’s emotions enough.

If he messed up, he might really get thrown out the front door in the middle of the night.

That was why Seha truly wanted to just go back to his room.

Even if Cha Jeongyun was experiencing sleep paralysis, was that really such a dangerous situation.

“I’m sorry, I came in without permission…. I won’t do it again. I really won’t….”

Seha spoke defensively.

Cha Jeongyun was just staring at him without saying a word, and that face was terrifying.

Seha lowered his gaze and let out a small sigh.

He regretted it now.

He should have just gone to sleep.

Why he couldn’t turn away, Seha honestly didn’t know himself.

Bad luck, death, the exhausted eyes of a grandmother who said she’d do anything for her grandson if there was even the tiniest chance.

Those thoughts swirled chaotically in his head, but Seha could have ignored them.

And yet, Jin Seha had taken the risk anyway, opened Jeongyun’s door, and woken Cha Jeongyun as he suffered in silence.

“You just looked like you were in so much pain, so I couldn’t help it…?”

Confusion crept into Seha’s voice as he kept muttering useless excuses.

That was when Jeongyun suddenly grabbed his wrist.

Trouble flashed across Seha’s face.

Only then did he realize that he was still gripping Cha Jeongyun’s shoulder.

Seha tensed.

He pictured himself being slammed to the floor, just like last time.

“……?”

But that didn’t happen.

Jeongyun was just gripping Seha’s wrist tightly.

He’d avoided being thrown down, but he couldn’t relax.

Jeongyun might snap in anger at any moment.

And even when Seha subtly tried to pull his hand free, Jeongyun didn’t let go.

His anxiety deepened.

It seemed Jeongyun’s mind hadn’t fully returned yet.

Seha loosened his grip.

At times like this, it was better not to provoke him.

After a long while, Jeongyun finally spoke again.

“What did you… what did you do to me.”

“Pardon?”

“What did you… do to me.”

Seha was flustered.

What did he do.

“…I woke you up?”

He answered honestly.

Jeongyun still seemed disoriented.

But instead, Jeongyun frowned as if Seha’s answer was the frustrating part and continued.

“That’s not it. You, with this hand right now…!”

“My hand?”

Seha asked back, looking down at the hand still being held.

Aside from being gripped so tightly it had gone pale, it was just an ordinary hand.

Seha murmured again.

“So, with my hand… I woke you up, sir.”

“Hah….”

Jeongyun let out a sigh.

Seha pressed his lips together.

It was ridiculous.

Wasn’t the situation obvious.

He’d been under sleep paralysis, so Seha had woken him up.

He’d explained it several times already.

Why was he acting like this.

Jeongyun shook his head as if it wasn’t even worth explaining anymore and said,

“…Enough. Get out.”

“Yes, thank you.”

At least he’d avoided being yelled at for barging into the room this time, so Seha didn’t ask anything else.

He quickly offered a greeting and slipped out of the room.

The one who deserved thanks should have been him, but what could he do.

Between someone with power and someone without—no, between gap, eul, byeong, and jeong—there was an unbridgeable wall of status.

“Helping someone and still having to watch your step.”

Outside the room, Seha muttered as he rubbed his chest.

It wasn’t that he was truly irritated.

He was just relieved it had passed without incident.

Something else bothered him more.

Seha turned with a heavy expression and looked at Jeongyun’s tightly closed door.

He’d thought nothing was wrong, but that wasn’t the case.

The moment he saw Cha Jeongyun suffering, unable to move, Seha realized that the vague sense of unease he’d felt earlier had come from right here.

Did he have some kind of keen sense he wasn’t aware of.

Or had it truly just been a coincidence.

Or… if not that.

He remembered the chill he’d felt in the living room.

The unpleasant dizziness and ringing in his ears—looking back now, they all felt like warnings his body had sent.

He knew it was nonsense.

There was no way he could feel Cha Jeongyun’s sleep paralysis from the living room.

Shaking his head hard, Seha hurried back to his room.

Linking his strange symptoms to Jeongyun had to be because he’d met Insuk today.

Whatever was wrong with his body was a separate issue.

Seha quickly lay down on his bed and shut out the useless thoughts.

He’d go to the hospital after waking up.

That was the only thing he needed to focus on.

“…….”

Even after Seha left, Jeongyun couldn’t lie back down.

He just sat there, rubbing his shoulder over and over with one hand.

The spot where Jin Seha’s hand had touched.

This wasn’t the first time.

Jeongyun clearly remembered feeling something similar before.

The day Jin Seha had woken him from his nightmare, he’d felt the same kind of sensation.

At first, it felt as if his skin had been burned.

Then a cool, refreshing feeling seeped in, as if washing everything beneath his skin clean.

And today, that same energy had forcibly dragged Jeongyun out of the swamp-like darkness he’d been trapped in.

At first, he’d thought it was a coincidence.

But after experiencing it repeatedly, it was impossible not to feel strange.

Seha wasn’t the first person to wake Jeongyun from sleep paralysis.

His grandmother, caregivers during hospital stays, and Donghyun had all woken him before.

But never—not once—had he felt anything like this when they did.

Only with Jin Seha.

“Disgusting….”

Jeongyun forced out an irritated tone.

Yet the gaze he directed at the door Seha had left through was no longer sharp.

In his vision, the darkness pooling in the corner near the door caught his eye.

Jeongyun bit his lip and quickly looked away.

Staring at darkness for too long never led to anything good.

Even after waking, places where deep darkness lurked were always terrifying.

He’d seen far too many times how darkness could ripple and turn into something horrific.

On a normal day, he would’ve gotten up, turned on the lights, and distracted himself.

When it was bad, he’d turn on every light in the house and even the TV in the living room, waiting for dawn.

At times like that, Jeongyun wished someone—anyone—would be in the house with him.

He knew there were people who’d rush over with a single phone call.

But Jeongyun had never once begged anyone to come right away.

It was the last of his pride.

But tonight, there already was a person in this house.

Even if he was a con artist trying to swindle his grandmother.

Even if every word out of his mouth was annoying and infuriating.

There was still a living, breathing human being of flesh and blood here.

Hate to admit it, but Jeongyun was finding comfort in that fact.

Truly ridiculous.

So instead of opening the door and running out, Jeongyun leaned back against the bed and lay down.

He tried to relax his tense body and breathe steadily.

The voice that had torn through the darkness imprisoning him echoed in his ears.

If he were trapped again in a nightmare he couldn’t escape on his own,

Would Jin Seha notice again and come wake him.

Rolling that completely uncurious question around in his head, Jeongyun closed his eyes.

Strangely enough, sleep was already coming back to him.