Surviving Among the Entities

“You.”

The Blue Moon’s eyes narrowed like crescents.

“Two-eyed wearer of the one-eyed mask, disorder on the road, enemy of the rubber duck, one acknowledged by greed, one unfazed despite seeing me twice.”

All its eyes turned towards me.

“It’s good to see you again.”
“Likewise.”

The sky grew tumultuous.

[Run away!]
[Its attention has drifted! Now’s our chance!]
[Never setting foot in this place again!]

The world distorted wildly. Like oil paint doused in water, the entire world melted away, but the Blue Moon and I were the sole exceptions within it.

“The repulsive ones have fled.”
“You seem well-acquainted with them?”
“Those vagrants are a troupe wandering dimensions, garbage that films repulsive works mocking humans. I’ve intervened several times, but like lizards they just shed their tails and flee – fake artists.”

I belatedly recalled that the Blue Moon was an entity fond of and lavishing attention on humans.

“So you had past dealings with them.”

Though its attention drives humans insane, that attention and affection were not feigned.

“If one’s enmity can be called a connection, then yes, we are connected. But you two-eyed wearer of the one-eyed mask, why are you here?”
“I was kidnapped by them. And I created one work.”

Saying so, I extended the bead towards the Blue Moon. I did not mention creating it myself.

‘Mixing in personal connections makes it difficult to receive a proper evaluation.’

Since they had already fled, there was no official reason left to receive an evaluation. But I still wanted my first work privately evaluated.

“I shall examine it.”

The Blue Moon’s eyes turned towards the bead. After around 10 seconds, the air vibrated.

“You poor two-eyed wearer of the one-eyed mask, pitiful child mocked by false artists, hapless protagonist of a meaningless, worthless work undeserving to be called art, child sacrificed for something devoid of artistic value – how utterly, utterly pitiful!”
“……”
“Of the works by those false artists I’ve witnessed, this is overwhelmingly the most wretched garbage. Since this is their domain, even I cannot see what transpired here. So I cannot even fathom the humiliation and outrage you must have endured!”

The Blue Moon began vanishing.

“I will pursue them and demand recompense for wasting my time and soiling my eyes!”

The current space too began crumbling, and when it had completely collapsed, I returned to reality as well.

“It’s all over.”

I had escaped the dream I should have originally died in. I had evacuated all the people too, successfully avoiding the future world annihilation.

“This came along too.”

Finally, on the bed I last remembered, I arose and opened my palm. There, the bead formed from the work I had created, the crystallized dream, shimmered brilliantly.

“And to use it……”

Like turning on a power switch, activating the bead and making eye contact with the target for over 3 seconds would work. Instinctively realizing the operating method like breathing, I tried it on myself first for an experiment.

‘Let me check the time first.’

The current time was 10:35 PM.
Activating the bead replayed the work I had filmed, feeling like watching a movie in a huge theater.

‘It really feels like watching a film in a large cinema.’

Shortly after, the viewing ended. I immediately checked my watch again.

’10:36 PM.’

While the total runtime of my work was 26 hours, 12 minutes and 35 seconds, only 1 minute had passed in reality.

-Quack!

“It really was profound.”

For the Blue Moon to give such a scathing review, its brain must certainly be steeped in dopamine too.

‘But I wonder, will this work on other entities too?’

The Blue Moon is an exceptional entity considering its immense size and the way other entities spoke about it, so perhaps it was able to perceive the work stored within the bead.

‘I should experiment on other entities too.’

I approached the Rubber Rubber Duck in the corner and activated the bead towards it.

-Quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quaack!!!

Before a minute had even passed, Rubber Rubber Duck went berserk quacking nonstop. Despite me watching, it kept quacking for a while before abruptly falling silent.

“Was it so profound?”

There was no answer.

“I suppose so.”

After spending so much time in the dream, I didn’t feel sleepy at all. Just as I resolved to stay up all night and normalize my sleep pattern after enduring until the next evening, an unexpected guest arrived.

“Whew, I finally found it! Woah! You moved to a nice house!”

It was Shin Yeong-mun, who had squandered his entire fortune through illegal gambling and met an unnatural death.

“Now that I think about it, I never informed you of my new address, so how did you find this place?”

There was one request I had made of him – to let me know if he ever encountered any entities. But I had moved without a word, so I hadn’t provided my new address.

“I searched everywhere, starting from the studio apartment you lived in before, then all the surrounding houses in order.”
“Wasn’t that difficult?”
“I have nothing but time, you know.”

Well, as a ghost who neither sleeps nor tires, he would be well-suited for simple labor.

“From you coming to find me, it seems you discovered something related to my previous request?”
“Yes, I happened to witness it by chance. I never imagined such things actually existed.”
“What happened?”
“Well……”

After the experiments at my home concluded, Shin Yeong-mun aimlessly wandered the city.

“Suddenly I felt terribly resentful. Was my mahjong skill really that terrible? So I went to the library to read books on it, specialist mahjong books. It would be nice if I could view them on a computer, but as a ghost I can’t use computers, you know?”
“Can’t you not read books either?”
“For books, if I want to read one and someone else is reading it, I can just read along from behind them. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to stay there and wait.”

Shin Yeong-mun became a library lurker.

“Well, being able to read along with whatever books others were reading helped pass the time and felt like it was making me smarter, so it was nice. But recently, I saw something strange.”

While wandering the library, he witnessed a woman reading a book before suddenly vanishing.

“She was just standing there reading a book, then suddenly disappeared out of nowhere. The book she had been reading dropped straight to the floor too.”
“Was the book cover black by any chance?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Did you see the title?”
“The title… Um, what was it again… I was so startled that I just ran away without seeing it properly. After that, I spent my time searching for you, Seung-hoon.”
“What is there for a ghost to be afraid of?”
“There are ghost exorcists among the living, so maybe there are books that can devour ghosts too.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”

I think I know what entity that is.

“I should check it out sometime soon.”
“Ahem, so I did a good deed, right?”
“Yes, you did a good deed.”
“Then can I ask for one reward?”

I stared intently at Shin Yeong-mun’s face.

‘Surprisingly bold for a person.’

Normally, if someone is beaten to the brink of death, they would harbor immense resentment towards their assailant – be it anger, fear, or something else causing them to treat that person differently than before. But Shin Yeong-mun showed no such thing.

“Is it because he’s a ghost, or was he always like this?”
“Hm? What is it?”
“No, never mind. So what reward would you like?”
“I want to read mahjong books. Please buy some books and read them to me. The truth is, no matter how long I waited at the library, no one was reading any, so I’ve been getting exhausted.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to watch professional lectures instead? There are probably lots of people uploading lectures on places like YouTube.”
“Ah! I didn’t think of that! Please do so.”

But before that, one thought occurred to me.

‘Can I show my work to a ghost too?’

I approached Shin Yeong-mun.

“Would you like to see this?”
“What is this bead?”

I immediately activated the bead. Shin Yeong-mun, who had been staring intently at the bead, immediately collapsed.

“Bbeek! Kkwah! Kkwongnaebbaeng!”

Despite being a ghost, he convulsed violently all over before fainting.

“Ugh, uhhh……”
“Have you come to your senses?”
“Yes, yes……”
“Do you remember why you fainted?”
“Ah, no, I just felt like an incredibly boring movie was forcibly crammed into my brain making me want to bite my tongue and die, but other than that I don’t really remember anything in particular.”

It seems Shin Yeong-mun was steeped in dopamine too.
Well, for someone addicted to gambling to the point of death, it appears I had expected too much.

“Let’s watch some mahjong lectures instead. I’ll start one for you now.”
“Oh! Thank you!”

After watching mahjong lectures at my home for a while, Shin Yeong-mun eventually bid farewell and vanished.

“I should go to a mahjong parlor for some real practice. Hahaha! I’m finally starting to get the hang of it!”

After he left, I made new preparations.

“All I have to do is just have them watch this bead? And the daily pay is 150,000 won just for that!?”
“Yes. There’s nothing strange about it, so don’t worry.”

First, I wanted to experiment showing my work to others, so I found a one-day part-time job and presented the bead to the participants.

“Hing?Het? Heung? Bbeek!”

Whenever the participants watched the bead for over 3 seconds, they immediately let out strange screams before fainting.

“Ugh, it felt like I glimpsed an abyss that should never be seen.”
“It felt like I watched a really disgustingly boring movie that makes me want to gouge out my eyes.”
“It felt like I ate garbage with my eyes, but is this really okay?”

The people could not remember what they had seen. But it seemed to linger vaguely in their subconscious.

“I understand now.”

The dopamine-steeped brains of modern people cannot fully appreciate my work.

“So that’s why they faint, with only the subconscious retaining it.”

In fact, some participants were startled upon regaining consciousness and seeing me.

“You, you’re wearing clothes? For some reason I thought you’d be naked.”
“You’re not going to suddenly start stripping and dancing, are you? I don’t know why, but it just felt like you would.”

It was truly a lamentable state of affairs.

“Does pure art have no place in this dopamine-filled world?”

Encapsulating such sentiments, I wrote a post on a movie forum:

[The Reality of Modern Humans’ Dopamine Circuitry and Primal Stimulation, and Pure Art’s Lost Path]
[Author: DebateKing]

But I had realized too many points, exceeding the character limit, so I had to split it into multiple posts. As I tried continuing with the 15th post…..

[ID blocked by commercial film manager.]
[Block duration: 7 days / Reason: Spam and nonsense]

“Not a permanent ban at least.”

Not bad.

I immediately knew what entity the book Shin Yeong-mun mentioned was the moment he described it. Now I had to go retrieve it, but my mind had recently changed.

“Must I really retrieve it?”

After a long time browsing communities and reading people’s posts, I had that thought. After some contemplation, I decided to go see it in person first, but since it was my second priority, I did not depart immediately.

“I should experiment with this first.”

The five things I had sought to survive against entities:

Knowledge, force, means, identity, finances.

I had acquired knowledge and force, means and finances, leaving only identity remaining – which I had also obtained through the Merchant last time.

“The Great Author’s Heirloom.”

The safety grade entity with infinite ink.
But its most important ability was separate.

“Anything written with this will be accepted as truth by the recipient.”

The optimal entity to acquire any identity in the world was in my hands.