171 — A Fever Dream IV

Eun Ha's POV:

Eun Ha remained motionless, unresponsive. Unable to find her voice, the shock hitting her deeper than she thought possible. What was the point of all that foreshadowing and build-up if they were simply going to... do that?

Still, Jae-il refused to meet her eyes when Eun Ha asked:

"W-what just happened...?"

"Mom..."

"Who in their right mind would want a mother and son to..."

Jae-il frowned as if sensing she wanted him to finish the sentence for her. A couple more seconds passed, and Eun Ha found her mind unable to function normally anymore. The fever seemed to rise once more, along with the mounting disappointment that the writers decided that adding such an absurd scene would make the fans buy into a relationship between such star-crossed lovers.

"Such a horrid, unhinged choice..." Jae-il muttered under his breath, the last drop that filled the proverbial glass. "Who the hell could ever ship such a pairing to begin with?"

Eun Ha turned her attention to him. He said so, but there was a weird look in his eyes. A weird, darkening look.

"Who knows..." Eun Ha managed to say, her head feeling fuzzy. "Fans these days... they... they ship anything, I guess."

She pulled the blanket up to her chin.

"Right..." Jae-il said, though he sounded distant. He took the laptop and placed it on the desk. "They really do."

"......"

He picked up the tray. "I'll take this to the kitchen. Get some rest. We'll watch a real movie once you're feeling better."

Eun Ha just nodded, not trusting her own voice.

He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the light switch. "Do you need anything else? More water? Another blanket?"

"No. Nothing." Eun Ha said hoarsely, curling up against the pillows. "Go rest. You've done enough."

More than enough, in fact.

"......"

Jae-il nodded, opening the door.

"Sweetie?"

He turned towards her.

"Thank you... for everything."

She saw his lips form a faint smile. "Don't even mention it."

Eun Ha watched him flip the light switch, and gently close the door.

For the longest time, Eun Ha lay in bed, blinking up at the ceiling, her thoughts a dazed muddle of fever, over-sensory imagery, and an ongoing, distant sadness.

She wasn't exactly sure where that sadness stemmed from... maybe from her body fighting the illness, her confused feelings about her husband and son, or that cursed movie she had been so excited about.

Ah, seriously! Just when she was finally getting comfortable breathing around Jae-il, the movie had to go and—

It just had to...

It was so... weird...

Mother and son... a bizarre pairing if there ever were any, even if one considered that the timeline was drastically different due to the genre of the movie. Even then, it was disturbing enough that she didn't quite know what to make of it. Still, even as she stared up at the ceiling, she couldn't help but replay that last frame before Jae-il cut the movie short.

The movie had yet to end. Eun Ha didn't know where Kael or The Empress went from there, after such an indecent moment between the two. She wouldn't know where that was headed, no matter how much she speculated. That ending had been, after all, so disgustingly abrupt and... and... and...

She really, really shouldn't.

But curiosity, as is often said, killed the cat... or so Eun Ha thought when, with much reluctance, she eventually pulled the duvet back and slid out of bed.

Her legs felt as unstable as if they were made of jelly, she swayed with the fever for a couple of seconds, her thoughts too messed up to catch up properly, and before she realized, she reached for the laptop on the nightstand.

Her conscience screamed at her to stop, to go to sleep, to bury the movie and the thoughts that came with it.

But the sickness had stripped away her defenses. She opened the lid. The screen flared to life, blindingly bright.

She dragged the cursor back to where Jae-il had cut it off, chancing one last look towards the door, in case her son suddenly decided to ill-fatedly check up on her.

Biting her lip, with trembling fingers, Eun Ha clicked 'resume play.'

She turned the volume as low as she could, whilst still being able to hear clearly.

The two characters stared into each other's eyes.

Their arms closed around each other in a long, fierce embrace.

Their lips came together.

On-screen, Kael kissed the Empress—no.

Kael kissed her.

As she watched their lips moving against each other in passionate unison, it was not just The Empress he held and kissed. It was his own mother he kissed.

The ship around them shook with a deafening explosion. But neither of them seemed to care, too lost in each other's lips, even as the world crumbled all around them, perhaps a moral representation that those were the consequences of getting caught in such an... outrageous thing.

For several long minutes, Eun Ha continued to watch, in stunned disbelief. Of course, she knew that it was just a movie, and not a mirror-like reflection of her own life, or meant to be taken in any other way except on face value and in a fictional context.

The actors that played those characters didn't think about their roles that way.

When she came back to herself, she found that the credits were rolling. She had made it all the way to the end of the scene.

Only to have watched something... ridiculous, she told herself firmly, putting her mind firmly out of the whole thing.

No way could such a mother-son relationship actually exist in the real world, whether in that movie or anywhere else.

But what if?

As she turned off the laptop and placed it beside her, returning to a laying position, it was all she could think about.

'What if'...?

...

Eun Ha wondered what would've Dr. Han said if she were right here, right now, in her patient's cursed dreamscape after a fitful of restless sleep; a miracle she had even fallen asleep, in the first place, because after everything she'd gone through that night, one could easily assume it had all been some crazy fever-dream of some sorts.

And she had been really tempted to sit up and turn to grab the phone to inform Dr. Han that her son was surely making advances, and most definitely doing this intentionally and not just her subconscious, not entirely.

What with his care, his little gestures, the attention, all the spoiling and coddling, the constant proximity.

Was she really supposed to not read too much into any of this?

Maybe Dr. Han, instead of providing a proper professional perspective on the matter, would've been more concerned about her poor choice of viewing material.

Well, the movie was an accident.

The dream was not.

Seriously.

What in the living fuck was Eun Ha doing inside a starship, donning regal robes that the Empress herself would wear?

She looked around, and it was all so... real. The metallic clangs of the distant engine room, the flickering of overhead lights, the slight tremble of the floor beneath her as the vessel navigated through a turbulent asteroid field.

She was in the movie. A dream—well, deep down she knew it was too fuzzy and weird to be real, but in the heat of the moment it was hard to extricate herself from this figment of imagination and wake up.

And the more she immersed herself in it, the more it felt real, and became her new reality.

Eun Ha looked at her hands. They were pale, elegant, with long fingers that seemed strangely foreign, yet also her own.

She was no longer feverish and weak. She felt powerful.

She sat upon a throne that wasn't a throne, but a captain's chair upholstered in stark white leather. The bridge was empty. The crew had vanished. The ship was adrift. The universe outside the panoramic viewport was a swirling vortex of infinite black and purple.

"Your Majesty?"

Then she heard him.

Eun Ha looked down, only to find Jae-il, wearing the charcoal-grey uniform of a starship commander, with high, stiff collars, emphasizing the strong column of his neck.

He was kneeling in front of her, head slightly bowed, yet lifting ever so lightly to look into her eyes. It was Jae-il's face, not Kael's.

"I await orders, Your Majesty."

"......"

Eun Ha didn't recognize her own voice, smooth and imperious. "Have you come to watch me fail, my young star commander?"

Jae-il looked up with solemn conviction. "No, My Empress. Never. My sword arm, heart, and life belong only to you."

At that moment, as she peered into his earnest expression, Eun Ha forgot completely about everything that had been haunting her for weeks, for months.

She forgot about her fever, her stress, and her anguished confusion.

In fact, her mind was clear, steadier than it had felt for a very, very long time.

Eun Ha felt an odd sense of power as she tilted her chin up, looking down at this young commander of hers... her son.

He didn't know.

He didn't know that he was her secret son, that he wasn't here by choice or fate, but by design.

But here, safe inside their crumbling domain, inside her dreams, he would stay, his will and desires her own.

Eun Ha stared deep into his willing eyes. The eyes of someone who'd sworn to protect her, to die for her...

He'd do anything for her.

Anything.

'Because he doesn't know.'

A treacherous voice in the back of her mind reminded.

Eun Ha's lips, previously a flat line, now finally pulled into a proper, empress-like smile.

"Yes, my star commander, I do have an order for you."

Poor little lamb, who didn't know his shepherdess had designs for him that were utterly unmotherly.

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