Chapter 61– Out-of-Order

I never considered myself an actor, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Today was the day I needed to brush up my acting chops and put on an Oscar level performance, or I could end up in a really bad situation. Pretending to be violently thrashing in my sleep, I tore at my blanket, making sure to cover up that suspicious burnt hole in the middle of the blanket. 

So what exactly just happened? My brain reviewed the sequence of events so I could organize it and think about it logically. 

I just woke up from that horrible nightmare, where I was continuously looping through the memory of that time I got beaten half to death in the rain by those gangsters, from that one drunken night so many years ago. Then, suddenly, something changed in the timeline and caused a deviation from what really happened. In the dream, dimension ripper from Eclipse Online manifested itself on my left hand, and I rather gruesomely tore apart every single one of the gangsters, reaching into their insides and pulling out unmentionables. And I took great pleasure in their dessication and murder, too. 

That was just a dream, though. 

Dreams, wild as they may be, and realistic as they may be, had no bearing on reality. What happened in a dream stayed in the dream, or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. 

So how the fuck did I manage to burn a hole through the white hospital blanket in my sleep? No matter how I looked at it, it looked suspiciously like a tear made by dimension ripper. The way the edges that were burnt off seemed to be simply melted into oblivion was a tell-tale sign of my Eclipse Online ability. 

But this was reality. Eclipse Online was a video game, for fucks sake. Yes, it was a very realistic one, and yes there were people whose entire livelihoods revolved around it, but in the end of the day it was just a VIDEO GAME. 

Video games were not real life. 

This hospital bed I was laying on? This was real life. The two masked special forces armed with SMGs guarding the door? That was real life as well. 

Subject is thrashing in his sleep. I repeat, subject is thrashing in his sleep. Requesting additional orders. 

Bzzt. 

The SWAT team members standing by the doorway were observing and reporting my every move, as usual. Even when I slept, they just stood there, watching over me as if I was some sort of lab rat. 

A staticy answer replied from the radio. 

Do not touch him! My precious patient... I will be there shortly. If you harm a single hair on his body, I’ll have you tried for treason! 

The SWAT team member looked at his partner with a concerned look on his face, or at least that’s what I imagined underneath that thick respirator and mask. 

Understood, sir. We will not engage the subject. 

Click. The radio went silent. 

I did enough damage to the blanket with my violent thrashing spree to fully conceal the supernatural hole in it, so I no longer needed to pretend to be having a nightmare. Leaning up on the hospital bed, I pretended to have just woken up.

*Yawn.*

“Mmmff…” I groaned, squinting my eyes and pretending to have just woken up from a shitty dream. “What the…”

While I put on my sleepy acting performance, I pulled up the blanket just a little bit to obstruct vision from the two SWAT team members. Then, I prepared to whisper two words under my breath. 

I just needed to make sure. Raising my left hand carefully so that it was not in contact with anything else, I muttered the two words. 

“Dimension ripper…”

I looked at my left hand. Nothing happened. Suddenly, I felt a bit sheepish. Maybe I was just imagining things… 

Unless…? Maybe this was like one of those isekai game system manhwas? If it was, I just needed to use one word to check. 

“Status,” I whispered again. 

After all, status was the key word in all of those novels and comics. The status menu was invariably the first introduction the protagonist had to his system. At this point in pop culture, calling up the status window was almost a trope in and of itself. 

…

Nothing happened. 

Yeah, I was being retarded right now. I threw back down the blanket and rolled over, getting out of bed to stretch. 

The SWAT team members guarding the door eyed me suspiciously, but since I paid careful attention to stay within their line of sight and well out of striking range from them, they didn’t have any reason to attack me or even threaten me like before. 

I picked up the bottle of water that the glasses wearing doctor left for me earlier and took a swig. The foil of anti-anxiety pills he left on the counter were still there, but I decided not to touch them. It was best to keep a sane mental state when dealing with tricky situations like this one, and from past experience, I knew that anti-anxiety pills sometimes had wild side effects on a person’s mental state. 

Tick-tock. 

Tick-tock.

The only sound was from a clock from the hallway outside, counting down seconds at an ever so steady beat. Ironically, it was out of my vision, so I had virtually no sense of night and day here. After all, the windows in this room were boarded up completely with wood and nails. If someone told me that this room was part of a set for a horror tv show about an insane asylum, I’d believe them in a heartbeat. 

An awkward ten minutes passed, and the door creaked open again. In stepped the doctor from before, beaming with his creepy wide smile. He seemed even more pleased this time, which gave me shivers down my spine. 

“Hello again, Mr. Kim Taek-yong. I’m here to take your vitals and ask a few questions.” 

....

The doctor sat down and pulled out the same stethoscope from yesterday. 

“Breathe in,” he said softly. “Good, good. Now breathe out.” 

“Your heart rate is a bit higher than normal. Have you been under stress today?” He asked with that stupid grin plastered on his face as I shifted in my hospital gown. 

“No, not really. Just had a bad dream,” I responded, getting slightly uncomfortable from the way his eyes seemed to be piercing me. 

“I see. We will talk more about that later, after your vitals have been taken.”

Just like the day before, the glasses wearing doctor brought out that clunky metal contraption of a temperature gun, and pointed it at my forehead. 

Beep. Beep. Beep. 

The device let out three beeps this time. I swallowed unconsciously, a bit apprehensive about what that could mean. It didn’t feel like I had a temperature at all. 

“Hmm, it seems like you’re a bit overheated today. Not quite a fever, though.” He took a glance at the reading on the strange temperature gun. 

For a split second, I noticed that the doctor’s eyes flashed when he read the reading on the temperature gun. My body tensed up reactively. 

“Tell me about your nightmare. Did you feel anything unusual during it? Please answer truthfully.” 

“Uh, I don’t remember the specifics,” I lied. “I think the dream was something about going to the convenience store, when I got mugged.” It was better to keep the real story under wraps, so I was bullshitting off the top of my head. 

However, I had to remember to keep eye contact and not look away, as hard as that was. Looking away could be taken as a sign of lying, so I forced myself to fix my eyes on the doctor’s nose and eyes. 

I started just making up crap randomly.

“Then the cashier came over and asked if I needed help, and when I turned around, the thieves were already gone.”

“I see…” the doctor replied. “Subject experienced... trauma during a dream…” 

I narrowed my eyes ever so slightly. Was that the important information that he extrapolated from my bullshit story? The fact that I experienced trauma? 

Was this supposed to be a medical doctor with a degree, or some sort of quack psychiatrist? 

Either way, I was at his mercy for the time being. I continued to plow on with my bullshit story about a convenience store mugging, waxing on with random details off that top of my head at a rate that would’ve made even the most creative film director impressed. 

After about twenty minutes of rambling about my dream, the doctor waved his hand to stop me. 

“That’s enough. Let’s continue to the next set of questions.”

He pushed his glasses up and flipped to a new page on his notepad. 

“Have you experienced anything unusual since yesterday? Any anomalies, nausea, hallucinations, or anything else?”

My mind briefly flashed back to that strange hole in my blanket, but I took a deep breath and tried to forget about it as I delivered my rehearsed answer. 

“Not really. Although I’d really appreciate it if I could use a real bathroom for once. I’ve been holding it in since yesterday, and a jar is kind of…”

The doctor nodded. 

“You may use the bathroom facility down the hall from now on, although you will be supervised by the guards,” he replied, taking a quick glance at the jar full of yellow piss in the corner of the room. “The er... jar situation was just a temporary solution. You see, we’ve noticed that patients have been particularly volatile during the first twenty-four hours since their seizure.”

The doctor answered me with a wide grin full of his blindingly white teeth yet again, as he clipped his notepad to a clipboard and stood up. 

“I will be back again tomorrow for your next appointment.”

He began walking to the door, before turning back once more. “Oh, and if you don’t develop any more symptoms in the next three days, you will be discharged from the hospital in good health.” 

He opened the door and stepped out, but poked his shoulder and head back in for one last statement. “We hope you get well soon, Mr. Kim Taek-yong. Have a good rest.” 

And with that said, the door closed with a click, before it opened again with the two SWAT team guards. 

For some reason, the pair of SWAT team members reminded me of Tweedledee and Tweedledum from Alice in Wonderland. Two eggheads, just bouncing around in place without saying much. 

As silence descended upon the room after the doctor’s departure, I mulled over what he said earlier, scouring every inch of the verbiage he used.

Didn’t he say something about the other patients being particularly volatile during the first twenty four hours since their seizure episode? I wondered what exactly he meant by that. 

------

I spent the next few days held captive at the hospital rather uneventfully. The only real change that really occurred was that I gained access to the bathroom. Never in my life did I think I’d be so glad to see a public restroom. But my god was it so much better to use a real toilet instead of a jar. I hadn’t taken a shit in days at this point, and so I let loose a bit on the toilet. 

There were only stalls here anyway. No urinals. It was the female restroom. 

Strangely enough, it was the SWAT guards that instructed me to use the female restroom, because the male one had a giant sign over it saying out-of-order. The guards waited outside as I did my business. 

Pssssss….

In the very back of my head, my brain began to connect some dots. 

Hm…

Seoul National Hospital was the same hospital that the first seizure patient was taken to. 

If I had to guess, this could be the same quarantined section of the hospital that the first patient stayed in. And if I remembered correctly, that first patient on the news was a healthy male in his thirties. 

Hmm…

It was possible that the other patient used the male restroom. The one that was now labeled ‘out-of-order’. 

What did the other patient do, to make the other restroom out of order? Judging by the size of the female restroom, the male restroom was probably also a locker room sized area with several stalls and urinals. If anything, only a single stall should’ve gone out of order… not the entire public bathroom. 

I glanced down at the mirror-like silver cover of the toilet paper dispenser, and a plan to investigate this theory began to materialize in my mind.