Don't Feed the Professor! - Chapter 80

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

I rubbed my eyes. And in the next moment, the sky had turned to liquid gold in the sunset.
“How on earth……”
As I murmured, Mallo spoke as if it were nothing remarkable.
“The biggest variable is aerosol. This isn’t really the city proper, but the atmospheric conditions are quite similar. And the high-rise buildings form an artificial layer that makes the human brain crave a bit more dramatic contrast……”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
I started to ask how he’d done it, then stopped and shook my head.
Truth was, I wasn’t surprised anymore by anything Mallo could pull off.
Just the things he’d shown me so far were far harder to believe than some sunset.
Besides, when would I ever get another chance to admire a sunset like this?
I took a sip of the Smoothie I’d set down moments before, drawing it through the straw. Cold droplets beading on the cup tumbled one by one onto my thighs, exposed beneath my skirt.
Mallo, who’d been silent for a while, finally spoke.
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
“……?”
“You said so in the car earlier. That you had something you wanted to ask before the lecture.”
“Oh.”
It came back to me.
“It’s……. dreams……. I mean……”
“Dreams?”
“You know, the kind you have when you sleep at night.”
“I know what dreams are. Why?”
I fought the impulse to curl up as I asked, “They don’t have any meaning, right?”
Mallo studied me for a moment before asking, “That depends on your perspective. What kind of dream did you have?”
“”
“”
“It’s not about me.”
I answered quickly. But inside, I was thinking of course about the dream I’d had last night.
Half-submerged in the Swimming Pool, I had asked him.
〈Are you just going to keep watching?〉
Mallo wrapped his hand gently around my chin and whispered, 〈What do you want to do with me?〉
At his vivid voice, I shuddered involuntarily.
Mallo’s eyes narrowed. Was he trying to read something from my expression? I quickly lowered my gaze.
“Just, broadly speaking… is a dream really a reflection of the unconscious?”
“Give me an example.”
“What? Like……”
“For instance, tell me what kind of dream you’re talking about.”
“Um……, for instance……. I mean, it’s not like it really happened, but if a certain person appeared in someone’s dream……”
“That alone isn’t enough.”
“That person said something, you know……, something they wouldn’t normally say. But if it went well……”
“Lee Yuri.”
“Yes?”
“What did I say in your dream?”
I nearly spit out my Smoothie.
“You… you didn’t say you were a professor, did you?”
Mallo raised one eyebrow slightly.
“Then who?”
I fell silent. I’d just admitted it was my dream without meaning to.
No, fine—let me just plow ahead shamelessly.
“That’s private, so I’m not telling.”
“……”
“Look, anyway it’s not relevant, right? Just because someone appears in my dream doesn’t mean I was necessarily thinking about that person.”
Mallo watched me ramble for a moment, then finally spoke. “A lot of people believe dreams are reflections of the unconscious or projections of hidden desires. Strictly speaking, though, they’re not directly corresponding concepts.”
“So……”
“If anything has meaning, it’d be not the experience you had in the dream itself, but the emotion you felt going through it.”
Emotion. Right, what kind of feeling was it?
Trying not to dwell on the dream further, I asked, “Um, just asking to be safe……. Even if you’re a professor, you… you can’t see my dreams, right?”
With his gaze fixed on my face, Mallo answered, “I might be able to tell what ‘kind’ of dream you had. But I wouldn’t pry into the ‘contents’ of it.”
‘What……?’
Why is he speaking like that?
I rolled my eyes and asked, “Then… just asking to be safe again……. There’s no way you could interfere, right?”
“…Interfere?”
“I mean…., um…., manipulating the content of a dream or something.”
Still expressionless, he asked, “Why would I do something like that?”
“No, um……. For fun……?”
Because Mallo always spoke that way. He’d tease me when his pranks bewildered me, asking if I didn’t find them amusing, so I simply answered the same way.
That’s why I couldn’t help but blink in surprise when Mallo laughed dryly.
“Um……. Professor?”
“What fun would it be for me to make you have that kind of dream?”
“Uh……”
That kind of dream? What kind of dream?
“Whatever you did in that dream with whoever, it has nothing to do with me.”
He said it bluntly, then sealed his lips.
“……?”
Oh.
That’s when I realized. How my words must have sounded to him.
‘That kind of dream’—that’s what he thinks now.
“Wait. Wait, Professor. It’s not like that!”
I cried out in a panic.
But how convincing could I possibly be with my face burning red and my words stammering?
Mallo smiled in a peculiar way and spoke. “You don’t have to be so flustered. It’s probably just hormones. You lot are just bundles of hormones anyway.”
“No! Really! It’s not!”
Mallo wouldn’t even look at me. It was an unexpected reaction. Normally he’d have seized the chance to tease me relentlessly.
Perhaps because of that, I found myself shouting something I’d never normally have said.
“You were in it!”
Mallo turned his head.
“……What?”
“No, um, it’s not weird or anything. It’s just, you appeared in my dream and you asked me, like, what do you want to do with me……”
There was a suffocating silence for a moment.
I was thinking maybe I should just dive out, or maybe he’d catch me again like before, when Mallo abruptly asked, “So how did you feel?”
How did I feel.
“Um……. I don’t remember.”
“……”
“Can we talk about something else now?”
“Your adrenaline is spiking.”
“Shut up.”
Mallo relented without protest. He took the Smoothie from my hand and pretended to drink from my straw.
Somewhere along the way, his expression had returned to its usual composure.
Watching his profile, I suddenly asked, “Don’t you want to see the real thing?”
Mallo glanced at me with just his eyes. I asked again, “Don’t you want to see the real sunsets of the whole world, not the one you created?”
Mallo set down the Smoothie.
He let out a long breath, then spoke with a slightly furrowed brow. “Why would I?”
“……”
“To watch the sun rise and set beyond my will, to observe ambiguous and fleeting signals endlessly coming and going? Doesn’t sound fun at all.”
“That’s irony, isn’t it?”
Mallo laughed.
“I can’t ruin your world just to amuse myself.”
“…Should I thank you?”
“Is that irony?”
“No.”
I turned my gaze toward the sunset and sipped my strawberry Smoothie, pretending not to notice.
Somehow, I felt like laughing.
* * *
The next day, the day after, and for a whole week—Bibi never showed up.
Kwon Tae Hyun said there was no need to worry. Bibi was an Internal Agent too, and it was common for Internal Agents to be suddenly reassigned or transferred elsewhere.
Since his department and duties differed from hers, there was no way for him to know the details, he said.
But what about my files that I’d entrusted to Bibi? I thought we had an implicit cooperative relationship.
Of course, I hadn’t been as helpful to Bibi as she had been to me, but I at least thought she’d give me a heads-up if something came up that meant leaving school.
On the way back from Goldilocks to the Dormitory, I was trudging along when my phone rang, right on schedule.
I couldn’t help but chuckle and picked up.
“I told you I was useless.”
Mallo had been calling me at the same time every day lately.
The message was always the same.
—Are you really going through with it?
I deliberately sighed in an exaggerated way.
“Professor, there are things in this world you have to do even if you don’t want to. Anyway, I made a promise.”
—How mature.
“Mature. Far more than you, Professor.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————