Lucien sat in the Victorian world again, the air thick with soot and lamplight, the sound of iron wheels grinding along cobbled streets echoing through the fog. He pressed a hand against the cold stone wall beside him, feeling the damp moss creep between his fingers. The sensation was so vivid, so utterly grounded in texture and smell, that for the first time he asked himself in earnest:
Which world is the dream, and which one is the cage?
The question was no longer passing curiosity. It haunted him.
In his modern life, things had begun to slip. At first, it was subtle—a faint pallor in his reflection, shadows beneath his eyes that no sleep could cure, teachers remarking that he looked tired or distracted. But now, when he lay down to sleep in the cramped apartment he had scraped together, he would awaken here, in this endless Victorian sprawl, as though the universe itself had chosen for him.
He looked at the flickering gas lamps lining the fog-choked street, their orange halos swaying in the wind. The stench of coal lingered in his lungs. Carriages rattled by, their wheels splashing through puddles of mud and grime. And the people—those weary men in top hats, the women in heavy dresses with eyes cast downward—seemed far more tangible than the classmates he had once sat beside.
If I stay here too long… will the other world simply collapse? Or am I already forgetting it? Or worse—am I the one being forgotten?
---
When he woke the next morning, he was back in his narrow bed in the modern world. His sheets were damp with sweat, and the faint glow of the morning sun sliced through his blinds. For a moment, he thought it was relief. But then he caught his reflection in the mirror.
His skin was pale, almost gray, his lips colorless, as though his blood was thinning away. His hands trembled when he tried to comb his hair, and when his mother knocked on the door, her voice was lined with worry.
"Lucien? Are you awake? You look unwell lately."
She had always been fragile in tone, but now there was a sharp edge of fear. She dragged him to clinics, made him sit through endless consultations. Doctors prodded, drew blood, scanned his body, yet every time the answer was the same.
"There's nothing wrong with him."
How could there be nothing wrong when he could see his veins glowing faintly beneath his skin, as though his body was losing substance?
He remembered sitting in the waiting room, watching his mother twist her hands together, her brow furrowed. She asked again and again if he was eating well, if he was stressed, if there was something he wasn't telling her. He only shook his head.
Because how could he explain? How could he tell her that every night he walked among smoke and carriages, spoke with men who carried knives at their belts, dealt with bosses who tossed money in his face as if it was dirt? How could he explain that he feared more and more that the life she knew—the life she thought was his—was only the fading afterimage of another?
---
School became unbearable.
At first, it was just whispers. The faint distortion at the edge of his hearing, like the static hum of a broken speaker. Then came the cracks in the floor tiles that weren't there when he blinked. Teachers' mouths moving, their words bending between Korean, English, and something old, something Victorian in cadence, as if language itself could not decide what belonged here.
And then, one morning, it happened.
He walked through the gates, books in hand, trying to keep his gaze down. Students brushed past him, laughing, shoving each other, tossing careless greetings. He was just about to step into class when someone barreled into him—except they didn't.
They passed through him.
No impact. No stumble. His body tingled cold where they had intersected, as though he was nothing but vapor.
He froze, staring, but the student didn't even turn around. It wasn't that they hadn't noticed. It was that there had been nothing to notice.
His chest tightened. Did that just happen?
He tried to tell himself it was a glitch, a one-time slip. But by afternoon, it happened again. Another body passed through him like fog. Then another. By the third time, his stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
He wasn't just fading.
He was being erased.
---
At dinner, his mother smiled tiredly, but her eyes drifted past him more than once, like she was staring at the chair without realizing it was occupied.
"Lucien," she said finally, her voice hesitant, "you… you've been so quiet lately. Is everything alright?"
Why had she called him that, he didn't know?
He wanted to scream. No, everything is not alright. People walk through me like I'm dead. My skin is fading, my reflection looks like a ghost. Can't you see it? Don't you remember me?
But the words caught in his throat.
Instead, he asked, "Should I… tell you something strange?"
The rhetorical question lingered in the air. His fork clinked against the plate, his appetite gone. He stared at his hands, at the faint translucence creeping into his fingertips.
And then, he shook his head. "No. It's nothing."
His mother nodded, relief softening her face. She reached for his hand, but for the briefest moment, it felt like she touched only air.
---
The next day, it was worse.
Students no longer greeted him. Teachers didn't call his name. His desk sat untouched, as though no one had ever been assigned to it.
When he tried to answer a question aloud, his voice cracked and echoed strangely—as if the air itself rejected his sound. No one turned. No one heard him.
By the time he returned home, his mother was humming in the kitchen, cooking two servings of dinner. Only two. She set the plates down carefully and smiled when she saw him—but not at him.
"Dinner's ready," she called. Then she blinked, confused, glancing at the empty chair opposite her.
She frowned. "Strange. Why did I… make two plates?"
Lucien stood there, frozen.
His lips parted, but no sound came. No protest. No plea. He realized then with a hollow ache: it wasn't that she had forgotten him suddenly. It was that she was forgetting him piece by piece, like a tapestry unraveling thread by thread until nothing remained.
---
And then, one morning, there was nothing left.
No mother. No classmates. No teachers. His apartment stood empty, stripped of all memory of him. His name wasn't in the records, his presence not etched in anyone's mind. He was a phantom wandering the shell of a world.
The silence was unbearable.
But then—like a tide crashing in—came the other world. The Victorian streets, the smoke, the soot, the voices calling his name there. Here, he was a ghost. There, he was something more—something the shadows whispered about.
So when he finally opened his eyes and found himself beneath the iron arches of the Victorian factories, the gaslight halo above him, he didn't fight it.
This was no longer the dream.
This was all that remained.
And yet, he still remembered the modern world. His mother's smile. The sterile glow of clinics. The faint laughter of classmates. The weight of being forgotten.
He remembered—and that was his curse.
---
Lucien tilted his head back, staring at the endless smoke curling into the sky. His chest rose and fell with a shaky breath.
"Which one was real?" he whispered to no one.
The world did not answer.
But the fog seemed to close around him, pulling him deeper, as though the Victorian realm had always been waiting. And with every step he took along the cobblestones, he felt the truth settle like lead in his stomach:
There was no going back.
Only forward—into the world that remembered him, even if it meant losing the one that didn't.