When I awoke, Harriet sat nearest to my feet.
"Have a good sleep?" She massaged my calf.
I nodded.
This slumber I had inside of the dungeon was not the usual dreamless one.
A purple-skinned infant's childhood was projected in my dream.
The infant that looked to be an ordinary human from behind grew up in a way that looked more like a devil.
That was what they were, after all.
It was a world where nephilim, these more than two meter colored beings, were a part of society.
Society adapted with their existence. Doors are made to be taller, meals sold in restaurants were bigger, sometimes even including blood from donors.
This was something I've been doing a lot lately, I thought. The existence of multiverses.
It was also something I've done since I was young.
We weren't particularly rich—just enough to get by. But it was more often than not that my father would go home and prey on my mother.
For years, I wanted to be the heir of some family of tycoons, live in a mansion, and have butlers.
This was the start of my creative mind.
I would imagine myself as part of higher society. To the point that I would wish that one day I would blink and all of a sudden it was reality.
In my dream, there was an alternate Eisenblad State Hospital.
I came a lot there before I even shifted my course to nursing to visit Justin so I was sure it was the same hospital despite not showing the sign. But in this dream, mutated-looking creatures walked and even wore white coats as though they were doctors.
A clinic's door comes on cue. The sign had written "Vanessa A. Jame, PhD. Doctor of Nephilimology and OB-GYN."
The door opened and the dream's scene shifted to a woman with a huge belly, talking to a familiar doctor of which I did not recall having a pair of bony wings. Beside the mother, you could see a tall man's behind.
He looked to be human from behind but once the scene switched to the front, still unable to see the woman but managing to see her light brown hair, the man, who stood at two hundred and fifty centimeters, had an unintelligible face.
As most nephilim do.
It was something that was strange to all humans.
Angels or nephilim never had clear faces.
In the first place, nephilim lived on the multitude of floors that is heaven. They were not meant to be on earth, only coming to visit rarely unless another holy ward broke out.
The last time they were seen was centuries ago, but it seems like, because of the rounds, they had been around more often.
They were creatures who were deprived of sex, so they would ease their drive by going to the human realm, resulting in devilmen.
"How's the child, doc?" said the tall nephilim with a blurred face, rubbing his wife's shoulder.
Doctor Jame pressed her palms together in front of her face.
The mother asked, her face hidden by her layered hair, in concern, "Will it be a safe delivery?"
"Now, that's something," said Doctor Jame, as professional as she could. "You understand the consequences of breeding with a neph and still question that?"
"Do not," said the tall creature, striking the doctor's desk, "talk to my wife like that!
"You are a devilman like me." He looked at the doctor pointily. "And that will never change. Don't put yourself on a pedestal just because you earned the approval of a few humans."
Transposing to another scene, the couple was now in an operation room.
The woman was in labor.
She shrieked and cried, but it was a successful delivery.
The mother held the child in her arms, looking down at the chunky infant as she cried in happiness.
When the scene changed into a close up of the mother's face, her tears falling down across her cheeks, I recognized it immediately.
It was a complete doppelganger of Harriet.
Or maybe Harriet was the doppelganger all along.
Then the scene focused on a different doctor that was not Doctor Jame.
The midwife was a dark-brown-haired man of one hundred and eighty centimeters with glimmering golden hazel eyes.
It was me.
-
"Reve, you're stuck with your thoughts again," said Harriet who urged me to let her hold the torch. I had no choice.
"Ah…you know," said I. "Just thinking."
"You like to do that, it seems."
I was wondering about why the Narrator hadn't appeared once when we entered the dungeon and the reason for Harriet's knowing my anomalous existence in the group.
Shouldn't there be a "Harriet van Gogh will remember that" right now? Or, maybe Harriet just doesn't care for me as much as I thought. Internally crying, I was.
Could it be that I had manifested life into her by being inspired by a stranger? Could it be that I actually want her to know that I was an anomaly in this world?
Having lost my chance with the original inspiration of Harriet because of the wimpy youth I had been, I was tempted to do things right this time.
I liked her to the point that I wouldn't mind being her lover. But I had a feeling that I was simply projecting my feelings of the original Harriet, of whom I did not even know their name.
Boggling the dream I just had, we walked side by side towards the fourth chamber: the one where the great nephilim, Bachulus, resided.
Could the woman I concluded to be my first love and met at age nineteen be the same woman that bore the monster child in the 0th round?
I felt a little disgusted.
Everyone knew that breeding with higher beings like nephilim was taboo.
But, there was the feeling of disgust which made me think that I definitely didn't like her as much as I did when I was seventeen. I was only just a cub, after all.
That feeling of disgust, however, I did not feel towards this beloved fictional character, Harriet.
Fictional character, it echoed in my mind.
Right.
That was what she was in the end.
As we sauntered through the hallway, Harriet was taking count of the chambers we passed.
Not long after, we arrived at the fourth chamber.