Chapter 84 (2/2)
”Who is it? Heart?”
Uncharacteristically, he seemed to emanate heated anger at the situation. SoYoon hurriedly grabbed his arm.
”No.”
She grabbed firmly onto him so he wouldn't explode.
”Did you know that there was something strange about Alice?”
”She did this to you?”
No wonder Heart asked him about SoYoon's home.
Mad Hatter observed her in detail. He silently assigned blame. SoYoon hesitated then pulled away from the finger that was still touching her eyes.
”How much do you know?”
”Well. Without knowing how much you are hiding, it will be hard to tell you...I probably know about half the story.”
His long fingers wrapped around her rough fingers. She stared longingly at the intertwined fingers that were like thread and needle. Mad Hatter squeezed her hand and asked her.
”That girl is from the same world as you, isn't she?”
Was he a genius, or was she stupid for not realizing it? She suddenly knew how blind she had been regarding Alice.
”You figured out that much, and you said you only know half?”
”Yes. Because I don't know the most important part—how you and that girl know so much about this world.” He added in a small voice, ”How you two know the way this world will unfold.” Even the genius Mad Hatter probably hadn't thought that this world could be the narrative of a book.
SoYoon removed her gaze from Mad Hatter and looked around her surroundings. Air, light, color, and feel—everything was so real.
After experiencing all this, could she say she was inside a book? But to say that this was a completely different world was too farfetched because it functioned just like Korea: one year, 12 months, 365 days. One day was 24 hours. It started with winter and transitioned to spring, then summer, and finished with autumn. The standard measuring system was in meters and grams, and the native language was Korean.
As if it was built up fueled by the power of magic, this place seemed to be a parallel universe that lay beyond the other side of a mirror.
She looked up at Mad Hatter again. His deep blue eyes didn't waver once from her face. Seeing this clearly, she justified the existence of this place.
”Where I come from, there is a novel with Wonderland as the setting of the story.”
The last missing piece of the puzzle seemed to have popped out at Mad Hatter from the box. Hearing this unexpected truth caused him to blink confusedly, but not long after, he hugged SoYoon with his entire body.
”It must have been difficult.”
Her affections had already been weakened by Heart previously, and they were getting attacked once again. SoYoon closed her eyes.
”So, do you think of me as a character from this novel?”
”No.”
She felt his cool body on hers. Thump, thump—his heart roared in her ears. How could this be a part of a book, just a scene fabricated by words on paper?
He didn't ask her any more questions. When she asked him if he was okay, he smiled and answered, ”Is there a reason to not be okay? If you had thought of me as merely a character from a book, then I wouldn't have felt great, though.”
”There was no way I would feel that way.”
Mad Hatter had been able to see SoYoon's world through what she had told him. When he found out that she knew information about this world, he had assumed that the people of her world had been able to see into his world through advanced technology or even have created it themselves.
”I already assumed that it would be something like that. What's important is not whether this place is just a part of a novel or not.”
He wrapped her white hair around his finger. He enjoyed the crisp feeling of it and continued. ”Your touch feels real, and you don't see me as a character, so what does that matter?”