A Dream Escape
Prologue

“How long have I been asleep?” Marmel asked.

“A little over a day.”

Marmel repressed a sigh, pressing his hand to his forehead. His head was aching. Voice gravelly and low, he delivered his words in a slurred manner. He had slept for so long, but deep sleep had eluded him. His body was still demanding more rest. He was tired.

Was it because of the terrible dream I had?

Marmel couldn’t remember the details. Putting his hand over his eyes, he tried to remember what it had been about.

At this rate, I’ll never get my normal life back.

He lowered his head, and hair as white as snow shifted forward to settle over his face.

“Is it nighttime now?” he asked.

“It’s early morning, Your Highness.”

In a black-and-white world, the faint glow of early morning was not so different from night.

“Is that so?” Marmel asked sluggishly, and he looked up.

A milky, rippling fog filled his view outside the window. This was seemingly the reason it was so dark. After he had lost his ability to see color, it had become hard to differentiate day from night. Now, he could only see light and darkness. Mere fog was now enough to fill his world with darkness. Marmel found this hilarious and laughed at himself mockingly.

The physician seemed hesitant as he said, “You must be properly diagnosed. You’ve put it off far too long, Your Highness.”

“You know that it’s pointless.”

“You can’t know that! Even if you believe it’s pointless, we must do everything in our power to fix it! We will look high and low, scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel—”

“Shh,” Marmel said, silencing the physician’s shrill words. His red lips formed a smile, on which his pale index finger rested. He blinked lazily, then said slowly, “Tell no one.”

His long, translucent eyelashes bobbed up and down, exposing and obscuring his beautiful, rose-colored eyes. The overwhelming malice hidden behind his angelic grin made the air feel as if it were too heavy to breathe.

“I know my condition better than anyone else,” he said. His disease was not something anybody could heal. And nobody could know about it. “I’m simply suffering from insomnia. Isn’t that right?”

The powerful hostility coming off him in waves vanished as quickly as it had emerged. The physician let out the breath he had been holding, glancing at the innocent smile on Crown Prince Marmel’s face. He seemed rooted to the spot, no longer daring to do anything to upset him. He stole nervous glances at the prince instead.

As a physician, he could no longer dismiss the prince’s illness as mere sleeplessness. In hindsight, he was not even sure that it had been insomnia from the start.

What in the world was affecting the crown prince?

Marmel had become dependent on sleeping pills after an incident five years ago, but now often struggled to wake up after going to sleep. The time he spent asleep seemed to increase with each passing day. His condition had probably not been a case of insomnia from the beginning, but if he was pressed to make a diagnosis, the prince’s symptoms were closer to narcolepsy. The physician feared that the prince might one day fail to wake entirely.

“I like things the way they are,” Marmel muttered.

After that day five years ago, his physical health had begun to decline. Since then, he had thought to himself that perhaps his body was slowly readying him for death. It was either insanity or death, and he had chosen the latter. Perhaps it would be better if he were to slowly die in his sleep before he could become completely unhinged. Death was a boon to him—the only way he could remain human.

The physician was silent. Then he said reluctantly, “How about spending some time in the sun? It will help you manage the hours you’re sleeping.”

“It’s dark outside because of the fog.”

“The morning fog disappears after the sun rises.”

“Does it?”

Marmel stared out the window with a disinterested gaze. His gray-scale vision still told him nothing about what time of day it was, though he could make vague guesses thanks to the birds chirping. Dawn might as well have been sunset.

Is the sun falling or rising?

Before long, however, his eyes slowly filled with surprise. The physician had been right. The sun rose, just as it always did. Its splendid rays banished the fog, filling the sky, and passing through the windows.

The crown prince frowned slightly. The light was so bright and white that it made his eyes ache. The rays almost overwhelmed him for a moment, driving the gloom away and setting his world ablaze. He slowly rose, stood at the window, then lifted his hand to press it against the cold glass. The darkness was gone, leaving only a soft heat that gently enveloped his body. He felt warm. He stared as the white light—which was no doubt golden—passed through his fingers.

Light banishing darkness.

“It’s almost like magic,” Marmel whispered to himself.