Yuna stared at the masked woman in silence for a moment before offering a simple, cautious greeting.
"…Hello. I'm Yuna."
Everything about this encounter felt off, too vivid to be a dream, too surreal to be anything else. Yuna didn't want to waste time sitting in confused silence, so she asked directly, "Is this a dream?"
The woman didn't answer immediately. Instead, she made a sweeping gesture toward the sofa with an exaggerated flourish, her wrists flicking like a magician mid-performance.
"Have a seat, little darling! Sit, sit, sit! Why stand when you can sink into divine cushions curated for this once-in-a-millennium audience with me?"
Yuna blinked once. Then calmly sat down. Why stand indeed?
Once Yuna was settled, the woman finally responded, bouncing a little in her seat like someone barely holding in a secret.
"Well~! Yes and no and also maybe!" she said, voice lilting in three tones at once. "It's a dream, technically. But not entirely. I've scorched through a ridiculous amount of probability and energy to make this meeting happen. So many sparks~! It's been forever since I talked to someone. My mind was starting to loop. I named all the dust particles in my chamber, you know?"
Yuna blinked slowly. The woman's voice shifted between chipper, wistful, and sing-song without warning.
With how real this place felt, Yuna didn't bother clinging to denial. It wasn't a normal dream, that much was clear. She chewed over the woman's words for a moment before asking the question that felt most urgent.
"How is probability calculated? And how is energy generated?"
"Ohoho~! So cold! So direct! No 'Who are you, beautiful strange lady from my dreams~?' Not even a little bit of panicked screaming?" she twirled her hand, then made a jazz-hands motion. "You're absolutely delicious, Yuna."
"…No. I don't want to know who you are," Yuna muttered. "People who know beings like you end up entangled in world-ending events." Yuna raised an eyebrow. "Honestly, the less I know, the better. Knowing anything more about you feels like the kind of mistake a main character makes."
Her voice trailed off into a quiet mutter, "...and I'm not one of those."
This whole situation reeked of plot hooks and narrative flags, the kind of thing that dragged people into grand quests and god-level chaos. But she wasn't a chosen one. Yuna clung to that belief with unrelenting stubbornness. Sure, her life had gotten weird ...sometimes…, but it was only because she was too close to actual plot-important people. She was just a background character caught in the splash zone.
She needed answers—not a storyline.
"I want to know how this probability thing is triggered," she continued flatly, "and how energy gathers—so I can avoid it."
The woman gasped like Yuna had just proposed marriage. "Ohhhh~ my stars! You're trying to be boring! How rare! How tragic! How adorable!"
Yuna pressed her lips together to keep from groaning out loud.
This woman is hella weird. She looks like a nutjob.
'Stay calm Yuna! Nothings gonna solve itself if you panic anyway' Yuna gave herself mental prep talk.
The woman swung her legs childishly, her masked face tilting to the side. "Okay, okay! So! Probability, darling, is a temperamental beast. It gets all twitchy when you touch people with world-tied fates—y'know, those heavy ones. Chosen ones, disasters-in-waiting, cursed heroes—if you nudge them, you jostle the scale. Reality hates that."
She leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially, "It loves drama."
Yuna sighed, trying not to recoil as the woman leaned even closer.
"And energy," the woman continued cheerily, "that's all you, sweet pea! It loves you, darling. Especially your cute little dimension stone—oopsie! Wait no, not a stone anymore, is it? It's mutating into something reaaally spicy.. Almost like a—zzzt! Whoops, can't say that!" she cackled, tapping her temple like a TV with bad reception. "Ah, censorship barriers. I forgot how ticklish they are."
Yuna felt a headache forming.
Then the woman clapped her hands with glee. "Oh! Oh! I almost forgot—so silly of me! Is the Crown Prince your next capture target? How do you plan to capture him?"
Yuna froze.
"…Excuse me?"
"Capture target~" the woman repeated sweetly, fluttering her fingers in the air like she was releasing butterflies. "You know! First, there was Austin—yummy angst and blind devotion, love that. Then Lucion, elegant and smitten. Ooh! And That boy with the darkness ability—very jealous energy, A+. Now the Crown Prince, all frost and pride, recently entangled with you—"
"Stop. Stop, what the hell are you even talking about? 'Capture targets'? And are you stalking me?!"
Yuna's voice shot up. Her face contorted in pure, reflexive horror.
Imagine being watched 24/7 by some unknown weirdo—absolute horror. Yuna didn't even know what part disturbed her more: the fact that someone had been spying on her nonstop, or the fact that her perfectly normal (and unfortunately unavoidable) interactions were being labeled as capture targets. The sheer audacity was nauseating. Just—disgusting.
The woman placed a hand delicately over her heart. "Spying is such a cruel word. I prefer… 'intimate omniscient observer!' You're my only channel! Of course I'm watching! I watch everything~! I just can't talk until now because of energy restrictions. Ugh. The struggle of being a fan with poor signal reception.. seriously, Who else would I watch? You're my lone channel. All my energy goes into you—you're the only show on air!"
Yuna's soul shriveled and stared into space. There were no words strong enough for her discomfort.
She wanted to scream. Or break something. Or find a blanket and hide under it forever.
She opened her mouth to protest—because seriously, wasn't this some violation of spiritual space?—but the woman suddenly flailed her arms like a dying squid.
"Oh no, no no no! The connection! The thread's unraveling! Oh noooo!"
Yuna felt it too—a sharp pull, like she was being yanked backward through molasses.
And just as everything started to blur, the woman waved frantically and shouted after her:
"I'm so devastated! You won't even remember this glorious first meeting! Not one word! Not a single detail! Woooo~ woo woo woo—sob sob sob! Tragedy! Absolute tragedy!"
Yuna's last coherent thought was simply:
'I want to flip her off so badly'
What was the point of that whole cursed conversation if she wasn't going to remember a single thing?!
How was she supposed to avoid probability triggers if she didn't remember what triggered them? Or keep her cursed little stone from becoming a god-tier beacon for weirdness?
Yuna wanted to scream into a pillow. Or set the dreamscape on fire.
'Fuck. This.'
---
As the sky began to lighten, Yuna woke up in a foul mood.
It felt like she'd had a terrible dream—something frustrating and infuriating that clung to her chest like a splinter. Her hands itched with the urge to hit something. Someone.
She tried hard to recall what the dream was about, but no matter how much she strained her memory, nothing came. Just an overwhelming sense of irritation that refused to fade.
"It's all because there aren't any decent novels to keep me up at night! Definitely that's the reason!"
Yuna, entirely unreasonable and fully committed to being mad, began blaming everything around her.
She was a night owl, damn it. She wasn't built for this early-bird nonsense.
And so, in a fit of indignation that morning, Yuna made a very loud, very petty decision:
She was going to write her own damn novel.
One that was so good, so aligned with her taste, it would set a new trend and force the universe—or at least the authoring public—to finally get it right.
"Fuck it. I'll do it myself." Yuna swear rather impulsively.