She dreamt of the strangest things sometimes. The dreams were at times so vivid, vibrant in ways that was starkly like the world she lived in yet not quite so at the same time. Yet when she tried recollecting those memories again in that pink haze between sleep and wakefulness it slipped through her hands like water leaving her with only a vague feeling that they had once held something.

Perhaps it was because she felt so much older, more tired than the young girl who once woke up with a smile tugging on her face because the dreams that had once filled her with the warmth of a familiar face and kind words gave her a growing empty feeling that she was missing something.

Either way that particular dream did not visit her much anymore now that she was busy juggling waiting tables in the night and working as a store clerk in the day, with responsibilities as a functioning adult of the society.

She was drowning in a dark ocean when suddenly something fished her out— the presence was familiar. He, or she assumed he was a he, smiled at her with small crinkling eyes that were dark as the coffee she drank. She saw him and yet at the same time she was looking at herself through his eyes. And the scene flashed and he put his hand around her waist, they were running from something, yet there was no fear only a exhilarating joy like they were children playing an innocent game of tag...

His eyes, they were the same as all those times she had seen him and she had a brief moment of déjà vu, of an aching familiarity she couldn’t place—

Chun Sung Im blinked awake trying in vain to grasp onto the last remnants of the dream, this time of black words on a small white sheet plastered in the space between shoulder blades, and a high voice and there was something else—

It had been a long time since that had happened. Why here and why now? 

She lifted her face off the of the table she had been cleaning.

"Hey are you alright?" Her co worker Ji Min asked gently shaking her shoulder. “You practically knocked out.”

"Oh, I just... had a