Your eyes flutter open and you look around the room in a daze. You hated taking naps. Naps always made you wake up, still feeling tired and twice as disoriented. Taking naps was never a thing you did on a regular basis, but ever since your treatment with Dr. Kim, they had become routine during your session, they were unavoidable.

“How long was I out?” You ask, rubbing your head and looking at Taehyung.

“Oh, I’d say about 20 minutes” Taehyung says, as he looks up form his notebook and sighing.

“So did anything happen while I was knocked out?”

“You mumbled a few indecipherable things, but other than that everything was quite normal. How do you feel?” Taehyung asks.

“More calm”

“Good. Did you remember anything?”

You shift on the couch, sitting up and trying to organize your thoughts.

“I think someone I met recently showed up in my dream this time.” You say, as you vaguely recall a pair of chocolate brown doe eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses. “But then again, he feels like the same person who’s always been there in my dreams.”

“You mean, you’ve been dreaming of someone, and you didn’t know who they were until you met them in real life?” Taehyung asks.

You slowly nod, wondering how that’s even possible or maybe you’re just getting mixed up. Taehyung nods his head and purses his lips.

“You’re not going to tell me I have some clairvoyant ability are you?” You ask, looking at Taehyung with a doubtful expression.

Surprisingly Taehyung just laughs and shakes his head.

“Can’t come to that conclusion quite yet” He jokes. “But I’m curious, who is this person you’ve suddenly met in real life?”

“Um, he’s a professor I’m doing research under” You reply, feeling your cheeks flush. You didn’t know what had gotten into you lately, but Dr. Jeon has never left your mind since the first day you met him.

“I see” Taehyung nods.

“You don’t find any of it strange?” You ask, wondering why he’s so nonchalant, like it’s completely normal to dream about someone long before you ever met them.

“Isn’t it obvious that you might just be developing a crush on this guy?” Taehyung says, causing your mouth to drop and your eyes widen.

“But-what..how?” You try to form a coherent sentence, but fail as the embarrassment settles in as quickly as the heat that was burning on your cheeks now.

“I don’t want to perpetuate the stereotype that psychologists can read minds, but…come on, I’m a psychologist,” Taehyung says with a grin, looking at your mortified expression.

“He’s my professor and I met him yesterday!” You emphasize, voice almost coming out as a shriek.

“It’s likely that this person is not one person but a mix of two or more people. It’s not uncommon for someone in your dreams to actual be a combination of more than one person you know in real life. I think your affection for this guy might’ve just given him a ticket to merge with whatever person or people you’ve consistently dreamt of for most of your life” Taehyung explains.

You look down at your lap as you register the words coming out of the psychologist’s mouth. It makes perfect sense, but somewhere deep down; you know that whomever you’ve dreamed of all these years is way too distinct to be a mix of people you’ve known in the past.

…

“Tae, I’m worried about Dr. Jeon” Jimin says as they’re grocery shopping on a Saturday morning.

Taehyung, who was pushing the empty shopping cart stops in his tracks, narrows his eyes, and looks at Jimin.

“From a patient-psychologist standpoint!” Jimin quickly defends, knowing that Taehyung’s mind was probably going places it shouldn’t.

“Continue” The latter says as he begins walking again.

“It’s like he’s changed into a different person or he’s been possessed or something.” Jimin shakes his head and stares at tiled flooring of the supermarket. “He doesn’t look at me like I’m a joke, and he doesn’t say hurtful things anymore. In fact, he’s barely showing any emotion at all. Do you think it’s a sign that his depression is getting worse?”

“It’s a possibility. Or maybe some significant change occurred in his life.”

“That’s what I was thinking! But I can’t figure out what it is, and you know how difficult it is for me to squeeze anything out of that guy.” Jimin sighs as he grabs an 8-pack of peach yogurt from the dairy section and drops it into the shopping cart.

“Well there’s really nothing you can do except keep trying” Taehyung says as he and Jimin walk towards the snack aisle.

“Hey, look! It’s Yoongi!” Jimin exclaims as he spots the familiar figure standing in front of the shelf of chips and dip.

Yoongi turns around, startled by the sudden sound of his name. He spots the pink haired Jimin in a heartbeat and the brown-haired male standing next to him, which he assumes is the other psychologist from the clinic.

“Morning Dr. Park. And, umm… Dr. Kim?” Yoongi greets.

Taehyung nods in greeting as Jimin hops over to talk to Yoongi.

“Shopping for Dr. Jeon?” Jimin asks, eyeing the cartload of processed foods.

“Like always” Yoongi sighs.

There was a long pause as the two of them continue to stare at the pile of food, before Yoongi and Jimin both speak at the same time.

“How are the sessions coming along?”

“Has anything big happened in Dr. Jeon’s life?”

“Oh sorry, you were saying?” Yoongi says, awkwardly putting his hands in the large front pocket of his baggy hoodie.

“It’s just that Dr. Jeon seems detached lately, and I was wondering if you know about anything that’s going on.” Jimin explains.

“Oh, umm, everything seems pretty normal from what I can tell.” Yoongi says, trying to think about all the events that happened recently. He’s still eating normally, sleeping as regularly as his schedule allows him, and balancing surgeries with experiments as perfectly as he always has. There’s really nothing that comes to Yoongi’s mind except one.

“Not a single thing has changed?” Jimin asks, disappointed that not even Yoongi, the closest person to Jungkook that he knows, can even help him.

“Well, he took in a new graduate student recently” Yoongi finally says, remembering the sleepless hours he spent filtering through hundreds of applications.

“A new student?”

…

“Since I assume you’ve already read up on my latest research on visual perception, I’m not going to bother reiterating the details.”

You were sitting in a chair across from Jungkook in his office as he explains the project you’ll be working on. He seemed so focused on explaining the experimental set up that it felt like he was giving a lecture to hundreds of students, which in turn made you feel sort of invisible sitting there. He wasn’t even looking at you as he talked, only pausing to give you the occasional glance to see if you were registering everything. The guy even made a PowerPoint for crying out loud, and he was so skilled at orating that it sounded like he had memorized the whole spiel.

“So the first step is to begin growing retinal ganglion cells derived from human embryonic stem cells.” Jungkook finishes as the last slide of his PowerPoint switches to a black screen.

“So if I’m not mistaken, the goal of this project is to determine the selectivity mechanisms in the occipital lobe?” You tentatively ask, hoping he won’t think you’re dumb for not fully understanding the first time around.

“More specifically, we’re looking to see how inputs in the axons of retinal cells are modified through each layer of the visual cortex and ultimately aid in neuronal selectivity. Basically the difference between what is there and what you actually see.” Jungkook explains.

You look at Jungkook with a lost expression, and although you try to hide it, he notices and sighs as he turns his chair and faces you for the first time. You try to keep eye contact to show that you’re completely focused, but fail as his unnerving stare causes you to look away. Maybe it was a bad idea to ask…

That tense, nervous feeling is back at it again as you swallow the saliva building up in your mouth and bite the inside of your cheek. You feel Jungkook’s gaze pointed at you, but you’re too afraid to look at his face to see his expression, so you keep your eyes down towards the floor. Hoping that he’ll think you were deep in thought or something.

“If I were to throw a ball at your head right now, you would dodge, right?” Jungkook asks, voice coming out not nearly as annoyed as you thought it would.

“Umm….yes…” You answer, wondering why he would suddenly asked such a random question. His tone had made you less nervous, but the question itself left you in a confused state.

“But even if you were slow by as little as a nanosecond, it would hit you square in the face.” Jungkook continues, and by now you’re wondering if this is his way to indirectly refer to your incompetency.

You slowly lift your eyes to look at Jungkook, preparing to apologize for not being up to speed with the experiment and all, but you notice that he’s focused his attention to the scene outside the window. You breathe a sigh of relief, glad that he’s not scrutinizing you anymore, but still feeling apologetically inept.

“But it takes times for inputs to the photoreceptors in your eyes to travel through the optic nerve and to your brain, where you ultimately see the ball flying towards you.” Jungkook pauses, waiting to see if you’re catching on.

You listen, still not quite sure where this is all going. Jungkook’s lips curve up slightly as he continues to explain.

“So how do our brains make up for that time?” Another pause, but this time so short that it’s barely noticeable. “It makes educated guesses. Predictions about the world we see because if it didn’t, everything you see would be the world nanoseconds in the past.”

As that last sentence escapes his mouth, the central idea Jungkook was trying to convey finally pops into your head.

“Which means that our brains have to construct a reality before we are able to see it.” You finish, finally piecing together everything Jungkook was explaining.

You see his mouth curve into a smile, and a faint glint in his eyes as he nods.

.......