Chapter Three - Resolve
 

The night had been long, tiring, and filled with uncertainty and fear. Since the moment the two had arrived at Seohyun’s apartment from the hospital Yoona had huddled up on the sofa with Seohyun taking care of her needs. When night fell the two had moved to the bed where Yoona forced herself to stay awake.

Yoona had realized from all the dream experiences so far that only external sources of distraction could wake her up from her reverie. Her body had been getting increasingly tired and her mind constantly wanted to drift off to sleep. The only way that she could stay awake the whole night was for Seohyun to be her nightingale.

Seohyun stayed up the whole night with Yoona waking her up every time she was about to drift off to sleep. She would read to her from her book and occasionally sing to comfort her as the two lied on Seohyun’s queen sized bed with Yoona wrapped in Seohyun’s arms staring into the distance and trying to keep her mind active.

Eventually morning arrived and the warm radiation of the sun flitted through the blinds bringing with it small relief. The two were still sitting in bed, Yoona staring at the window while Seohyun was passing her time by reading a book.

“Seohyun.”

“Mmm?”

“I can’t postpone sleeping indefinitely can I?”

Seohyun stopped reading and looked at the slender figure in her arms. Her focus was still on the blinds. She let her book rest on the bed and looked at the window herself. “No, we can’t.”

Yoona tore her eyes from the window and looked up at her friend. She felt horrible for dragging Seohyun into this. No matter how much she would insist though Seohyun wouldn’t allow Yoona to face this alone. If she had to stay awake, so would Seohyun. Yoona was truly thankful for all the kindness and friendship that Seohyun showed her during this time of need and hoped she could pay it back somehow in the future.

“Thank you, Seohyun,” she said. This pulled Seohyun’s attention back from the window, a smile forming on her lips as she looked at her friend.

“Anytime. That’s what friends are for right?”

Yoona’s expression deepened more into seriousness. “I really mean it.”

“I know you do. So, what now?”

Yoona opened slightly as if to respond but shut it immediately. She wasn’t sure what they could do. She looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was seven A.M.

Yoona thought back to her first experience of these events a couple of days earlier. The morning she had first woken up inside somebody else. That time she had seen the person wake up just before seven which probably meant that it was around this time that the person in her dream would be waking up today. Yoona gave herself a nod. She knew what she had to do. Since she was in the caring hands of Seohyun who could wake her up and be there for her if anything went wrong, Yoona was committed to finding out more information about the person she was in her sleep. She had to know more.

“Seohyun. I want to find out more about her, the dream person.”

“Are you sure?” Seohyun asked Yoona with a hint of concern in her voice. She didn’t want her friend to suffer or be scared. Yesterday’s experience had filled Yoona with fear to the point of being immobilized which was too much for Seohyun to bare and see.

“I’m sure. If we want to find out what is going on we need to know who the person is, where she works, what her name is…” Yoona paused for a moment. “…and where I can go meet her.”

Seohyun saw the determination in Yoona’s eyes. She was going to find out what was happening no matter what. She wanted to meet the person, if she was real in the first place. Seohyun was not entirely convinced that the people Yoona saw were real but Yoona was certain if this and that was enough for Seohyun to support her.

“Alright then. How do you want to do this?”

Yoona looked back at her friend before slowly sitting up from Seohyun’s lap with her legs crossed and smiled.

“We shall stalk her for the whole day,” Yoona grinned and Seohyun’s expression turned quickly from one of surprise to a smile letting out a barely audible giggle.

“I will close my eyes, go to sleep, and try to remember everything that I see and hear in my dream. You wake me up every fifteen minutes and I’ll give you the main details of it all with you writing it down. Then I’ll go back to sleep and repeat the process. We shall extract everything we can out of her without her knowledge.”

Yoona was getting excited and all the feelings of despair from the last night had disappeared. She had made a one-eighty turn in her disposition. It was time to fight back.

Seohyun felt relieved seeing the change in Yoona’s attitude. She was beaming with excitement and determination, a smile plastered on her face, her body about to burst in anticipation of what they were about to do. She had regained her usual every day confidence and was now once again the Yoona that Seohyun had gotten to know. Her friend was back.

“Alright, I’ll be right here. I’ll go get some pen and paper and fix you some breakfast to eat while we write the details down.” Seohyun told her as she got out of bed.

Yoona laid back down and sprawled herself wide on the bed. She looked to her right at Seohyun who smiled back at her. They were going to find out what was happening. Together.

“See you in fifteen minutes,” Yoona told her friend before closing her eyes immediately drifting off to sleep.


---


The afternoon sun was low enough to shine right into the apartment cooking the two people sitting in the living room. Taeyeon wiped sweat off her forehead as she finally turned the air-conditioner on a higher setting. She tried to cut back on using the AC and would only use it when it was absolutely necessary. The machine beeped as waves of Siberian winds gushed out earning a sigh from Taeyeon sighed as the artificial arctic breeze swept into the room.

“Finally!” Yuri shouted as she slouched deeper into the couch, enjoying the cool air that rapidly spread across the room.

“Yuri, could you close the curtains? No point in having the AC on while the sun heats the room.”

Yuri looked at Taeyeon who was sitting in a massive leather office chair with her eyes closed. She sighed as she got up and walked over to the window let down the drapes and pulled the thick duke blue curtains in front of the window, before walking over to Taeyeon and lightly flicked her forehead.

“Auch! Yah!” Taeyeon looked at Yuri whose expression was tired and defeated. They stared at each other in silence for a brief moment before Yuri walked back across the living room to her spot on the couch.

“What did you do that for?” Taeyeon turned in her chair to face Yuri who looked back at her with the same bored expression on her face.

“Cause you look cute when you’re angry,” she replied. Taeyeon’s exaggerated angry expression softened while looking at Yuri, a small blush forming on her cheeks. “And I was bored.”
 

Letting out a sigh and shaking her head Taeyeon began to spin around in her chair.

After hours of reading through files and plotting the locations of coma incidents on a map the two were beginning to feel mentally exhausted. None of the patients seemed to be related to each other, all cases were unrelated. However the only pattern they could see forming was the locations where people had fallen into a coma. At had at first it seemed quite random but with further inspection and more patient files they noticed that these cases were focused in the centre of the city. If they concentrated enough it was a possible lead yet they still had many files to go through and frankly they didn’t want to look at a single patient record more.

None of the patient backgrounds had any connection to each other. The occupations of the people were varied; teachers, plumbers, garbage collectors, restaurant owners, office workers, students and housewives. So far no overwhelming evidence or connection had surfaced and both Taeyeon and Yuri were beginning to feel overwhelmed with personal information. On top of looking at the patients backgrounds they dug up information on their families and close relatives to see if there was any link between them. Another dead end.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Yuri asked. While she had been going through patient files Taeyeon had found some interesting research articles on the internet. She had dug deeper and found a blog that was littered with topics and discussion related to the recent comas. Her efforts during the past couple of hours had been concentrated on finding more about the research blog and its owner.

She clicked a few times on her computer printing out a couple of pages worth of information she had gathered. The printer grunted to life humming in its regular pace as the machine scratched its message onto paper.

“I summarized what I found, it’s pretty interesting and crazy at the same time,” Taeyeon got up from her chair and walked over to the printer picking up the last page before neatly bunching and stapling them together.

“It says here that she is a researcher of dreams and brain structure, claims to have a Ph.D. and is specialized in dream studies.”

“Uhumm,” Yuri urged Taeyeon to continue as she pulled herself up right before leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her head cupped in her hands.

Taeyeon sat back on her chair and continued reading. “She has been doing private research with private funding on the coma patients and nothing, according to her, shows that they would be naturally occurring incidents. According to her research it isn’t drug related since… yadidadadaa boring medical lingo… instead it seems there would be some device transmitting a signal that affects some people at a certain frequency, which results in a coma. She followed the activity of the frequency and has been receiving a signal on some wave lengths for the past month, ones that never before have shown such behaviour. An interesting point is that… dadadadaa more stuff I don’t get… and she has a source with first hand information.”

Taeyeon looked up from the summary sheet at Yuri. She was trying to understand everything that had been said but her expression told Taeyeon that she was out of the loop.

“So basically someone is doing mind tricks with a big machine,” Taeyeon added.

“Like a mind-control Death Star?”

“Yeah, something like that I guess. Or instead of a death ray, a sleep ray,” Taeyeon chuckled at the notion and looked back at the summary.

“So she is our primary source for any information at the moment, if we consider that blog to be real?” Yuri looked at Taeyeon who was still focusing on the piece of paper.

“Yes, so it seems. Especially if her claim about a ‘first hand’ source is true.”

“What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t say.”

Yuri looked at Taeyeon, her eyebrows creasing and scrunched up. Silence fell over the two as they stared at each other. Taeyeon broke the uncomfortable stare and focused back onto the sheet of paper.

“It seems a bit too suspicious,” Yuri finally broke the silence. Taeyeon shifted in her seat and looked back at Yuri.

“Well… yeah,” was all she could say before looking back at the paper. “This is all we got though and we need to follow some lead.” Taeyeon looked back at Yuri.

“True. I just don’t like this situation.”

“Neither do I,” Taeyeon got up from her chair. Yuri’s gaze followed the shorter girl as she made her way to the kitchen, “but it could be that she hasn’t revealed her name because of what’s been happening. Trying to keep herself safe.”

Taeyeon opened the fridge door and looked into the void. She had forgotten that the reason they had eaten takeaway last night was because they were out of food in the first place. She closed the door and walked back out of the kitchen.

“Were you able to find an address?” Yuri asked Taeyeon who simply nodded.

“Takeaway?” Taeyeon asked Yuri. She walked over to her mobile phone and fished the brochure for the Chinese around the corner from under the piles of paper on her desk.

“Yeah sure. So you couldn’t find a name linked to the address?” Yuri inquired.

“Nope. Or, yes I found a name, but the name linked to the address belongs to some old lady in the countryside who suffers from Alzheimer’s. She can barely remember who she is herself,” Taeyeon answered before dialing the number to the restaurant. “We’ll just have to go physically visit the address and see what is up. Ahh, yes hello! This is Taeyeon. Yes, yes, the same as usual but this time can we get even more pickled radish than usual? Thank you. See you soon. Alright, yes, bye.”

Tayeon finished the call, walked over to her chair and propped back onto it. Yuri looked into the distance, her eyes not focused on anything in particular. She saw movement in the corner of her eye as Taeyeon began to spin in her chair again, the short figure straddled in her massive chair.

“Since we don’t have anything else to go with let’s go check the address out tomorrow,” Yuri told Taeyeon who stopped spinning to look at her.

“Yeah let’s do that.” She answered. She took out her wallet and opened it before biting her bottom lip, her eyes squinting with annoyance. “Yuri, you wouldn’t happen to have any cash on you?”

“Wah! It’s your turn to pay!” Yuri protested as she got off the couch and threw a pillow at Taeyeon who quickly turned around in her chair the pillow striking the back rest. She turned back around and showed her tongue at Yuri.

“Aish, you little kid,” She walked past Taeyeon and made her way to her room.


---


In a well lit windowless room void of any furniture, a tall and well built figure loomed over a young woman lying in what looked like a luxurious dentist’s chair. She was sound asleep, her breathing regular, but her face was covered with a contraption. It was a thick head gear that resembled the space suite helmet though slightly smaller. The cover on the front reached halfway down the face stopping at mouth height.

The figure circled the chair and walked over to a computer terminal and with their gloved hand typed in the terminal. The jacket pulled back to reveal a strong hairy arm. He looked at the statistics on the screen, made a few changes in the program and then looked back at the woman lying on the chair. Pulling out his mobile phone the person dialled in a number while staring at the slumbering girl.

“I’m here, she is asleep and won’t be waking up for a very long time,” he spoke with a hushed tone, his voice surprisingly high pitched. He walked out of the room with the sleeping girl into the living room of the apartment. The wall length window in the room revealed a splendid sight, a cityscape that flared in its lights from the high apartments that rose in front.

“Good. Did you destroy all the research?”

“Yes, all that I could find. There were a few documents that could be of interest to you so I’ll be taking them with me.” He walked over to the window and looked down. The people walking were tiny and the cars like little toys he used to play with as a kid. He would not have minded having an apartment on the thirty-fifth floor himself.

“Alright, bring them here and be quick about it. It seems that it is about time.”

“Already? Understood, I’ll be on my way.”

The figure finished the call and placed the phone in his pocket giving one final glance at the sleeping woman on the seat before hurrying off out of the apartment carrying a handful of documents. He thought of the poor girl in the machine. She wouldn’t be waking up from it ever. Such a waste since she was a clever and beautiful woman.

He got in his car that was parked right around the corner from the apartment and turned the engine on to hurry back to headquarters. If it was about time, things were going to get interesting.


---


“Wake up, Yoona,” Seohyun lightly shoved the sleeping figure lying on the bed. Once again the drowsy girl opened her eyes, a process that had been repeated many times over that day.

They had at first repeated the process almost non-stop for four hours before a lunch break. Yoona only allowed herself fifteen minutes to eat before she wanted to dive right back into sleep to find out every little detail of the person she was invading.

This was the way she thought of it. She was the one invading the other person. Even though she had no idea how in the world it happened, Yoona would not allow herself to blame the other person, to say that she was pulling her in. How would that work in the first place? Every time she went back to sleep the process got easier and she found that she required less focus to fall asleep.

After the lunch break Seohyun insisted that they only do an hour at a time before forcing Yoona to take a break. She was worried that the other girl would start to suffer from the constant change in view and mind, with the possibility of eventually getting confused which mind was her own. But Seohyun trusted Yoona and she knew that her friend recognized which one was her own body, because every time Yoona opened her eyes Seohyun would be there to greet her with a smile and something to drink.

“I think that’s enough for the day,” Yoona began as she got up from the hurricane of bed sheets. “I doubt I can find out any more crucial information.”

“I think we have a wealth of information here, what do you want to do now?” Seohyun asked as she sat down next to Yoona on the bed. She gave her a glass of water, the other gulping it down her dry throat in a flash.

“Find out the best location and time to meet her. I need to know what is going on.” Yoona looked down at her toes wriggling them around. Seohyun stood up again and took the glass out of Yoona’s hand.

“Alright, we’ll do that.” Yoona looked up at Seohyun, a smile spreading on her lips, “But that will happen tomorrow. Now you need to eat and rest.”

“I’ve rested the whole day!” Yoona argued but relented at determined look on Seohyun’s face.

“It hasn’t been proper rest and you still feel tired don’t you?”

Yoona looked down at her feet.

“Yeah, I do,” she sighed. Even though she had spent the whole day practically sleeping she hadn’t been properly resting. Her mind had been actively working all the time and for some reason as time went by she felt more and more tired.

“Why don’t we go make us some dinner?” Seohyun asked. At the mention of food Yoona sprung up from the bed onto her feet and hurried to Seohyun. She pushed her from the back ushering them out of the bedroom. “Let’s go, go, go. I’m hungry.”

Yoona was eager to get on with tracking down the person. They had found out who she was, where abouts she lived, where she worked, where she had lunch. They also knew more about the mystery blonde called Hyoyeon and what role she played in her life. The amount of information they had was so vast that it would take another day to get through it all and make up a plan.

Seohyun had to go back to work the next day while Yoona still had sick leave for the next couple of days. She was going to stay at Seohyun’s place for the time being and while Seohyun was out working she was going to go through the notes they had. Once Seohyun got back from work they would devise a plan. If all went well she would go the day after to meet the person she was invading. Face to face. She would finally know what this was all about.

She would go meet Sunny.