That night, he had a surreal dream. It did not feel like a dream to begin with, a spanse of convoluted emotions that aggregated together like the colours of light. He sank down a dark ocean, but he had no body--just his vision. Around him, bubbles of light floated upwards, and each bubble held either a face or a memory. In the darkness of the ocean, he travelled among a universe of starry bubbles.

    Some faces were inscrutable, features clouded by a mist. He must have created it at some point in his life, to forget them. One of the outlines he recognised clearly; his mother. She had been one of the only sources of kindness he knew in his life. The scent of macaroons and honey, a melodious voice that used to leave him sleepy as a child, frail arms that were strong with love.

He wondered why he allowed the mist to cover her face. Reaching towards that bubble, which grew brighter the closer he travelled, a strong current pulled him away. Jin realised that the current belonged to the bubble of his father.

He never knew his father; that man passed away before he was even born. His step-father--the man in the bubble. Instead of light, his step-father’s face was clouded in a dark pall.

    The memory that was most stark about his stepfather was the ghostly mask he would wear. If Jin was a naughty child, the attic would be his punishment--and the ghostly face. His heart panged like a drum, each beat sent a vibration in the black ocean, dispersing the bubbles into smoke, piercing through them. Each sonorous beat left him gasping for breath.

    The attic. The ghostly face. The face on the wall.

  All the light morphed into a single entity, one giant star that blinded him. And within that star was Jisoo, smiling with that sunshine smile, her hair in flames.

Jin woke with a start. His sheets were drenched in sweat. He flipped himself around, checking his phone for the time. It was close to one in the morning. Irene snored softly on the bed.

   He stared at her mound in the hazy stillness, forcing himself to watch the rise and fall of her breaths. He truly did not disturb her.

She told him that she was entrusting the task of babysitting to her sister Rose. She had to return and help her parents run their flower business in Busan.

   Irene’s tears fell when she told him earlier that day.

“You're crying,” he noted.

   She yelled like an angry cat. “I'm not crying, you fool! I was cutting up onions!”

Jin smirked, leaning back on the couch, one leg crossed over the other.

    “Do I mean that much to you?” he asked.

Irene huffed. She dabbed her eyes with a kerchief. He thought she was extra pretty when she cried.

“I practically raised you, you goblin. When someone puts their heart and soul into someone else, then you're bound to establish a connection.” She made a sound, halfway between a hiccup and a chuckle. “And I had to put all my heart and soul into a fool like you. Little goblin.”

     Back in the stillness of the night, Jin moved this way and that. Sleep eluded him.

To establish a connection, you have to pour your heart and soul into someone else…

Would Jisoo be his friend if he did just that?

Lisa was elated when he met her outside. She inspected her bike. Apart from the chain, nothing else was damaged.

     “Wow Jin, you're truly something aren’t you?”

The way she gazed at him, like a child admiring their hero, no one had ever looked at him that way before. A warm feeling gushed inside him. His heart sang to the tune of tha