She is shrouded in smoke, in darkness, in a dreamy haze. Her dress is white, the ends flow behind her as she runs. It envelops her, the purity of her past holding her back. Her skin brushes against the lace and she feels a spark in her fingertips. The smoke is all-encompassing. With each breath she takes, it travels deeper into her lungs, and soon she can’t take many more. But one first comes the smoke, soon comes the fire, and that is far worse. She is running on flames, fire flicks at her ankles and shins, pulling her back, stronger than any gravity. Each fevered step and the light rises higher, up her legs, turning the tips of her black dress to ash. is closed and her black hair aflame. Her brown eyes are the last to be consumed, turning black, darker than any night.

    Hyejoo wakes to a far different scene. Her eyes still burn, squinting because of the light from before. It had been so real, watching the girl run in the flames from far. Her skin is still tingling from the fires of her subconscious. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and rushes out of bed, nearly falling over herself in the process, to kneel before her window. Her fingers grasp the locks, pull them towards her, and pushes the glass pane upwards. Her body lurches forward into the morning air, and she gasps, beginning to cough out smoke that wasn’t really there. Once her body calms down, she folds her arms on the window sill, her head still hanging out, her black hair pulled over her shoulders, shrouding the sides of her face.

Her roommate, Yerim, wakes from the noise, unsurprisingly. It takes her a few seconds to get a feel for her surroundings, having been woken from one of those deep and imprisoning Thursday night sleeps. Hyejoo takes good use of those few seconds. As Yerim rubs her eyes, so does Hyejoo, as one hand threads her fingers through her hair, the other does so as well. When Yerim’s eyes open fully, and all traces of night have left her body, Hyejoo is still seated at the window but much calmer than she had been before.

Hyejoo turns to her younger roommate, squinting slightly at the change of lighting, and says only a few words, “allergies, sorry.”

It’s a excuse and they both know it, but Yerim doesn’t ask questions. She looks at the red digital red numbers shining across the room; it reads 3:26. She attempts to glare at Hyejoo, despite the two usually getting along quite well. It’s not long before her head re-attaches itself to the pillow beside her. “Go back to sleep Hyejoo,” She mumbles out, yawning at the end.

    Hyejoo forgets about the dream—nightmare—whatever it was, soon enough. After hours at school, and an hour studying after school, she’s finally able to go home. It’s around five in the evening when she’s walking home, most likely a few hours before Yerim would return. The sky is a light blue, with matching lightly colored scenery. The straps of her bag weigh heavily down on her shoulders, but she keeps walking forward, ignoring it. At some points, she thinks she hears voices or footsteps behind her, but when she looks around there is nothing more than the red and yellow leaves that crunch below her converse. She can see her fellow students farther ahead up the street, but after a few minutes, she takes her turn, off the busy street and onto a smaller road. Seoul is a strange city to live in. As Hyejoo walks down the road she passes by trees on one side and modern buildings on the other. She passes through some of the poorer streets, where the buildings are older, apartments on the top levels, and small shops and restaurants on the bottom. A few more minutes pass and she's walking alongside a six-lane road, crossing at a stoplight, walking towards the subway station. It’s normally a 15-minute train ride and an uneventful train ride at that. There’s no one else in her train car today, but Hyejoo still takes her earbuds in her fingers, pushing her black hair behind her ears before putting them in softly. She takes her phone, fingers swiping along the bright screen, clicking Fairy Tale and pressing the repeat button twice. Her eyes close, letting the music fill her ears.

    The music stops suddenly, the earbuds tugged from her ears forcibly, and her eyes flash open. They scan her surroundings, seeing no one at first, but then there’s a laugh, no, a giggle.

    “Oh sweet girl, you better wake, haven't you made a mistake?” A soft, airy, nearly singsong, voice hums from beside her. Hyejoo’s head jerks that way, but there’s still no one in sight. That’s when she notices it, the train car is stopped, and outside the windows, instead of her normal subway station, there’s greenery. There are trees, much brighter than she had ever seen before, and they’re all so large, monstrous even.

    “Dear me, is this the wrong stop? Gone round like a spinning top?” came the same airy voice from before. Hyejoo stands, her muscles tense as she looks around rapidly.

    “Who are you? Where are you?” She turns back to her seat, and there she is. A familiar girl is sitting there, smiling softly, blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. She’s dressed in white, lacy, frilly, white. There’s lace around her arms, stretching to her fingertips, and tulle from her waist to her toes. Hyejoo tries to remember who she is, where she knows her from, but nothing comes to mind.

    “Oh me? Wouldn’t you like to know, I want something, quid pro quo,” She says, with a voice like honey, but with a bad aftertaste. Hyejoo knows she’s seen her before, but she doesn’t know where.

    “What do you want?”

    “Oh, sweet darling, it’s your name, give me yours, I’ll do the same,” Hyejoo’s chest clenches up, whatever she does, she isn’t going to tell this girl the truth.

    “Olivia, I’m Olivia Hye,” it was a nickname, a so-called English name she had given herself, keeping the first syllable of her own given name as her last name.

    “Now, now, that wasn’t too hard, Gowon, now don’t look so jarred,” she stands up, smiling from ear to ear, and hugs Hyejoo. The confused girl’s muscles tense at the contact, but she lets it happen, closing her eyes.

    When her eyes open, Gowon is gone, and Hyejoo is sitting at home, sitting in her bedroom. She’s alone, Yerim isn’t home