"I lost my heart and my mind,

I tried to always do right,

I thought I'd lost you this time,

You just came back in my life."

Double five.

Six and two.

Six and four.

One and three.

She spends most of the morning sat at her kitchen table rolling the dice. There’s a superstition to it that Seulgi can’t quite explain – as if rolling them might contain some sort of small and subtle reminder that her world is certainly hers and not some other false or siren world. She’s thankful it’s the weekend and there’s nobody to confront at work, because in this state what would she say? Anything at all? The thought of that is almost too embarrassing to even be a possibility at all. She sits there until just after midday, yet undressed, unshowered, unready for the day. The dice change and continue to change. Again and again. The day wakes into a faint streak of grey, an oil to the canvas, and she’s still there.

The truth is something that appears both sincere and vague simultaneously. It’s the readiness with which Seulgi understands this that makes it so difficult to confront. As if it would be easier to digest were it somehow more abstract in concept, or in execution. The truth is that in all likelihood her world of dreams is just that – a particularly lucid figment of her imagination given an additional dimension every time she falls asleep. It’s the reason for Jung Wheein, a woman without shape or identity in the real world, a sketch on the pages of her book, living and breathing in this other world of hers. It’s the reason for all of it. And yet still there remains the mystery – the part that lacks resolution. This time she was at a theatre hall. The performance was Macbeth and she was the leading woman. Then it was a restaurant, the same restaurant.

All of this comes to her. Retracing her steps like someone awoken from the endless halls of some wicked dementia, recounting a past life, some other crueller time. And what eluded her in the past still remains elusive, no face or voice, no person to this person. Seulgi thinks about that for a long time. Whatever meaning to be wrenched out of this feels either impossible or irrelevant. Only the truth of it is left behind. And that truth is not so easy to admit at all.

Part of her wants to ring somebody. Perhaps even Yeri or Sooyoung. After a while she washes and dresses and spends her day drawing by the window. A thin void of dark light runs up against the blinds, a paleness to it. She sketches outlines of characters and she puts names to none of them out of fear this additional layer of completeness will in some way imbue them with the same corporeality as the other members of her dreamworld, Wheein the first in line. As if to do so would be to accidentally populate her world with the members of her own choosing. And if such a thing were possible, what else could be? Or perhaps more importantly, what could not?

One question remains, one that lingers. Is it the dream itself that feels vivid enough to replace her real life? Or is the woman within it, the one that remains so unknown to her?

The answer to this comes in her next dream. She’s in the middle of the street and it’s rush hour. A cool smog hangs. There are cars parked all the way down the intersection in the heaving traffic and people shifting about in the endless crowds that push past her going left and right as she struggles to gain her bearings properly. Everything is moving too fast. She’s awoken here in this street in central Seoul – perhaps it’s Itaewon but she’s unsure – but she remembers it all as if she’s been there all along. It’s twenty minutes on the bus from her work and she’s going for a wander because what else is there to do?

That’s the truth of it. What becomes so hard to fathom is the world outside of this one. If this dream is merely that and not something more then how come it all becomes so recountable in the moment? So easy to retrace. Only this time there is no Irene. Seulgi in this world of illusions stands in the middle of the sidewalk nudged this way and that, gazing out at the street like a vagrant, and soon she’s almost crying because even here the woman she wants so desperately to be back in her life has disappeared. There remains only the vaguest outline of her, the silhouette from her breathing world, a ripple on the watery timeline she inhabits. And the pain of this is so heavy it is almost unbearable.

She stands there for what feels like forever. No longer has the brightness of the day, the glassy glimmer of the lights, the redness of the car taillamps, taken on a look that is fascinating – here it is anything but. Now it feels nauseating, like something from a nightmare. Nothing is right and nothing feels it. It’s insidious, asive. It feels all wrong. Up is almost assuredly not up. Seulgi puts her hand in her pocket. The two dice are there, ruby-red and finished in white, the same as before. She looks both ways up and down the street and then she heads south, a lone agony among this crowd of faces. Her heart is already racing. She doesn’t know where she’s going or why, only that she must move. Her feet are already taking her. The anxiety is back, returned from a different world where it should have stayed, come with a terrible price. She wants so badly for what she cannot truly explain – the freedom of calmness. Of knowing where you are and where you want to be. Yearns for it. And now even here is no sanctuary at all.

She walks until her legs cannot carry her anymore. There is a park some ninety minutes south and she passes through into the quietude between the shade of acacia trees and finds the nearest unoccupied bench and sits with her head in her hands trying to calm her breath to no avail. Please, she says. Please. But nothing comes to her. This world might as well be no different at all. She takes out the dice and cups them tight in her hand. Something about them feels strange and so she rolls them to a double six.

She rolls them again. Double six. Then she picks them up and ensures they’re not double six in her hand and rolls them onto the bench. A gentle clattering as they go rolling and land on double six. She throws them three more times. Then twenty more, a manic desperation to each throw. Every time without fail they land on double six. It’s now she begins to panic. She rolls them again. Then another time. She runs a hand through her hair and closes her eyes and counts to ten. Solace has never come easy to Seulgi and she doesn’t expect it to but it’s a minor relief, a temporary balm. She stands up and looks about and crouches by the side of the path and rolls them across the tarmac.

It’s double six. She sits there on the bench for a while, a lonely outcast in a world that is falling apart. She isn’t crying but she is close. After a while she lies down and closes her eyes and tries to sleep and it’s now she begins to cry, because the outcome is more uncertain than ever. Does sleeping in this world bring her back to the real one? Or will she be thrown further into some bastardised amalgamation of worlds? Do these things only exist in her dreams? The parallels are not so obvious and the lines between reality and fiction blurred a long time ago. She lies there for what feels like hours. No fatigue comes to her. When she sleeps it is sudden and unexpected and she never feels herself slip into it at all.

It is a week of misery.

What remains notable about this is how it differs from the rest of her life. Gone is the emptiness, the apathy at all things. In its place is a fever she has not felt before, not in love or sickness or pain. She wanders through her true world as if she were no more than a ghost, a sick and pale phantom from some other plane. Work comes and goes. Even Yeri has resigned herself to the understanding that Seulgi is quiet and lonesome and would rather remain to herself. She’s as friendly as ever, and part of Seulgi thinks perhaps it’s in Yeri’s very nature to be so, to dedicate a significant portion of her day to befriending everybody possible. But there’s a gentleness to the way she smiles at Seulgi that implies she sympathises with the loneliness that has ruined so much of Seulgi’s life.

‘Okay,’ Seulgi says, eyes elsewhere, leaning on the side of her chair. ‘Okay, yes. Yes, I understand. Yes, I— I mean, sorry, Mr Kim. Sorry about that. Yes, I will. Thank you. Thank you very much. Apologies for wasting your time today. Thank you. Bye now. Bye.’

She punches the centre console button and sighs. Yeri is already there, leaning a slight forward in her chair, brows furrowed in worry. She asks softly, ‘Are you okay?’

‘What? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Got a little distracted.’

‘You’ve been looking a bit out of it this past week or so.’

‘I know. Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise to me.’

‘Yeah.’

Yeri looks at her again. The worry in her eyes is such that Seulgi feels a pang of guilt for not being able to confess to her, but what would she say? What part of it makes sense? ‘Sorry,’ she mumbles again.

‘What did I say about not saying sorry?’

‘Right.’

‘But seriously, if you wanna talk, I’m here. I know this might sound, like…I dunno, too forward or something? Because we’ve only known each other for, what? A couple weeks? A month? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t even know how time works. Just seems to do its own thing, y’know?’

‘Yeah. I know. Believe me, I know.’

‘But if you ever wanna talk, I’ll listen. Might not be the best at giving advice, but I’ll listen.’

‘Thanks,’ Seulgi says. But it comes out as barely anything at all. And by the time she’s gone home at six in the evening she hasn’t said another word to Yeri all day. Her apartment has that same coldness to it, as if she’s a stranger in her home. She sits there looking at her drawings. The one with the pink jacket. Thinking: I don’t even want to dream anymore. I don’t know what I want.

She decides on a course of action. Seungwan is outside her door before she’s even had time to sit and collect herself. The smile on her face is one of worry, same as Yeri, same as Seulgi’s seen many times before. ‘What’s up?’ she says.

‘I just wanted to chill and talk.’

‘Sure.’

‘You’re not busy, are you?’

‘I’d be here even if I were,’ Seungwan says, and it’s only half a joke. She sits and makes small talk and it’s a signal for Seulgi to speak when she’s ready. Nothing to urge her or force her if she’s doesn’t want to because Seungwan has never been like that. Seulgi sits there with her hands in her lap and her legs crossed. It’s a long time before she musters up the courage to speak. And when she does it’s to say, ‘I think I’m finally losing my mind.’

‘What? Why?’

‘It’s a long story. Actually, it’s not, but I don’t know how to say it.’

‘Well,’ says Seungwan, and it’s an invitation for her to speak.

Seulgi sits on it a moment. Then she says, ‘You know what I was talking about the other week? The dreaming?’

‘The lucid dreaming.’

‘Yeah.’

Seungwan nods.

‘It’s getting worse. I’m starting to actually believe they’re the real world when I’m in them. Or not really, but almost. I can’t really describe it. It’s like nothing that’s ever happened before. Almost like virtual reality. Everything in these dreams feel so real to me. Like I’m actually in another world or something. And then I wake up and it’s just…worse. So much worse.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I wish I could but I can’t. And it’s been eating away at me for a while now. I don’t know what to do about it.’

‘Am I in these dreams?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says, and it takes her a moment to process this. The sudden realisation is that she hasn’t much thought about Seungwan or the real life in her dreams at all and perhaps there’s a reason for that. She thinks about the dice as well. ‘I’ve been doing some reading,’ she says. ‘About ways people use dreaming as an escape from reality. Mostly it manifests itself in people who have some sort of severe emotional or psychological trauma in their real life that they try and block out. Apparently in case studies it’s been seen as a way to bring about lucid dreaming in test subjects. Dreams that feel as real as, well, the real thing. Occasionally it’s been documented in patients with schizophrenia as well. It goes back thousands of years. The ancients had a fascination with dreaming. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius discussed the feeling of dreams and how they pertain to the real world. There were philosophers in the early Middle Ages that equated particularly intense dreams with astral planes, or other planes of existence entirely, and spoke of being able to connect with spirits in these worlds of dreams.’

‘Wow,’ Seungwan says. ‘You really have been doing your reading.’

Seulgi can only shrug. ‘It’s really freaking me out. Like, really. I feel like I’m slowly slipping into living my dreams.’

‘Well. I don’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know that was what was affecting you.’

‘Because I never said anything. How could I?’

Seungwan nods in understanding. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she says.

‘About what?’

‘Maybe it’s to do with trauma in your life.’

‘I don’t—’

‘Maybe you do.’

‘What?’

‘I mean, maybe you do have trauma. Most people – for whatever reason – seem to equate “trauma” to some particularly terrible event in your life. Abuse, violence, sudden loss of family or loved ones. Something like that. But trauma can be a subtle, gradual thing. Trauma can be built up over time, block by block. Missing your friends, regretting having not done something, failing a job interview. Little things that are only moments of temporary sadness on their own, but amount to something much greater when together. Maybe it’s like that. You’ve always been so open with me about how much you struggle with depression. And with your anxiety in particular.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, maybe it’s partly that. Maybe it’s just the whole weight of years of that taking its toll on you. Maybe you’re living out a happier life for yourself in your dreams. Or maybe it is an astral plane. Maybe Marcus Aurelius was right. Who knows.’

‘What do I do, then?’

Seungwan smiles softly, a smile with her eyes closed. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Sorry. You’ve always told me the worst thing I could do for you was to dictate your life. To try and give you answers. “Just get better,” or, “You need some exercise,” or, “Good food will do the trick.” “Just make more friends.” “Do this, do that.” You’ve always told me to stay away from that.’

‘Yeah. For good reason.’

‘Well. This doesn’t seem too dissimilar to me.’

‘I guess not,’ Seulgi says, heart dropping. She looks at Seungwan again and manages a faint and simple smile. ‘Thank you,’ she mutters. ‘For listening to me. And for not calling me crazy, even when I might actually – literally – be going crazy.’

‘Any time. I think we’re all a tad crazy from time to time. I think it helps us. Helps keep the sane in perspective. Gives us something to ground ourselves against.’

‘I think maybe you’re right.’

‘I’d like to think so,’ Seungwan says, almost wistfully. And it’s with that Seulgi understands the sincere portion of their conversation has come to an end. The rest is lighter, passing from topic to topic with ease – the weather, Seulgi’s new job, Seungwan’s love life – but with no less importance. The triviality of it is itself important, to both of them. When she leaves it’s almost midnight. Seulgi dwells in her solitude. She takes out her old books full of drawings and flicks through them and sets them back in the box under her desk again. And there they should stay. The last thing she does before falling asleep is lie there and take a look at her room. The blue of her curtains, blue of her bedsheets. The dice on her bedside table. There in the cold atavistic dark she almost breaks into tears. And it’s a long time before sleep comes to her at all.

She wakes in a warm knife sunlight from the far window and rolls over and winces at the intrusion and drifts off to sleep again. When she opens her eyes once more it’s to the sound of her phone humming on the bedside table beside the dice. Outside the midmorning traffic beckons her to action. For a while Seulgi sits there with a smile. Mornings like this are hard to come by nowadays. Where she wakes up and there exists no looming dread or upheaval hanging over her like the sword of Damocles. Just the light outside, the steady hum of cars as they pass on by. Her phone buzzes again. She rolls over and stretches out in bed, a rarity for her, hand roaming over the red bedsheets. It goes ten thirty, ten forty-five. The narrow shaft of morning light runs over the red curtains like fire.

The dice are right next to her phone on the table. She leans over and grabs her phone and lies back down and unlocks the screen to eight new messages from Irene. The first five asking where she is. The sixth, ten minutes later, asking again. The seventh:

Are you still in bed???

The eight and latest:

Nvm I’ll come to your place 😊

Seulgi just looks at it. As if her phone itself might contain something volatile and violent to the touch, a ticking timebomb in her hands. She’s supposed to meet Irene for coffee because she’s got the day off work. And yet here she is. She throws the covers off and stumbles into the bathroom and into the shower without reading her phone again. It’s almost midday when she’s ready to leave. The dice sat there on her bedside table beckon her to pick them up and for the first time in her life she ignores the worst part of her brain and instead grabs her coat and locks the door behind her as she eaves.

Irene is in the lobby when she goes down. She’s stood at reception looking down at her phone and Seulgi can’t help but smile. And when Irene looks up at her she smiles back, a glimmer of mock anger on her perfect face. ‘What time do you call this?’ she asks.

‘Sorry.’

‘Slept in?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘I’ve been stood here, like, ten minutes.’

‘Why didn’t you come up?’

‘I don’t know what you number your apartment is,’ Irene says. ‘You never told me. Only told me it was this building.’

‘You should’ve text.’

Irene shrugs, a shyness to her. ‘I didn’t want to seem too much like I was fussing,’ she says.

‘Really now.’

‘I thought maybe I sounded a bit too, you know…’

‘Bossy?’

‘I guess.’

‘Well.’

‘You wanna grab coffee now? Or we could go for a walk or something. I don’t mind. Got the day off.’

‘Me too.’

‘I know. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says. As if reminding herself of this. As if forcing herself to do so, so that perhaps it might hold a moment’s more truth, might prolong it further. If only a day, an hour, ten minutes. It’s all slipping away and she knows it and the worst part is how little of this she truly does know. It could vanish at the blink of an eye. Her world returned to nothing. Her happiness gone with it. The emptiness of her real world, but if that is her real world and this is not then why does it feel so real? So tangible. Everything is the same, is it not? The dice, her red bedsheets, red curtains. The same apartment. She can reach out and touch it. Touch the reception desk and the potted plant sat there and the doorframe at the front of the building. Move aside and touch the old red fabric of the couch cushions by the rear wall. Crouch down and touch the cold linoleum beneath her feet. Stand straight again and put out her hand and touch Irene’s cheek, soft and warm and right and so very real, so real because it has to be. Because there is no other alternative Seulgi can bear to entertain.

She manages another smile. This one is brighter, fuller, more real. There’s no tinge of sadness hidden beneath it. No façade or mask. Here and now exists with her and Irene and that’s all that matters.

‘After you,’ she says, and resigns herself to saying no more.