Hiraeth,
a homesickness
for a home, you can't return to
or that never was.

/2/ Hiraeth
[ Y E R I N ]

Hayoung and I finished the revisions fast as we expected so we got to bed early. But I was up all night, just laying down on my bed. I couldn't sleep because of that blurry photo. It keeps bothering me. Whenever I feel like I am falling asleep, my dreams will suddenly come back. The girl was there again. I know it's all a dream, but every time I wake up it seems like I'm out of breath and I feel like crying, especially when she says to wait for her. I'm longing for a girl I never met.

"Did you stay up all night with Hayoung? You look sleep-deprived." My office mate points out while having our lunch break.

Do I really look tired? I even wear my reading glasses today to hide my swollen eyes. I guess it's really obvious.

"Nope. We finished the proposal early. I don't know what happened to Yerin. She looks out of her mind..." Hayoung continues to eat as she mocks me.

"Hey! I'm not..."

Do they think I'm losing my mind? I looked at them as I pouted my lips. I'm not that sleepy. Or maybe I am, I'm just afraid that I will completely lose my mind when I sleep.

"Guys, what does it mean again when your dream keeps on repeating?" I asked. I'm too desperate now to have a peaceful sleep.

"Maybe the dream has a big significance in your life? Why? What did you see?" Lulu asks, he looks up to me. He's fond of science stuff, maybe he's thinking of a scientific explanation. He always does that in our conversations since high school.

"I'm in a familiar place, the garden in front of our building. Then there's a girl in my dreams. I can see her face clearly there but I couldn't remember it when I woke up." I can see on their eyes that they are not buying my story. Do I look like I'm making up pieces of stuff?

"Oh my god! Maybe that's your soul mate! It means that you already saw the one!" Mina yelped in glee on her own idea.

Soul mate? Really? What if the girl was part of my past life? Or she's been reincarnated. No. I'm thinking too much. My life is not a Korean drama.

"I don't remember her actually. I don't know her." I opposed Mina's idea.

I often see the girl and I facing each other in my dreams. She's telling me something, but there's no voice. The only thing I could hear was her saying to wait for her. And I'll wake up after that, the scene just always keeps on repeating.

"Yes! You may have seen her already or you met her somewhere you don't remember. According to our psychology, our brains cannot formulate a human face. So the faces we see in our dreams, are the persons we saw already." Lulu is smiling at me while he's explaining. But I couldn't find the connection to what he's saying. I'm too lazy to think.

Honestly, I'm not the kind of person who looks at the faces of people I don't know. It's creepy! And besides, I have poor eyesight. I don't usually wear my prescribed glasses outside. That's why all the faces of people I met in my everyday life are blurry. Oh well, I'm wearing lenses today. But I swear! I haven't seen the girl yet.

"Wow! As usual. Lulu the nerd strikes again!" Hayoung teases, and they laugh at Lulu's reactions.

Maybe if I'm in my right mind, I will bicker with them too. But my mind is too occupied for silly things. Why do I keep thinking about that girl again?

My officemates continued teasing and laughing at each other. I can't help but listen to their nonstop playfulness.

"Lulu always believed in time travelling! He's obsessed with those kinds of stuff," I heard Mina's remarks on Lulu.

"Hey! Time travelling is really true! Yerin already tried it. Right, Yerin?" I came back to my senses when Lulu nudged me.

That's Lulu, my geek office mate, and friend. Like Hayoung, he's also my classmate from high school, and luckily we met again after several years in the publishing house. He was my seatmate, he would always tell me weird and impossible things.

He's insisting that I had been able to time travel when I used the watch he had given. Lulu told me back then to put the time and date I wanted to see and I would be in that time. We're still young and naive, so I believed that he continued Einstein's time travel experiment. But of course, it was all a joke time, nothing happened. Lulu is just a scientist wannabe and my dumb self believed in him.

"Shut up, Lulu!" I told this dork.

"Just told them already! You're even the first one who tried my invention. Think about it, maybe the girl you always see in your dreams is a girl you met when you time travelled."

Even though I'm confused and lost discovering who's the girl, I will not bite Lulu's ideas about time travel. Think about it? Huh! If I really go back in time, how come I can't I remember it?

_

"Yes!" Mina stretched out her arms in the air. Work hours are already done and we're already preparing to go home. Well, except me, I still need to go back to the garden. Again.

I told Hayoung I won't be able to go home with her. I walk away from my office mates after bidding them goodbye.

"How are you, Yerin? Long time no see!" I was surprised when a man greeted me. I looked at him, confused.

He's wearing white from head to toe. He does not look old, he looks... just fine. But seriously? Who is this man?

"I'm fine... Ah, excuse me, who are you?" Maybe I just forgot and I really know him. He looks familiar anyways.  

I saw his little smirk,  "I see. I do not have to worry. My job is clean." Clean? Is he a janitor? But really, what does he say again? This man is weird.

"I'm sorry. But who are you? How did you know my name?" The man smiled at me widely. Shocks. Is he a freak? Kidnapper who wants to sell my organs? Gangster? A mafia?! Wait, as I remember, I didn't do anything wrong.

"I know. You may not know me, but I know you. And I was right. Until now, you still have the desire to come back where everything started." What started? What desire? Where will I come back?

"What do you mean?"

I do not know, but my curiosity is kicking. It seems like he knows something I do not know. The aura he's radiating is not ordinary. Am I imagining things?

"I've been watching you for a long time. I thought I already deleted your desire to come back. I was wrong."

"I don't understand. What desire are you saying?"

"The past. You want to time travel again, right?"