“Come on in, Ms. Eunbi.”

The door to the clinic opens, and as she hears her own name repeated by that charming voice, Jung Eunbi hesitates for a moment, before entering at last.

Once she was inside the consultation room, the doctor closes the door behind her. It did not feel like a doctor’s clinic. If anything, it more closely resembled a reception room for guests, filled with multiple potted plants that Eunbi couldn’t name, all giving off a refreshing scent. There was a comfortable-looking lounge chair for patients, and only the desk with its computer and documents littered all over somewhat resembling a doctor’s work area.

For some reason, just being in this space was already helping her to destress.

At the doctor’s instruction, Eunbi settles into the patient’s chair, watching quietly as the doctor also settles into her own seat. The nametag spelling out ‘Choi Yuna’ grabs her attention almost instantly, yet seemed so natural at the same time.

Yuna smiles at Eunbi as she picks up her notepad.

“Well then, is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Yu--um, I mean, doctor...that is uh…”

Eunbi didn’t even understand why she was stuttering so hard. Even though Yuna was currently present as a doctor, they were still already acquainted before this. Why would she feel so anxious talking to a friend like this? It’s not like she was going on a date or anything.

This was odd. Maybe it was just because she was seeing Yuna in a doctor’s coat for the first time? After all, in all their previous meetups, she had only seen Yuna in off-work hours and the other woman had always been dressed casually then. She hadn’t been expecting her to look this good in a doctor’s white coat…

“You don’t have to call me doctor, you know. Just Yuna will do.” The smile on Yuna’s face never dimmed for even a second. “So why did you come all the way to the clinic? We could have just talked about it when we hang out.”

“Um, well...this is kind of your job…” Eunbi scratches at her cheek awkwardly. “If we just chatted normally it feels sort of...disrespectful to your profession?”

“You do know that we’re friends right? That’s hardly a problem.”

“Eh, just feels like I should be paying you for this.” Eunbi leans back in her chair, feeling herself return somewhat to normal after a bit of chitchat. She grins at Yuna.

“Well since I’m paying for this anyway, you should figure out a way to help me feel better.”

“Gotcha~” Yuna replies easily, twirling her pen in her hand. “Well Ms Jung, what problem would you like me to assist you with today?”

“I’ve been losing sleep,” Eunbi pouts, thinking. “I don’t feel like anything’s been really different about my life lately, but when I go to bed at my usual bedtime, it takes me a few hours of tossing and turning before I even feel a little sleepy. And even when I do fall asleep, I get startled awake really easily, and then I’m back to not being able to sleep…”

“Sounds like your typical insomnia…” Yuna makes a few notes. “Are you absolutely sure there have been no changes in your life recently? Like for example, arguing with anyone, or getting close to anyone etc…”

“Hmm…” Eunbi thinks about it for a moment. “Well, there’s you?”

“Me?”

“I don’t think we used to talk quite as much as we do now, right?”

“Well that’s because we just happened to find something in common between us,” Yuna frowns thoughtfully. “How would I have known you liked to sing if I hadn’t attended that class reunion that time?”

“ I didn’t know you liked to sing either,” Eunbi retorts with a pout.

“Oh never mind that. Anything else other than this?”

“Um...I can’t think of anything…” Eunbi’s voice trails off as her eyelids flutter close. “Yuna...are these plants supposed to make me feel sleepy...I suddenly really wanna sleep…”

“Are you seriously spending money to sleep here?” Yuna shakes her head in exasperated amusement. Although it really wasn’t a problem for Eunbi to sleep as long as she liked provided there were no other appointments after her, but she did come here for treatment, and now she was also going to fall asleep as if this was her own home. This just wouldn’t do.

An idea came suddenly to mind, but her patient had already fallen asleep. Even though it was probably a little cruel to someone suffering from insomnia, Yuna walked over to Eunbi’s side, clapping her hands loudly next to her ear.

“Wahh!!”

Jung Eunbi springs straight up from the chair, the sleep she had so craved fleeing her in an instant. The author of her misfortune was still smiling by her side, and Eunbi immediately smacks her in retaliation.

“Choi Yuna!” The smack might have been light, but her voice certainly wasn’t. “Do you know how hard it is for me to fall asleep!? How dare you shake me out of it!”

“Ah-ah, but I didn’t lay a finger on you.” Yuna grinned. “You can take whatever plant it was that helped you sleep later, but honestly that only solves the symptoms. We really ought to get to the root of your problem.”

“So?” Eunbi still sounded visibly annoyed.

“Hypnotherapy.” Yuna removes a little pendulum from her pocket. “I believe your subconscious should know better about what’s going on.”

At the sight of the pendulum Eunbi’s previous annoyance vanishes, replaced with avid curiosity as she looks between it and Yuna. “Wow, are you going to hypnotize me? Wait, I can’t even sleep, how are you going to do that?”

“Hypnotherapy and REM sleep are two different things, it’ll work even if you’re insomniac.” Yuna twirls the pendulum, letting the momentum swing it back into her palm. “So, wanna try?”

“Sure! I always wanted to know what it’s like to be hypnotized!” Eunbi agreed without even thinking, then hesitates for a second before peering suspiciously at Yuna.

“You wouldn’t take the opportunity to ask me anything weird right?”

“I’m a licensed practitioner.” Yuna scowls. “And do I look like someone who would do that?”

“Alright alright, yeah you aren’t the type.” Eunbi lies back down in her chair. “I’m ready then.”

Yuna was going to add something else, but after seeing the look of anticipation on Eunbi’s face, decides against it. Moving to a different spot to face her patient, Yuna drops the pendulum before Eunbi’s face, letting it sway gently before her.

It might be cliched, but it was also effective.

“Just look at the pendant, don’t think about anything else.” Yuna keeps her voice low, speaking slowly and steadily to guide her patient into the right state.

“Look...pendant…” Eunbi mumbles after her, her conscious state clearly succumbing slowly to the hypnosis. 

“That’s right, your heartbeat is in time with the pendant, it is a part of you...let yourself go, and let it inside you…” Yuna coaxes her gently, watching Eunbi’s reactions closely.

Honestly, with how cooperative Eunbi was being right now, Yuna had a feeling that she could just guide her into the right state with a few words even without the pendant’s help. But if the pendant makes the other girl feel better, she might as well play along with it.

“And now, imagine you’ve entered a completely different space within the pendant. What do you see?”

The soft blue light reflected off the pendant shifts slowly in Eunbi’s eyes, painting a wholly different picture from the room she was in.

“...the sea. I think I’m at a beach?”

“And what sort of beach is it?”

A voice drifts towards her, as if from a very distant place. Eunbi relaxes on her personal beach, trying to experience everything it was telling her.

“Mm...the sand feels really soft, and there’s a hint of salt on the breeze. The beach is really wide and clean and...ah, I think it’s sunset now.”

It all felt very mysterious to her. On one hand, it was as if she were walking down the beach herself, but at the same time, she was also watching herself walk down the same beach. The setting sun draws long shadows on her lone figure in the sand, and somehow, it looked a little lonely.

“Try walking forward. Is there any place different on the beach?”

And so she did that, but it seemed like the shoreline was endless. 

“No. This place is huge. I don’t see anything else except the sea and the sand.”

”What about the setting sun?”

Eunbi looks toward the horizon as instructed, and the luminous disk had sunk even lower in the meantime, the fiery glow it lit the sea with dimming as it dipped further out of sight.

“Um, it’s going to set soon.”

As she turns back towards the endless shoreline before her, she suddenly notices a distant figure walking towards her.

“Ah, I think someone’s walking over.”

“What sort of person?”

“Umm…” Eunbi walks forward as well, eager to find out how the other person looked like. After a not-inconsiderable distance, she finally sees the face she was trying to identify.

“It’s Yuna.”

Jung Eunbi felt like she was seeing everything through a third person view right now.

The two of them were shoulder to shoulder on the soft sand of the beach, close yet not entirely pressed up against each other, but enough to feel the heat off the other’s skin. The sea breeze was gentle as it caressed their faces, forming a peculiar harmony with the curling waves splashing to shore. Even though their individual shadows were two parallel lines stretching out and away from them, perfectly balanced and harmonious, something in her wanted to rush forward and break that symmetry.

“So, what are the two of you doing?”

For some reason, the distant voice seemed less certain that it did before. 

“Nothing much, just watching the sunset.” Eunbi replies honestly. “I think it won’t be more than a couple of minutes before it sets entirely.”

Eunbi felt as if she could see the seconds tick by, swallowed into the dark mouth of the sea. With it, the temperature dipped as well, chilling her to the skin.

“Well, is there anything you would like to do now then?”

“I…”

As she watched her doppleganger, Eunbi felt as if she were going through the same motions she was observing.

“I lean on Yuna’s shoulder. She’s warm…”

“She notices me doing so, and then…”

“She kisses me.”

The sound of the pendant hitting the floor jolts Eunbi out of her trance, and it was then that she realizes she never left the room all this time.

She still felt groggy, as if she had been out of it for a very long time. So this was what it feels like to be hypnotized?

Still enveloped in the strange experience she just had, it takes Eunbi quite a while before noticing that Yuna was still seated right before her, not moving an inch and blushing bright red.

Which of course only served to remind her exactly what she had seen during her trance, and Eunbi felt her cheeks burn in response.

“Umm, I uh…” Eunbi wanted to explain, but even she could not find a suitable explanation for what she had experienced, and her lips move soundlessly for a bit before she gives up.

“Uh...well…” Yuna finally bends over to retrieve her fallen pendant, shoving it back into her pocket before rising to her feet. Her eyes are evasive as she replies.

“You should probably come by again tomorrow, Eunbi...if you’re worried about not being able to sleep, I’ll give you some sleeping meds first and uh…”

Yuna goes to her desk and pulls out a box of sleeping pills, shoving it nervously at a baffled Eunbi. Her instructions were pretty stuttered, and she barely makes it through before repeating herself more clearly.

“You can just return this to me tomorrow...no need to make an appointment...just come in directly.” She looks at her feet. “I guess we’re done for today…”

“O-okay…” Eunbi nods numbly, forgetting even to thank Yuna before she stumbles out of the clinic.

Jung Eunbi’s condition was very simple, actually.

All she really had was a crush but she didn’t realize it. Or to be more specific, she may have had an inkling of it, but had suppressed it all this time, resulting in her not being aware of her own feelings. The stress from this suppression had only finally reared its head recently by manifesting as insomnia.

From what the hypnotized patient describes during their trance, a trained hypnotherapist could gather the information they needed and interpret their client’s needs. As it turned out, Eunbi wasn’t a person with very complicated thoughts to begin with, and everything she described was very grounded and realistic, making it all too easy to read. The fact that she was even able to simply tell that the person she liked in her trance was Yuna says it all.

When she got to this point, Yuna’s pen pauses in the middle of her report, an uncontrollable blush rising up her cheeks again. Fortunately, she has had time to calm down after the initial shock of the revelation, and was now analyzing what it really meant.

There was something she didn’t quite understand, really.

Even though the patient was in a hypnotic trance, it didn’t mean that the hypnotherapist could simply do as they wished to influence the hypnotized patient. In the end, everything the patient chose to describe during their trance was still under their own control, and Eunbi could just have easily chosen not to say who it was she had seen in her trance. 

Yuna couldn’t understand why Eunbi would just blurt it out like that. She turned it over in her head several times, and at the end, there seemed to be only one conclusion.

When she got to that, Yuna pursed her lips, thinking.

It was also then that a knock sounded at her door.

“Come in.”

The wooden door creaks open slowly at an acute angle, a pair of eyes peeking cautiously from its edge first, before the rest of her shuffles in awkwardly, closing the door behind her.

“Lock it.”

“Hm? Ah...okay…” Eunbi startles for a second, then does as instructed.

After Eunbi settles into the lounge chair, Yuna finally rises, going around her cluttered desk and resting her weight against it as she studies her patient.

“Did you sleep well last night?”

“Mm, not really. Look at this.” Eunbi indicates the dark eyebags that even makeup couldn’t fully erase. “Still took me a long time after the pills before I could sleep.”

“I understand.” Yuna nods. “Actually, after yesterday’s session I should have explained to you what everything you saw in your trance meant...I’m sorry to trouble you to come here again.”

“I-it’s fine...I was a little shocked myself…” At the memory of that, Eunbi flushes again. “So uh...why did I see that then?”

Yuna turns to retrieve her notes. “When you mentioned the beach and how there was nothing all around there, it means that you have always had an innocent mindset. Most things don’t trouble you, if at all.”

“Is that so…”

“But with the sunset you mentioned, that event usually signifies the end of a day, which usually means that there’s something you feel that you had to do before it was too late. And then I appeared in there, and uh…”

Yuna pats at her flushed cheeks, trying to damp down on her embarrassment. All the trial speeches she had tried earlier had definitely gone down the drain, and at this, she sighs.

Clearly she was either completely incompetent as a hypnotherapist, or she was no longer qualified to be Eunbi’s attending doctor.

“...can I just jump straight to the conclusion?”

“Huh? Oh, er…okay…” At the thought of what Yuna was clearly trying to skip, Eunbi realizes she doesn’t really feel up to reliving the experience again either.

Yuna paces up to the lounge chair, leaning down to face Eunbi at close range.

“You like me, and you wanted to confess, but you didn’t know how. That’s why you buried those feelings, but that only caused you a lot of stress, which is why you can’t sleep.”

Jung Eunbi suddenly felt that the soothing fragrance of all the potted plants did absolutely jack to help her relax right now.

“To solve your problem, the best way is to tackle the issue at its cause.”

Eunbi felt like her heart was at right now.

Indeed, she had always sort of known how she felt, but she had been trying to push it away, trying to convince herself that she was only just really good friends with Yuna, but that hadn’t really worked out all that well, had it?

And under that hypnotic trance yesterday, all her excuses had been shredded as her subconscious exposed her to herself. To make things worse, Yuna now knew as well.

What was she going to do now?

“Yuna…”

Yuna’s face was even closer to hers than it had been yesterday from the hypnosis, and Eunbi suddenly felt flustered to the verge of tears, uncertain of where to go from here.

What if Yuna rejects her?

“Eunbi.”

Yuna lowers her head for a second, before raising her eyes back up to meet Eunbi’s. 

“If we want to tackle this from its root cause, the easiest way is for me to like you back, right?”

Without giving Eunbi a chance to react, Yuna leans in quickly, giving her a quick peck on the lips.

“...good thing I actually do like you as well.”

Yuna straightens up after this, escaping back to her desk as she eyes a stunned Eunbi with an awkward, yet shy grin.

“So that’s your problem solved~ Turns out the best medicine for you was myself all along.”