Shortly after 8 o’clock, I bring coffee to the room. Sowon is still asleep; she’s lying prone, hugging the pillow with both arms. The sheets subtly uncover her torso which makes her back visible. I leave the coffee on the drawer and I approach her slowly. I touch her shoulders. She starts to move, perceiving my presence. I kiss her ear, pulling slightly her earlobe. She begins to wake up with a cute laugh.  

─Good morning, honey─ I take my arms around her neck. She turns to meet my eyes and kisses my forehead lovingly. 

─Good morning, Eunbi─ she my hair. I pecked her lips. She looked at my eyes saying nothing, for words are unnecessary to express herself. I smiled. She draws her attention to the hot coffee cup on the drawer. I kiss her again, but she manages to loosen herself. 

─You have overtaken my morning routine─ She sits and sorbs coffee. I sit next to her and steal her cup to drink from it. 

─Hey! Here’s you cup! - She pretends to be annoyed. I joke about the situation while taking my real cup. I blow a bit to put the spoon in and whirl the liquid around. 

Sowon follows my actions. We drink at the same time quietly. She looks at me with her playful eyebrows up. I just foolishly smile.   

Next to her, silences are not uncomfortable, nor do they feel empty. 

Next to her, time does not pass. 

─Have you ever had a recurring dream?─ Eunbi suddenly asked. Her office mate, Jeon Jungkook was bewildered by the question since he was focused on typing the reports of the day.   

─Eh?─ Jungkook asked, baffled. 

─Have you ever had a recurring dream, over and over again? A constant dream, one that you can’t get out of your head─ 

Jungkook lifted his eyebrows. His hands weren’t moving. He couldn’t understand why Eunbi was asking that in such an inconvenient moment.   

─Dreams? What are you talking about?

Firstly: Yerin doesn’t exist. Secondly: You risked your health. Thirdly…─she emphasized before she started pronouncing the next sentence. ─It’s just a dream! ‘what the are you doing, Eunbi? 

Dahyun looked at her; she couldn’t believe it. She kept her eyes wide open with her eyebrows arched. Eunbi could tell that Dahyun was furious and worried. 

Eunbi just lowered her head. She was extremely pale, and the bags under her eyes were getting bigger. 

In that instant, Eunbi regretted having told her friend Dahyun, also her private doctor, about her disgrace. Some minutes before, she had thought that she might have provided solutions and given her support by curing the pain she had experienced weeks ago. Dahyun had always been her salvation when her headaches didn’t stop and she treated her case very professionally, which proved that the past accident did not leave any side effects nor lateral damage. For that reason, Eunbi believed that her friend doctor could prescribe a sleeping pill that could make her dream.  

─Listen, Eunbi. You know that you are not okay. It is not pleasing to receive a phone call in the middle of the night and hearing that you fell sick again. Do you have any idea of what could happen if you relapse?. 

In fact, Eunbi made a terrible mistake. While she tried to find a solution to her problems, she found a bigger issue: Dahyun was livid. That was the second time that she asked for her help and the only thing she got was angry looks and a damage to her health. Her stomach was burning terribly. 

The person who first got the idea was her friend, Jungkook. Hours earlier, while they were working in the office, Eunbi could not get the girl with black hair out of her head; the same one who dares to disturb her dreams every night.  

She was frustrated, and not because she has that kind of dreams. The trouble was even worse: Eunbi had not dreamed in an entire week, which was driving her crazy. Her head lost somewhere else and her blank reports led to ask for advice to her loyal friend and colleague, Jungkook, who has unaware of the preoccupations that haunted her and, instead, he was typing in advance all the reports of the week. 

─Have you ever had a recurring dream? ─ Eunbi suddenly asked. 

Jungkook lifted his eyebrows. His hands weren’t moving. He couldn’t understand why Eunbi was asking that in such an inconvenient moment.   

─Dreams? What are you talking about? 

─The dreams you have when you sleep. One that you had had repeatedly. ─Jungkook kept thinking. It wasn’t a question that people would commonly ask, so he couldn’t understand the point of it. 

─Mmm, I think so─ Jungkook answered coldly. Eunbi looked at him saying nothing as a hint for him to continue.   

─It happened during my childhood─ Jungkook went on ─ I remember that in school, some seniors locked me up in a storage room. It was dark and the last thing I heard was their laughter extinguishing in the distance. When the adults found me, I was scared to death and my pants were wet. My mother picked me up that day. When we came home, she suggested me to go sleep and, since that moment, I started to dream. Every night, I dreamed that I was locked in the same storage room. Contrarily to reality, my dream allowed me to escape, which made me think during the day about the different routes and paths I could take in the night. I didn’t want to repeat the exits and I was convinced that eventually I would run out of directions to explore; however, until that day wouldn´t come, I successfully ran away from that abominable place. When there were no more routes to try, I said to myself