Fire! The smell of fire is choking. Yeji leaps out of bed as if coiled like a spring. She runs to the window, its frame haloed in red, and looks out the window only to see a hellscape

“MOM! DAD! THERE’S FIRE EVERYWHERE!” she yells out at the top of her voice. Yeji doesn’t get a response so she runs through the house only to find nobody. She continues to yell for her parents and sister but there’s only the crackling sound of fire from outside. She wonders if they took shelter in the basement so she checks there. There’s nothing and nobody about. Scared out of her mind she tries to find answers outside. Yeji bursts through the front door, all the while yelling for anyone. Yeji opens her eyes once outside only to find darkness. The smell of a fire lingers but it’s not overpowering like it was inside. Yeji feels like she just came out the front door but she finds herself a fair distance away. It is eerily quiet. The town she lives in is quite small but there is always the sound of life around her. As she makes her way back home, Yeji notices she is stark which obviously shocks her, as she picks up pace she hears a sound like cracking behind her, as if the world is crashing on her

“MOOOOM!” she yells, which actually scares her awake. She looks at her alarm clock which reads “3:27 AM”. She wants to curse out loud but that would wake up her Ryujin, roommate. Yeji sits upright on her bed shrugging off the blanket as she wakes in a sweat, and collects her thoughts

‘what the hell kind of cruel bad dream was that?’ she thinks to herself. As she vows to stay awake the rest of the night, she finds herself sobbing, trying to make sense of it all

“Yeji unnie, you ok?” croaks a tired Ryujin, woken up by Yeji. This alerts Yeji a bit, still on edge from the dream

“I’m fine Ryujin. Bad dream. Go back to sleep~”

“okay~hnnn” Ryujin falls back to sleep in an instant. At first Yeji takes herself to the lounge room, so she doesn’t disturb anyone. After a while she gets a small pudding from the fridge, and watches some really boring television with the volume down low. The background noise of the tv is a little soothing for her. At about 5am she falls asleep on the sofa, with the tv still on. While she does fall into deep sleep there is no further bad dream

Ryujin wakes to her phone alarm at 6.30am, only to find her roommate isn’t there. Ryujin goes to the bathroom, then looks for her, and finds her slumped over, her loose hair covering her face. Ryujin turns off the tv and shakes Yeji awake

“Unnie? Yeji unnie? Yah, unnie wake up~” but Yeji is still deep asleep. Leaning in further she repeats herself closer to Yeji’s ears, and suddenly Yeji’s body flails upright, and her right arm backhand hitting Ryujin in the face, her bracelet punching right near her eye. Simultaneously, Yeji lets out an a