A/N: This is being published at 11:42 pm; too tired to care about typos....

She couldn't tell if it was just her imagination or if the air in Incheon was really different from the air in Canada. The safety of her home was so far from here; she was all alone in this big country with nothing but bad memories to accompany her. Elly knew that she was 10 seconds from a panic attack and took that time to drag her Converse across the ground to take her to the nearest wall where she could sag in helplessness. The short puffs of breath that came from between her lips made her chest hurt with how sharp they were.

   When you get there, you may feel overwhelmed. Don't panic. There is nothing for you to fear. You are surrounded by people. You are safe.

  The words of her doctor washed over her mind like a cool wave of water, bringing the heat of her freak out down to a more manageable level.

  Breathe. Count to 10 like I taught you. Inhale, 1...2..3...exhale

  Elly, eyes squeezed shut, hugged her neck pillow even closer to her chest in an attempt to hold herself together on the fringe of the mass of people moving through the crowded arrival gate.

   Inhale, 4...5...6...exhale...

  Her trembling hands lost their chills, the death grip on the softness of her bear pillow relaxing. She imagined that she was laying in her favourite worn out blue chair in Dr. Kim's office, listening to the calming ticking of the metronome he bought just for her with the soothing scent of vanilla incense burning somewhere in the corner of the room.

   Inhale, 7...8...9...exhale...Now say with me, together...

   "10." Her eyes opened to the expanse of space before her.

  The amount of people had decreased, those with loved ones or chauffeurs having already made their way out into the afternoon sunshine over Incheon like normal human beings. Only she was curled up against the wall like a cat trying to escape the tide. Dr. Kim once laughed at her for it; while he apologized right afterward, having even her doctor find her antics ridiculous made her conscious of what other people must have been thinking seeing some freakishly tall, twig of a girl with oily brunette hair piled onto a messy bun on her head in ratty jeans and a worn out white tee attempting to meld with the structure of the airport. It could not have been invoking favourable opinions from the Korean public so with as much nerve as she could muster, Elly crept along the wall, eyes focused on the doors in the distance.

   "Miss Hale? Miss Hale!"

  In the cloud of Korean floating over her head, a shout that almost had to be referring to her speared up like a beacon and drew her eyes across the room to where there were people waiting with signs and hopeful faces as they looked on through the arrival gate. The man she saw moving toward her wasn't much shorter than her—perhaps an inch—and looked every bit like the stereotypical doctor with round rimmed glasses, a dressy shirt paired with a comfortable pair of slacks and an educated air about him that made you want to believe in his opinions.

   "Miss Elyssa Hale?" he inquired, as if he wasn't sure now that he had approached someone with such uncertainty pouring off of her.

   "Yes, that's me. I hope you weren't waiting too long," she went on in a stronger tone when she realized how her voice had trembled slightly at the end her first sentence.

   The good doctor smiled reassuringly. "No. I just arrived about..." his voice drifted off as he checked his watch and he opted abandoned the train of thought entirely.

  'So he had been here forever...' she mused at his abrupt change in subject to the quality of her flight experience. It wasn't her fault that her flight got delayed, but she was sorry that this was how her temporary psychiatrist had to meet her. Dr. Yoo—"Just 'Youngjae' is fine."—didn't seem to mind though, taking the initiative to treat her to a meal before they headed to his office to get introductions and a general first meeting out of the way.

   "When Himchan-hyung asked me to look after a patient of his, I was curious at first," Youngjae explained, wiping ketchup from the corner of his mouth. "I hadn't heard from him in a while. It figures that when he does call that its for a favour. Not that I'm bothered by it," he amended quickly. "He was concerned sending you here alone."

  Elly knew full well how Dr. Kim could be. Sometimes he let her be on first name basis with him , but most times it was, "Please, Miss Hale, let's keep this professional". It was hard to tell when he was joking and when he was not so despite all the help he had given her over the years, it was still difficult for her to be as relaxed with him as she was with Youngjae who was picking a pickle he had missed from his Big Mac and tossing it into the pile the others had been banned to when he had first unwrapped the sandwich.

   He caught her staring and smiled. "Is this weird? I just really don't like pickles. Its something I've been doing since I was a kid."

   "I can tell. But its fine," she replied with a smile of her own, gesturing to the pile of ringed onions on a napkin beside her soda. "I can eat them diced but not like that."

   "I love how you said 'that' like you were absolutely disgusted by the very idea of it being possible for people to consume it in that form."

  His laugh was contagious. Somewhere between here and there, the pins in her hair began to irritated her scalp and the limp monstrosity that was her brown mop was released to flop over her shoulders. The aimless conversation didn't break stride, however; their debate about the difference the preparation of vegetables make to an entire meal was too hot to be disrupted so easily. Youngjae opened her eyes to cooking techniques she would have to try while the ingredients that would have cost her a bit more in Canada were right at her fingertips.

  3 hours flew past them in a blur of English gradually melting into Korean until at the end of their conversation he was addressing her in polite speech.

   "So tell me," Youngjae said at the tail end of another shared bout of laughter, "are you comfortable now?"

   Elly blinked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"

  He gave her time to come to it on her own and sipped his water as if to say I'll wait. She was lounging on the leather couch in his office as if she was on her blue beauty of a chair back home. She had spent the better part of the afternoon at complete peace, following behind a relative stranger who managed to keep her from thinking about what she was trying to avoid even as she appealed to what she loved about the country.

  She stared at Youngjae in awe. He merely shrugged.

   "All you needed was something else to focus on. Now that you've gotten over your initial shock, would you like to get down to business? We have some things to discuss."

  His words should have cut her calmness to shreds, but there wasn't another panic attack in sight. She couldn't even see one happening in the presence of this man. He nodded in encouragement, patiently waiting on her and Elly began seriously considering permanently becoming his patient. With such a person for her to turn to for support, it was appearing more and more likely that this trip wasn't going to be a bust after all.

   "Well, I'm sure that you got my file." She looked down at the smooth surface of the water in her glass. "Dr. Kim thought that it would be good for me to come back to Seoul, visit my old house and try to let go of the fear that had surrounded the very idea of the place. I'm supposed to flooding bad memories with good."

   "And he expected you to do that alone?"

   "I'm guessing that's where you come in."

   Youngjae tiled his head and looked over her form as if considering her. "Maybe. What about that little boy?" He leaned back in his seat. "Have you had any more dreams about him?"

   The dream from the plane came back to her mind, but she shook her head. " Nothing I haven't seen before. Does that matter?"

   He nodded without hesitation. " If you had any more dreams about him, like he was trying put you off from coming here, it would've meant that you have deeper seated issues than I thought. The fact that you didn't means that your mind is at least open to overcoming this hurdle in your life." When he said it like that, Elly almost felt motivated. "In the face of that, I have no choice but to do my best to help you. However," Youngjae added with his serious gaze boring into hers, "I need you to know that this will not be easy. You will struggle, you will have issues, you will get caught up in memories and webs of pain from your past. My methods are different from those of Himchan-hyung and my skills differ as well--if necessary I can use hypnosis to help you through the rough spots."

   "Hypnosis," she inquired skeptically. "Does it really work?"

  The doctor's eyebrow arched gently and Elly figured that she could have worded that better. But he didn't call her on it. Aside from his quirked brow, Youngjae showed no other reaction.

   "Yes, it does." He shifted in his seat. "Would you like to try it right now?" At his companion's look of surprise he smiled. "I read that you can't even remember the boy from your dreams clearly. Do you want me to help you unlock those memories?"

  Did she? It wasn't as if she hadn't thought about it. One of her fears had been coming to Seoul just to meet the boy, now aged into an adult like her and being completely oblivious to who he was, to be possibly taken in by him again. Did he even remember her? It wasn't as if she had changed much from her childhood, but would it really help her any to be able to put a clear but out-of-date face to the object of her trepidation? 

  It was the age old decision: the reality of the red pill or the blissful obliviousness of the blue pill?