Guest Ch 32

Misunderstandings and Truth (2)

*

When Toya woke up, Lee Yiseon took her out. In the empty mechanical room, I lay on the sofa for a long time, engaging in a staring contest with the ceiling. I was tired and wanted to sleep more, but sleep wouldn’t come. I feel like a small frog about to be killed by the pebble Lee Yiseon threw.

“If I come back and have nothing to do, I don’t think I’ll be able to leave you alone.”

The top of my lips still stings. While fiddling with my chapped lips, I muttered to myself.

“What if I don’t dream? You won’t leave me alone? What are you going to do, what exactly won’t you leave alone?”

All my resentment was aimed directly at Lee Yiseon. Was I too defenseless? As I blamed myself, I started to get angry as well.

No, what should I even be careful about in front of a guy my age? Or wait, we did kiss, so should I be more cautious? No, is this guy gay? No, Woo Hyunho, you idiot, the atmosphere changed because you brought up that stupid wet dream.

“Ugh!”

I slammed my fist into the pillow and buried my face. Sure, I can accept that the first kiss happened. But this? The s3x I dismissed as just a dream and the weird tension creeping into reality. I wanted to do whatever it took to stop that.

“Damn it, fine, I’ll just have that precognitive dream. That will do, right?!”

I lifted my head from the pillow. My hair was a mess, and my face, exhausted from all the huffing and puffing since morning, was in rough shape. I got off the sofa and opened the fridge, pulling out the last of the bottled water.

Gulp, gulp, gulp.

After drinking half, I poured the rest of the water over my face. The cold shock brought me back to my senses. I slapped both my water-drenched cheeks with a loud ‘smack!’ and looked down at the table.

The map and pen that Black Foot had spread out at dawn were still there. The locations of the wild dogs alliance forces were marked with a highlighter, but the Northern Fort and Eastern Fort were marked in large red permanent marker. I traced the Northern Fort with my fingertip.

That area stretches from the Cheonggyecheon stream to Gwanghwamun Square and Gyeongbokgung Palace. That’s where Grandma is. If I want to meet her soon, I need to figure out a way to control these so-called precognitive dreams.

“What’s the way to do that?”

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t find an answer. Instead of wracking my brain, I grabbed the blue shirt and coat I wore yesterday and adjusted my sneakers. I muttered to myself as I knocked the tips of my sneakers on the floor.

“Let’s just try everything we can.”

I lay on the rooftop where I had that dream about being with Lee Yiseon. I lay on the stone bed in the furniture section of the shopping mall. I even hugged a giant penguin doll from a stationery store, which would’ve made the perfect comfort toy, and tried lying on a cypress pillow at a sauna.

I wandered through abandoned, ownerless shops, desperately trying to dream. But every time I closed my eyes, I fell into a dreamless sleep. After countless meaningless naps, the sky had already darkened. Even when I moved to different places and tried to sleep, I still didn’t dream.

Back in the mechanical room, I sat on the sofa, clutching my head. If it were studying or exercising, at least I could try. But how do you even try to dream?

You can try to sleep, sure, but dreams are random, right? Maybe if I sleep enough times, I’ll get lucky and catch one?

There was only one last resort left.

“I should go see the Doctor, and maybe check out the herb garden too. There might be some kind of herb or drug that helps with dreaming.”

Like that drug the wild dogs tried to feed me when they caught me. If I could just get a small amount and take it, maybe it would work.

Thinking simply, I left the mechanical room. I ran to the red-brick villa where the Doctor lived. Bounding up the familiar stairs, I knocked loudly on the door of the second floor.

“Doctor, it’s me!”

Oops.

I quickly corrected myself.

“No, it’s me, I mean!”

At my awkward shout, the door opened, and a large man looked out at me.

“What are you doing here alone?”

I looked up at the messy-haired man, even wearing glasses. The dark circles under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept properly. Probably stayed up all night doing something.

“I wanted to ask you something. Are you busy?”

The Doctor glanced inside his messy room and nodded faintly.

“Come in.”

Stacks of papers were scattered all over the living room floor. Looks like he’d stayed up all night researching something. As I followed him in, he gestured towards a chair at the dining table.

“I’ll make you some tea.”

He took out some unidentified powder from a shelf and mixed it with water. It smelled like black tea with a hint of fruit, though it tasted more like cheap junk than high-quality tea.

As I sipped the strangely familiar but foreign drink, the Doctor began staring at me. His gaze seemed to be analyzing me. If it weren’t for his gentle tone, I probably would’ve kept my distance a long time ago. It’s still unsettling, no matter how many times I get treated like an experiment.

“What brings you here alone? Should I worry that the Captain will get jealous later?”

I let go of the teacup I’d been fiddling with and got straight to the point.

“I came to ask you about dreams.”

“Dreams? Huh?”

“Is there a way to intentionally dream? Like, can I create an environment that encourages dreaming?”

“Ah, so you want to dream, huh?”

“Exactly, that’s it.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.”

I expected the Doctor to offer some amazing solution, given he’s the most knowledgeable of all the Garrisons and Stand-ins I’ve met. But when he casually answered, I felt like I would have been hit over the head.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe if you stress over the future enough, you’ll dream?”

I waited for more, but that was it.

Was this seriously his solution?

I hadn’t expected such a half-hearted response. Here I was, trying my best, and the Doctor, of all people, wasn’t being helpful. If not him, who else could I turn to? Just as I was about to feel completely lost, he added,

“What? I’m serious.”

I let my mouth twitch in frustration. I tried to force a smile, but even that effort felt wasted.

“You don’t believe me? Want me to explain?”

As I waited with doubt written all over my face, the Doctor spoke in a casual tone.

“In analytical psychology, they do deal with dreams, you know.”

…What? That actually sounds convincing.

The eyes that had been staring at the Doctor as if looking at a con artist relaxed. I was confused as to whether he was trying to make fun of me by spouting plausible expertise or if he was being sincere. Thanks to that, I kept watching him with a suspicious expression. No matter how I look at it, I don’t see the point in making fun of someone like me in this barren world that has lost its sense of humor. It seems he’s giving me a sincere answer.

“I’ve heard of that field of psychology.”

“Dreams are always subject to analysis. They’re often treated as a medium through which we can look into a person’s unconscious or preconscious. Why, there are plenty of people who try to interpret dreams. Even without going all the way to the West, people here in the East try to figure out whether a dream is auspicious, ominous, or tied to financial luck.”

“That’s true.”

“From a scientific perspective, dreams also serve a ‘future-oriented function.'”

“A future-oriented function?”

“Like a precognitive dream.”

I blinked, and the Doctor explained in simpler terms.

“There’s a famous anecdote of someone dreaming, after World War I, that German patients would break out of their dungeons and turn Europe into a sea of blood. You don’t need me to tell you how terrible Germany became in World War II. The idea is that people visualize their future achievements or fears in specific scenes through dreams.”

“Wasn’t that just a lucky guess?”

“It could’ve been, or maybe it wasn’t. If it wasn’t luck, how would you explain it? That’s what the experts called it: the ‘future-oriented function of dreams.'”

“That makes sense when you put it that way.”

“Aren’t you thinking too negatively?”

“Dreaming hard won’t let you see the future. Plus, it feels like it’s all just plausible academic jargon, so I don’t really believe in it.”

“Plausible academic jargon, huh. Well, that’s what scholars do. From their perspective, it’s one of the functions of dreams. When you worry a lot about the future, you end up dreaming about specific situations. They believed it has a future-oriented function that can actually manifest in reality.”

Hearing that made me wonder about something. Most of the other Prophets exercised their foresight based on their professions or experiences. Then, what about me? I’m neither a psychologist nor a neuroscientist studying dreams. I’m not even a dreamer, so why is my ability specifically ‘precognitive dreaming’?

“So, am I someone who thinks a lot about the future? Is that why I can foresee it through dreams?”

The Doctor shrugged at my bewilderment.

“Who knows you better than yourself?”

“I’m not exactly that constructive of a person.”

“I would disagree.”

“That’s strange. I’m the type who thinks that if something’s good, it’s good, and if not, then it’s whatever.”

“I haven’t seen you many times, but I know you’re not that simple.”

“You must’ve seen wrong. I’m really simple.”

“If you were simple, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge. You wouldn’t think so much either. Both the leader and I know you’re smart. It’s just that your lighthearted attitude buries that intelligence.”

I stared at the Doctor in silence. How could he judge me based on just a few encounters? While I appreciated the compliment of him valuing me highly, I didn’t feel great about being evaluated. So I gave him a bright smile, signaling that I didn’t want to be judged any further.

“You definitely saw wrong.”

The Doctor, perhaps sensing my mood from my lighthearted but slightly bitter tone, said nothing more. Instead, he stood up and walked back to the cupboard where he had taken out the tea leaves earlier.

What he brought back from the cupboard was a small plastic bundle, no bigger than a fist. The Doctor placed the plastic bag in front of me.

“If you really don’t trust me, then give this a try. Don’t bother about who’s right or wrong.”

Inside the bag was an unidentified brown powder.

“It’s a drug. You’ll probably hallucinate for a while, but if you really want to dream, this will help.”

At the word ‘drug,’ my eyes widened. I looked at the Doctor, more shocked than at the sight of the brown powder. He remained unbothered.

“It’s what the wild dogs tried to use on you. It works well.”

The Doctor handed over the drug as casually as if it were nothing.

Was this how the wild dogs, Garrison, and Stand-ins all thought alike. That I had to resort to drugs to dream? His nonchalant attitude made me feel as if the blood was draining from my feet.

Wild dogs and Garrison and Stand-ins are different, aren’t they? That’s why they fight and hate each other. So why do they have the same attitude toward a Prophet? When it comes to foresight, do things like ways of life and beliefs not matter? As long as you can see the future, do the means and methods not count?

I fiddled with the small bag in my hand, feeling a strange sense of unease.

I didn’t take my eyes off the Doctor, who was looking at me with a kind expression. Instead of smiling or expressionless, I stared at his face, feeling hurt.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

It was the moment I clearly understood what it meant to be a Prophet.

And that I should never give my heart to or rely on the people in this place.