Another Dream

This is your dream.

The gray canopy stretches toward the horizon, the colors before a storm pressing down upon everything within reach. You live here, live in a large house standing amidst an endless dark-green forest, with two others.　

Even beyond the treetops, no cityscape comes into view. What meets the silent gray is only an endless, even more silent green.

Inside the house, lemon yellow, grass green, rice white, and other paints attempting to illuminate something are evenly spread, like cosmetics trying to preserve a corpse's final dignity, overgrown with viscous darkness.

You sense you've been here for a very long time, but how long exactly? You don't know.

Just as you don't know when the storm will pour down. Perhaps the next second, perhaps never.　　

Now, you stand before the elevator. You haven't had time to wonder why there's an elevator here—the dream won't allow you to think. Ding. The elevator doors open, and red bursts into the picture.

As if someone had splashed their paint everywhere, crimson blooms and flows carelessly across every surface of the tiny space. And standing amidst it all is a man who must be your father or grandfather, dragging two real, rather undignified corpses by his hands.

Gripping the mangled things tightly with both hands, the man steps out of the elevator. With his movements, trails of fluid ooze from the things, crawling out of the four-sided cage, coming in front of you. All other colors scatter from your vision. You see nothing but red.

The man smiles at you. You recognize that smile.

In the kitchen, the pale sunlight squeezed through windowpanes so worn they barely revealed the outside world, falling upon the figure busily at work. Washing, tidying, arranging... no matter how you called out, the woman who must be your mother or grandmother showed no response, frowning deeply, continuing her tasks.

The woman smiled too.

Just like the man's smile, you were familiar with hers as well. You'd seen them countless times, and naturally understood their meaning.

So, you tried to figure out what was happening, just like countless times before.

But the man quickly caught on to your intentions.

You were locked in the room. The man ordered you to do your homework—how absurd this turn of events seemed in this situation, yet somehow it made sense, because both the men and the women like normalcy, and doing homework is the most normal thing of all.

His mouth moved, telling you he'd check your progress later. You caught the man's towering gaze, the tone leaving no room for argument, and that face darker than the sky outside. You understood automatically, what the man truly wanted to inspect, was whether you'd done “other things.”

Something very, very bad was bound to happen next. You instinctively felt it, though you couldn't say where the feeling came from.

Therefore, when the man's figure vanished behind the tightly locked door and not a sound could be heard, you began dialing the police.

Simultaneously, you started frantically writing your homework as fast as you could. A dual strategy, a backup plan, a second escape route—whatever you want to call it—was essential. Because who could guarantee the other path would succeed? Who could guarantee the call would go through, that someone would answer, that help would eventually arrive?

The first time, the line didn't get through.

The second time, the voice on the other end scolded you for “playing a senseless prank.”

The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time...

You kept dialing, again and again.

Finally, finally, they asked for your address.

You began to wait. The pen in your other hand never stopped either.

You waited for a very, very long time—so long that for a few moments you thought the downpour had already begun. While straining to see outside through the mottled window, you wrote down the answer to another question.

Just as you were about to make that mistake again, a police car laboriously crawled over the pitted ground, stopped near the house. The alternating flashes of red and blue lights reflected on the glass—covered in numerous, yet unchanged scratches—seemed particularly out of place, struggling to penetrate this human-made barrier, distorted to the point where even its own outline was indistinguishable.　

In just a moment, two officers appeared before you. One man, one woman.

Before their faces, you noticed their uniforms. Compared to looks, A person's appearance can always offer quicker explanations. And the appearance of these two people before you, was different from the others—the only other two people you'd ever seen.　　

The male officer always carries a hint of a smile—not the kind you're familiar with, in fact, quite the opposite. Even in the dimness that tightly grips every inch of the cramped room, seemingly out-of-place lighthearted jokes still flow freely from his smile, moving unimpeded within it.

Inside the house, keeping your head down had become second nature. An invisible hand seemed suspended above you, constantly gauging the angle of how straight you stood. To avoid touching that hand, you always lowered your head a little further. But in this moment, you seemed to have temporarily forgotten that hand.

The female officer didn't smile. Though she didn't smile, she looked at you earnestly, different from just looking anywhere else but you. She moved closer, asking the most basic questions, checking the most basic conditions. Are you okay? Can you walk? She also always frowned, yet miraculously didn't make you want to flinch away. Don't worry, she said.

Inside the house, you often doubted whether you were merely an illusion. If a person listened to illusions, or even conversed with them, it was a sign of madness—not doing so was the sane choice. But in this moment, you began to feel once more that you might indeed exist.

Then, they led you out of the room where the man could return at any moment, one in front and one behind, shielding you between them.

But this is a dangerous house.

When you walk in, live in it, let it swallow you whole—when you do these ordinary things—the house doesn't seem particularly remarkable. The foreshadowing and hints woven into every corner, composed of an ingrained gloom that clings like a stubborn stain, at this point seem nothing more than incidental phrases.

But when you try to do something less ordinary—like “leaving”, the house changes instantly.　

The traps never cease, appearing from anywhere, at any moment, like someone were playing a random lottery game, all scrambling to pop up. Or like starving beasts, track, pounce, and tear. How strange—usually you can't see a thing.

The two officers stay alert, their eyes and brows suppressing emotions they don't want you to see. They focus intensely on every sudden trap, guiding you to dodge, guard, and flee.

Still, the traps keep appearing—at every possible instant, or the next.

The inevitable moment finally arrives.

A massive, rot-blackened flower suddenly crashed down from above. Where the male officer had stood just before, only a pile of human-sized, writhing petals remained. Before you and the female officer could even blink, the petals vanished along with the greasy liquid. The once-cheerful smile lips couldn't utter a sound, as if it had never existed.

The female officer said nothing. She didn't want you to see what lay beneath her expressionless face. After one final glance back, she quickly led you away.

How much time passed after that, no one knew.

The deep gray sky, forever brewing like the eve of a storm, the dark green forest stretching to an invisible edge, reappeared before your eyes, feeling oddly unfamiliar.

The female officer and you immediately ran toward the police car.

The police car wasn't there.

Not only was the police car missing, but the barely-there path you'd glimpsed through the window earlier was gone too.　　

You search everywhere. For the first time since meeting, the female officer seems to have forgotten your existence, frantically checking the same spots over and over. You suddenly notice her uniform, barely recognizable as such, is covered in gray like everything else around.

Finally, the female officer gives up the search, grabs you, and randomly picks a direction away from the house to run.

But it's already too late.　　

You lift your head, gazing upward. No torrential rain falls—what peels away is the ceiling-feel canopy looming overhead, like cheap paint unable to hold onto its canvas. The forest writhes, flows, like a rubber band pulled haphazardly.

Cracks spread, same as a child tears paper after growing bored—what the people in the painting see must be like this.

The female officer halts her running stride, turning to look at you, who is standing behind her.

Her face bears only despair, now impossible to conceal.　

This is the last thing you see.

Then you wake up.
　　
　　
You wake up, drink water, wash your face... just like any other day.

It was a vivid dream, but not a particularly special one. So while you remember it, you decide not to dwell on it.

Still, one thing keeps nagging at you, compelling you to revisit it.

—Why, in dreams like this, do you always feel like you're both inside the “play” and standing outside the “play”?

The scene of the male officer vanishing flashes back into your mind.　

　
—He died. Heart felt as though it had been wrenched, gasping for breath, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to move forward. Could only stare fixedly at the spot where it had suddenly happened.

—He died. Indeed, for a character designed to quickly win the audience's good impression—a kind of stress-relieving role—dying here was the most fitting. There should be quite a few audience who would feel saddened.　　

But you should already know the answer. Just as you know why, even in a dream, you would instinctively prepare to both call the police and do your homework. Just as you know that no matter what emotions you feel about the events in your dreams, you never feel “surprised”.

Choices in dreams are still too naive, you think.

For example, even if you did all your homework and never did anything else, what guarantee is there that the man would admit it?

You continue thinking without realizing it, even though you've decided not to spend any more time on it.

Perhaps it will fade away soon, perhaps never; perhaps time will dilute it into a faint shadow, perhaps it will return again and again. That's how dreams are.

You don't know, and you can't possibly know.

Then, you start making breakfast.