“It’s strange.”
After a shower, Song Tae-eun slumped down to the floor. The bowl she had left on the nightstand hadn’t been touched for over ten days.
It was because the camellia flower inside hadn’t shown any signs of wilting.
“Do they usually last this long?”
All she had done was change the water daily. She wasn’t knowledgeable about flowers, but it was definitely odd for a bloom that had fallen off its stem to remain vibrant for so long.
By nine at night, her parents would take the playful dog from the living room to the master bedroom. Tae-eun would turn on only a small lamp and climb into bed, and that’s when her phone would typically start vibrating.
– Are you in bed?
By now, she was used to these nightly calls from Ji Hyun-ho. She would securely close her room door and whisper into the phone until she fell asleep.
“No. I’m looking at a flower.”
– Which flower?
“You remember the camellia plant you gave me? The one that fell off. I put it in water, and it hasn’t wilted yet.”
– You put it in water?
His voice was incredulous, which made her suddenly feel warm. She kicked off the covers while mumbling an excuse.
“It looked fine when you gave it to me. I didn’t want to throw it away. I thought it might last a day or two, but it’s still the same.”
– It’s still the same?
“Yeah, it’s pretty.”
– Know why it’s still pretty?
There was a playfulness in Hyun-ho’s voice. Tae-eun remembered the scam-like charm he had displayed earlier that day.
– I put a spell on it. To keep watch over your sleep with its beauty.
“…Uh huh.”
As Tae-eun responded noncommittally, laughter erupted from the other end of the phone. She wanted to hide her flushing face, so she quickly covered herself with the blanket.
– Oh, you don’t believe me?
“You sometimes forget, but I’m four years older than you.”
His laughter tickled her ears once more. She listened carefully to its tone, as warm and comforting as the yellow light of the bedside lamp.
That’s why she wanted to keep listening. Her lips curled up in response.
Perhaps that night’s dream was particularly vivid because of the enchanted camellia story.
Tae-eun now gazed indifferently at Ha Sung-joo, who was fiddling with his hair in front of her. She knew better than anyone that this was just a dream.
“Sigh…”
But the muffled sobs that followed instinctively stirred her. She walked past Ha Sung-joo to a high-partitioned desk.
A woman was lying on the desk, sobbing.
It was a dream, she knew for certain. Yet, it felt as though someone was carelessly wringing her heart.
“Ye-jin.”
Her friend didn’t lift her head. She just shook her fragile shoulders and kept crying. Tae-eun crouched beside her, gently stroking her thin back.
“Ye-jin, it’s okay. This is all a dream.”
That was as much for herself as it was for her friend. Otherwise, the suddenly unearthed past seemed sharp enough to jab at her still-tender wounds.
Tae-eun moved her hand up to comfortingly stroke her friend’s small head. Soft hair brushed against her fingertips and then, suddenly, strands were sharply pulled through her fingers.
She was frozen, clutching a handful of her friend’s hair.
“Sob, sob…”
Ye-jin raised her head, crying, but her friend’s face showed no signs of tears. Instead, her eyes, stained with a dry rage, stared back, mimicking the sound of crying with just her mouth.
Tae-eun shook her head and backed away. This wasn’t Ye-jin. She knew it instinctively. It was something else, impersonating Ye-jin.
Like… a ghost.
“Uh…”
With this sudden realization, she frantically shook her hand to free it from the strands of hair caught between her fingers. As she backed away, the chair-bound figure of Ye-jin sobbed as it approached.
“No, I don’t want this…”
Tae-eun’s flailing hands knocked over flower pots by the window. Flowers as red as blood were uprooted. As she stumbled backward, she fell to the ground.
Then, she clutched the red flower in her hand forcefully, and suddenly, everything around her changed.
“Huh?”
Ye-jin and Ha Sung-joo had disappeared. Instead of being in an office-like space, she found herself lying on a quiet country road, covered in dirt.
As she lifted her head, she saw three boys kicking stones down the road. Her gaze lingered on the smallest boy at the back. The sense of déjà vu hit her when she heard the rumbling of wheels. She looked around; to her right were the boys, and to her left, a blue truck was swerving towards them.
‘The brothers and I were on holiday. We played there all day and were heading home when a truck hit us from behind. The driver was drunk.’
Her vision focused again on the smallest boy.
“No!”
Tae-eun pushed herself up and tried to run, but the truck was faster, passing by with a heavy thud. The screeching halt of the truck filled the air with an ominous silence.
Then, a surreal calm ensued.
From beneath the truck, blood as red as the flower she held began to flow.
“Hyun-ho.”
She crawled to the boy lying askew under the truck. Unlike in her previous dreams, his features were clear as he lay bleeding, his eyes closed.
“Hyun-ho, wake up…”
‘Was this a memory I had forgotten in sleep? Was it real? Was six-year-old Ji Hyun-ho in this accident, and had ten-year-old me witnessed it?’
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her fingertips, stroking the boy’s face, trembled. His downturned mouth seemed ready to burst open in a childlike wail at any moment.
“Hyun-ho, Hyun-ho…”
How had he survived? How could she have completely forgotten him, as if he miraculously came back from the dead?
The boundaries between dream, reality, and memory were blurred. She didn’t know where to set her bearings.
And unbelievably, the boy’s eyelids twitched. She held her breath as he opened his eyes.
The dark and light brown of his irises mixed strikingly as they locked onto hers.
When their gazes met directly, she knew. Just as the Ye-jin she had just met wasn’t the friend she knew, this boy wasn’t the real Ji Hyun-ho.
“Uh…”
Tae-eun withdrew her hand from his cheek and backed away. But the boy, mimicking the deep voice of the adult Ji Hyun-ho, called out to her.
“Noona.”
“No!”
She flinched and threw the red flower she had been holding. Then, she noticed the details of the flower’s appearance. The petals, as red as blood, were tightly curled inward. Inside, there was no pistil or stamen, which would be present in ordinary flowers.
If there had been a pistil, it might have resembled a camellia.
She had come to realize this only because she had been observing camellias closely over the past few days. The camellias, which seemed enchanted not to wilt for over ten days, had captivated her.
“Noona.”
Ji Hyun-ho called her from behind. He reached around her shoulders and gently turned her.
“When did you get here?”
Song Tae-eun slowly turned around to face him. He was smiling softly, as always, perhaps despite facing what could be the worst scene of his life.
“This is a dream, you know?”
Hyun-ho tucked her hair behind her ear as he whispered. She shivered at the deepening scent of fragrance and tensed her shoulders.
“If it gets too scary when you wake up from this dream, I’ll call you. If you’re really scared, I’ll come over again, so leave the door unlocked. Okay?”
Suddenly, everything felt off.
The same dream, night after night. Why did it start the day she met Ji Hyun-ho, and why was it shared with him of all people? Why him?
Questions she should have asked herself from the start now filled her mind.
He covered her eyes with his large hands. A moment later, when she opened her eyes, she was in a dark room. Sweat was cooling on her back.
Tae-eun quickly got up and turned on the light. Leaning against the wall, she looked over at the bowl on the bedside table. The camellia was blooming vibrantly, not just surviving but flourishing.
She picked up her buzzing phone and answered the call.
“Yeah.”
“Were you scared?”
Her eyes blinked slowly. She had occasionally thought Hyun-ho was not ordinary, but today he seemed eerily different.
The voice she had thought pleasant before bedtime now caused a revulsion. Her spine straightened, and her mouth went dry.
“A little.”
“Should I come over?”
“No.”
Tae-eun realized that her voice sounded colder than she intended. The person on the other end seemed to feel it too.
“Noona seems to be in a bad mood. What can I do to make you feel better?”
She didn’t respond. More precisely, she couldn’t think of an answer. Her mind was too crowded with questions to think of anything else.
After a long silence, she managed to muster a response.
“I’m tired, I’m just going to sleep.”
“Alright, good night.”
His reply was brisk. She hung up without further conversation.
And then she stared at the opposite wall until dawn, continuing her silent questions.
🍉🍉🍉
