Not a Dream
"W-what is this?"
Yoo Minhae and Kim Seyeon's faces, and the Pungwol Bridge right before my eyes, began to blur and bleed together like wet paint.
Screeeeech—
Ugh!
A piercing tinnitus rang in my ears, and my vision whited out completely. It felt as if the ground beneath my feet had vanished—a dizzying, floating sensation like being utterly wasted.
Minhae! Seyeon! What is—!
I tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Damn it...!
Feeling myself slipping away into the distance, I closed my eyes.
A moment later.
"Gasp!"
I opened my eyes with a violent start.
Pant, pant...
I bolted upright. What met my eyes was the stained ceiling of my studio apartment. The damp, musty smell of dust tickled the tip of my nose.
"My... my room?"
Outside, it was dawn. A faint, bluish light was filtering through the window. I scrambled out of bed, drenched in cold sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"...A dream?" I muttered blankly.
Was it all a dream?
That horrific disaster. The people falling. The desperate struggle in the university broadcasting station. And even those final moments on Pungwol Bridge. It had all felt so incredibly vivid, as if I had actually lived through it.
A dream...?
With trembling hands, I grabbed my smartphone from the bedside table. When I turned on the screen, the date caught my eye. The date and time pointed to the very night of my graduation project pitching. The exact day I had decided to take a leave of absence and applied for manual labor at a factory in the countryside.
I got up, stumbled over to the door, and took a step out of my entryway. The occasional sound of passing cars, a quiet alleyway. The hellish landscape where people rained down from the sky was nowhere to be seen.
"Wow, holy crap... It really was just a crazy nightmare."
A wave of relief washed over me, closely followed by a profound sense of emptiness. It had been such a vivid, terrifying nightmare. My anxious state of mind—having failed the pitching and contemplating a leave of absence—must have conjured up such a horrific dream. I rubbed my face with both hands and let out a long sigh.
It was then.
"How did it feel to live in the world you created?"
"How did it feel to be the fixer? Heheh."
?!??!?
Goosebumps erupted all over my body. I whipped my head around to scan my surroundings, but there was no one there.
Morning came after a night spent entirely awake, driven by a desperate refusal to go back to sleep. Terrified that I might be sucked back into that horrific, vivid nightmare, I had kept my eyes wide open, waiting for the dawn. I had hoped that once the sun rose and the world filled with the familiar noises of morning, all this anxiety would wash away.
But the anxiety didn't fade. If anything, it had only grown sharper in the silence of the dawn. Then, reality hit me.
"Ugh, let's just get up... Getting this spooked over a stupid nightmare. Why did I even bother serving in the Marines if I'm going to be like this?"
Dragging my zombie-like body out of bed, my destination was, of course, school. I planned to speak with my professor beforehand about taking a leave of absence next semester. My decision from last night hadn't changed. I had failed the pitching, and I needed to make money. That was my reality.
A dream was just a dream. Telling myself to forget it quickly, I made my way toward the department office. Along the way, I spotted two familiar figures walking toward me from a distance. My junior from the department, Yoo Minhae. And next to her, someone strangely familiar...
Ah, Kim Seyeon!
The head of the broadcasting station whom I had desperately tried to save in my dream. Minhae's friend. In reality, she had the same long, straight hair and elegant impression as she did in the dream.
"Oh, Seonbae! Hello. Where are you heading?"
Minhae spotted me first and greeted me brightly. I raised my hand awkwardly.
"Oh. Hey. Just heading to the professor's office."
My gaze naturally drifted to Seyeon. She was staring at me as if I were a complete stranger. Of course she was. Today was the first time we had ever met in real life. Yet, like an idiot, the words slipped out of my mouth anyway.
"Hello, Kim Seyeon-ssi."
"Huh?"
At that, both Minhae and Seyeon's eyes widened.
"Huh? Seonbae, how do you know Seyeon?"
"Ah! Well, you mentioned her before, Minhae."
"I did? Huh? No way."
"You... you know... you did. You definitely told me."
"Oh, come on, Seonbae. That's a bit of an old-school pickup line, don't you think?"
"No! It's not like that."
"Hey, I'm just kidding, just kidding."
Minhae giggled, but Seyeon's expression was a bit different. She tilted her head, staring intently at me.
"Um, but have we met somewhere before? For some reason, you look really familiar..."
At that, Minhae looked back and forth between us with squinted, suspicious eyes.
"Huh? Really? Wait, did you guys actually know each other? Did you take a class together or something? What's going on with you two? Suspect."
I was just as puzzled as Seyeon was. My connection with her had happened entirely in a dream. In other words, I had never known her in reality. I forced a casual smile.
"Probably not. I just have a very common face."
"Is that so...?"
"It's probably just because I spoke to you first. Haha."
Seyeon still looked skeptical.
"Oh, right, Seyeon. Your earphones—I guess they really are worth the hundreds of thousands of won. The sound was so crisp while editing, it was awesome."
"Yeah, I'm glad it helped."
"But one side was crackling a bit. What's up with that?"
"One side? Oh no, is it broken?"
"I didn't break it! It was like that from the start."
Seyeon reached to put the wireless earbud into her ear to check. Just then—
"..."
Seyeon flinched violently. In an instant, all the color drained from her face.
"Ah... Ah!!!"
As if she had touched something utterly repulsive, she gasped in horror and frantically shoved the earbud back into its case.
"What's wrong, Seyeon?"
"No, just... suddenly, I felt really weird. A sudden wave of disgust just washed over me."
"Huh? Did you hear something? But it's not even connected to your phone."
"Ah... It's not that I heard a sound, it's just... something felt off."
She touched her ear, tilting her head. At the same time, a chill ran down my spine.
No way...
Was it the phantom sensation of me forcing the earbud into her ear in the dream?
As I stood there hesitating, Minhae spoke up.
"Oh, by the way, Seonbae, I heard you're taking a leave of absence. Is that true? You're not doing your graduation project?"
"Oh? Yeah... Well, I'm going to make some money first. I should shoot it with my own funds."
"Where? On a movie set? I heard there's barely any work these days. Even the older graduates are all resting."
Minhae asked with a worried face. Instead of answering, I threw out a different question.
"By the way... do you have any friends in the broadcasting station? Is everything okay over there? Nothing weird happened yesterday?"
She replied, "Huh? Oh, I heard Seyeon's computer was acting up yesterday."
At Minhae's words, I looked at Seyeon.
"The computer?"
Seyeon answered, "Yes. I'm absolutely sure I turned it off yesterday, but when I came in this morning, it was on. The computer was acting weird, too. We almost messed up the morning broadcast, seriously... I was just about to summon all the juniors to see if someone was sneaking in during the early hours. If they were using the station to hook up, I'm going to absolutely destroy them..."
Seyeon's words made my heart race again.
Could it be...?
I said to her, "I know a bit about computers. Want me to take a look? I have some time to spare anyway."
"Oh? Really?"
And so, we headed toward the Mass Communication and Journalism building.
At the end of the third-floor hallway stood the heavy iron door I had frantically pounded on in my dream. When Seyeon tapped her key card, the door opened with a *beep-beep*.
The scenery inside the main control room was identical to my dream. Countless monitors and complex broadcasting equipment. I naturally walked over to the computer next to the main console.
"It's this computer. It's been lagging a bit since last night, and there were all these weird windows popped up. The engineer had a tough time closing them all. I think they said there was an issue with the internet?"
"Let me take a look."
I sat in the chair and grabbed the mouse. Then, without hesitation, I opened the internet browser and clicked on the search history.
"Huh...?!"
> [High-quality rooster crowing at dawn]
> [Baby's first cry ASMR]
> [Sounds that make you feel life]
The exact search history I had frantically looked up in my dream last night. The timestamps clearly pointed to yesterday morning.
"Huh? What is this? This isn't for our program... Ah, these kids, did they really try to do something weird in here?"
Seyeon's voice instantly turned sharp with irritation, but I couldn't muster a response. I turned my gaze to the desk. Amidst the scattered writing utensils lay a single black ballpoint pen, snapped clean in half.
This... is the one I dropped...?
It was the exact pen I had dropped on the floor in a panic during that grand curse, that disaster.
Crazy... Was it not a dream? What the hell is going on then?
My head spun. But forcing myself to look calm, I spoke.
"Uh, there doesn't seem to be any major issue. Let me just check the internet for a second."
I quickly accessed a news site. The main page was filled with nothing but stories about politicians and celebrities. There was no article anywhere about a massive suicide disaster at our school or in South Korea. But this was no time to feel relieved. I typed "Pungwol Bridge" into the search bar.
Trashy blogs scattered with countless ghost stories and supernatural experiences popped up. Among them, a small, brief news article published this morning caught my eye.
[Pungwol Bridge on the outskirts of the metropolitan area receives lowest safety rating. Urgent inspection needed]
...Meanwhile, a recent surge in cases of depression and suicidal impulses among young people in the area, accompanied by unexplained radio interference, has prompted authorities to...
I clicked the article. The content was simple. The bridge's deterioration was severe, posing a risk of collapse, and prompt action from local authorities was required. But the very last sentence of the article caught my eye.
Ha...
I leaned back in the chair and let out a hollow laugh.
"This is driving me crazy."
"Huh? What's real? That? The Pungwol Bridge ghost story? Is that your script's subject, Oppa?"
I could no longer hear Minhae's laughing chatter.
Did it... really happen? In reality?
It was then. My smartphone vibrated briefly. It was a text message from the site where I had applied for manual labor at the countryside factory.
I stared blankly down at the text.
Leave of absence. Manual labor. Production costs.
None of those things mattered anymore. Because no one knew which of my scenarios the next disaster would start from.
"Hey, Minhae. And Seyeon-ssi. Can we talk for a second?"
"Seonbae? What's wrong?"
"Uh... well, the truth is, one of you almost died yesterday. Actually, maybe both of you did."
At my quietly murmured words, their eyes went wide.