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I had another strange dream.
Ever since coming back from the Japan trip with A-ra, I felt like I'd been dreaming almost every single day.
The content was nothing special.
It was a dream where I moved into the shabby apartment I used to live in,
gradually grew closer to A-ra, and then our relationship developed until we started dating.
For me, her husband, to be having dreams like that
might seem wholesome and normal to anyone else watching,
but I alone felt something like déjà vu from it.
And what was even more chilling was this.
When I recalled a scene of us dating in vivid detail — the location, the season —
and I asked A-ra about it once, she said...
'Yeah, back then you were so painfully awkward, Seong-hwan.'
That was the response I got.
What could that possibly mean?
It meant the things I was seeing in my dreams had already happened in reality.
The dreams I'd been having all this time weren't dreams — they were real events.
Not that the dreams became reality, but the past became dreams and showed themselves to me.
What on earth did this all signify?
And there was one more thing that had only now started to strike me as odd.
The braised mackerel I first made for A-ra.
At the time, it was on sale and I'd heard about it on a broadcast,
so I'd bought it thinking it was perfect for dinner.
But one of the reasons I'd chosen mackerel back then
seemed to be simply because A-ra 'likes braised mackerel.'
I prefer meat over fish,
and I remember the meat section was also having a sale.
Yet I'd tossed all of that aside and picked mackerel — that was a little strange.
On top of that, other fish like horse mackerel, saury, and hairtail were discounted too,
and if anything, the mackerel wasn't particularly cheap or in great condition.
But I'd chosen that mackerel unconsciously.
And on top of that, I'd made it into braised mackerel, which A-ra loves.
Back then, I shouldn't have been having dreams or known anything about A-ra's tastes...
I couldn't chalk it up to mere coincidence.
They say that dreams are basically
your brain randomly shuffling together and showing you memories
of things you've personally experienced or at least indirectly seen at some point.
In that case, could those dreams
be things I'd experienced without even realizing it?
So I came up with two hypotheses.
The first was that I had amnesia.
The second was that I was in a state close to the butterfly dream.
Honestly, the second was about a million times more plausible than the first.
The fact that this world's original memories remained meant this body had lived through those events.
Then it would be logical to think the other world's memories had been overwritten onto this world's body.
It was a copy-paste job.
Or maybe, not copy-paste
but cut-and-paste.
Could it be that for some reason, the me from the other world died and only the memories were transferred over?
...Ah, hell. I had no idea.
My head was pounding like it was going to split open.
"Seong-hwan-a! The stove!"
"Huh?"
Just then, A-ra suddenly shouted at me, and I snapped back to my senses
to find the curry bubbling and oozing out over the sides of the pot.
I quickly turned the heat down to low, grabbed a dishcloth,
and wiped up the spilled curry.
"Good grief... you shouldn't let your mind wander when you're standing in front of a stove, you know?"
"I'm sorry..."
A guy who cooks, spacing out right in front of the fire.
Since I was one hundred percent in the wrong, I bowed my head and apologized to A-ra, who'd been worried about me.
"Why are you bowing your head over something like that."
A-ra gently stroked my cheek, then went and sat down in her chair.
She started setting out spoons and chopsticks one by one —
it looked like meal prep was complete.
"Oh, right!"
Then she got up from her chair, grabbed a glass tumbler,
and started filling it with cold ice water from the water purifier.
Since A-ra has a really hard time eating without water,
it was no exaggeration to say cold ice water was an absolute must.
"Seong-hwan-a, noona wants lots of rice and lots of curry. Pile it on."
"Yes, yes. I'll give you plenty."
After hearing her say that the curry I made was even better than the curry we ate in Japan,
I couldn't even tell you how moved I was.
I was now in the middle of fulfilling my promise to treat her
by making an ultra-luxurious curry loaded with big chunks of beef.
From the roux on up, everything was homemade — a fully handcrafted curry.
If you sold this in a restaurant, you'd have to charge at least 100,000 won a bowl.
I scooped a big heap of rice from the rice cooker, then ladled on a generous serving of curry.
With all that sirloin tip packed into the curry,
I felt like my eyes were going to roll back in my head.
"Here is your order — 500 grams of sirloin tip curry."
It wasn't exactly something A-ra had ordered,
but I suddenly felt like doing a little skit, so I smiled and held the bowl out in front of her.
A-ra gave me a beaming smile in return, then turned her eyes to the plate.
The curry, with its massive chunks of meat, was more than enough to steal both A-ra's eyes and her heart.
"Whoa... I've never seen curry like this before."
"For the record, I didn't use a single drop of water."
There are various ways to make dry curry, but this time I used something A-ra likes —
I lightly blanched a red fruit vegetable, peeled off the skin, and added it in.
"Huh? How do you make curry without using water?"
"You might find out once you taste it."
A-ra gave me a quizzical look
and took a small spoonful of just the curry.
Maybe the first taste was hard to place, because she tilted her head
and brought a second spoonful to her mouth.
And then her face lit up.
The tingling sensation visibly spreading through her entire body
felt almost palpable even to me, as I watched.
"There's a tangy acidity to this... is it tomato?"
"Ding-dong-deng."
As expected of our foodie A-ra — she guessed it in one shot.
If you add several blanched and peeled tomatoes
and let them simmer, the tomatoes melt down like water.
Sweet potatoes do the same thing — if you boil them and then simmer them for a long time,
they turn all soft and mushy like this. They're delicious just eaten as-is,
but if you make curry this way with them, the finished product is a curry that makes you feel like you've stepped into heaven.
Only then did I scoop rice and curry for myself
and sit down at the table.
"Thank you for the meal."
Watching A-ra, who only properly started eating after I sat down, I smiled wryly.
Either way, I was A-ra's husband, and I was Yoo Seong-hwan.
Wasn't that enough?
I shouldn't overthink it.
I was A-ra's one and only husband, after all.
***
"SNS is a little..."
"Oh come on, Seong-hwan-ssi. Who doesn't use SNS these days?"
"I don't."
"What? Seriously!? I've never met a man who doesn't use SNS before..."
She said she'd seen a rare creature
and laughed heartily — it seemed the Director's sulking had mostly worn off.
Because I'd felt so guilty about deceiving her, A-ra and I had confessed that we'd completely forgotten to buy myeongran jeot in Fukuoka,
and we'd been startled to see tears trickling down the Director's face.
She'd apparently been stoically enduring her own desire to go on vacation and just working,
so when the married couple who went on a trip confessed they'd even forgotten to bring her a present,
her emotions had apparently swelled up beyond her control.
Still, when we gave her some Fukuoka-style myeongran jeot — bought in Korea — from the bag we'd brought,
she quietly accepted it and tucked it into her own bag,
which let me breathe a small sigh of relief.
Was she really that busy?
We were all just doing this to make a living, after all.
"Anyway, like A-ra, try making an SNS account too.
Someone at Seong-hwan-ssi's level would have cosmetics companies and all sorts of places
begging on their knees to let them attach advertisements to you."
"Advertisements... I don't really need money that badly, so..."
I hardly even upload videos to CueTube anymore,
but revenue keeps coming in steadily.
Though I had no idea why.
Was it really that entertaining?
"Alright, fine. I just have to make one now, right?"
"Make it and send me the account ID and password. While we're at it, want me to attach some ads from our subsidiary too?"
"I don't really mind either way, so go ahead and do whatever you like, Director-nim."
A-ra wasn't saying anything about it either,
and the Director would handle things well on her own.
Ads on SNS — wasn't it basically just sticking something onto a post?
That was my understanding of how SNS advertising worked.
"And... an ad offer came in for A-ra, too."
"You're talking about a CF? I said I'm taking a break for a while, remember."
With her music activities on pause,
most of A-ra's schedule consisted of CFs, dramas, and variety show shoots.
Apparently, filming one CF brought in about 1.2 billion won in annual advertising fees.
But since a single shoot involves filming multiple scenes and takes a lot of time,
she'd apparently said she wanted to rest for a bit.
"I know, but this time a rather unusual ad offer came in."
The Director, who'd been frowning as she looked at it, slid the tablet PC she'd been holding toward us.
A-ra picked it up and slowly began reading through it.
A-ra, who'd been nodding along as she read,
at some point started letting out little snickers.
"Is this for real? Not a joke?"
"That's what they said."
Now laughing out loud,
A-ra turned the tablet PC so it faced me.
"Seong-hwan-a, look at this."
"Yes?"
A-ra grabbed my sleeve and started shaking it, urging me on.
What had she seen that made her laugh like that?
Now curious myself, I picked up the tablet PC and slowly read through it.
It didn't seem to contain anything particularly special.
It was just a model and CF shoot offer from a famous hanbok company...
Huh?
"Requesting the appearance of husband Yoo Seong-hwan-ssi..."
"Is our Seong-hwan already making his terrestrial broadcasting debut?"
There, alongside A-ra, I was specifically named as a CF model.
A-ra, sure — but why on earth me?
I was so flabbergasted by this completely incomprehensible situation that I was more bewildered than anything else.
"Our Seong-hwanie is handsome, so of course anyone would want him!"
As I stood there making dumbfounded noises in disbelief, A-ra noona stepped in to bolster my pride.
No, but was this really okay?