The Dream of a Future Yet to Come
He seemed to have experienced multiple wet dreams while watching himself in his sleep, tormenting a woman whose identity remained a mystery. It was the first time he had ever had such sexually charged dreams. The experience was utterly confusing and felt so incredibly real that he had tossed and turned throughout the night, unable to wake up even as his usual time to head to work arrived.
And now, there was a woman, held firmly in his arms, letting him feel the rhythm of her breathing. She kept talking to him.
"I don't curse out of malice. I've told you that before. ...It’s just, it’s really stuck in my mouth. I have to at least do that to feel relieved. I don't know why you don't do it. Are you keeping things bottled up inside? Ah, that’s why you said you got divorced..."
"...I’m worried. Mas...ter... If you have anything bottled up, even against me, please tell me. I’d be shocked if you slapped me, but I’ll take it if you hit me elsewhere. Like my chest, my shoulders, or my hips... I was too rude."
"Honestly, even if you were in my shoes, you’d understand. Bringing me something you ruined yourself and begging for help because I’m the best at it. Do you know what I thought? 'Ah, that bastard is going to use me and then package it as if he’s the genius...' I felt so used. I was shaking with rage."
"I thought I was the only one working overtime, but watching you rummage through documents in the office, I fell for you a little. Regret? Of course I did. I realized it’s a huge mistake to judge someone just by their surface..."
Towards the end, as the woman was talking about the swearing, she suddenly asked,
"Ah. Aren't you going to see that person?"
"...?"
"Why, that prickly one. I don't know how you managed to break her in, but... she seems pretty sulky that she hasn't heard from you. ...You know how timid she is."
Who on earth was she talking about now?
"...I'll be satisfied with this much for today. But there’s still so much I want to say. I want to see you again next time... Send me a text after work today to let me know when we can meet. I’ll be waiting. ...You’re always such a busy person. At the company, outside the company... I wish I were the only one who knew how cool you are, but it’s sad that it doesn't work out that way."
"And so... don't, don't just come to my house again... and grope me while you're drunk. We ran out of condoms, so I have to go buy more. If you tell me you're coming beforehand, I could... at least run to the convenience store or something."
"I’m not scared of buying condoms anymore. Honestly, at first, I was worried the part-timer would ask weird questions... so I went with a hat pulled low... but they didn't seem interested, so I’ve been stocking up lately. We used more than five last time, didn't we? ...I thought I was going to go crazy. The problem is you act like you're going to kill someone half to death every time we do it. Don't... don't cut down, no. I think I made a slip of the tongue again. Don't cut down. Why would you cut down? It feels good."
At this point, he realized he needed to investigate the nature of this dream. As he felt the dream beginning to shatter, he entered a lecture hall within his own mind—a place where he could analyze what he had learned in the past.
There are many perspectives on dreams. The first is the view that a dream is merely an image playback, where the brain reconstructs experiences from the unconscious state. According to proponents of this view, a dream is simply the retrieval of past experiences related to a specific object, and they set a limit here. Simply put, just as they summarize dreams as videos drawn from experience, they argue that the brain fails to generate images for "things one has never experienced." Therefore, they claim that things a person has never seen or heard usually do not appear in dreams, and they rebut those who claim to have dreamed of things they haven't experienced by saying:
"That is merely the manifestation of repressed memories being played back in a dream. While the brain tries to erase them from memory through the process of repression, as if the person never experienced them, it is actually just hidden behind a veil through a 'hiding' process. Since this 'hiding' process only functions when the consciousness is awake, it doesn't apply in dreams, which is why they pop out only then."
However, a second, more advanced perspective on dreams emerged, driven by persistent questioning. This theory, while not yet fully accepted, is considered worthy of scientific research and attempts to dismantle the previous view through questions like these:
"Since ghosts don't exist, we don't even know what they look like, yet we are startled when we see such unique entities in our dreams. Through what mechanism does this occur?"
"The vast majority of people have never killed anyone. Similarly, most people have never hit a person from the driver's perspective. Yet, the number of people claiming to have had such dreams is scientifically proven to be increasing. Are they all dreaming this because they collectively watched videos of drivers hitting people, or because they actually have experience committing a traffic accident?"
"These people are implicitly distorting the fact that dreams can be fabricated. While they claim dreams are just playing back past experiences, they also accept the scientific fact that the brain uses combined and classified memories to display dreams. If they claim dreams are based on existing experiences, it is questionable how they can accept that the brain-reorganized dream content is identical to the experience itself. If I dream that the Lotte World Tower is in Beijing, China, and the surrounding area is an Amazon-like tropical rainforest, should I accept this as a playback of 'experience,' or is it a new, individual dream 'reborn' based on experience?"
In short, they interpreted the brain's activity—not just playing back dreams based on existing experiences, but processing them through creative thinking—in a broader sense, meaning that the processed dreams undergo a "rebirth" process, making them different from existing experiences. And this process of rebirth implies that "while sleeping, the brain can fuse existing experiences to create a new future."
When you think about it, that was true. Since it originated from human experience, when the brain fused it into something new, it could indeed become the future. It was a slightly flimsy theory, and it took time to organize because it was still complex, but to summarize simply: "The brain can output things I have never experienced." How? "Because the brain itself can create new images by fusing existing experiences." Then? "Ultimately, since the created images are also based on human cognitive concepts, it means they could occur in the future, or in some unknown place or time."
In fact, the latter explanation was more accurate for the dream Han Suhyun had today. Based on past experiences, Seo Jia had synthesized the "pregnancy" point—a possibility that could very well happen in the future—while never forgetting to use honorifics and calling him "Master," thus creating a "new future."
Also, though he hadn't consciously realized it, his brain had independently judged that Eunbyul was related to Seongjeong, inserting that into the dream so he could hear that he had impregnated the "eldest daughter of a conglomerate chairman."
And finally,
"...."
The mysterious woman, and the fourth woman that mysterious woman spoke of. This was important. These two were completely absent from his memory. Therefore, the proposition that "dreams are played back based on existing experiences" was already dismissed at this point. Instead, his brain had appropriately synthesized existing memories to draw and play back how the other party would react to whatever he said. Ultimately, this too could be seen as a reborn, new prophecy of the future.
He remembered hearing similar content in a university liberal arts course. And around that time, just as he was about to confirm who the last woman was, he woke up. And just before waking, in that pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen, he remembered the words spoken in different tones of voice.
'I’m sorry. Thank you for giving me another chance.'
Strangely, those voices were as vivid as if they were actually speaking right next to him,
'I want to move my things quickly and live together! ...I’ll practice cooking a lot before I come.'
They pierced his ears,
'...I speak bluntly, but I won't make you regret it. ....Please... trust me.'
. .
'I was just thinking about it. One for intimidation, one for the Minor Offenses Act... for excessive exposure, in a public place. For this. And the other one for public indecency. ...I didn't say who it was.'