An Odd and Beautiful Midsummer Night's Dream (2)
They say that when a person is under too much stress, their memories become hazy, as if shrouded in fog. As a child, I hadn't even understood what my father's affair meant. Once I learned the truth, the shock was so severe that I couldn't swallow water for three days. School had ended early that day, and when I came home, a woman I didn't know was with my father. The filthy traces those beasts left behind felt like an awl piercing my mind. My childhood memories had frozen on the day my mother gave me the Miracle Ranger combining robot.
“You got soaked because you didn't have an umbrella! If you stay like this, you'll catch a cold….”
But what on earth was this situation? Had I ever experienced something like this as a child? The fierce sound of rain brushing past my ears and the earthy scent rising from the soaked ground felt vividly real, even though it was a dream.
“No one's at the playground because of the rain today…. Noona, are you waiting for a friend?”
Even stranger was the sensation that words kept spilling out of my mouth without me trying to speak. I couldn't get used to it.
“……”
The girl shook her head slowly without a word. Judging by her uniform, she seemed to be from the nearby middle school. With her long, beautiful black hair and yellow scrunchie, the nameless girl looked like a puppy trembling in the rain. Her lips had turned blue from crying for who knows how long, her fingertips trembled slightly, and her eyes brimmed with sorrow as she stared at me.
“You're not waiting for a friend? Then why are you crying alone at the playground…? I thought you were sad!”
Yet the tongue of what seemed to be my younger self trampled the girl's heart with pure innocence. She had probably broken up with a boyfriend, or fought with her family and run away—whatever it was, it couldn't have been good.
“Noona, don't cry. Your pretty face will get ruined! There, there! If you keep crying, your head will hurt and your eyes will swell!”
What on earth was I thinking, saying things like that? Actually, I wasn't even sure if this memory was real. After my father's affair, my childhood memories had filled with scenes of my mother and little sister crying, leaving everything shrouded in a faint fog. The only things that surfaced were memories of filling my stomach with school lunches and tap water, then lying awake at dawn in tears from hunger.
“Don't cry, okay? Santa won't bring you presents on Christmas if you do!”
Why had this childish scene of comforting an unknown middle school girl appeared in my dream? In my current view, I was wiping the tears of a girl whose looks were believable as a celebrity's. Her long lashes, large eyes, straight nose, and soft lips looked like a masterpiece sculpted by an artist who had devoted his entire life to it. Maybe because it was a dream, everything felt different from reality.
“It hurts my heart too when someone as pretty as you cries…. Did someone bully you? I'll teach them a lesson! I have a yellow belt in taekwondo!”
I couldn't understand how a kid who had just started taekwondo could speak so confidently about beating someone.
“Haha, you don't have to go that far.”
“……!!”
Maybe the joke landed. For the first time, a small smile spread across the girl's face, and a hoarse voice escaped her lips.
“It's not such a big deal that I'd ask a little kid in a taekwondo uniform I just met today.”
“Then why were you crying here? It's pouring, and you're not even going home!”
Her voice sounded like she'd been shouting while crying or arguing fiercely with someone for a long time, leaving it hoarse.
“It's just… I don't know who to trust in life anymore. I found out that the friend I thought was closest to me was badmouthing me behind my back, calling me a slut who steals other people's boyfriends with her body.”
“……”
“Ah, is that too mature for a little kid like you? Sorry. I'm just really shaken up because of family stuff too, and I can't filter my words right now.”
Her tone was sharper and lower than what you'd expect from a middle schooler. In her empty eyes, sorrow seemed to have settled like sediment. I had seen eyes like that before. Yes—after my mother collapsed from a stroke, when I finally calmed my crying little sister and looked in the mirror. Back then, I couldn't see any hope left in life. It felt like the harsh winds of the world were pushing me out of existence.
‘…That's when I discovered Yooja-cha's stream. I thought that on the anonymous internet, it would be okay to pour out these feelings.’
It felt like that moment was overlapping with this one. My father's affair. The poverty and red eviction notices that showed no sign of being overcome. The talent I couldn't surpass to become a pro, and my mother collapsing from a stroke as if to put a period on that dream. As a middle schooler back then, I had given up on my pro-gamer dream to earn money for my sister's living expenses and my mother's hospital bills, working illegal part-time jobs. One day, I couldn't take it anymore, so I caught a random bus to the Han River Bridge and stood there wondering whether to jump.
‘If it weren't for her, I might not be in this world right now.’
It was Yooja-cha who had pulled me back from that dark period. Trusting the anonymity of internet broadcasting, I had entered some random streamer's chat and poured out my troubles—and her words had saved me.
So was this not an actual past event, but a twisted memory born from trauma? ‘Is the situation similar to back then? Maybe I'm seeing my trauma from an objective perspective. No, that doesn't explain why the girl's words feel so vividly real…’
The voice sounded familiar, like I'd heard it somewhere before, so I couldn't easily dismiss my suspicions.
“Kid, you don't have to wipe my tears anymore. Noona's done crying. A little shrimp like you trying to flirt with girls already?”
“N-no! I just felt bad seeing you crying in the rain…”
“You talk well. I thought the rain would hide my tears so no one would notice…. Of all days, it had to pour this hard with no one outside.”
Her throat was already too hoarse to speak comfortably, and it was a shame there was no way to confirm whether this was real or just a dream.
“Anyway, I think I'll stay out a bit longer. I don't have the courage to go home right now.”
The girl ruffled my hair affectionately. The name tag on her chest had fallen off, probably from some scuffle. If I could at least read her name, I might have been able to guess who she was. It was frustrating that, being a dream, my body wouldn't move as I wanted.
“Then I'll give you some courage!”
At that moment, my younger self held out something from his arms to the girl. It was the robot toy piloted by Red Turbo from Miracle Ranger. The arms had been broken and clumsily glued back together. I definitely remembered playing with that as a kid. Whether my memories were mixing because it was a dream or whether this had actually happened, I was getting more confused.
“What's this…?”
“I almost fell down the apartment stairs once, but Miracle Ranger Red protected me!”
In my memory, I had luckily gotten caught on a tree branch, and instead, the toy's arm had broken from hitting the ground. Back then, I still believed in Santa Claus, so I must have thought the hero from the TV had protected me. A child's innocence is pure and untainted, so such beliefs were possible.
“Really? But are you sure it's okay to give me something so precious?”
“Yeah! Miracle Ranger is a hero who never falls! If you have this, Noona will definitely get courage too!”
What was I saying to a middle schooler who had long outgrown watching cartoons on TV? I was probably just smitten by her looks and spouting sweet words.
“And I don't like seeing a pretty noona getting rained on. My heart in the middle of my chest goes thump-thump and hurts and feels cold…”
“…Cute. You're such a baby. A total baby.”
My younger self said that while holding the umbrella over the girl. She then showed her wrist and smiled brightly.
“In all my life, this is the first time I've felt my heart flutter because of someone this much younger than me…”
Reciting a line similar to something I'd once heard from Yooja-cha, she stood up and glanced away from me. She seemed embarrassed.
“I won't ask your name. Kid, if we dated now, it would probably be a crime. Instead…”
She pressed a brief kiss to my cheek.
“This much should be fine. I did it because you were so cute I wanted to bite you.”
Though she called it a kiss because the kid was cute, it felt more like gratitude for comforting her. She then placed the umbrella she had been holding back into my hands.
“Or maybe you'll remember this noona? If fate allows…, we might meet again somewhere.”
The moment the nameless girl's soft hand touched mine, a warmth as hot as a burn spread through me.
“Who knows? Just like how you gave me your most precious toy today, maybe when you're an adult, if you still like me, I'll accept your feelings?”
“N-noona…. You're too close…”
“Really? If you keep avoiding eye contact like that, I guess I can't tell you my name~”
We were so close our breaths could touch. In that moment, when the sweet, fruity scent threatened to paralyze my senses—
Baek Seolgi-ssi, wake up!! Something big happened!!
Along with Yooja-cha's voice calling me, I felt my body floating and woke from the dream.
“…Yoojung. My name is Yoojung. It wouldn't be fun if I told you my last name too. I'll tell you that when we meet again later. Then you can call me Noona Yoojung.”
In that final moment, I heard the two syllables of the girl's name—excluding her surname—from the dream.
* * *
“Crazy…. Was that the reason I had such a weird dream….”
After waking from a dream that felt far too real, I cursed in shock at the scene before me. Water had already risen past my ankles. Because my studio was a cheap semi-basement, it occasionally flooded during the rainy season. “I should have prepared properly after seeing the news a few days ago…. What do I do now?”
Wearing a defeated expression, I pressed a hand to my forehead. Yesterday, I had stayed up all night clearing Forest of War with Yooja-cha and completely forgotten about this. This was the price.
“At least it's Saturday so I don't have to go to work tomorrow. But finding a place to stay right now is tricky…. I have a backup of the edited video on a USB, but the computer tower got water in it…”
I gathered whatever seemed salvageable. Seeing water already flowing under the front door, I prepared to leave.
“…At least the TentenDo 2 I got as a gift and my work laptop are fine. Thank goodness.”
If the shoe cabinet by the entrance was this flooded, there was probably already a lot of water gathered outside the door. If I delayed any longer, I might not be able to get out and would be trapped.
“Phew, I need to survive first.”
Crash! Bang—!
Using the strength I'd built from working out, I forced the door open. A torrent of muddy water rushed in all at once. My studio was completely submerged in dirty water, and the flood was rising past my calves. With tears in my eyes, I had no choice but to escape the chaos. Ah, how hard I'd worked to collect those premium toys.
* * *
After leaving the studio, I checked into a nearby jjimjilbang for the night and sent a message to Yooja-cha via CodeCode.
Thank goodness modern smartphones are waterproof by default.
This person—what kind of sleep schedule did she have to reply to a message sent at 3 a.m.?
She replied immediately with typos, clearly in a hurry. People say that when a girl replies right away it's a sign of interest, but right now I didn't feel happy—I wanted to sit down and cry. I didn't want the only person I could rely on to worry about me after my house and belongings had been ruined by water.
Even in this difficult situation, I clung to reason and rejected her kindness.
The next reply far exceeded my expectations. For Yooja-cha, “my house” didn't mean a cramped studio—it meant an entire apartment building.
This woman—maybe she wasn't streaming for money after all. Maybe she had some other purpose.
