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There is a man who always appears in my dreams. Sometimes, he is looking at me. Other times, he is gazing into the distance. This has been going on for close to ten years now. So this man has been part of the formative stages of my life, a companion of sorts.
After so many years, it is like I know the man. I have seen him at his worst, with blood splashed across his face, unfocused eyes that seem to be searching for a reason to keep going in one hell of eternity. I have seen him at his best, forming a family with the woman he loves, having a child that resembles him, cooking for his people dishes that always get him compliments that he answers to with a scowl, but the faintest of smiles would always lurk in the corner of his mouth. I know that silently taking care of others is the way he shows love, I know he is afflicted by constant nightmares of deep horrors, and I know just how important it is to him to find meaning to his existence.
If we are talking about the man, then we are talking about the hundreds, if not thousands, of experiences he has been through. I can’t really keep count any more of the number of scenarios he has had to face. Would face be the accurate description for someone that has been surviving every single breath he takes? That is why I could never blame the man for turning into a monster, a tyrant, or the devil himself if he had to. Despite seeing his glorious moments, the man had more falls than successes. He had been let down, time and time again. Seeing the worst in people, seeing the world falling apart, living in the eternal abyss… That is the man I have known for ten years, and the one I have grown rather attached to.
At first, the dreams were like subtle whispers, but as time went by, the images took shape, the colors seemed brighter, the man stood real before me. Every time I came to the land of my dreams, I felt like I grew closer to this man. I would observe his daily struggles, and even the moments in which he would make a fool of himself. I watched so many of his adventures, I would often find myself fantasizing about going to sleep that night, just so I could keep dreaming about the man. After all, fiction was always better than reality. Watching the man was only natural, so it came as a surprise to me the first time that he seemed to notice me.
“Kim Dokja”, he said, voice plain and serious like he often would.
“Me?” It was the first time that I tried to speak in the dreams about the man, too, so I tried to approach it with caution, still surprised by this feature. In so many years it had never happened, in so many years I was nothing but a star gazing from above.
“Who else? Hurry up and…” The voice grew distant, the light extinguishing rapidly. And just like that, I was awake, and the man was gone, confined to some corner of my mind.
I thought this dream was an exception, one that would not happen again as I longingly watched this story, but it happened a couple times more. In all of them, the man seemed to know me, the way he called my name would be familiar, different from those around me. Different from any reality I could exist in, just so I knew it was a dream.
“Kim Dokja”, he would repeat time and time again. “Kim Dokja, if you run away again…”
“If I run away again, what would you do?”
And he would stare at me like I was a fool, like we had this conversation countless times, as if his gaze was enough answer on itself. “Tch” is all he would reply from time to time, like words represented a heavy burden, like the act of expressing a little more would burn him. I found that endearing. This was the man, after all, the one I had seen for years on end, the one that kept me company for so many nights that could have been sleepless nights had it not been for him.
“This is all a dream, you know.”
“You are saying useless things again.”
“Despite that, I am grateful you are here.”
“I am not going anywhere”
“Yes, you are.”
“You are the one who keeps leaving, anyway.”
“How do you…”
Wake up again. Same bed, same ceiling, same loneliness. No other face to meet me.
Maybe I did say useless things.
Still, we would keep having conversations in my dreams. Things I understood, things I pretended to go along with, things that would get me deep in thought. Those were the most honest conversations of my life.
“If only you weren’t a byproduct of my mind, you would probably be my best friend”, I told him once, while he was polishing his sword. The one with a super cool name. I just forgot. He stopped his actions, and looked me straight in the eyes, a serene look on such a handsome face that people would kill for. Too perfect to be real, and still so easy to admire. However, it would be shameful to admit that, even in a dream.
“I am my own person, not a byproduct of your mind.”
“Sure that, if only we were not in a dream.”
“You keep saying this is a dream, but you know that is not true. If I were to touch your hand, you would feel the warmth of it. If I were to punch you, it would surely hurt.”
“You are not going to punch me again, are you?”
“... You really are a losing case.”
“If this was not a dream, then why would I wake up like nothing happened after? How can I go to work everyday, despite living in a fantasy world? Living in a dusty apartment, going to a tiring work. Why am I alone? Why are none of my companions around me…? Why are you not there…”
“You keep going back because you want to. When I have asked you to stay.” The man seemed convinced of his words, and I must be losing my mind for almost believing him, for almost thinking that would make any sense. Like I did not see him through a glass for many years, like I was not desperate enough to make a whole alternate reality just to feel like my heart could beat again, after being infested with loneliness all my life.
The man tried to reach out to me, but I stepped back. So many years wasted on this dream, like a little kid scared of reality. It was a pathetic attempt at keeping me sane, but after all, the comfort zone always ended up being the most agonizing of all. If my mind was playing tricks on me, if I could not control it any longer, then I surely had gone insane.
“Stop thinking useless things and talk to me. If you are really alone, what would that make me?”
“A dream… nothing but a dream.”
“A dream can only do so much. If you do not think I am real at all, then why do you keep coming here?”
“That’s the thing… I probably only keep coming back because it is a dream, after all. There is no reason you and I would be friends in my pathetic reality, you know? And if this was real, I would never speak about my feelings as freely as I do here. I could not tolerate it. It is shameful.”
The man stared at me again for a moment, trying to decide his next words. I knew he was trying to be careful with what he was going to say next. He was being considerate, and that was a lot coming from an individual like him, who never had thoughtfulness as a defining quality. I had spent enough time with him to know his way with words was not an illuminated path, yet it came to me with a surprise when instead of replying, he came for a hug.
If time could pause in a dream, then that would have happened. If a million pieces in my brain could stop working at the same time, then that would have happened.
And he was right. I could feel the warmth.
The man held me for a long time. He had lived a long time, after all, and I almost felt like that was what holding eternity back would feel like.
The man was trying to convey something to me, and I was not able to understand it. And how I wanted to.
How I wanted the man to be real.
The man.
The man.
The man.
“Why is it that I don’t even know your name after all this time…?”
“Kim Dokja, my name is…”
(...)
After he woke up, he felt miserable.
And he would not stop feeling miserable for a long time.
He stopped having dreams altogether, and it sort of felt like that was the answer to his complaint. But he was angry. He was angry because he believed for a moment that all of it was real, that he had people who cared about him, that there was something he was good at, and that he had someone who understood him.
But it was a lie, a delusion of his mind that could not even be bothered to give salvation a name. In the end, it was nothing but meaningless dreams. Maybe he could sell the story, if someone was interested, with how many notes he had of those adventures of that fictional man. It was pitiful, really. There was no way anyone but him would fall for such bullshit. Too long to tell, too boring to entertain, too repetitive to be touching. That was the kind of story he held onto for dear life, created for his little tragedy of a life.
He sighed, trying to dissuade those thoughts. As an adult, he should be settling already. There was no more time for childish antics, and he should see the disappearance of those dreams as a sign. Immersed inside his mind, his steps were passive, almost coming to a stop. He should probably start thinking what to do with that job of his, his contract coming to an end soon. There was almost zero hope for him at this point. He would figure it out, like he always did. He knew how to fend for himself, even if it was rough work. Being as distracted, he did not notice the bike coming at him at maximum speed.
If there was a god above, he sure liked pulling pranks on him.
Closing his eyes, the impact came. Except there was no pain, only the already familiar hold of an individual.
“Ah… Thanks for getting me out of the way.”
The warmth.
“I figured that if you kept running away, I would just have to come and get you.”
Those eyes again.
“Yoo Joonghyuk. My name is Yoo Joonghyuk.”
The man.