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Lily jolted awake with a gasp for air, her breathing slowly settling into a steady rhythm. Though tucked safely in bed, her muscles refused to move. Realisation only came when she recognized the familiar ceiling. Turning to the left, her gaze landed on the phone on the bedside table.
She reached out with one arm to tap on it and lifted her head slightly to read the time: 4:03 AM.
Now in full control of her body, Lily turned to the other side of the bed and found a half-asleep Haewon, her eyes barely open, trying to match Lily’s alertness.
“Are you alright?” mumbled Haewon.
“Yeah, I just— it was just a nightmare.”
Haewon hummed in response. “Wanna talk about it?”
“I think so, but…” Lily looked back at her phone, the dim screen still showing the lateness of the hour. “...it’s very late. You should go back to sleep.”
“But I’m awake now, and I kind of want to hear it.” Haewon pouted, reclaiming Lily’s attention. “What if you forget it by tomorrow morning?”
Lily wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. Actually, she wasn’t very sure what day of the week it was, and if they had to get up early in the morning it would be better to jot down her dream and talk about it when they were free.
Before she could decide, Haewon was quick to provide a solution.
“We can have some chamomile tea and go back to sleep after.”
“Alright,” she conceded. “But leave your phone here, we both know you’re not falling asleep again otherwise.”
Haewon let out a sleepy laugh, stretching as she got up. She was the first one to slide out of bed. Lily was much slower, patiently sitting up straight before sliding her slippers on. In the time she took to do that and get up, Haewon had already reached the kitchen.
Lily took her time to recollect her thoughts and piece her dream together as best as she could to retell it. Loose ideas came to her as quickly as they went away, but even though she was losing a couple parts, she—
“I’ll be able to hear you better in here,” hinted Haewon from outside the room. The break in silence grounded Lily once more.
“Yeah, sorry.” She finally got up and joined Haewon. The kettle was already on the stove.
Haewon sat on the counter and inquired, “So? What was your dream about?”
Moving through the kitchen and searching for their mugs, Lily started once again to recall. “Well, I remember I was swimming at a lake. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just going forward.”
“As one does”, Haewon quipped.
“At some point I reached the end, but there wasn’t any land, I think I was at the far end of a dam, on top of it.” She took two chamomile teabags and put one in each mug. “When I turned around, there wasn’t any land behind me either, which was strange because it didn’t feel like I had been swimming for that long.”
Haewon hummed, and Lily continued, “So I was about to start swimming back the opposite way, but there was- I think it was a… a girl swimming in front of me, kind of fancy-dressed.”
Haewon got down from the counter and turned off the stove. “How so?”
“She had a…”, Lily trailed as she put sugar in both their mugs: two teaspoons for Haewon and three for herself. “...a sundress?”
Haewon raised her eyebrows. “A sundress? In the water?”
“Yeah. I think that’s what it was. It didn’t seem like it was getting wet either, she was just wearing it and swimming.”
“Right”. Haewon moved beside Lily to pour water in their mugs. “Did you talk to her?”
“I did, but she couldn’t hear me. She turned around and smiled at me, then pointed to her ears,” Lily recollected as she imitated the motion in question.
They both started bobbing their teabags, stirred their drinks and let them sit for a second.
“What weirded me out was her smile, she wasn’t showing any teeth but she had this radiant smile on her face, like she was just ecstatic to be there.” She also replicated the gesture, an exaggerated grin from ear to ear, her eyes just barely chipping in to complete the expression.
“Yeah, I don’t like that,” said Haewon, which made Lily switch her creepy-dream-smile to a normal smile. “So, she was deaf, right? Did she say anything to you?”
Lily continued, “She signalled to me to come closer, so I did. But when I was close enough, it was actually me.”
Haewon frowned in confusion. “What, the girl?”
“Yes, the girl! She looked exactly like me but with makeup on.” Lily grabbed her cup of tea and brought it to her lips. She looked at Haewon, who was still in disbelief but with a smile on her face.
Haewon hummed again, attentively looking at the storyteller. “And?”
“And I tried to say something in sign language, but as I raised my arms, I started sinking like a rock.” Her eyes drifted and landed on a wall, as if she was putting in more effort to remember. “I looked up and she was swimming towards me, reaching towards me.”
Lily took a pause. Three seconds passed until the words came to her. “And… when she reached me, she grabbed my face with both hands, and then stabbed my eyes with her thumbs.” A shiver crawled up Lily’s spine upon saying that.
Another hum. The sound made Lily’s eyes move directly back to Haewon. “And… I didn’t feel anything. I just woke up.”
Lily took another sip of her drink and felt Haewon’s touch on her free hand, it felt warm and caring. She looked at their hands with a soft smile. She was feeling a bit relieved now that she had gotten the dream out of her, and Haewon was a great listener.
She definitely could have typed her dream on her phone and talked about it in the morning, but something about this was nice. About the two of them alone, sharing a hot drink while Lily speaks as much as she wants. Haewon was very attentive, and she made that known by looking at Lily the whole time she spoke.
Looking. Haewon was looking. In fact, attentive Haewon hadn’t moved her gaze away from Lily for a while now, her head slightly turned as if in admiration, eyes immobile. This made Lily feel as if she had to break the silence they had been sitting on for a bit now. “So? What do you think? Could it mean something?”
Haewon spoke softly, “I think it’s terrifying.”
Lily couldn’t help but agree, it was indeed a scary nightmare. Her reaction upon waking up was enough proof of that. Though, it was a weird statement to make without dropping the easy smile on her face.
Haewon broke the silence once more. “That reminds me, though. I got you something.”
“What?” Lily asked, puzzled. “When?”
Haewon nodded at that, not answering any of it. “I was waiting for a good occasion to surprise you, but I want you to see it now. It’s next to the bed.” She walked behind Lily and put her hands over her eyes, then started guiding her towards the room.
Lily had no idea what to expect, but her feet moved on their own towards their room. She knew the way like the back of her hand, no stranger to her own apartment, but she still chose to follow Haewon’s suggested path.
Silence filled their home now, Lily couldn’t perceive anything except their footsteps and the electrical buzzing coming from their appliances. Upon reaching the doorframe of the room Haewon stopped walking, prompting Lily to stop as well.
“I’m ready now,” said Lily.
After a second, Haewon’s voice shattered the stillness in the room. “One…”
“Two…”
An unfamiliar sound filled Lily’s ears, managing to not only snap her out of Haewon’s voice, but also override the very silence that served as background. The feeling crawled over her, dizzying Lily for a second before recognising that it was, in fact, Haewon saying “three”.
But it couldn’t be Haewon. As much as it sounded like a voice, it wasn’t her girlfriend’s soft speech. The sound made her uncomfortable. It felt jarring. There wasn’t an emotion she knew that fit what she just heard.
She fell out of her trance. Hands were still on her eyes. “Can I see now?” Lily asked. The feeling she just experienced was urging her to take back her vision, but she didn’t want to ruin Haewon’s surprise.
No response. “Haewon? Can I see?”
Lily had frozen again. She drew in a shaky breath, and her senses started to come to her again. First, she was cold. From the stomach down, a deep chill surrounded her body as if she was submerged in ice.
Second, she was tired. Her eyes felt sandy moving under her eyelids. The strain was making them throb behind the temples. Her body was giving out, and she couldn’t hold her arms up much longer.
She couldn’t hold her arms up much longer. So she didn’t, she uncovered her eyes and opened them to… water, she thought. Or what felt like water. As she tried to figure it out, her hearing fired up, recognising the sound of the cascade behind her. Now more vividly than before, she recognised the familiar setting of the dam in her nightmare.
She scanned around for any signs of land, but her focus was inescapably on the feeling in her limbs. It felt like she had been swimming for hours, and the thought she might give in and drown made the panic settle in.
Lily turned from side to side in the water, picked a direction and started pushing. With the last of her energy, she started moving in a line, hoping to find something new, something to hold on to.
What she found was what had to be Haewon, grinning from ear to ear in a sundress, almost floating. Her most identifying feature was her unmistakable stare, locked straight onto Lily’s eyes, now making her intensely uncomfortable. She was the only thing around that she knew, but the dress, makeup and grin were triggering Lily’s fight-or-flight response.
Fight she wouldn’t and flight she couldn’t, so once again, her instinct was to freeze in place. Petrified, she couldn’t help but watch Haewon close the distance between them.
Lily spoke, but nothing intelligible was heard. She’d pushed herself too much on the one word she wanted to let out, now realising how painfully sore her throat felt.
Next thing she felt was Haewon’s hands on her head, one on her cheek and the other one on her scalp, both caressing her softly. Before Lily could get used to the familiar feeling again, they started sinking together.
No time was given to Lily to react after that. As soon as her body started trying to acclimate to being fully submerged in the deep, cold water, Haewon was repositioning her hands, thumbs over each one of Lily’s eyes.
Now she felt it. A white, blinding pressure behind her eyes, gone before she
Lily jolted awake with a gasp for air, greedily inhaling and exhaling, over and over. Bolting upright, she pressed her palms against the bedsheets, desperate for grounding. She looked around and recognised her room, then moved her hands to her face, her eyes, her chest, her hips.
She hastily tapped her phone screen with her entire hand to light it up and see the time: 4:05 AM.
She turned so fast the whole mattress lurched. With a shocked look on her face, she stared straight at a half-asleep Haewon, her eyes barely open but still letting confusion show.
“Are you alright?” mumbled Haewon.
Lily took a few beats before responding. “Yes. Yeah... you?”
“Me? You look like you just saw a ghost. Did you have a nightmare?”
She didn’t know what to say, and the hesitation felt weird. “I’m alright, let’s go back to sleep. I’m sorry,” Lily rushed.
“You’re good,” Haewon mumbled once again before closing her eyes. Lily hadn’t had time to process her thoughts yet, and it was somehow unsettling to see Haewon sleeping so peacefully now. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just tell Haewon she had a nightmare again, but it didn’t feel right. She’d just tell her in the morning.
Still staring. She was looking at Haewon like something was off about her, about her expression as she slept.
Lily chuckled nervously, but no smile came through. “What’s so funny?” No answer.