The ceiling dissolved.
It didn't fade like it should have. Sleep was supposed to be soft—an unraveling, a slide into dreams. This wasn't. It was sharp, like something had gripped his chest and yanked. The plaster overhead warped into liquid shadows, folding inward until there was only black.
His body jolted. The sensation wasn't falling—it was being torn. Like his skin stayed behind while everything else was dragged forward.
And then, breathless, his eyes opened.
Cold stone pressed against his palms.
He blinked, and fog seeped into his vision. It clung to him, heavy, damp, too thick to see more than a dozen paces ahead. A sour reek of smoke and coal stung his nose. Gas lamps leaned overhead, their glow weak and uncertain against the mist.
He sat up slowly. The stone beneath him wasn't smooth—it was cobblestone, uneven, the grooves slick with condensation. He ran his hand across it and felt grit catch under his nails. Not a dream. Or at least, not a dream that obeyed the rules of sleep.
Bootsteps.
He froze. Shapes drifted past him in the fog—figures wrapped in long coats, hats pulled low, boots striking against the stones in a steady rhythm. The sound echoed, faint, as though swallowed by the fog before it could reach the edges of the street.
Dozens of people.
And not a single one looked at him.
They passed by as if he didn't exist. Their gazes never flicked toward the boy crouched in the middle of the street. He could have been a shadow, a stain, a piece of the stone itself. He shifted, deliberately scraping his palm against the ground, testing if they'd react. Nothing. Not a glance.
The world felt muted. Wrong.
He drew in a slow breath, tasting iron on the air, and let it out in a pale cloud.
So this was how his night would go.
He should have panicked. He should have wondered if he'd gone mad, or if someone had spiked his drink, or if this was some kind of elaborate hallucination. Instead, he sighed. His lips tugged in something too flat to be a smile.
"Figures," he muttered. "Even dreams are too loud."
He stood, brushing dirt from his hands. His school uniform was out of place here, he realized—dark blazer, white shirt, creased trousers. The passersby all dressed like something out of an old film, a century too late for Korea, too deliberate to be coincidence.
It wasn't a dream. Not a normal one, anyway.
A noise dragged his attention to the left.
"Not bound."
The voice rasped like paper tearing.
"Not bound, not bound, not bound—"
At first he thought it was the wind. But the words repeated, overlapping themselves, until he caught sight of movement in the fog.
A figure crouched in an alley, rags clinging to its thin frame. Its hair hung in greasy clumps, its lips torn from constant motion. The whispers poured out nonstop, a river of syllables that grated against his skull.
The people walking by didn't react. They didn't even flinch.
But he heard it. Every word.
Shadows bent around the ragged body. He noticed it then—the lamplight stretched too far, pulling the beggar's shadow across the cobblestones like ink spilling from a broken bottle. It writhed. Twitched. For a moment it seemed to crawl on its own.
The boy narrowed his eyes.
The beggar's head snapped toward him.
The whispers stuttered, then shifted. The voice cracked and doubled, as though something else spoke beneath the rags.
"You."
He blinked.
"You'll stand where all roads break," it hissed. "The stillness in the spinning. The silence in the scream. You don't belong to meaning."
His lips curved again—closer to a smile this time, though there was nothing warm about it.
Of course. Even here, wherever here was, someone had to throw riddles at him. Someone had to act like the world cared enough to assign him a destiny.
He gave a soft laugh.
"Even in dreams," he murmured, "people can't help but force meaning where there isn't any."
The whispering figure clawed at the stone, its fingernails scraping deep lines into the wall. Its eyes rolled white. The shadow writhed harder, stretching like it wanted to peel free.
He turned away.
If the thing wanted to spout nonsense, let it. He had no interest in playing along.
His footsteps echoed on the cobblestones as he walked, the fog curling tighter around his legs. Behind him, the beggar's whispers rose into a scream, but he didn't look back.
---
He walked until the lamps thinned, until the fog grew so heavy it pressed against his skin like water. His lungs ached with every breath. The air buzzed. Not with sound, but with something deeper—like static vibrating against bone.
He stumbled, knees hitting stone, and the world folded again.
The fog shattered.
---
He woke in his bed.
Sheets tangled around his legs, his ceiling smooth and white overhead. The night was still. The hum of the city faint through the walls.
For a moment he almost believed it had been a dream.
Until he looked at his palms.
Dirt crusted under his nails. Scrapes stung across his skin.
Cobblestone grit.
Real.
He leaned back into his pillow and laughed once, softly.
"Of course."
The sound lingered in the dark.