The night before midterms stretched thin and restless.
At nearly eleven thirty, Rin Haesol was still hunched over her desk, memorizing drug interactions beneath the pale glow of her study lamp. Outside her bedroom window, the city had quieted into that late-hour stillness where even traffic seemed to move cautiously, as if aware that most of the world had surrendered to sleep.
"Unnie! You have to see this!"
Her little sister's scream cut cleanly through the silence. Haesol's pen slipped, leaving a dark slash across the margin of her notes.
She didn't look up. "If it's another dance challenge, I'm transferring universities and legally changing my name."
"It's not a dance challenge. It's VEIL!"
The television burst to life in the living room at a volume that felt medically irresponsible. Silver light flickered down the hallway and spilled across her doorway, briefly overpowering the warm yellow of her desk lamp.
Haesol pressed her fingers to her temple before standing. If Minji wasn't going to lower the volume, she would at least confirm that the apartment wasn't under attack.
On screen, five boys stood beneath a cascade of white stage lights. The brightness was almost aggressive against the dim apartment, washing the walls pale. The crowd's roar vibrated through the speakers and faintly through the floor.
"Minji," she muttered, folding her arms, "your obsession with shiny celebrities is concerning."
Minji gasped. "Shiny? That's Han Jae Hyun. Main vocalist. Center. The backbone of this generation."
Haesol looked up fully.
The boy at the center wasn't singing. He was listening—to another member, to the audience, to something beyond the cameras. Then he smiled.
It wasn't exaggerated or constructed. It wasn't shaped for headlines. The smile was smaller than the performance demanded, almost private, as though it belonged to someone standing much closer than the crowd.
The room felt subtly compressed, as if the air pressure had shifted.
Her pulse stumbled once and corrected itself.
She knew that smile.
"I've seen him," she said quietly.
Minji scoffed. "They debuted last month. You're just late."
"No," Haesol replied, still watching the screen. "I've seen him before. In a dream."
Minji turned, stared, then laughed. "You need sleep."
Maybe she did. It was nearly midnight, and her eyes burned from hours of reading. The margins of her notes had blurred an hour ago.
But the dreams had never felt like fatigue.
They were always structured. Consistent.
The same stage lights. The same overwhelming roar of applause that seemed to echo inside her skull rather than around her. He would stand only a few steps away, close enough that she could see the faint crease near his left eye when he smiled.
In the dreams, she never felt like part of the audience. She felt positioned—deliberately placed at his side.
And then something would change.
The noise would distort, flattening into a dull, internal ringing. The lights would glare too harshly, no longer illuminating but exposing. She would try to reach for him, and for a fraction of a second, she would feel the warmth of his sleeve against her fingers—
And then the ground beneath them would tilt.
That was where the memory always fractured.
She never saw him fall.
She only woke up with her chest aching and her hand extended across empty sheets.
Now he had a name.
Han Jae Hyun.
And millions of people were watching him breathe under real lights, unaware that somewhere, a stranger recognized the shape of his smile.
...
The next morning arrived too quickly.
Sunlight filtered through the kitchen blinds in pale stripes, painting the table in alternating bands of gold and shadow. Minji was already replaying performance clips on her phone while balancing toast in her other hand. Their mother moved between stove and sink with practiced efficiency, the scent of coffee steady and grounding.
Haesol felt as though she had floated through sleep rather than rested in it. The dream hadn't returned, but the residue of it lingered behind her eyes.
"Unnie," Minji said brightly, "if Han Jae Hyun ever got sick, would you treat him for free?"
Haesol wrapped her fingers around her mug, absorbing the heat. "I would prescribe rest and reduced exposure to strobe lighting. Chronic overstimulation has measurable neurological effects."
"You make fame sound like a diagnosis," Minji complained.
Their mother laughed softly. "At least one of you chose a career that saves lives."
The words settled deeper than intended.
Haesol had not chosen pharmacology because she loved it. She had chosen it because she trusted what could be measured. Heart rhythms could be tracked. Neurotransmitters could be studied. Causes led to effects.
In her dreams, cause and effect never aligned.
Something catastrophic always happened without warning, and she was left holding the aftermath without understanding the mechanism behind it.
...
By the time she reached campus an hour later, the morning air had sharpened into something crisp and alert. Students clustered near the gates with iced coffees and crumpled review sheets, their conversations overlapping in restless waves.
Yura stood near the fountain, holding two iced coffees like she had anticipated Haesol's exhaustion.
"You look like you didn't sleep," Yura observed as they fell into step.
"I slept," Haesol said. "I just… recognized someone."
Yura's expression shifted. She had seen the sketchbooks over the years—the same face drawn repeatedly from slightly different angles. She knew about the migraines that followed certain nights.
"It's him," Haesol said quietly as they crossed the quad. "The one I've been dreaming about. His name is Han Jae Hyun."
Yura didn't dismiss it.
"That isn't something you can ignore," she said carefully. "Your body reacts to those dreams like they're stored memories."
The late-morning sun reflected sharply off the science building windows. The brightness struck her eyes at the wrong angle.
Haesol slowed.
For a brief moment, the sounds around her stretched thin and distorted. The murmur of students blended with something deeper, fuller—like applause swelling inside a cavernous hall. The pavement beneath her feet felt subtly unstable, as if the ground were no longer perfectly level.
She blinked hard.
The campus snapped back into ordinary focus: footsteps, laughter, the distant hum of traffic.
Her heart was beating too fast.
"They're changing," she said, more to herself than to Yura. "The dreams. They don't stop where they used to."
Yura's voice lowered. "Changing how?"
Haesol hesitated, searching for language that didn't sound irrational.
"They're getting closer to the part I never see," she said. "Like whatever happens next isn't distant anymore."
The bell rang across campus, sharp and mundane. Students hurried past them, adjusting backpacks and checking their phones, irritated at the interruption.
Everything looked stable.
Everything sounded normal.
But as Haesol stepped toward the lecture hall, a quiet certainty settled beneath her ribs.
The stage in her dreams did not feel like a forgotten past.
It felt like a memory waiting for its cue.
And this time, she was no longer sure she would wake up before it finished.