Raspberries

I stand alone in the tropical rainforest. There’s no sound.

I look around. The sky is nearly covered by green leaves. Light shines through the branches, but it’s not moonlight. The moon isn’t that big. The trees have grown too tall to look closely. This time, I turn my head toward the ground. The path on the ground is just wide enough for two people to walk side by side. I walk, pushing aside the vines.

Thought I had walked in a straight line, but have returned to my original spot. There are fewer trees here. Looks like a clearing. There’s a slightly brighter spot with bushes nearby. Among the bushes, there are colorful red spots. What kind of fruit is it? I carefully reach out, avoiding the thorns.

I suddenly withdraw my hand. Heard a cry from afar. I was not alone here. Strangely, curiosity comes before fear when I realize this. I turn my head towards the sound.

I saw a monster in the distance. The monster looked…

What did it look like?

I can’t remember.

At that moment, the monster charged towards me. I ran instinctively. No matter how much I ran, I returned to the clearing. I looked back.

The monster was right in front of me.

I opened my eyes. It was humid. The fan was off. My toe got caught in the blanket. Did I sleep in the wrong position? My head hurts. It’s still dark outside. I lifted my head.

As I got up from the bed, something caught on my clothes. It was a string. At the same time, the camera flash went off. Startled by the sudden light, I stumbled backward. It took a while to remember that it was a camera flash. For two weeks now, I had set up a dream camera in my room, but I still hadn’t gotten used to the flash going off as soon as I woke up.

I carefully untangled the string and turned on the light. A recently taken picture was attached to the clumsily set up Polaroid camera on the tripod. I picked up the photo. The afterimage of the flash made it hard to see until I held the picture close to my nose. This time, the picture was blurry, but it was clearer than yesterday’s, and I could see the details.

It was a picture of a jungle. I was standing among the red bushes in it.

I looked at the previous dream photos. I had taken one every day, so there were about ten by now. The pictures taken over the past five days were all the same - the background, the number of trees, the location of the bushes. The only difference was that all the pictures were too blurry to see the details.

The afterimage in my eyes finally faded. I suddenly found myself looking at the bed. There were leaves scattered on the bed, but I didn’t know where they came from. But that wasn’t important.

There was a distinct mark on the wallpaper as if someone had been slashed it.

Even by estimation, a good more than two hours had passed. Sweat was pouring down. Renko was still searching for information on the red bushes in the dream photo.

“Guess it’s not in this book. Can you grab the one next to it?”

“Again?”

A bead of sweat rolled down my face. The highest temperature today was 36 degrees Celsius. I wiped the sweat on my forehead with the back of my hand. Then, I carefully rubbed my hand on my clothes. It wasn’t easy at all. I had to do it while maintaining balance on the ladder.

There was no air conditioning or stairs in the university library. Renko said it was because people these days didn’t read books. Since there were no stairs, to get books from high shelves, one had to climb the only wooden ladder available. The ladder, however, was so damp and squeaky, 80% of the time spent getting a book was wasted on trying to maintain balance while gripping the edge of the bookshelf.

Without even looking at the cover, I pulled out the last book in the row. The book was thick, and my hands were slippery, making it difficult to remove. I managed to pull it out and threw it towards the desk where Renko was sitting. The book fell, barely missing Renko’s hand, and hit the floor with a loud noise. The sound echoed, even from up there. There was no one else in the library besides Renko and me, but I still felt guilty. Renko picked up the book from the floor.

“Sorry, but it doesn’t seem to be this book either.”

The hand that held the book felt sticky. The heat had caused the book’s adhesive to melt.

“Hey, forget it. If it’s not in that book, it’s not anywhere.”

I climbed down the ladder. The ladder, which had been creaking so much while climbing, didn’t make a sound when I descended.

Once I came down, I saw Renko had built a small mountain of books on the desk, not taking her eyes off the book she was reading. It must be hard to concentrate that much even on a favorite subject. Perhaps being isolated from the outside world made people more focused. It had already been a month since the record-breaking downpour caused landslides and broken trees, cutting off all transportation to and from the university.

I pressed my sweat-soaked short sleeves against my forehead and wiped it roughly. My clothes were soaked with sweat as if I had just poured water on them.

It would have saved me trouble if the search results appeared immediately on my cell phone. The only clearly visible part in the photo was the red bush. The photo search feature, which I thought was quite accurate, gave me an absurd result this time. No matter how I thought about it, the bush couldn’t be a yew or a pine tree.

If the photo had been too blurry, I could have used that as an excuse not to investigate. I had already spent days avoiding the issue with such excuses. But the red bush was too clear in the photo. I had no choice but to come to the library to find a plant encyclopedia, and I foolishly offered to help get the books. I should have known beforehand that while the animal encyclopedia was on the bottom shelf of the previous bookcase, the plant encyclopedia started on the top shelf of the next one due to an awkward gap in the shelf space.

Wasn’t it a mistake to take a picture of the dream in the first place?

Abrubptly, Renko poked my shoulder with her finger.

“Hey, what gives?”

I was irritated.

“So while sweating and struggling up there, you have the energy to poke others while sitting comfortably?”

The smile disappeared from Renko’s face. She looked surprised.

“…Ah. I’m sorry. I just wanted to let you know I found it…”

My senses returned in an instant. Renko looked hurt. It wasn’t something to get so angry about. Guilt rushed over me. I mumbled that it was no big deal and took the encyclopedia from Renko. Renko cautiously stood up and looked at the same page with me.

The plant in the encyclopedia looked just like the red bush in the photo. It was a wild strawberry from the Rosaceae family of the Ros

The plant in the encyclopedia looked just like the red bush in the photo. It was a wild strawberry from the Rosaceae family of the Rosales order.

But why didn’t the search results show up in the beginning?

I closed the book and looked at the cover.

‘Extinct Plant Encyclopedia’

It’s not considered common to take pictures of extinct plant and search for it.

Student lounge had air conditioning. Its wind was so cold to the point it gave a headache. I looked at Renko, sitting awkwardly in a chair. She was looking at the photo, but her face looked uneasy. She seemed to be watching my reactions, perhaps because I was angry earlier. I took two cans of coffee from the vending machine and handed one to Renko.

“Here.”

I wanted to do something to erase the lingering guilt.

“…Ah, thank you.”

Renko awkwardly opened the can. I sat down across the desk from her.

“Can you give me the photo?”

Renko handed me the photo.

I stared intently at the photo. The jungle and strawberry bushes. What dream did I have this morning? The contents of the dream I had forgotten all morning suddenly came to mind. And the monster. As I recalled, the monster had appeared in my dreams ever since I had dreamt of a tropical rainforest. However, this was the first time there were knife marks on the wallpaper.

Renko kept staring at me. It seemed I had been looking at the photo for too long. I needed to quickly find something to continue the conversation.

“Ah, the sky.”

“The sky?”

Renko asked back.

“In my dream, instead of the moon in the sky, there was the Earth.”

I thought of a place where I could see Earth of that size. One place came to mind.

“Ah, right, remember T Satellite?”

“T Satellite? You mean the space station that lost contact a few years ago?”

Renko’s expression brightened. T Satellite was a hot topic a few years ago. At that time, newspapers covered T Satellite stories daily. They talked about how much national budget went into it, how half of the development cost disappeared, how a single measurement error led to a loss of contact, and how a 10-minute power outage caused the expensive satellite to become space debris.

“Anyway, that space station was filled with rare plants and animals for research on ecosystems in microgravity. Many of them are now extinct.”

“That’s right.”

I agreed with her.

“They didn’t bring animals other than lizards and insects, but there should still be many plants. If we go to the satellite, we can bring back the wild strawberries and plant them in the school garden. We’ve only eaten artificial strawberries our whole lives; this would be the first time we see a real fruit.”

Renko spoke excitedly.

“Identifying the photo seems like an opportunity. A few months ago, knowing the dream photo was of the Gobi Desert allowed us to immediately enter the same dream. It was hot, but there was nothing new.”

Renko took it lightly, but I had discovered blisters on Renko’s feet after waking up from that dream. My feet were fine even though I had walked barefoot on the scorching sand in the dream. Back then, I hadn’t thought much about the blisters because I was preoccupied with trying to share dreams through the blurry dream photos.

“This time, we’re going into your dream after a long time.”

It was the last thing I wanted. If you can enter a dream, you can also leave it. That means nightmares are not only dangerous in the dream, but also outside of it. There hasn’t been any harm to my body from having nightmares so far, but can I guarantee the safety of others?

I thought of the knife marks on the wallpaper. And I thought of Renko. No matter how I thought about it, this was dangerous. As long as there was a monster, it wouldn’t end as lightly as last time if an accident occurred. That’s why I had been trying to delay the progress of our plan as much as possible

What if Renko gets hurt because of me?

“This time it could really be dangerous. Last time, we were chased by a monster of unknown identity in a dream.”

In the end, I brought up the words I had been pondering.

“A monster too? That sounds even more exciting.”

I stared at Renko with a dumbfounded expression. It was foolish of me to try to break her persistent enthusiasm over the past week with just a word of warning about the danger.

“When has anything we’ve done not been dangerous? Don’t worry.”

I became worried.

“Besides, wouldn’t it be easier to handle any situation together rather than alone?”

It was inevitable that something would happen. But Renko looked the happiest she had been in weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to say that I couldn’t do it. Though reluctant, I opened my mouth.

“Alright. Let’s get ready now.”

Renko’s dorm room was, to put it nicely, a place for creative thinking, or to put it bluntly, a mess. I didn’t particularly want to do it in my room, so I didn’t say anything. After tossing textbooks and equipments piled on the floor up onto bed, we then laid down a bedspread and two pillows on the floor. We also placed dream photos we had taken earlier in the morning in the center of it.

It took us less than 10 minutes to actually do what we had been contemplating all day.

Renko lay down on the floor first.

“Ah, it’s harder than I thought.”

It was still bright at 8 pm, maybe because it was summer. I turned off the room lights, hung the curtains, and came back to lie down slowly. I held the dream photo in my right hand. I could feel that Renko was also holding the photo as it became stiff. We were all set. It was the same method as when we had shared a dream last time.

I could hear Renko’s faint breathing. I turned my head slightly. Renko’s face was right in front of me, her eyes closed. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. My face felt hot. I hurriedly turned my head back. My head throbbed. There was no turning back now. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Renko’s breathing gradually became fainter.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Then

Renko was nowhere to be seen.

I was standing alone in a tropical rainforest. There was no sound.

I looked around. All I could see were tree branches everywhere.

I shouted Renko’s name at the top of my lungs. There was no response.

I ran to find Renko. My legs were sore, but I kept running. The trail led to a clearing, much larger than the one in my last dream. The clearing wasn’t dark inside. The Earth was twinkling above my head. I looked up at the Earth. It was much larger than the Moon. The Earth had clouds swirling around it. This was the T satellite. It was so realistic that it was hard to believe it was a dream.

And in the middle of the clearing, there was a monster. It was the largest one I had ever seen in my dreams.

I still couldn’t decipher the monster’s face. It could be because of the lucid dream, but I wasn’t sure. However, i could be certain on one thing: if I do not confront it, I will not see Renko again.

Out of the blue, anger welled up inside me. I wanted to kill that monster. I wanted to hurt it. It didn’t matter if one of us died.

Abruptly, I looked at my hand. There was a knife in it. It looked sharp.

Relying on the knife, I took one step at a time toward the monster. My heart felt like it would burst, but I couldn’t stop. I had to show no weaknesses.

The monster and I were now within a distance that we could reach by jumping. The monster looked at me.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. The monster didn’t answer. It was driving me crazy.

I looked at the monster. It had no fingernails. I looked at the knife in my hand. It couldn’t be.

The monster looked at me. It was not worth thinking about such nonsense. If I could get rid of the monster, Renko would come back right away.

I looked at the monster. In the dream I had this morning, I ran. Who was chasing and who was being chased? My grip on the knife, which had been so tight that it hurt, loosened.

There was no such thing as a monster from the beginning.

I was the one who had slashed the walls.

The monster was an illusion I created to justify my overprotective behavior towards Renko.

No matter how I tried to excuse it, Renko would not have wanted it this way.

If I truly care about Renko, I have to let go.

The strength in my hand holding the knife loosened. The knife slipped out of my hand. It fell powerlessly to the ground. When I looked up, Renko was standing in front of me. There was no trace of the monster. Renko looked worried.

“What’s wrong? As soon as we met, you look serious.”

Renko didn’t seem to know what had just happened. I looked at Renko and then lunged at her.

I hugged Renko tightly, as if to crush her.

“Mary, what’s going on all of a sudden?”

I pulled my head back and looked at Renko. She seemed bewildered.

“A love confession.”

Renko’s face instantly flushed.

“What? On Here?”

I could feel my face burning uncontrollably as well.

“…Well, I’m fine with it.”

Renko hugged me back just as tightly.

“I’m sorry for acting on my own, thinking it was for you all this time.”

Renko was silent for a moment.

“Nah, it’s fine.”

When we finally let go, Renko was smiling.

“Stop talking nonsense and look over there.”

Renko pointed at a patch of red bushes.

“Do you remember me saying we should grow wild strawberries? Let’s go.”