Dream Me a Sonatine

5 - Unravelled

WARNING: this chapter is pretty damn gory. if you're sensitive to gore, please don't read!

i also apologise for the long wait, i'm currently doing my GCSEs (for all you non-brits: very important big exams wooo) so i haven't had much time to write/upload. hopefully the next chapter will be up much sooner, depending on how much revision i have to do. :D thanks for the patience!

'In here.'

Hyunjin pulled her bedside drawer open, revealing the accumulation of objects inside. The air around the three of them was thick with silence. Hyejoo reached inside, her fingers closing on a woollen jumper. She held it uncharacteristically gently, her fingers running over the fabric almost rhythmically.

Hyejoo asked quietly, 'What colour is this jumper?'

'It isn't. A colour, I mean.' The jumper was stitched like any other item of clothing, but it wasn't red, blue, or yellow. It was something else. 'That colour doesn't exist in reality.'

It sounded like madness, but Hyejoo and Vivi could see it with their own eyes. Everything in the drawer was solid, real, existing. But it didn't make logical sense.

Vivi swallowed. 'So you're a...'

'Greywaren.'

'A Greywaren, yes. But your dreams hurt you. Is that the cost for creating something?'

Hyunjin picked at a plaster on her arm (she'd tended to her wounds and changed into dry clothes) and thought for a moment. 'I don't create. I steal. Take. I wake up with a random item from the dream in my hand. I can't control what I dream about, and I, like everyone, have nightmares. The only difference is that my nightmares really do affect me physically.'

'Do you get recurring dreams?'

Hyunjin remembered the girl on the carousel. 'Not often. But yes. Aside from the returning setting, my dreams work like anyone else's.'

Hyejoo set the jumper down and leaned forward. There was an odd gleam in her eye. 'If your dreams work like anyone's, then couldn't you learn to lucid dream? You know, control what happens in your dreams. You said you have no control, but what if you did?'

Despite herself, Hyunjin's interest was piqued. Control meant no night horrors. Control meant anything could materialise. Control meant she could do anything.

'Stop it.' Vivi's voice shook. 'Don't plant ideas like that in her head. As far as I can perceive, this is a dangerous power, not a toy to be wound up and played with.'

Hyejoo continued, 'You could create instead of steal. Make the world your own. It's your own mind, isn't it? You could mock gods, destroy reality, make your dreams real. Hell, I bet you could create a sun in the palm of your hand.'

Vivi stared at Hyejoo incredulously. 'We just watched our roommate's arms tear themselves to ribbons, we watched her drowning in thin air, we watched a fish materialise out of nothing and die in the palm of her hand. She could have died and you want her to become consumed by her dreams?'

'She's wasting her power,' snarled Hyejoo. 'God, if I had this ability, I'd... fuck, at least I'd be free.'

'This power isn't yours, don't tell her how to use it. It's unnatural, it's wrong.'

Hyunjin bristled, about to give Vivi her own thoughts, but Hyejoo's scornful remarks drowned out her own.

'You don't know anything about natural and unnatural. You're a pathetic princess with her own god-complex, you just can't stand that Hyunjin actually has something that you don't.'