Chapter 1: The Dream That Shouldn’t Be Mine

Han Jiwon awoke to the sound of her own scream.

Her chest heaved as she clutched the sweat-soaked sheets, eyes darting around the small bedroom of her rooftop apartment in Mapo. Morning sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, dust motes swirling lazily in the air. It was an ordinary day. Yet inside her chest, her heart still raced with the weight of a memory that didn’t belong to her.

Or maybe it wasn’t a memory at all.

In the dream, she had been standing in the courtyard of a palace bathed in moonlight. Her hands were slick with blood—her blood—seeing between her fingers. A man knelt before her, his face streaked with tears, his arms wrapped tightly around her as though he could will life back into her body.

His voice echoed still in her ears, hoarse with desperation:

"Jiwon-ah… please, don’t leave me. Not again."

And then darkness.

Jiwon pressed her trembling hands against her chest as though to prove she was still alive. Her skin was warm. Her pulse is steady. She was twenty-three years old, a fine arts student at Hongdae University, not some doomed court lady from centuries past. Dreams weren’t supposed to feel so vivid—so real. And yet, every time she woke, she swore the man’s voice lingered in her bones.

She didn’t even know his name. But she knew his face as if she had known him her whole life.

---

After splashing her face with cold water in the bathroom, Jiwon forced herself through her morning routine. Coffee. Toast. Backpack slung over her shoulder. Out the door. Her building’s rusty metal staircase groaned under her weight as she descended, the city’s pulse greeting her in full force—vendors opening stalls, buses wheezing at the curb, students in uniforms rushing to schools. Seoul was alive, bustling, utterly normal.

Which made her feel all the more abnormal.

The dream has returned five nights in a row now. Always the same. Always ending with her death in his arms. She hadn’t told anyone, not even her best friend Sohee. After all, what would she say? Hey, I think I keep dreaming about being murdered in a past life, and I might be in love with a stranger who doesn’t exist?

She shook her head and started walking toward campus. The September air was crisp, carrying the faint scent of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. For a brief moment, she managed to push the dream aside, focusing on the day ahead—her professor’s critique session, the painting she still hadn’t finished, the rent payment looming over her bank account. Ordinary worries for an ordinary girl.

But fate rarely allowed ordinary things to stay that way.

---

The campus café buzzed with chatter when Jiwon slipped inside before class. She ordered her usual iced Americano and found a seat by the window, sketchbook open. Drawing always steadied her nerves, pulling her out of the fog that lingered after her nightmares.

Her pencil danced over the page, and without meaning to, she found herself sketching him again—the stranger from her dream. Dark eyes that held both sorrow and fire. A strong jaw, lips pressed tight as if holding back words he could never say. She shaded carefully, tracing every line of the face that haunted her sleep.

When she looked down at the finished sketch, a chill ran through her.

"I’m going crazy," she muttered under her breath.

“Crazy about what?” a voice interrupted.

Startled, Jiwon snapped her sketchbook shut and looked up.

A young man stood in front of her table, tall with messy dark hair that fell just enough to shadow his eyes. He carried a guitar case slung over one shoulder and wore a black hoodie, the hood pulled low. At first glance, he looked like any other artsy university student. But when his gaze met hers, something inside her cracked open.

Her breath caught.

It was him.

The face from her dreams.

For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the space between them—the hum of the café fading, the chatter blurring into static. She swore her chest tightened the way it had in her nightmare, as if some invisible thread had tied itself around her ribs.

The stranger tilted his head, brows knitting in faint confusion, as though he felt it too.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice low, almost musical. “I thought you were someone else.”

And before Jiwon could speak, he was gone—moving past her toward the counter, ordering a coffee, and settling at a table across the café.

Jiwon stared, her pulse still thundering. Her fingers itched to open her sketchbook, to prove to herself she wasn’t imagining things. But the thought of someone seeing the resemblance terrified her.

Instead, she sipped her Americano and pretended to scroll through her phone. Every few seconds, though, her eyes betrayed her—daring back toward him.

He was scribbling in a notebook, occasionally tapping his guitar case as though keeping rhythm only he could hear. His expression shifted between concentration and quiet melancholy. A familiar melancholy.

Jiwon whispered to herself, “Who are you?”

---

By the time her morning lecture ended, she had convinced herself it was a coincidence. Seoul was huge, but not infinite. Faces overlapped. Dreams bled into waking life when the mind was tired enough. The man at the café wasn’t the man from her dreams. He couldn’t be.

And yet, when she stepped out of the lecture hall, she nearly collided with him again.

“Whoa—sorry,” he said, steadying her before she stumbled. His hand was warm against her arm, his grip gentle but grounding.

Her breath faltered. The same sensation surged through her chest, stronger this time—like recognition. Like relief.

“It’s… fine,” she managed, pulling back quickly.

He studied her for a moment, lips parting as if to ask something, but then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, muttered an apology, and hurried off down the hall.

Jiwon stood frozen, watching him disappear into the crowd.

That night, the dream returned.

This time, the palace courtyard was brighter, lanterns glowing like fallen stars. She was wearing a white hanbok, her hands trembling as she clutched a dagger pressed against her chest. Before her, soldiers shouted, chaos erupting. And once again, he was there—the man who now existed both in her sleep and in the daylight.

He grabbed her wrists, tears streaming down his face.

"Jiwon-ah… don’t do this. Don’t let them win."

Her voice broke as she whispered, “I’ll find you again… in the next life.”

The dagger plunged.

Her scream tore her from the dream, heart pounding as though she had truly bled out again. But this time, when she sat up in bed, she whispered his face into the dark:

“Seo Minjae…”

The name had never been spoken in her dream before. And yet, she knew it belonged to him.

The stranger from the café.

The man from the palace courtyard.

The thread ties every nightmare to her waking life.

And now, he has walked straight into her world.

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