24 Only A Dream

"HEY MINJI? ARE YOU AWAKE?"

I turn around from my vantage point to spot Dahyeong and Seoyun waving me down from across a ravine. They're dressed from head to toe in what looks to be tracksuits while screeching on the top of their lungs. The landscape around us appeared to be in a desert but for some reason, I wasn't sweating.

"YEAH, MORE THAN I'll EVER BE! WHAT ABOUT IT?"

"OK, I'LL NEED YOU TO BE VERY CAREFUL. CAN YOU DO THAT?"

I nod to them from the large distance I was away. I didn't think they would see but the thought's still there.

"DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU BUT THERE'S A WHOLE PACK OF OSTRICHES HEADED YOUR WAY. JUMP ACROSS THE RAVINE CAREFULLY. MINJI I NEED YOU TO WAKE UP."

"I'M ALREADY AWAKE!" I squawk back.

"WAKE UP!"

Seoyun screams with more vigour in her voice.

"BUT I AM-"

I don't have much time to respond back before I'm violently seized by an ostrich's beak at my neck. The ostrich proceeds shakes me like a smoothie jar at a tropical smoothie shack as if I'm a meal being prepared with thoroughly rattled organs.

"PUT ME DOWN YOU DUMB OSTRICH!"

I kick and scream while trying to free myself from the grip of the hairy ostrich. It doesn't take much fighting back before it drops me to the ground, hovering over me and cocking its head as if waiting in anticipation. Its little head moves forward gently with its skinny soft neck right up to my face. I don't move an inch and keep my ground.

"Wake up Minji."

The ostrich's voice drops to one barely audible over a pin drop, making my eyes widen. Was it from the talking ostrich? Or was it because it knew my name? I can't exactly tell and I don't want to. My face scrunches as I catch a whiff of the breath of the ostrich. Its breath reeks of mayonnaise sandwiches, just like the ones Dahyeong snacks on throughout class.

"If you're not gonna wake up, I'll make you wake up."

The ostrich dawdles around me as if I'm sort of summoning before charging right up at me with a bat in its mouth.

A bat? My eyes merely blink in confusion. Within the time of my blink, the ostrich goes from being 5 meters away from me to pulling the bat up to an inch from my face. That moment was the last I saw before my vision begin to fade black as I feel myself tumbling across the sandy desert floor.

~~~~~~

My eyes immediately flutter open, only to find myself collapsed on the bus floor with all the passengers, including the bus driver, look at me in concern. Before even trying to lift myself off the floor, I reach a hand up to my head and scratch at my head, noticing how knotted it is. I slowly pick myself from the floor and stagger my way up, holding onto a pole nearby.

"Dude. That was a trip. And I'm not talking about just riding the bus." Dahyeong whispers to me with her eyes widened.

Dahyeong and Seoyun look at me with stunned expressions as they cautiously get up from their seats.

"Sorry about that. Our friend here gets..." Seoyun faces me while narrowing her eyes, examining me carefully. "Seizures. Very bad ones at that."

Dahyeong quickly and furiously nods before grabbing by the arm and tugging me out of the bus with Seoyun trailing after. I don't question the mention of seizures and follow Dahyeong, a little dumbfounded. Seoyun waves one last gesture of apology to the bus driver. The bus driver sympathetically nods in understanding then takes off.

I wave politely back to the bus driver until they're out of our sight. A look of uneasiness and utter confusion fills my face and I turn to Seoyun and Dahyeong.

"So. Give it to me straight. What happened to me on that bus?"

"Basically, we were trying to wake you up because it was our stop and you had fallen asleep. Needless to say, you weren't waking up but instead, started screaming for us to stop and called us ostriches. You were kicking and screaming so much so that you fell off your chair. After that, you were still asleep and we figured there was no better way but to let Dahyeong slug you across the head." Seoyun pauses for a little bit. "Oh yeah, then you finally woke up."

"UuUUUGhHH" I let out an exasperated sigh and cup my face in my hands. "That was my dream. The tl;dr is that I got beaten up by an ostrich."

Seoyun and Dahyeong nod after hearing that.

"An interesting dream if you ask me." Dahyeong quips in amusement.

"No kidding."

I bring a hand up to my hair and attempt to run through it, only to realize that it was still knotted up like a bird's nest. I fumble with it for a bit before conceding defeat.

"Seoyun, can I use your comb?"

Seoyun nods and reaches into a front pocket on her bag, pulling out a sleek black comb and handing it to me. I grab it and bring it up to my hair to tame it.

"Thanks."

"Just use it whenever. Your hair's always a train-wreck."

Seoyun's response draws a snort from Dahyeong before she finally regains her composure.

"Alright. Let's head for the convenience store. How much of a walk is it again?"

I pull out Naver Map on my phone right away to look up the walking route. The dotted green line starts to extend off of where Dahyeong, Seoyun and I were at the pin to the convenience store. The time then displays an ETA of 5 minutes.

"Roughly 5 minutes." I finally respond, putting my phone back in my bag.

"Then let's not waste time."

Seoyun takes off to the direction immediately while Dahyeong and I quickly follow suit.

~~~~~~

The walk to the convenience store is relatively sunny with occasional chilly breezes. Dahyeong can't stop complaining about how cold it is while Seoyun can't stop laughing every time she brings it up. We're just starting to walk by a park so the chatters of kids starts to fill ears, making us subconsciously slow down to just take in the entire scenery. It's around 5pm now and the sunset is filled with orange to purple tinted puffy clouds with a pinkish orange hue in the sky along with the usual blue. The feeling I'm getting is almost euphoric until I get abruptly disturbed.

"So I need to ask you guys this very important question, alright? I'm going to need your 100%, no, 1000% truthful responses." Seoyun stops speaking and pauses, most likely for dramatic effect.

Dahyeong and I snap our heads to her direction and look quizzically to signal that we were paying attention to her. I give a light beckon for Seoyun to continue.

"And the question is?"

"What would you guys prefer? Fire or plants?"

I'm taken aback by the sudden nature of the question but I know it only makes sense for Seoyun to ask it. After what I heard her discuss with Jun, I'm thinking she's still trying to figure out between Dahyeong and I who the saviour is.

"Fire is a bit scary so I think I would prefer plants."

Dahyeong finally answers and Seoyun nods slowly in response.

"How about you, Minji?"

Since I already know the motive behind Seoyun asking her question, it removes all non-biased feelings I may have. I honestly have no clue what to think anymore but I can't just not answer either.

"I think..."

Seoyun inches closer with anticipation in her eyes.

"Yes?"

"I think they're both the same. No one is better than the other and no one is more favourable. In the end, we can all have our opinions but that doesn't change the fact that they're just things on this earth that are both the same amount of crucial, just in different ways."

The words come out of my mouth without much thought but I let them keep rolling as they please. Dahyeong seems confused as to why I made a supposed simple response about philosophy while Seoyun faces forward again, biting down on a finger in what looks to be a concentrated state.

I don't know how to feel about my answer but I think it turned out good.

If anything, I think it did something.