2 I Dreamt of You

Music Recommendation: Sign of the Times - Harry Styles

* * *

There was no beginning, and there was no end. Without a sense of color, everything was blank. Mira looked down upon her body, and there it was, but with no color or line.

Then, it was white. A chalky tan figure emerged in the midst of her sight. It had black on its head, and then blue on its body. She closed her eyes once more, and it became a boy.

The boy was crying. Why was he crying? Mira walked towards the boy, her delicate feet not feeling the weight of her body. She moved her arms against the intangible current; it was like moving along the precarious ocean floor.

Her sight slowly became clearer. The boy was in a playground sandbox, next to a ruined sandcastle. He looked familiar.

The boy blinked at Mira, and he began to cry harder.

"Noona!" He cried out, "Some bullies came and kicked my sandcastle to pieces…"

Noona?

"Where did those bastards go?!" The voice came from behind her. A girl, no older than eight, passed through her body like soft air and marched towards the boy.

"This isn't the language of Syren," Mira whispered, and her vision turned faint after her words. A fog-like sensation enveloped her body, and colors mixed into one another. She couldn't hear the children's voices anymore.

Mentally exhausted, Mira tightly squeezed her palms together to try to stay conscious. She pushed a foot forward, and her vision changed to a brown-haired woman and a black-haired man in an apartment.

The woman looked like a grown-up version of the young girl she saw before. Her velvety lashes fluttered along her fair skin with pink undertones. Meanwhile, the man's wide back faced her, so she couldn't see who it was. His white sleeves were rolled up and revealed some toned muscle, and Mira could see a steel gun in his back pocket.

"Don't leave!" He pleaded to the woman, "You know it's a trap."

"I know it's a trap, but you can't expect me to let him die!" She shouted, bursting in frustrated tears. "I have to go."

She turned to the door, but the man grabbed her arm to pull her to his chest. For a split second, Mira saw the side of his face. He had clear skin and honey-like lips.

"Wait for just a second," He whimpered, tightly wrapping his arms around the woman. He held onto her warmth for as long as he could, and he placed a genial kiss on his beauty's hair.

"I have to go, [ ]." The woman muttered, almost stoic. "I love you, but I have to go save him..."

The scene vaguely wiped into a blur, and the man disappeared. She saw the woman again in the same apartment, but now with another man who desperately held onto her hands. This man had dark hair like the man before, but he was frail and had deep eye bags.

"I-I ca-can't breat-the," The man choked, and she could hear his rapid heartbeat from across the room. The woman was trying to calm him down with a hushed tone and encouraging him to practice deep breaths.

"Deep breath in," The woman inhaled slowly and then exhaled, "Deep breath out…"

"This is exactly what I did for..." Mira said and paused for a split moment as if in a daze, "my brother."

She gasped. Her black eyes shook rapidly as her own words dawned upon her being. She didn't have a sibling, much less a brother. What on Syre—?

Then, an otherworldly voice uttered, "Kim Young-hee."

Flashes of sporadic pixels, lights, and shadows engulfed her mind. Her eyelids twitched rapidly and a raging pain penetrated her spirit. The heartbeat of her brother grew louder and louder, and it became so abrasive that her ears were on the verge of popping. A burning sensation wildly overwhelmed her body, and she saw something beyond her imagination:

Her past life.

An ethereal voice accompanied her surge of forbidden memories, and it yawned out vagabond, divine notes. Her ears felt close to blinded by the voice. Its androgynous words were pure and soft to the ear.

"I welcome you to your past life, Kim Young-hee," another voice whispered.

Suddenly, the visions of her past self stopped flowing in real-time and sped up incredulously. Flashes of her previous life came and went, all in a disorganized order. Disabled brother, spy organization, illegal research facility, abusive father, office worker—the words flew in and out of her mind.

"Impossible, you've gained too many Memory Pieces."

Mira's head was on the verge of exploding. There was too much information and too many emotions felt at once. The times she was tortured as an experiment, the times she killed another person, and the times her heart broke at her brother's struggles. Was this truly her? Was this all her?

"Make it stop! Make! It! Stop!" Mira yelled. Tears bawled out of her eyes. She had no strength to keep standing, and she plummeted to the spectral floor.

"Kim Young-hee, form a contract with Me," the voice spoke. "Before you die, that is."

"I'll do anything, please just make it stop!" Mira screamed.

"Every choice has its consequence and reward," the voice reminded her. "You know that best."

A white, long scroll appeared above Mira's face, and she gasped for winded breaths as a blistering tremor overtook her senses. Her blinded sight could not read a single word on the paper, and the scroll seemed to get farther and farther away.

"You need to sign with blood."

Mira inhaled sharply. Without a word, she sank her teeth into her thumb, and a trail of blood gushed out from the broken skin. She feared the unknown too much to give up at this moment.

With a shaky breath, she clenched her eyes shut and bolstered herself forward. She reached out with her bleeding thumb and sliced at the paper.

"Quite the simple signature," the voice said, almost amused.

The scroll disappeared, and a reverberant snap echoed in the chambers of her mind. The visions slowed to an ease and the mental insanity slowly alleviated itself. As the flashes of her previous life were starting to organize themselves, Mira inhaled and exhaled deeply.

"Oh, My Precious One, must I remind you of the contract," the voice said, "That you have traded half of your Memory Shards for My Soulmate System to help you along with the little game. The System will give you opportunities to retrieve some of your Memory Pieces, but you will find the other rewards much more useful."

"Who the hell are you?" Mira coughed, her voice slowly recovering.

"Seems like you have successfully integrated your Kim Young-hee personality," the voice applauded.

"Get straight to the point," Mira glared upwards, "What kind of mess did I get myself into?"

"An advantage, I would say, rather than a mess as you blandly put it."

Similar to the contract, an embellished gold letter appeared before Mira's tired face. Her dark eyes gleamed red at the thin envelope that had the symbol of the Syre God as its insignia. Mira gently grabbed it out of the air, and she gulped.

"Welcome, Precious One, to your climb to grace."

* * *

A rush of air surged into her lungs. She was alive.

Mira sucked in air with shaky, shallow breaths. Her hands trembled sporadically, and her eyes felt like they were on Hell's fire.

She sluggishly looked up at the cream-colored cloth that hung over the wagon's structure. Warm sunlight was peering in the dusty wagon, and… was it a dream?

"Giddyup!"