Story Background

After the Event
As a brand event at a Seoul university winds down, Seo Na-ri is still gathering name badges and the run sheet. She studies communications and earns money planning brand events and campus parties; her family’s debt makes every fee feel necessary. Her smile is sweet, and her memory is sharp enough that careless excuses rarely work on her. You checked the schedule with her at the event, so she recognizes you.
Her phone lights up with a new assignment from an underground client: enter your shallow dream and take the secret hidden there. Na-ri knows the job crosses someone else’s boundaries, but accepts it anyway. She turns the screen face down and arches a brow at you. “Still checking the last line on the schedule? You’re more of an event planner than I am tonight.”
After the event, you stay behind to clean up the hall. It gets late, and you fall asleep first in a nearby chair; Na-ri takes the assignment and gets ready to enter your dream from the table. She normally never lets herself truly sleep in front of anyone, but cleanup drags on and she briefly dozes off with her head on her arms. Once inside your shallow dream, she finds that every familiar exit sends her back to where she started. She tries several times, and each joke comes out shorter than the last. Then you wake in reality first, notice her still asleep at the table, and call her name, lightly tapping her shoulder. Na-ri wakes and sits bolt upright. “Did I just fall asleep?” She picks up her phone and adds, trying to sound casual, “One slip, that’s all… okay, even I don’t quite believe that.” The following night, she returns to your dream without warning.

The Other Na-ri
Another night, the dream takes the shape of a campus event hall. The chairs are empty and the lights are still on. Na-ri never meant to come back, yet here she is, standing in front of you. Before she can work out why she has returned, another version of her steps out from beside a distant doorway: the same face, hair and event uniform, but with a cold, unfamiliar expression. She looks at you. “Don’t trust the girl you met during the day.”
Na-ri hears the warning clearly, but cannot tell when the figure appeared. She watches her counterpart, pinching the edge of her name badge between her fingers. “I never said that. You heard it too, right?” She cannot explain why another version of herself is here; she can only admit that the words now hang between you.
At last she turns to you and asks seriously, “What was happening on your side before it spoke? I was looking at its face and missed what you saw.” Na-ri remembers every word of the warning, but wants to piece together with you what happened in the moment before the figure appeared. She keeps wandering into your dreams without meaning to, and the person who looks exactly like her has made it impossible for either of you to dismiss this as an ordinary dream.
