Clothes I Saw in My Dream

Sana immediately ran to the front door at the sound of the lock disengaging. Soon, the door opened, and Doha paused as he entered.

“The smell of food as soon as I open the door, it’s unfamiliar.”

He mumbled to himself, then took off his shoes and stepped inside.

“I was worried you’d be late, but fortunately, you arrived right on time for dinner.”

It was a vague promise to arrive around dinner time. He hadn’t specified an exact time, so while waiting, he had worried if it would be too early or too late.

Doha looked down at the seaweed soup and side dishes arranged on the table.

The side dishes weren’t much different from breakfast, but the seaweed soup was freshly made. Fearing that Doha might scold him for using the card again, he quickly pointed a finger under the sink.

“I found it when I was searching.”

When he rummaged around the sink earlier in the day, he found some leftover dried seaweed in the drawer where he kept groceries like ramen and canned food.

“I didn’t buy it!”

Doha was just silently staring, so Sana quickly emphasized.

“I know. A few months ago, on my birthday, Jungwook came and cooked seaweed soup, saying I had to eat it, and that’s the leftover.”

Doha replied casually and took off his outer jacket, hanging it on the back of a chair.

“Oh?”

Sana’s eyes widened as he stared at Doha.

“These clothes…”

Sana parted his lips, then simply closed them and frowned. Thump, thump, his heart pounded heavily with the sudden onset of anxiety.

“Why?”

Doha asked, sensing his reaction was odd. Sana bit his lower lip hard.

“Because they’re different from what you wore when you left.”

When he left this morning, he was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. But now Doha was in a white shirt and suit pants. The jacket he had taken off and hung on the chair was also a suit jacket.

Sana had seen that suit before. He knew it precisely because he had seen it so many times.

“He told me to buy new clothes, so I did.”

“Who?”

Only half a day ago, he had been relieved that Doha hadn’t acquired that suit yet… Who on earth told Doha to buy those clothes?

“Big Brother.”

Even if he answered that, Sana wouldn’t understand. He just blinked his large eyes, looking up at Doha, wondering who he meant by ‘Big Brother.’

“The club owner.”

Doha answered vaguely.

“Ah…”

The club owner, huh… He understood that he was Doha’s superior, but why would he suddenly make him buy a suit? He was nodding, but his mind instantly became a mess. He couldn’t take his eyes off Doha’s suit.

“Is there a problem with these clothes?”

“No.”

He shook his head in denial, but Sana’s expression remained subtle.

“Ah, the soup will get cold.”

Not intending to explain further, he turned around, served the soup, and placed it in front of Doha. Doha, who had been quietly watching his face, silently took a breath and picked up his spoon. He seemed to find it suspicious but didn’t pry further.

Sana also picked up his spoon, but he couldn’t tell if the food was going into his mouth or his nose. How could he explain? That he was wearing those clothes in his dream, that he died with those clothes stained with blood… He couldn’t bring himself to utter a single word.

After dinner and cleaning up, Doha turned on the TV and sat down for the first time in a long while. He didn’t seem to have any particular show he wanted to watch, as he was flipping through channels with the remote. Then he stopped on a news broadcast.

Sana paced back and forth in front of Doha. After seeing that suit earlier, the churning in his stomach hadn’t calmed down. He was anxious and restless, worried that Doha might go out wearing those clothes and something would happen, even tonight, let alone tomorrow.

“You’re making me dizzy.”

Doha frowned and said curtly.

“Um…”

He opened his mouth, but his thoughts were still tangled like a ball of yarn, disorganized. If he were to impulsively tell him not to go out wearing that suit, Doha would ask why, and he couldn’t say, ‘You’ll die if you go out wearing that suit,’ without any solid information.

‘What should I do? How can I…’

“Could I borrow your phone for a moment?”

No matter how much he thought about it, it seemed impossible to figure out when Doha would die or why, based solely on his own dreams. He needed help. He desperately needed someone with a more reliable ability to help Doha.

At his request to borrow his phone, Doha looked a little surprised.

“You don’t have a phone?”

He asked, but his expression seemed to say, ‘Is that even possible?’ However, he couldn’t answer that he had something he didn’t. When Sana nodded, Doha let out a hollow breath in disbelief.

“To think there are people without phones in this day and age… Even elementary school students carry them.”

It was generally true, but that standard didn’t apply to Sana.

“I never really had a use for it. And I had no one to call.”

When he was in Muryeong, he stayed only within it, so he didn’t need a phone. And even after it was disbanded, he had no one to contact. So he had never even thought about getting a phone.

“You really seem like you came from another world.”

Doha said with a sigh. He wondered if not having a phone was so strange, but that wasn’t what was important right now, so he didn’t retort.

“Go with me tomorrow and get one opened.”

Sana only blinked at Doha’s words.

“You said you’d be staying here for a while. It can be frustrating if we can’t contact each other, so it’s better to have a phone…”

Doha, who had been adding explanations as if frustrated, trailed off and frowned. Unable to understand why, Sana met his gaze with a clear expression. Hoo, Doha let out a long sigh and opened his mouth again.

“Bring your ID.”

“Why suddenly…?”

“You need it to open a phone line.”

“Ah.”

He didn’t know why he specifically needed to open a phone line, but since Doha said he needed it, he nodded, agreeing for now.

“I’ll go tomorrow. Before that, could I borrow your phone for a moment now?”

Setting aside getting a new phone, he needed a phone right now. Doha, though he didn’t understand why he suddenly needed a phone, gestured with his eyes towards the phone he had left on the table.

Sana bowed his head in thanks and picked up the phone. He touched the screen to activate it, then opened the internet app. He typed ‘Dragon Holdings’ into the search bar and pressed the search button, and related information appeared. He checked the information about Dragon Holdings, the very first result, and opened the company’s website.

“You know how to use it, I see.”

Doha, who had been quietly watching, said.

“I used the Leader’s sometimes.”

He didn’t have a phone in his own name, but he sometimes used Mooyoung’s phone. He just didn’t specifically need one, but he knew how to use a smartphone well.

“You didn’t buy yourself a phone, but he carried one around, I suppose?”

Doha asked back somewhat gruffly. Sana was now twenty, meaning he had been a minor before, and Doha suspected that this Mooyoung character might have confined a child and extorted from him.

“I didn’t need one.”

Sana replied blandly, seemingly completely oblivious to Doha’s suspicion. Hmm, Doha let out a short groan and stood up. For some reason, he also let out a low sigh. Sana was busy rummaging through Dragon Holdings’ website, looking for an address, so he didn’t pay much attention to Doha’s reaction.

“I’m going out for a cigarette, use it and put it back.”

Doha got up from the sofa and went out to the veranda, glancing at the phone screen Sana was holding. He had been cautious, wondering if he was doing anything suspicious with his phone, but Sana was simply opening an internet window and searching for something.

He came out to the veranda, took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and leaned against the railing, watching Sana, who was standing in the living room.

He concentrated on his phone with a serious expression, then made an ‘ah!’ sound as his face brightened, as if he had found what he was looking for. Then he fumbled around, as if searching for something.

“Where’s a pen?”

He had found a stray memo pad, but couldn’t find a pen, so he asked Doha. Doha pointed to the bedroom with his chin, and Sana quickly went inside, found a pen, and wrote something on the memo pad.

Doha, who had been smoking until the red light reached the filter, threw the cigarette into the trash can on the veranda and came into the living room.

He picked up the phone Sana had used and put back, and launched the internet app. When he clicked the search bar, the latest search terms appeared in a cascade below.

Dragon Holdings.

The unexpected term was at the very top. Come to think of it, Sana had acknowledged it when news about Dragon Holdings came out. He had said that a friend, not he himself, was involved with Dragon Holdings.

It was now known as a respectable investment firm, but its foundation was organized crime that moved money in the underworld. A friend involved with such a place…

‘There’s a rumor that the representative of Hoban Gallery introduced shamans to political and business circles.’

A hollow laugh escaped him at the belated realization. Sana’s friend, he too was clearly a shaman belonging to Muryeong.

Even so, Dragon Holdings and a shaman. The combination was so incongruous that he realized once again that one truly couldn’t know what went on beneath the surface of people’s affairs.

After 10 PM, Doha slowly began to feel sleepy. He had been living with his days and nights reversed for a while, and since he had been out and about today before fully reverting, he was quite tired. He was about to go into the bedroom to sleep when his gaze stopped at Sana, who was sitting on the floor below the sofa, watching TV.

There was only one blanket. ‘Should I have bought one more blanket when I had time?’ Regretting it now was too late. It was past the time when large marts closed.

“You where… No, never mind.”

He was about to ask where he would sleep, but then he wondered if he really needed to care about his guest’s sleeping arrangements, so he stopped.

He would just sleep roughly on the sofa or the floor. After all, Sana was the one who had stubbornly stayed even when told to leave.

He decided to ignore when or where he slept and just go to sleep, so he went into the bedroom to prepare for bed, but Sana followed him in.

“Why?”

He asked, wondering if he had something to say.

“To sleep.”

He was momentarily stunned by the overly confident answer.