Lady of Dreams Read online

  Table of Contents

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  Glossary of Korean Terms

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  This one is for Shin-woo. He isn’t real, but he made me love him anyway. Here’s the happy ending I would have written you, Shin-woo.

  And with many thanks to CNBLUE’s Jeong Yong-hwa, whose music I listened to continuously while writing this book, and whose name I stole.

  미안해요, 용화씨!

  Contents

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  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Glossary of Korean Terms

  1

  I don’t remember when I first started to Dream. I don’t know why I began to Dream, either, or even how the way I Dream is possible. It could have been because I was bored. Perhaps it was because I’m nosy. Yes, that’s far more likely. I was bored, and nosy, and for the first fifteen years of my life I couldn’t walk, so what else was there to do but Dream?

  I didn’t know I was spying on people. Not at first, at least. And when I did find out, what was there to be concerned about? I couldn’t stop the Dreams, and it was pointless to feel badly about something I couldn’t help. The Dreams came by night or by day, intruding upon the real world until it was almost impossible to tell which was real and which the Dream. My nights were long, but my days were longer, and the Dreams were a welcome distraction from the beige ceiling and the window from which I could see only grey sky. In Scandia the sky is always grey and the ceiling always beige; there’s probably a moral in there somewhere.

  You have questions. That’s all right. Ask away.

  Oh, that’s a clever one; no one has asked me that before. Did the Dreams come first, or the paralysis? I don’t know for sure, but I can guess. I think the Dreams came first, tugging my soul away from my body, and I became so used to being away from my body that I never learned how to use it or really live in it.

  But it’s more than that. I’m left alone in my quarters most of the time, simply forgotten. People don’t see me. Servants sweep past me without bowing, and if I’m not very careful, I get left out in the garden when I take the air on my chaise longue. I used to think it was because I was actually dead, and perhaps I wasn’t so far off.

  After all, what is a body without a soul, and why should a soulless body be seen?

  ***

  The year that made me nineteen, my Dreams of Eppa began a few weeks before I actually arrived in that country for my annual visit. It wasn’t unusual for me to Dream about Eppa, though I didn’t often Dream about it when I wasn’t there. My Dreams chiefly follow people rather than places, and I normally Dream of the people I’m with. Unless it’s Jessamy, of course. I Dream about Jessamy no matter where he is. That’s probably why the Dreams began early, if it comes to that.

  I was a perpetual nomad, flitting between Eppa and Scandia, and though my father made sure I spoke both Eppan and Scandian, my real home was Scandia. My house was small and light, one of a long line of seaside houses that faced the bare, open shore—a great waste, since I couldn’t see the water from my windows. I spent the bulk of my time on my chaise longue, my view alternating between beige ceiling, empty, window-framed sky, and the Dreams that visited me by day and night.

  Despite insisting upon my coming to him in Eppa every year, Father didn’t otherwise concern himself with me. He had never said so, but I knew he was ashamed of a daughter who not only looked like the wife who had abandoned him but was crippled into the bargain. He still made the correct overtures, however: once I was thirteen, summer meant Eppa and three months in the house of Kang Eun-hee, one of Eppa’s brightest, richest, and most social widows. She loved me unreservedly, for whatever reason, and though I didn’t have the capacity to love anyone but Jessamy, I was fond of her in a distant sort of way.

  After the summer came the autumn, when I would be conveyed from Eun-hee’s estate to Father’s estate to spend the next two months. He would see me on the first day I arrived, his face blank and unreadable, to remark, “Are you walking yet, Clovis?” and for me to reply, “Aniyo, Abeonim.”

  Then he would leave me entirely alone for the remainder of the two months, until the last day came and he appeared in the doorway to ask, “You’re to return tomorrow?” and hear me reply, “Ye, Abeonim.”

  By then, unless Jessamy had also visited the estate, I would be thoroughly chilled with boredom, my mind far from my body with Dreams and slow to be recalled even by the return to Scandia. The small amount of walking that I was periodically capable of was always just a little bit harder than usual in the weeks after my return, the disconnection from my body leaving me less responsive to my surroundings than usual and without any interest in my arms and legs.

  It was therefore no surprise to me, two weeks before my expected journey to Eppa, to lose sight of my breakfast tray in the surge of a powerful vision of elsewhere. It was a surprise to find that I wasn’t Dreaming of Scandia; the street I was seeing was filled with Eppan faces and Eppan fashions, colourful and outlandish by contrast with the more modern, pinched Scandian ones.

  My Dream had me outside a familiar restaurant; Father quite often met business acquaintances and potential clients of his publishing house at this restaurant. Approaching the entrance from different directions were three men, who met and bowed on the stairs as they recognised one another.

  I recognised all three straightaway. Jessamy was the easiest; he’s my brother. Half brother, actually, and unlike me, he looks properly Eppan. My mother’s Scandian blood never sullied his complexion, so my father’s creamy brown skin sits oddly beneath Jessamy’s dyed-blond hair. That dyed hair is an Eppan affectation that I don’t much care for, but on Jessamy it looks bright and happy instead of pretentious. The fact that he has such a mobile, expressive little mouth that’s always making odd grimaces and amusing jokes only adds to his brightness. I’m always glad to see Jessamy again, though I would have preferred to see him in real life. We’re so different, but he’s the only person I love. He’s the only person I’m capable of loving.

  The second was a tall, thin, elegant man with what seemed to be a permanent scowl, and wild black hair. The hair would have you believe he didn’t care how he was seen, but it was so artfully done that I knew it must take at least an hour to work it into such a careful disarray. His name was Park Hyun-jun, and he was an author of some fame. Truth be told, I enjoyed his books but found the author himself too much work to enjoy his company. We’d met once or twice before, both of which times he’d stared at me with that disturbing scowl for a full half hour before abruptly rising and striding from the room. At first I’d thought my paleness disgusted him—or that he, like most others, simply hadn’t seen me and had be
en staring through me—but a few years later I found myself written into one of his books, drawn with such care and desolation that it was obvious my inability to walk had hit him unexpectedly hard. I wondered whom I’d reminded him of and from then on dismissed the scowl as a defensive mechanism to keep at bay anything that might cause him to feel more than he chose to feel.

  The third man I recognised almost as easily as I’d recognised Jessamy. Not his name, but himself. I’d never seen him before, but I knew that faint air of languor, that flitting look he sent around the street in search of any distraction. This man, whoever he was, was utterly, achingly, numbingly bored. He was a beautiful thing, his hair perfectly combed and worn long over the forehead and ears in the true Eppan style, and a diamond earring glittered in each earlobe. An exquisitely moulded mouth was set softly closed below heavy-lidded brown eyes that didn’t quite seem to be awake. I saw the long-fingered hands that were playing aimlessly with his silver-topped cane and wasn’t surprised to hear Hyun-jun address him as Ma Yong-hwa, a famous Eppan composer and musician. Besides composing music, he played both the gayageum and the violin, leading me to wonder exactly why such a talented man was obviously as bored as I was. But he smiled when he saw Jessamy, and that smile was a warm, faintly affectionate thing very different from his cool boredom. I decided that I would like him.

  My father met them in the vestibule as they removed their shoes, a young agassi standing quiet and neat beside him. That was new, so I was already watching her when her eyes flew to Hyun-jun’s face in horrified consciousness. Had she had an unpleasant meeting with him previously, or was she simply shy? Unpleasant meeting, I decided. That was particularly likely when it came to Hyun-jun.

  The agassi’s head dropped forward to provide a screen of hair as my father said in the deep, welcoming voice he uses only for clients, “Ah, Hyun-jun-ssi! Come and eat.”

  He bowed, as did the agassi, her hands clasped at her waist. Her bow was just a little too shallow at first and then a little too deep as she hurriedly atoned for her mistake. Fortunately for her, she was a little behind my father, who didn’t see, but Hyun-jun’s lip curled slightly as he followed them both down the hall. On Yong-hwa, the botched respect had quite a different reaction: there was a faint glow of interest in his sleepy brown eyes as Jessamy ushered him into a different room.

  There were no other Dreams to be had, and the room around my physical body was coolly white, creating an open emptiness around me that didn’t invite me to stay, so I followed the Dream with a weary half interest to where Jessamy and Ma Yong-hwa were discussing the publication of Yong-hwa’s music. That puzzled me at first. Father was undoubtedly meeting with Park Hyun-jun, and Jessamy might be the only son, but he was still only sixteen. Moreover, he was a junior assistant at Father’s publishing company, and the idea that someone as important as Yong-hwa had been fobbed off to a junior assistant seemed odd. I had been listening to their conversation for only a few moments before I understood it, however: Jessamy was discussing Yong-hwa’s compositions with a passion and quickness that I hadn’t realised he was capable of. Jessamy had attended the famous Silver Heart College of Music for the last four years, but my Dreams of him had most often caught him either off the campus or in mischief. Nor had we previously had the opportunity to discuss music, and since Jessamy had always struck me more as a large, clumsy, happy puppy than an insightful student of anything, the discussion was something of a surprise.

  Ma Yong-hwa knelt at the table, watching him with a soft line of amusement to his lips.

  “We’ll have to redo the fingering,” said Jessamy. He was kneeling with his elbows planted on the table between them and poring over the sheets of handwritten music. “Of course you can manage it, Hyung, but normal people can’t change position that fast. Or right there.”

  “The position affects the sound,” countered Yong-hwa. “If the fingers aren’t in position on the D string, the mellowness of the notes will be ruined.”

  “There isn’t going to be any mellowness anyway,” said Jessamy. “Rich parents will want to buy music by the great Ma Yong-hwa for their little brats. And those little brats are going to make a huge mess of third-position fingering on the D string.”

  “My music is not for little brats.”

  Jessamy grinned. “With the kind of skill you’d need to play it, it’s not really for anyone but you, Hyung; but if you want it to be published, you’ll need to make some concessions. What if we keep your original fingering, and add a second set below that?”

  Yong-hwa gazed at him in silence for a long moment, and Jessamy’s mouth grimaced upward hopefully. A reluctant smile stole over Yong-hwa’s face. “Very well: two sets of fingering,” he said. “Don’t think you’ve won the game, Jessamy-a. I will be very capricious with the rest of my demands.”

  “All right,” said Jessamy cheerfully. “There’s food. Let’s talk about it.”

  One of Yong-hwa’s long fingers was tapping against the tabletop. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll discuss it. Jessamy-a, who was the young agassi who met Park Hyun-jun?”

  “Oh, that,” Jessamy said, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. “That’s Ae-jung-ssi. She’s pretty useless, but everyone seems to like her a lot.”

  “Everyone,” murmured Yong-hwa, with a brief look at Jessamy’s scowling face. “Yes, I see. Your father finds her useful?”

  Jessamy’s scowl deepened. “I don’t know why. She keeps making silly mistakes.”

  “Such as?”

  “Don’t worry, she’s not part of your publication team,” said Jessamy, hunching his shoulders. “I won’t let her touch anything I’m working on. Anyway, I don’t need help. Hyung, why are we talking about a boring girl?”

  “I really have no idea,” said Yong-hwa. I thought he looked faintly amused, and I couldn’t tell if he was amused at himself or at Jessamy. But his curiosity about the agassi had in turn faintly interested me, and I left them to their discussion of finger positions and pushed the Dream after Park Hyun-jun and Ae-jung.

  I found them both with Father in their own private room. Unlike Jessamy and Yong-hwa, who had begun discussion of their manuscript almost before they sat down, Father and Hyun-jun were still in the midst of a rather abrupt form of small talk while Ae-jung poured tea for them. She wasn’t very good at it, and besides trying to keep a screen of hair between herself and Hyun-jun, she often forgot to position her hands correctly. She remained lucky, however; Father was pretty fully occupied. I don’t often see Father in my Dreams, and I was rather distantly amused to see that while he was exceedingly good at small talk, Hyun-jun wasn’t. Father was persevering, but his mouth wasn’t usually so thin and tight. One side of my mouth curved up briefly, and I turned my attention back to the young agassi, Ae-jung. Beyond her muffed bow, nothing seemed obviously out of place, but I could feel the same tickle of puzzlement that must have bothered Yong-hwa. He had seen something that I hadn’t—or had, at least, understood something from what he had seen—which was mildly annoying. What was it about Ae-jung that struck me as wrong?

  I spent the evening drifting in and out of my Dreams, alternately watching Ae-jung and Yong-hwa and Jessamy. Yong-hwa and Jessamy proceeded from dinner to soju at a covered stand somewhere in the city streets, Jessamy louder and merrier as the evening proceeded and Yong-hwa more inclined to smile into his hand, his eyes glowing. He wasn’t exactly lively, but he was certainly not as painfully bored as he had been earlier in the evening. That didn’t surprise me; I defy anyone to stand proof against Jessamy’s tongue lolling and tail wagging. I can’t do it.

  Ae-jung was less lucky. She was stuck with Park Hyun-jun, on my father’s orders. When I found them again (with some difficulty, since my Dreams of Jessamy tend to be tenacious), Father was gone and Ae-jung was showing Hyun-jun around the room Father had rented for him in a nearby boardinghouse. I raised my brows a little at that; there must be a lot to discuss about Hyun-jun’s new manuscript if Father was renting a room in the city for him. Perhaps Hyun
-jun wasn’t turning in his promised chapters on time. Father had just acquired Hyun-jun from another publishing house, and I could only imagine his frustration if Hyun-jun had succumbed to writer’s block at this juncture.

  “There are three eateries within walking distance of the front door, Seonbae,” said Ae-jung. The shoulder nearest to Hyun-jun was awkwardly hunched, her hair still hiding her face. She would end up falling over if she couldn’t see where she was going. “The counter ahjumma will provide breakfast, and you can buy lunch boxes at the—”

  Hyun-jun’s terrifyingly wild eyes widened in a sort of frenzied recognition. “You!”

  “Aish!” moaned Ae-jung to herself. She emerged from her hair with a pained smile and met Hyun-jun’s eyes for a brief moment. “About last time, Seonbae—”

  “You!”

  “Seonbae, it’s like this: I really didn’t steal your lunch box! And perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to struggle, but it was my lunch box and I didn’t mean to let go right then—”

  Hyun-jun, who seemed to have frozen on the one concept, said one last, strangled “You!”

  “Ye, but about last time, Seonbae,” squeaked Ae-jung. She was looking more and more pained by the moment. “I didn’t know there was a fishpond just there and I really thought the lid would be tighter on a custom-made lunch box, so—”

  Hyun-jun drew himself up, taut and positively quivering with rage. “There were prawns in my hair. I found more of them in there the next day.”

  “Ah, ye.” Ae-jung sounded a little strangled herself. “That is, I apologise, Seonbae; it was completely my fault.”

  “My trousers got torn on the pebbles in the bottom of the pond,” said Hyun-jun, his voice sinking into the most menacing quietness I had ever heard. In direct contrast, his eyes grew more fixed and wild with every level his voice sank. “I had to walk the entire length of the street with the back of my trousers in ribbons.”

  Ae-jung made a small sound that could have been a cough or a quiet sort of choke. I thought at first that she was laughing, but her face was genuinely horrified. She took a faltering step toward Hyun-jun, one hand half-outstretched. “I—really, I—Seonbae, I didn’t mean to—”