Thirty Autumns

The things I can't go back to in reality, the things I can't do, I move them into my dreams.

In that parallel world, I return to the place I call home.

I don't need a key. I simply walk through the door.

Out of habit, I say,

"I'm home."

Then, I wait to see—

Grandpa sitting in the living room, answering me,

"You're home."

Grandma poking her head out from the kitchen:

"Are you hungry?"

And my aunt calling from her room:

"I'll take you out for a walk later."

Everything is just like it used to be.

Except, I can't find my room.

And in that instant, the scene goes dark.

The space becomes narrow, as if something is blocking my breath.

"Run."

A voice comes from the darkness, so black that I can't even see my own hand.

A familiar uncertainty rises into my throat.

My BPM starts accelerating.

Adrenaline surges through me.

Someone is coming upstairs.

But I don't know from which direction.

I start running forward.

The next second, I suddenly find myself climbing stairs.

I'm inside a cramped room, something like an attic, so narrow that I can barely turn around.

I'm looking for an exit.

"One minute and thirty seconds remaining."

The voice comes from the foggy darkness.

A red warning light begins to rotate, sweeping across my face again and again.

"If you don't run, if you don't find the exit soon, you're going to die."

That familiar voice...

I haven't heard it for thirty autumns.

And yet the fear is still there, like an invisible scar that never truly disappeared.

I start to think this isn't a dream.

Because I can feel my heart suddenly racing, my breathing becoming faster.

Someone is going to attack me.

But this room, this forgotten attic, is too small.

I can barely move my body.

Even breathing feels like pressure.

"Thirty seconds left."

The voice comes again from the darkness.

I push myself to move faster within the limited space.

Suddenly—

someone grabs me by the collar.

They lean close to my right ear.

My body reacts on instinct.

I strike back.

With everything I have.

In my head, I am already preparing my statement:

Self-defense.

Then, I turn around.

Nothing.

I freeze.

I begin to realize that maybe I'm going crazy in this dream.

Why?

Why does the dream, this parallel world, feel more real than the so-called real world?

I begin to think I might actually die here.

In a dream.

I am desperate.

Because the time is up.

A bell rings somewhere in the distance, like the shift-change bell in a factory.

And then, a force suddenly pulls me backward.

I am dragged through the darkness.

I can't see anything.

The force keeps pulling me back.

I feel myself falling.

In the instant I lose gravity, my heart feels as though it has been struck.

I start screaming.

Because I see myself falling toward Earth from an endless darkness.

I begin to enter the atmosphere.

The pressure of fighting against it almost makes me lose my mind.

I keep screaming.

Even though I know that perhaps, in the real world, my body is screaming too.

Suddenly, I am pulled upward again.

My body arches.

Once.

Twice.

But I am still falling.

The sensation is so unbearable, so close to death, that for the first time, I wish—

I really wish I could just die like this.

Then, I close my eyes.

Enough.

After a moment of complete darkness, I hear the sound of an ECG.

Someone is shocking my heart.

I feel my entire body jerking upward with every electric shock.

But somehow, my body and I no longer seem connected.

I hear the defibrillator release one long, continuous tone.

Then, I wake up.

I really wake up.

I am lying in my own apartment.

There is no autumn outside the window.

No familiar voices.

No Grandpa.

No Grandma.

No Aunt.

Those people, my family, are gone.

And that voice—

ten years ago,

twenty years ago,

thirty years ago—

it had appeared in my memories again and again.

It was the voice that had saved me.

Again and again.

I always thought it was only something left behind in my memory.

Until tonight, when it told me to run again.

Some things never truly leave.

They simply wait

for the wrong season

to come back.