It’s been a month, and Penny is adjusting well at the Dallergut Dream Department Store. The most significant improvement is that she now knows all the nitty-gritty details about the Eyelid Scales of the regulars. Specifically, that regular No. 898’s scale often struggles to keep its heavy eyelids up, and it happens so frequently that Penny is reasonably sure something’s wrong with the scale itself.
“Weather, this scale must be broken. I’ve been watching it closely, and right now, it’s not even nighttime in the time zone where this customer lives, and he has been dozing off from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. See here! It’s still moving right now!”
The eyelid part of the scale is slowly flapping up and down.
“That scale’s working just fine. He’s a high schooler, must be dozing off in class. Let him sleep. There’s nothing you can do about it, you know.”
Penny has grown comfortable guiding customers through the floors, helping them find what they’re looking for, or alerting them when new arrivals come in. But one of the essential tasks at the front desk is accounting, which means organizing the dream payments, a difficult job to master. More than anything, she finds handling the Dream Pay Systems program the trickiest. So does Dallergut, so the responsibility falls solely to Weather.
“Dream payments are made with half the emotion a customer feels after they dream,” Weather explains. “So, customers who naturally feel more have a higher chance of paying more. That’s why it’s important to take good care of our regulars. Most of their dreams are rich in emotion.”
“How is it possible to pay with emotion?”
“That’s where the Dream Pay Systems program comes in! It’s sort of like IoT technology—you know, Internet of Things? The program connects the customers to our safe. When they pay for their dreams, the currency comes to our safe, and we can read the data from our computers... Penny, are you with me? Can you at least pretend you’re following?” Weather pleads.
“Oh, I’m sorry... It’s just that... It’s hard to visualize it in my head...”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to keep doing it myself for the time being.”
Weather comes to work early each morning, and the first thing she does is take the dream payments from the safe and deposit them at the bank across the street. When Weather’s busy with this task, Penny fills in for her at the front desk, which keeps her on her toes.
This morning, Penny is looking around like a meerkat, ready to keep an eye on things while Weather checks the safe. But Weather returns only moments after leaving.
“Are you done already?” Penny asks.
She’s sweating profusely, bent over and clutching her stomach. “I think something was off with the omelet I had this morning. L-let me stop by...the restroom... I may be a minute. Can you go to the bank for me? Take the key to the storage room and open the safe with it. You’ll see two full glass bottles inside. Take them to the bank counter, and they’ll take care of it. Just tell them you’re from the Dream Department Store. You sh-should hurry... You’ll get caught in the morning rush.”
Weather hands a small key to Penny before darting to the restroom.
Penny has no time to panic. She quickly scribbles a note and leaves it on the front desk: “Gone to bank for a while—Penny.” As she trots toward the storage room, she mumbles to herself, “The safe, two glass bottles, full, the bank counter, tell them I’m from the Dream Department Store.”
Inside the neatly organized storage room is a safe. It is much larger than Penny thought it would be, and she struggles to find the keyhole. She finally locates it by her feet, pushes and twists the key until she hears it unlock. She pulls open the door—as massive as the lobby entrance—and a big room reveals itself, deep like a cave.
The safe looks like a giant spice cabinet in the basement of a wealthy house. Inside each custom-made case are rows of glass bottles, containing different colored liquids: mysterious turquoise, blinding ivory and dusky bloodred. There is something about the bloodred bottle that creeps her out.
The steady dripping of water echoes through the safe. Penny knows these colorful liquids are dream payments, and it is a wonder to witness them in person.
She easily spots the two full glass bottles Weather mentioned. Someone must have taken them out of their cases and placed them in a lower row of the cabinets last night. Both labels say Flutter, and the liquid inside the bottles is baby pink, like cotton candy. Penny wants to take her time looking at the other bottles, but she hasn’t forgotten what Weather said about hurrying to the bank. She rushes to remove two bottles and locks the safe behind her.
Penny heads to the bank with the bottles tucked under her armpits. They’re relatively heavy and slippery, which makes her sweat. There must be a better way to transport them; Weather probably forgot to tell her.
As she enters the bank, a cool breeze from the air-conditioning greets her. Luckily it’s not too crowded. She takes a queue ticket, proud of herself for smoothly carrying out the task up to this point.
No more klutz Penny! I can do things well on my own.
She takes a seat, clutching the glass bottles, the baby pink liquid sloshing inside. Seven people are waiting in front of her. Penny hopes they won’t take long, but the customers at the counters seem to be there on complicated tasks and are holding up the queue.
Bored, she rests the bottles on the floor and takes out a magazine from a nearby rack. The title reads Dream Neuroscience—May.
Wow, what a catchy title, she thinks sarcastically.
She casually flips to a random page and starts skimming.
Paper of the Month:
A Study on Dream Payments
and Their Respective Emotions
Dr. Reeno’s A Study on Dream Payments and Their Respective Emotions has been selected as Paper of the Month. Numerous papers on the topic have been published, but Dr. Reeno’s piece stands apart for depth of research.
“The point is that the customers are aware they are ‘oblivious beings.’ They have an objective understanding of themselves. They even know that what they ‘remember’ is not factual reality but information their brain has reprocessed. Ultimately, the fact that they know ‘all experiences will eventually be forgotten’ makes every moment a once-in-a-lifetime moment. That is why the emotions they feel after dreaming and their respective dream prices hold special power.”
Above is Dr. Reeno’s answer to our request to summarize the core message of his two-hundred-page dissertation. Some critics have argued that his paper is more a rehashing of previous studies and lacks originality. But the consensus in academia seems to be that in analyzing nearly three thousand cases over a decade, the scope of Dr. Reeno’s work deserves recognition. A full version of his paper is available at the Dream Neuroscience official website.
The thought of a two-hundred-page dissertation makes Penny dizzy. She closes the magazine without a second thought. There are still five people waiting in line.
Just then, a man in a neat suit sits down next to Penny and strikes up a conversation. “What captivating color you have in those bottles. Very high quality. Worth at least two hundred gordens, I’d say. Where’re you from? I haven’t seen you around.”
“I’m from the department store across the street. I’m new there, so this would be your first time seeing me.” Penny assumes the guy must work for the bank.
“What number are you? There’s still time until your turn—how about I show you around?”
Penny is about to decline his offer, pointing at the heavy bottles that have her tethered to her seat, when he picks one up and says, “Let me help you.”
Penny finds herself following the man as he guides her past the counters to an area with a huge electronic display board facing about a hundred chairs. It looks like someone just replicated a train station waiting room.
People are nervously looking up at the board, which displays the market prices of different emotions in real time, like stocks in the stock market.
Fulfilled and Confidence are up by fifteen percent in deep red, ranking the highest. Below them are Futility and Lethargy, whose prices are dropping. The people sitting closest to the display board are either desperately clasping their hands in prayer or heaving a deep sigh.
“A beef burger combo is one gorden, and how much is one bottle of Fulfilled—two hundred?” one guy rants. “It’s ridiculous that somebody would pay that much for some nobody’s accomplishment just to get vicarious satisfaction from it! Had I hoarded it last year, I’d be long retired by now!”
Penny finds the price for Flutter on the upper line. It is now being traded at 180 gordens per bottle. She realizes she would be in deep trouble if she lost her own bottles. She holds hers tight and turns to the man—only to find him gone.
Gone with the other Flutter bottle he was holding for her.
She is in trouble. A chill races down her spine.
Is he a swindler? He must have been roaming around, looking for an unwitting, woolly-headed victim to coin-snatch from, and he happened to catch Penny, who completely fits the bill. What was she thinking to admit she’s new? She must’ve been the perfect, most delicious prey. So naive. She frantically looks around, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
She needs to deposit the remaining bottle, but her turn has well passed. To make matters worse, her queue ticket is gone. She can’t leave the front desk vacant any longer, so she decides to head back to the store.
Weather is already back at the front desk, looking more buoyant. Her restroom situation must have been well taken care of—unlike Penny’s disaster.
“Weather...”
“What’s wrong, Penny? Wait, why did you bring that back?”
Penny explains everything. Now that she is verbalizing what happened, she feels like the dumbest person in the world.
“Gosh, this is bad. Flutter is rare these days. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have given you such a big task. I’ll tell Dallergut, don’t you worry. Maybe we can still catch him if we call the police. That guy tried to scam me a couple of times, too.”
“You should’ve kicked him in the joints back then, Weather,” says Dallergut, appearing without warning. “So, what you’re saying is, you’ve been robbed of one dream payment bottle and failed to deposit the other? The Flutter bottle price has reached its peak today, for the first time in three months...”
“I’m so sorry, sir.” Penny can barely look Dallergut in the eye.
“But all for the better! I needed a Flutter bottle myself and meant to stop by the front desk to tell Weather not to deposit it, only I forgot. It’s a good thing you brought it back for me! Today’s working out just fine. As for the lost bottle, let’s consider it a price paid for learning the lesson—that the world is a scary place.”
Dallergut’s generosity make Penny feel even more horrible.
“I am so, so sorry. Where do you want me to put the Flutter?”
“This? I have a feeling a certain customer will visit us today. And she’ll need it.”
Ah-young has been a regular at the Dallergut Dream Department Store since she was young. She thought she generally dreamed a lot, but it never occurred to her that she had a go-to dream store to visit every night because everything she dreamed each night would be forgotten by morning.
Ah-young was born in the suburbs, where she grew up and finished college. After that she found work in a metropolitan city and a place to live on her own, close to her typical, nine-to-five office job. She got the job as soon as she graduated, and had been working there for four years now. She was twenty-eight years old and, in theory, her life was smooth sailing.
“There’s no one. Literally, no one.” Ah-young sighed on the phone.
“Really? Doesn’t your company have a lot of guys?”
“All of them are married or taken, or not my type, or I’m not theirs.”
“I doubt that! Have you checked every one of them to know that? Or maybe you’re not interested in dating in the first place?”
“Honestly, I have no idea where to start. How are you supposed to initiate a date as an adult?”
“So, you do have someone, don’t you? I knew it!”
“Well...”
Ah-young sprawled out on her queen-size bed after finishing the phone call with her girlfriend. The bed looked especially huge tonight, and it was bugging her.
“Ah, so lonely.”
She had reached the point where she verbalized how lonely she was in her room. Her voice made small echoes as it bounced off the walls, which sounded pathetic. It was already around midnight.
Ah-young had worked overtime and then she came straight home, showered, threw out the recycling, had dinner, and then took the short call with her friend. Now she’d only have six hours left to sleep. If she binged YouTube and a webcomic series through the night again, she’d be staying up for two nights in a row. Enough about loneliness, she needed sleep. She had to go to work tomorrow.
How long will I have to live like this? Ah-young struggled to keep this question out of her mind. It was bad to think deep thoughts before bed. She knew all too well from past experiences that it wouldn’t help her fall asleep.
She pulled the blanket to her neck and set the alarm on her smartphone, then checked the weather for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s air quality: terrible. Weather: cloudy. All the icons in the weather app were gray.
What a grim life. Definitely not how I’d imagined my twenties would look... Nothing colorful.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Ah-young thought of the guy she’d mentioned to her friend on the call. He was from a vendor company and visited the office every Wednesday. After completing his morning tasks, he’d eat lunch at a one-person table in a restaurant that she also frequented.
“Hello, this is Jong-seok Hyun from Tech Industries. Do you have a moment?”
“Yes, hello, this is Ah-young Jeong. I’m available. How can I help you?”
“I plan to visit at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday of this week. Does that time work?”
The two had spoken on work calls before and exchanged a few greetings in person, but that was all. Yet his consistency in calling her every Monday at the same time for confirmation, his upright posture when greeting her in person, and his calm, professional attitude (of course, “professional” was subjective) toward sometimes frustrating and annoying work requests—all of this caught her eye.
And recently, he’d started appearing in her dreams, even more handsome and taller than in real life.
Ah-young reflected on her past, wondering when she’d last developed a relationship from “mere fondness” into something “romantic.” Maybe in high school? Or first year in college? Wait, is tomorrow Wednesday? Suddenly, she felt the knot in her belly relaxing. She would see him tomorrow.
Ah-young wrapped herself in the blanket and rolled toward the wall. She sincerely hoped he would never find this out about her—that she was tossing and turning, giddy at the thought of him. No doubt it would make him feel uncomfortable, knowing he was being admired at work, and fantasized about at night by a stranger! He could already be married or with someone.
Her fluttering heart was no different from a teenage girl’s, but she was at an age where worries and concerns came before romance.
Okay, now I’m overthinking again. I really must go to sleep.
Let me at least have this feeling last longer, even if it’s one-sided, Ah-young prayed as she fell asleep.
“Weather, I think No. 201 should be here soon.”
“Oh, you’re right.” Weather glances at the Eyelid Scale.
“What a relief. She usually comes every day, so I was worried when she didn’t stop by yesterday,” Penny says, smiling as she looks at No. 201’s Eyelid Scale. The eyelid is completely closed, the pendulum pointing at the bottom, “REM sleep.”
The moment Penny finishes talking, No. 201 comes in from the entrance. Penny and Weather greet her with delight.
“Welcome!”
“Hi! I’m here to take the same dream. I’ve been enjoying it lately.”
“Of course. The third floor is pretty hectic now. Let me grab it for you. Please wait here.”
Penny rushes upstairs where Mogberry, the third-floor manager, is sorting through new arrivals with other employees. Her baby hair is sticking out in all directions, as usual. Penny weaves through mounds of boxes to reach the Steady Sellers section. Popular dream boxes are stacked on the display. They’d been neatly organized this morning, but now that customers have swept through, they’re in disarray.
Penny rummages through the boxes to find the dream the woman’s looking for. After sorting past the Leprechauns’ “Flying Dream” for the fifth time, Penny finally spots the box with heart-shaped decorations. The ribbon has its dreammaker, Keith Gruer, printed on it. Keith Gruer is a veteran maker of romantic dreams. According to a well-informed source (Assam) Gruer is actually so bad at relationships in his personal life that he has gone through over a hundred breakups. He shaves his head whenever he has a breakup, so no one has ever seen him with long hair. But it is an established truth in the dream industry that the quality of his dreams gets better with every heartbreak.
“Is this the one?” Penny rushes back to the first floor, handing the box to the customer. The box is labeled “Meeting Your Crush.”
“Yes, this is it.”
“Here you go. Thank you.”
“Do I pay later this time too?” the woman asks as she takes the box.
“Yes. As always, all you need to do is share a little piece of your feelings after you wake up. If you don’t feel anything after the dream, we won’t charge you!” Penny has learned all this from Weather.
The woman quietly leaves the store with the box. Her steps seem light and bouncy, but for some reason, watching her walk away leaves Penny uneasy, and she doesn’t know why.
As the day goes by, the crowds thin out. Penny sweeps the floor, lost in thought. Since No. 201’s visit, something’s been bothering her, but she can’t put her finger on it. She mindlessly sweeps until she arrives at Dallergut’s office near the staircase. Then she realizes what’s bothering her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve spilled a lot of crumbs from the cookies, right?” The office door flings wide open as Dallergut trudges out.
“No worries at all, Dallergut. I was just cleaning up in my downtime. But, then...”
“Everything okay?”
“Actually, I have a question about Customer No. 201.”
“Oh, 201. She is a long-time regular.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to keep selling her ‘Meeting Your Crush’?”
“Is there a problem?” Dallergut asks, genuinely interested in Penny’s answer.
“Well, I think dreaming about your crush a few times is fine. But with each new dream the feelings would amplify and lead to more heartache. For her to keep dreaming the same dream...” Penny trails off, momentarily lost in thought. “Right!” She finally realizes what has been bugging her since seeing the customer leave. “It probably means she’s stalling out in real life!”
“Penny, do you know what our out-of-town customers generally think dreams are, including No. 201?”
“Of course! I’ve learned about this. The subconscious. They think dreams are manifestations of their subconscious.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“So? What about it?” Penny doesn’t get where this is going. She doesn’t want to seem like a pumpkin-headed employee, constantly asking questions, but still, her curiosity gets the better of her.
“I’m sure you’re aware, but outside customers don’t remember anything about their time in our store when they wake up from their dreams. Because of that, the best explanation they can come up with for their dreams is their subconscious. What would you do if you were a customer?”
“If my crush keeps appearing in my dreams, I would think my feelings had grown to the point that even my subconscious is consumed by that person,” says Penny, unsure.
“Right. And as time passes, you’d be certain you have strong feelings for that person.”
“Yes, but that’s the thing. That’s not enough to start a romantic relationship. Dreams are just dreams...” Penny thinks of how the woman was so excited to buy the dream again, and her heart aches for her. Still, Dallergut looks merry.
“Love starts when you recognize your feelings. Whether it ends in one-sided or reciprocal love, our job is done here.”
“I just hope it’s not one-sided. That’s too painful.”
“As you said, dreams are just dreams, right? Let’s keep our hopes high for her in real life.”
Ah-young woke up five minutes before her alarm. Her eyes just opened, feeling refreshed without the help of the alarm. She faintly remembered having gone to a store in her dream, but the more she tried to remember, the more it slipped out of her head, like a grain of sand escaping from her hand. Now, she no longer remembered any of it. All she did remember was that he was in her dream, yet again. In the dream, she was with him at his favorite restaurant. She was sitting close to him. He sat in his usual seat; they were having a long conversation. They seemed to have committed to meeting there every day, and the conversation was comfortable, as if they had been together for a long time.
Ah-young got up, the afterglow of the dream still lingering as she headed to the shower. Her heart was indeed aflutter. But, as soon as the showerhead sprayed cold water on her skin, she came to her senses.
What’s wrong with me? What’s all this fuss?
Before the customer’s flutter fades, an alarm rings in the lobby on the first floor of the Dallergut Dream Department Store.
Ding Dong. “Payment received from Customer No. 201. A small amount of Flutter has arrived for ‘Meeting Your Crush.’”
“This system is connected to those bottles in the safe, right?” asks Penny, reading the notification.
“Finally, you’re getting it! And yes, the world has definitely evolved for the better. Back in the old days, we spilled more than we collected, trying to transfer the payments into the bottles ourselves. Running around with a scale, trying to weigh them whenever they arrived—it would take up the whole day.”
“By the way, what’s Dallergut going to do with that one Flutter bottle?”
The bottle that Penny failed to deposit at the bank keeps bugging her. It is still standing on the front desk.
“If Dallergut has something in mind, I’m sure it’ll get put to good use,” Weather assures her.
At work, Ah-young was finding it hard to focus. The more she thought about why she kept dreaming about him every night, the less she could help but reach one conclusion.
Do I have feelings for him?
From the next cubicle, she heard her boss say, “Ah-young, is Jong-seok coming for the meeting today?”
It was 9:55 a.m. He would typically be here by now. He usually arrived exactly ten minutes before the meeting, or he’d call her to let her know he was running late. Ah-young thought it strange—and just then, her desk phone rang.
“Hello, this is Ah-young Jeong from the Tech Support department.”
“Hello! This is Jong-seok Hyun from Tech Industries.” He sounded like he was panting. As if he’d been running. “I’m sorry, but I left the meeting materials in my car. I should be there by 10:00 a.m.”
“Oh, okay.” Then, thinking her answer might have been too cold, Ah-young quickly added, “I’ll let my manager know. Please take your time.”
“Thank you!”
After Ah-young hung up, she fidgeted with the phone cord. He’d sounded uncharacteristically flustered. His voice left her heart skipping a beat again.
Stop. Focus. You’re at work. She tried hard to keep it together.
At 10:00 a.m. sharp, the door swung open, and in came Jong-seok. Ah-young pretended not to notice him, but she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She’d told him not to hurry, but his cheeks were flushed from rushing here.
He kept glancing around as if looking for someone. Then he met her gaze, catching her off guard. Before she could look away, he nodded and smiled widely, revealing dimples on each cheek.
You even have perfect dimples. Not fair!
Ah-young couldn’t help but admit it. She was indeed falling for him.
Things had seemed off ever since Jong-seok woke up that morning. His ex-girlfriend appeared in his dream, and he woke up feeling uneasy. They’d dated so long ago that he no longer remembered what had caused the breakup, and the dream didn’t trigger any regrets or longing. It just made him uncomfortable that she’d made an appearance. And she’d been appearing more often recently.
What a troubling subconscious I have.
That morning, Jong-seok was so lost in thought that he forgot his meeting materials in the car. He hated being late for meetings. He was turning thirty soon, and he didn’t want to enter a new decade with no dating life and an incompetent work life.
As he rushed back to the parking lot, he made a phone call. After a couple of rings and a click, the woman from the client’s office answered.
“Hello, this is Ah-young Jeong from the Tech Support department.”
“Hello! This is Jong-seok Hyun from Tech Industries.” He was worried his panting voice would sound comical to her. How pathetic. He raised his voice to try and cover his heavy breathing. “I’m sorry, but I left the meeting materials in my car. I should be there by 10:00 a.m.”
“Oh, okay.” Her response was short. But before hanging up, she added, “I’ll let my manager know. Please take your time.”
“Thank you!” Her response gave him the boost of cheer he needed to get through the day.
That night, Jong-seok went to bed exhausted. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
“Welcome!” Penny immediately recognizes the man. Recently, he’s been buying the same dream, “Meeting an Ex-Girlfriend,” from the Memories section on the second floor. “Are you looking for the same dream?”
“Yes, please,” he replies blankly.
Before Penny goes to the second floor, Dallergut intervenes. “Sir, I don’t think you need that dream anymore.”
“Excuse me?”
“You might not remember this, but you begged me two years ago for dreams in which an ex-girlfriend appears.”
“Did I...? If it was two years ago... It must have been right after we broke up.”
“Yes. And you’d always wake up in tears, right?”
“Yes, I used to. But I was okay soon after. And I didn’t dream about her for a long time.” He stops, as if considering this. “But wait, why am I dreaming about her again now?”
“Because you asked me to give you a dream about her again when you were ready to start a new relationship. You wanted to make sure you were really over her first. So I suggested that same dream, ‘Meeting an Ex-Girlfriend.’”
“I see.”
“And you haven’t been paying for your dreams. That means, you no longer have feelings for your ex-girlfriend, even in your dreams.”
“It also means our dreams have gone to waste,” Weather adds.
“That’s right. We’re afraid we can no longer sell that dream to you. You won’t have feelings to pay us back with, anyway,” Dallergut says.
“Okay then,” the man responds as he turns to leave. He seems to feel awkward.
“But before you go, can I offer you a nice drink? The night is long. Why hurry?” Dallergut’s friendly tone stops the man, and he turns back. Dallergut produces the Flutter bottle from the front desk and opens the cork. Pink smoke rises from within. Dallergut pours a teacup full of liquid and hands it to the man.
“Go ahead. Drink it up.”
The man finishes the drink and leaves the store looking much more cheerful than he did when he came in, before disappearing into thin air.
“Dallergut, why did you give all that expensive Flutter away?” Penny asks in frustration. He just threw it away—what a waste.
“You said one-sided love is too painful,” Dallergut says.
Penny’s mouth falls open. “Is he No. 201’s crush?”
Dallergut nods shortly and firmly, confused as to why she bothers to ask such an obvious question.
“How did you know?”
“When you run a store for three decades, you just know.”
Jong-seok woke up feeling more refreshed than ever. He was giddy, his heart full of excitement. Today’s a good day to start something new, he thought. He kept his phone plugged into the charger, humming as he headed into the shower.
The sound of splashing water mixed with his singing. Then his phone dinged with a text. Only the first part of the message appeared on the locked screen.
New Message: Hi, this is Ah-young Jeong. Hope you remember me...?
“So, how did you meet your boyfriend?”
“I had a crush on him. I just went ahead and asked him out.”
“Really? You don’t seem the type.”
“I know. But when your feelings are urgent, you change.”
“Weren’t you afraid of rejection?”
“I was more afraid of coming off as weird to him. I met him at work.”
“Wow, you must’ve really liked him.”
“After I sent that first text I immediately turned off my phone. I was worried he would never get back to me. I waited for about two hours and turned it back on. He called me out later for almost ghosting him. But he had asked me out.”
“So, looking back now, do you think you made the right choice?”
“Of course! It’s one of the top-five best decisions I’ve ever made. Maybe even top three.”