It started when I was an elementary schooler, knowing nothing and intoxicated by a colorful world. It was a pitch-black dream. A dream where I could see nothing and know nothing. I wailed, terrified by the dark, distant space. Mommy, Mommy... I screamed, but no one came. My voice was swallowed up. It felt like being submerged in black ink. I was suffocating. My lungs filled with water. It was agony. I reached out with all my strength. I hoped someone would grab me. That was when it happened.

A slender, pale hand suddenly gripped mine. It was freezing cold. I suddenly remembered touching a dead fish in the freezer section of a grocery store once. I had cried on the spot, terrified by the cold texture and the empty eyes. That hand pulled me up. When the owner of that hand finally came into full view, I felt like I could breathe again. My eyes ached the moment I met its gaze. It was because the eyes were such a piercing blue. It looked about my age, or perhaps more mature than me. It smiled and said something to me, but I couldn't hear it. I was in a daze. Then I opened my eyes. I saw the ceiling of my familiar room.

After that, it visited my dreams every single day. It asked about every little detail of my life. For years, every single day... If I hid even the slightest thing, it would notice like a ghost and become hysterical. I could guess it was what folk beliefs call an angel because of the wings on its back and the ring floating above its head, but I didn't want to believe it. What it did to me was hardly something an angel would do.

On nights when I hid even a small part of my story, I had to live the next day with a heavy, sluggish body and a head that throbbed as if it were breaking. After I told it about being scolded by my parents in elementary school, my parents' car caught fire for unknown reasons the next day while they were heading to a couple's gathering. Shortly after I talked about being bullied in middle school, the guys who harassed me stole a motorcycle and were riding it when the bike exploded for an unknown cause... Its obsession showed no signs of stopping. When my sleep hours decreased after starting high school entrance exams, it flew into a rage, asking if I liked that high school—just a building—more than it. From that day on, it stopped appearing in my dreams. It seemed to have left, fed up. Fine, it was for the better. Thinking that, I lived my high school life in my own way. I got into the student council and dated a few times. Everything returned to normal. Only happiness remained.

The 15th Freshman Orientation