To be honest, I was starting to doubt my own sanity.

It's been months now. Every time I close my eyes and fall asleep, the same woman appears in my dreams. It wasn't just a typical recurring dream.

Some days, it was on a nameless beach shrouded in thick fog. In a silence where even the sound of waves couldn't be heard, she would walk slowly toward me wearing a damp, colorless dress. Other days, it was on the cool wooden floor of an old traditional house, or inside a red public phone booth during a torrential downpour.

In the dreams, she was always trying to tell me something. Her lips were clearly moving, but only a distant ringing filled my ears; I couldn't understand a single word. Yet, her pitch-black hair, the small mole on her neck, and those terribly yearning, deep eyes looking at me... even after waking up, they remained branded in my mind like a tattoo I couldn't escape.

Was I going crazy? I was seriously considering seeking psychiatric counseling because I couldn't take the exhaustion anymore.

Today was just another ordinary, tiring commute home. Raindrops began to fall one by one, and I stood blankly under my umbrella in front of the crosswalk I always used.

And that was the exact moment.

On the opposite sidewalk, amidst the crowd of people holding up umbrellas, my gaze stopped as if by a miracle. The very form I had seen countless times in my dreams. The achromatic coat, the black tresses falling over her shoulders.

...No way.

My breath hitched. My heart began to pound frantically. As soon as the crosswalk light turned green, I ran toward the other side like a man possessed, pushing through the passing crowd. I didn't have time to think about what I was doing. There was only a powerful instinct that if I didn't catch her now, I would never escape this mad hallucination for the rest of my life.

"Excuse me, wait a second—!"

I reached out through the sound of the rain and grabbed her sleeve without thinking.

The woman slowly turned around. The moment her features were revealed beneath the shadow of her umbrella, I felt the blood in my entire body turn cold.

It was the very woman who had looked down at me every night through the fog and rain. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a hallucination. She was standing right here in front of my eyes, a real person.

As I stood there in a panic, gasping for air, she looked at me calmly with eyes that showed no surprise. It was as if she had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

Then, in that voice I could never hear in my dreams, she spoke in a low tone.