The dream started vaguely.
I was at my friends', L and J's, apartment in the same town where we attended undergraduate studies. I was consoling L over her most recent heartbreak with an ex she had been with for nearly three years. J was not there; instead, another guy I did not even know was with us as we sat cross-legged on the apartment's floor.
"You know what, crying just like this will not help significantly," said the guy. He paused, then looked at me as if he was trying to convey something through telepathy.
I shook my head at him. Should he be able to read what I was thinking, I thought to myself, "Sorry, I'm not an esper."
I was surprised that he nodded, as though he really did read what I thought. Then he looked at L. "Let's go to Kuala Lumpur!"
L, still crying, hit his arm. "What are you talking about?"
"Let's travel," he replied. "Traveling will surely heal your broken heart."
I doubted that, but at the time, I wanted to travel, too. So I told L a half-hearted lie: "He's right."
Then we were in an unfamiliar place, standing in the middle of a pedestrian crossing, tall buildings surrounding us. I could only assume this was the Kuala Lumpur we traveled to. I, L, and the guy roamed the streets and stopped by kiosks to eat cotton candies - only cotton candies for some reason. Always cotton candies.
When it seemed like we had scoured through the whole city's cotton candy stores, we decided to fly to Japan... for ramen.
The next scene was a typical Japanese ramen restaurant. The three of us sat together by the counter, big bowls of ramen in front of us, but we didn't eat. L's guy friend, whose name I still didn't catch, pulled out a phone from his pants' pocket.
I watched him scroll through his phone until he showed us a picture.
"Forget that guy," he said. "Why not try dating some of my friends? This guy's a lawyer and is really kind."
The lawyer he was talking about was a handsome white man in immaculately black three-piece suit. I grimaced. L grimaced.
Guy friend sighed and went through a photo gallery of seemingly tall white men he claimed were his friends.
"They're all good looking and definitely better than your ex!" he insisted.
I was about to comment that picking a random guy for L to date just to get over her heartbreak wasn't the way to go, but L beat me to it and started wailing.
"I can't!" she wailed. Guy friend looked confused. "I don't want to!"
"Why?"
"They're too tall for me!"
It wasn't the best moment, but I laughed really hard her comment. L, barely five feet tall, didn't want to be match-made with guy friend's many western, white male friends because they would all be too tall for her.
It was so hilarious that it took me a while to get grips with myself.
"I want kimbap," said L all too suddenly.
"But the legitimate ones are in South Korea," I answered.
"Then let's go to South Korea."
In the end, L and I found ourselves in a restaurant in Seoul. Guy friend was left in Japan. When L and I entered the restaurant we found one of my roommates from college, also a friend to L, Jha.
As we were already sat in one of the tables, we called her over. Jha followed through and sat at the seat in front of L and I.
"I'm taking a break from medical school," said Jha, a chemical engineering graduate. I was confused what she was doing in medical school, but I didn't ask further.
She just one day thought she wanted kimbap, just like L, and then there she was.
As we eat kimbap together, Jha opened up and said that she was heartbroken.
"By who?" I asked. I didn't know that Jha had someone.
"By T," she answered. T was one of her closest friends from high school. I used to tease the two of them, but it turned out that they got together in the year Jha and I didn't see each other.
"What did he do?"
"He cheated on me!" Then Jha began crying and wailing. It was a relief that the restaurant didn't have any customers besides the three of us.
I was appalled, and L was, too!
"But he seemed like a good guy," I commented. Jha used to tell stories about how good a friend he was, and how he would call her during college just to catch up and ask how she was doing.
"Apparently, he wasn't," said Jha. "One day, he just broke up with me and said he had been cheating on me all this time."
Jha continued crying while L started rubbing her back to console her. L, who herself just came from a heartbreak of her own, started asking, "There really were no signs? My ex and I broke up, but it's already obvious in the last few weeks that we were falling out."
Jha started crying even louder then yelled, "I think... I think there were!"
She realized that T had been cold to her in the few months before they broke up.
I was starting to get stressed by the development, so I offered her my kimbap. Only then did she stop from crying.
"I think... I think we should head back home."
Then I woke up.
Dream Journal from October 24, 2018
