Chapter 1 - Dreams of Lavender Fields

The streets of Soeul are always the busiest this time of year. Winter came with air so cold your face turns numb, but along with that came the holidays. Two weeks from Christmas and people were rushing to get their children, spouses, friends or distant relatives the gifts they were so desperate for. Choi Yuri was lucky in this sense. She didn’t have anyone in her family she was particularly close to, not even her parents. They didn’t expect anything from her, and she didn’t expect anything from them (not even a phone call or text saying Merry Christmas).

So she continued her walk to work, pulling her coat up higher to cover her bare neck. She knew she should have grought a scarf, but she woke up late and was in a rush this morning. Her boss was pretty anal about his employees being to work at least ten minutes early so they didn’t have to rush to set everything up for shop before they opened.

Her phone ringed in her back pocket, the sound startling her as she quickly dig around to grab it. She anxiously pressed answer without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?” She answered, dodging a few people only to bump into someone else, making them spill coffee over the both of them.

“Miss Choi, it’s Seokjin.”

“Shit, sorry.” Yuri apologized to the stranger.

“It’s okay.” He shrugged, giving a slight pained smile as he held his crushed cup in one hand and pulled his jacket off his chest as to not be burned any more than he already was by his beverage.

“You better be missy. You should have been here five minutes ago. You were supposed to open up the shop and Hyejin and Mina have been standing out here waiting for you. You’re lucky I decided to stop by early since Sundays are almost always supper busy and I wanted to make sure everything is setting into motion before customers show up.”

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry sir, I’ll be there in just a few minutes. I woke up a little late, but I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” She said, digging around her purse and pulling out ₩5,800 to hand the the male. She turned the bottom of the phone away from her mouth.

“Again, really sorry. I don’t have enough cash on me for the coat but I hope this covers the drink.”

“Good, I’ll see you soon.” Then the line cut off.

“I said it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, it was an accident, this sidewalk is packed, it was bound to happen. Almost did three times already.” He ended the sentence with a light giggle, a sound so pretty Yuri was sure the sound didn’t really come from him. No, she had to be dreaming.

And he didn’t really look that pretty. There was no way. His eyes were so round and bright, the brown of his eyes were so dark and deep, but warm like smoking wood. His cheeks were just as round, and just as soft. His smile was heart fluttering, but Yuri tried to ignore that part.

“Um, that’s fine, but please take it. It’ll at least make me feel a little better.” She insisted (even more so now that she realized she had just embarrassed herself in front of a really cute stranger). He let out a curt chuckle, gave a quick half bow and took the cash from her.

“Thank you. Uh, h-have a nice day miss.” He stuttered with a rather flustered look on his face before speeding off in the direction he was originally heading. Oddly enough Yuri felt rather breathless like she just got off a terrifying roller coaster. Her nerves were buzzing with something exciting but she quickly tried to push it to the back of her mind as he hurried her way to work.

***

“Miss Choi I expected better conduct out of you.” Seokjin scolded as he and Yuri began prepping the ingredients for the baked goods and Hyejin and Mina were setting up the cash register and coffee machines.

“Mina? Fine. But you?” He scoffed, pre-heating the ovens as Yuri measured out flour, though he nerves were still shot and her mind was a mess. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. His face, his voice, his aura, it was all just so...unreasonably magnifying. He was a stranger to her, why was she so worked up about him? Maybe because she made an immediate bad impression on someone who was unconventionally attractive and who immediately made a good moression by being kind and humbled.

“Are you even listening to me?” Yuri yelped and flinched, flinging flour up and accidentally inhaling it. In her short fit of coughs Seokjin came over and patted her back, waiting for her to breath properly before speaking again.

“Seriously Yuri, you’re acting kind of off this mor-oh...” She wasn’t sure why, but when she looked uo at her boss he instantly broke out into a smirk.

“Oh I know what this is Miss Choi...you met someone didn’t you.” Yuri stuttered over nothing, mildly short circuiting before proper words could form.

“I didn’t...I mean that’s not why I was late-“

“I didn’t say why you were late, I said why you were acting weird.” He sent a wink before moving back to his previous task.

“I would ask all the little details of ‘how their eyes shine’ or ‘how pretty their smile was’ but people should be pourng in any minute and we don’t have any time to waste, but if the time presents itself this week I’ll ask. Right now, I need your head in the game. Other than me your the best baker here so get to work.” He said sternly, before Yuri did her best to clear her head and focus on her job.

***

The day was as busy as any other Sunday. Yuri cut her lunch time in half so that she could spend more time working on the muffins and cookies and such, but even then she was a littlw overwhelmed. It didn’t help that that stranger wouldn’t stray to far from the forefront of her mind. However she was already starting to forget what his face looked like (as she expected from knowing a stranger for only a minute).

Still though, she thought of him. Even as she made herself a small dinner and took her shower. And when she fed her cat Mewtwo, and finally even as she dozed off in bed reading herself to sleep with a Dean Koontz novel. Random thoughts passed through her mind. At first they were pretty normal and relevant to her day and thing she does.

I fed Mewtwo right? Yeah I just did a bit a go. God I can’t wait will the end of the week already, I love baking but I hate working. Seokjin was kinda scary this morning but he was oddly nice later on. Did it have something to do with the stranger? And that’s when it started to take a turn. Her head was no longer quite clear, and nothing that made sense made perfect sense to her, and eventually out of the blue asked herself, ‘if lavender fields really do smell like lavender.’

Then her world was blank and black, and suddenly she was standing in a meadow. She didn’t know how she got there, nor did she question it, nor did she question the owl chacing a family of squirrels in broad daylight. She knew they were nocturnal, but ultimately decided that they were just playing midday cause animals can do what they want and that was a fact. She walked forward; over an abnormally large fire ant mound (that again, she didn’t question) and out to the little door shaped of light at the edge of the meadow and into the woods. However when she passed through it, it didn’t take long until she found another clearing.

A field of lavender, and on the other side, an unconventionally attractive stranger. A rather familiar one as well. She watched as he raised his hand over his head and called out to her. She couldn’t tell what his voice sounded like, simply that he emitted sohnd and it eched in the epty space of woods and that he was falling to her. She took a step forward, but before anything else could happen her alarm clock awoke her and it was 7:30 in the morning already.

Damn, it felt like she only slept for an hour, and the dream she had already began to slip from her mind, but in her half awake state she wished she could go back to sleep to finish it. Even if she didn’t get the whole story, she just wanted to know the ending already, and why lavenders were suddenly on her mind.