The Flames Remember

(Lee Mira's POV)

The fire is always the same.

It begins as a flicker at the corner of my vision-a candle trembling on a piano, wax spilling like tears-and then the whole room exhales flame. The air thickens with smoke, piano keys melting into white teeth, and someone is calling my name. I can never tell if it's a plea or an accusation.

"Mira-!"

The voice is swallowed by the roar.

I try to reach the door, but the heat folds around me, hot silk over skin. My lungs seize. And just before the ceiling gives way, I see a silhouette standing beyond the glass-tall, still, backlit by the inferno. His hand is raised, fingers spread as if in farewell.

Then everything collapses.

I wake to the taste of ash.

The ceiling of my apartment swims into focus: plain white, hairline crack like a scar down its middle. The radiator hums softly, the world outside muffled beneath a February drizzle. Seoul's skyline bleeds gray through my window.

Another dream. The same one.

I sit up, breath unsteady, shirt clinging to my skin. For a moment I can still smell burning lacquer, though my apartment carries only the faint scent of instant coffee.

It takes effort to peel the nightmare off my body. I force my feet onto the cold floorboards and murmur, "It was just a dream."

Except it never feels like one.

In the bathroom mirror, my reflection stares back-dark-eyed, hair tangled, a faint red mark wrapping my right wrist. It looks like a healed burn, thin and pale against my skin. I don't remember getting it, yet it's been there for as long as I can recall.

"Reincarnation scar," my roommate once joked when she saw it. I laughed with her then. I don't laugh now.

The university clock tower tolls eight times, dragging me into the day. I throw on a black sweater, jeans, and the long camel coat I bought from a thrift shop. The rain outside has turned to sleet, peppering the windows like static. Seoul looks beautiful from my tiny rooftop studio-gray, cold, alive.

By the time I reach the subway, the morning rush has already begun. The train car is full of damp umbrellas and murmured phone calls. I wedge myself between a salaryman and a student scrolling through social media. The tunnel lights flash past like streaks of memory-white, then black, then white again.

Every time we dive into darkness, I see flames reflected in the glass.

At campus, the world feels brighter but not safer. Psychology Building B looms ahead, its glass façade dripping with rain. Inside, my friend Jina waves from the vending machine.

"You look like you haven't slept in a week," she says, handing me a canned coffee. "Nightmares again?"

"Same one," I admit.

Jina frowns. "You should write it down. Sometimes dreams mean something."

"I think mine just mean I need therapy," I say, trying to sound light.

But when I sit through the lecture on trauma