It was an endless street with trees along the sides. There were no cars, the wind was blowing silently, trees were planted at regular intervals, and the pavement was flawless without a single crack anywhere that it was to the point that it was unpleasantly so. She tried numbering her steps. One, two, three…. Even after a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand, the scenery did not change. The faces of the ones coming towards her also started being repeated. A boy with cotton candy, a man dragging a bike, a granny dragging a hand wagon filled with cardboard, a man and a woman who seemed to be a couple, as well as a woman shouting at her phone.

At one point, Gaeul realized that everyone else was walking in the opposite direction of her. People were only walking towards her; no one was going the same way as her. She walked forward through the wave of people, praying that something would change, hoping that there was a flaw in this fixed scenery.

She wanted to turn around and walk in the same direction as everyone else, but the moment she turned around, the scenery was reversed. Wherever she turned,...