The Dreamweaver and the Monster

Everyone is an island unto themselves.

Cheng Yan can step into those islands. Her profession is called a dreamwalker: she touches a person's temple with her fingertip, and her consciousness seeps in like water, letting her witness the world built inside their mind. One person might dream of their childhood home, another of an abyss beneath the sea, and another of nothing at all. Every dream is a mirror, reflecting the truth that person is most afraid to face.

Cheng Yan has seen too many people's fears and secrets. She is calm, professional, and clear about boundaries, never lingering in someone else's world for even a second longer than necessary. She believes that as long as she never looks into her own dreams, she will be safe.

But lately, something has gone wrong.

After entering the dream of a domestic abuse victim, she notices a ripple in the gray-blue sea painted on the wall of her studio. A flash of a red dress appears in the bathroom mirror. A girl's sobs come from inside the walls. Her clients start asking, "Who's that person behind you?"

They say dreamwalkers can enter other people's minds because there is a locked room inside their own. The more tightly that room is locked, the stronger their ability to see into others. And whatever is trapped inside that room will wake up sooner or later.

The door Cheng Yan has kept locked for twenty years is beginning to crack, one fracture at a time. She has no choice but to investigate her own past. Who is the woman in the red dress? Why is the girl inside the walls crying? Why does everyone she knows fall silent whenever her childhood comes up?

Even more terrifying, she gradually realizes that there may be more than one version of "herself" trapped in that room...