(beach search / dog facility / different childhood)
I’m walking along a beach with my family, looking for something, though I don’t know exactly where it is. We pass a taxi area and continue to another stretch of beach, but that’s not right either.
Eventually, we come to a white glass building and go inside. It looks like a chemistry lab at first, but there are dogs everywhere—it’s more like a dog hotel or grooming center. There’s only one woman taking care of them.
Near the entrance are four small dogs: a fluffy white one wearing a headscarf, a blonde dachshund, a jumpy dog, and what seems to be the woman’s own dog, maybe a chihuahua with partially dreaded fur.
Behind a high table with stools where we sit, there are more dogs, including a golden-brown retriever that loves attention.I try to take pictures with all of them. They’re friendly, though some are shy.
Later, I’m in a restaurant talking about different ways my life might have gone if I’d been born into different circumstances.
Then I wake up as a small child.
Murasaki comes in with her daughter. I’m supposed to know Russian, but I only have my current memories. I make an excuse to go practice and escape into the garden, then head out into the street.
Some kids make fun of my hair color. An older white man approaches and gives me a bad feeling. I try to leave and tell him we don’t look alike. He pulls my hair angrily, but I manage to slip away and run into another house.
Inside, it feels like a community gathering space. Another girl finds me and pulls me into a crawl space so we can move around without being seen.
We end up at an outdoor Korean cultural museum. There’s a theater building, exhibit spaces, and alley-like streets lined with restaurants. We look for somewhere to eat but don’t settle on anything there.
Instead, we leave and go to a building in front of the museum and decide to have Indian food. We pay up front and each order a dish. I get a kind of dumpling set—seven pieces in a batch.