Two Kinds of Death

I learn that human beings can have two kinds of deaths, spiritual and physical, and both must happen before they truly die. This has to do with the two forces of the world, black (male, benign) and red (female, troublesome). Some other girls and I are reading and looking at some drawings that we found, and a Shinigami appears and tells us that we are all going to die spiritually soon, just not physically. The shinigami is a short man with a small dagger.

"Don't worry, you won't feel a thing when it happens," he says, waving his dagger.

I want to put on some new nail polish before I die because I figure the way I look when I die will remain my appearance when I am a ghost. I walk up and down Tung Hwa Street, looking for lilac colored nail polish. I pause at an intersection and suddenly feel the wind knocked out of me. I fall to the ground. As I get up I feel normal enough, and I guess that the Shinigami already stabbed me with his short knife.

I am worried that I am now an invisible ghost so I walk into a convenient store and talk to people. They can still feel and touch me--the Shinigami wasn't lying about how one will not really die until the body dies also. I'll have to be extra careful crossing the street.

I'm reading a book of dreams attributed to Charles Perrault and taking notes. M, the teacher, asks a few questions, such as "Do you believe all these dreams are by one person?" and "Would you like to know who wrote each of the dreams?" I say that I'd rather not know the authors because otherwise I'll just look up their lives and explain away the dreams based on what the authors experienced in real life.

A woman, a colleague of M's, walks into the room and M introduces me as his fiancee. I wonder if he noticed that I already have a wedding ring on, and feel happy, sad and ashamed all at once, not knowing what will happen next.