January 9 - The Ring

"No, Dan. Don't pick that up," they told him, but it was too late. By the time the words were out of their mouths, Dan was standing upright again, holding the gold ring between his index finger and his thumb.
"Dan, seriously. You should put that down," Lin told him.
"Don't worry, I'm not gonna keep it. Somebody must have dropped this. We should give it to the police or something."
"No, Dan," said Huang. "Whoever put it there left it there on purpose."
"What?"
And they told him. In many Taiwanese cultures, parents whose daughters die before they have a chance to get married leave rings in public places. The belief is that the spirit of their daughter will find a spouse in whomever picks up the ring. Dan was impressed by the story. Part of the reason why he'd moved to Taiwan three months ago was to experience a new culture and to hear stories like these. However, at this point he was more impressed with how unexpectedly superstitious his new co-workers were. All three of them--Dan, Lin, and Huang--were medical researchers. Not the kind of people you'd expect to believe in ghost marriages.
"No, no, it's OK," he told them. "I'm not Taiwanese. She wouldn't be interested in me."
They didn't laugh.
"Dan."
"OK, OK. I'll put it back." He stooped down, pretending to put the ring exactly where he'd found it, but instead he slipped it in his pocket when they weren't looking. He would give it to the local police after they had parted ways. Dan, Lin, and Huang then continued on their way to dinner and after dinner they grabbed another drink and before long the ring had slipped his mind.
He felt a little guilty when he got home and found it in his pocket, but he told himself he would take it to the police the next day.
But the next morning came and he couldn't bring himself to do it. The dream he'd had that night was too vivid and too real not to hold on to the ring for another day--and another night--and see if he had the same kind of dream.
He did.
The next night his dream was the same, or at least it was grounded in the same world and featured the same woman--not only that night but every night for as long as he didn't return the ring, which he decided he never would because, well, these dreams. This woman.
Her name was Li and she had died single when she was 23. On Dan and Li's first night together she explained how it worked to Dan: The worlds of the living and the dead came together in dreams. In this dream world, Dan and Li were husband and wife and it was in this dream world that they would live their lives together. If Dan had stopped to think about it, he would have been taken aback by how readily he accepted this reality. But he didn't stop to think about it or question it or do anything that might make it go away.
He'd never experienced anything like it. It was a dream world governed by dream rules (which was to say, no rules at all). But unlike other dreams he'd had, he was firmly in control in these dreams, completely lucid. It was as if he were living two lives: one in the waking world, and one in the dream world--only when he woke up he was never tired. Despite effectively living a completely separate life in his sleep, when he woke up each morning he was well rested.
It didn't take him long to realize that he liked the dream world better.
The main reason was Li. Despite having coming of age in different countries, different cultures, hell, different centuries, Dan and Li had an amazing relationship, certainly the best Dan had ever had. He wanted to be with her all the time.
And so he stripped his waking world existence to its barest essentials so he could spend as much time as possible in the dream world. He reduced his hours at work and moved into a smaller, cheaper apartment. Months later, he quit his job and found something he could do at home so that he wouldn't have to commute and he could sleep longer. Using herbal Chinese medicines that Li had told him about, Dan began sleeping 12, 15, 18 hours a day, remaining in the waking world only long enough to make enough money to pay for his food and rent.
Dan took more and more of the Chinese herbal medicine and slept longer and longer each day. Finally he seized upon the idea of taking enough of the herbal medicine so that he would never wake up again and he could stay in the dream world forever.
But he miscalculated.
Instead of taking enough to switch over completely to the dream world, he ended up in a coma. But the upside of this was that he was able to spend all of his time with Li. It was glorious, blissful, all that he'd ever wanted.
And then one day it all went black.
Dan opened his eyes and he was in a hospital, having been brought out of his coma by pharmaceutical advances made possible by the very same medical research he'd started and Lin and Huang had continued after he left the company.
That night--and the next five nights he stayed in the hospital--he slept a deep, blank, dreamless sleep. He was miserable, confused. He wanted to be with Li, but she was gone.
When he got out, Lin and Huang took him to the storage facility where they had put his things when he went into the coma and the landlord had evicted him for not paying the rent.
All of his things were there and accounted for, except for the ring. Lin and Huang had gotten rid of it.