And he ran away...

I've had at least four dreams so far involving either finding my wallet or confronting the strange man who I am convinced took it. The most recent one was Saturday night. In the dream I saw the strange man hanging around outside my school. He was leaning against a railing outside the main entrance, grinning in an obnoxious way, and ignoring the teachers and adminstrators who were telling him to leave. I felt momentarily nervous about his presence, then realized that I wanted to confront him. I strode out there and asked for my wallet back. He denied taking it, with a sort of blank, surprised, almost scared expression on his face. I shrugged, then yelled at him to never come back to the school again. At this point I was leaning over him and he was literally crumpling into the ground. I turned to leave, then called over my shoulder that he should leave the ETA at Suncheon Girl's High School alone, too (I learned at the Jeju conference that last week another ETA in Suncheon had run into him on a bus and that he'd come to her school twice in the same week--this was the week following his theft of my wallet).

Sunday afternoon I ended up re-enacting the dream in reality. The owner of the Jung-ang Bookstore, the bookstore where the Korean lessons for foreigners take place, called my host mother and said that the strange man, Mr. Chae/Choi, had appeared. I was actually still in bed, but I splashed some water on my face, got dressed and we drove there. I walked into the bookstore and saw him over in a corner reading a magazine. I walked over and he looked up at me with an expression that I can only describe as one of fear and dread, even though I smiled and greeted him politely.

I said, "I think you have my wallet."

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "You were the only one who could have taken it. You were sitting by my things for a long time and then my wallet was gone."

He said, "No. Wallet, I don't know."

His English was much worse than usual, from nervousness I think. I calmly kept on, but he kept denying it. Then he tried to say something about being interested in San Francisco and how his best friend was American and why would he take it? But he was acting so guilty I wasn't dissuaded. For someone who is very good at completely ignoring polite social cues, for him to act so unhappy to see me after he'd pursued some kind of friendship with me so persistently, there had to be some significant reason for the change (me being somewhat rude to him that night I saw him wasn't enough for him to act so uncomfortable upon seeing me).

Finally I just said, "Fine. Please bring the wallet here to the bookstore or back to my school." Then I turned around and left.

The reality differed from the dream in a few ways, but in both cases I walked away feeling completely in control and somewhat vindicated. The bookstore owner told us later that the man disappeared from the store immediately after my host mother and I left. The police haven't gotten back to us yet about their progress, and I don't know if they'll be able to accomplish anything, but if Mr. Chae flees at the sight of me, I'll be pretty satisfied.