Dream had told Sapnap everything that had happened the next day, and Sapnap tried to help as much as he could. He had been helping Dream try to re-enter the living world to at least learn more, but communication with the living was impossible.

He had gotten a few seconds of breaking the barrier, but it was abrupt and he would be sent back to the world of the dead after.

They had tried different locations. Wilbur's house, Dream's old school, and even Disney World, but nothing came from it other than nothing more than a few seconds to a minute at most. Nothing as long as when he was in George's home.

"Nothing." Dream groaned, "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing." He was punching at the pavement, and Sapnap knelt down next to him.

Sapnap was silent for a while, "What were you thinking of before you got into the real world in Wrong Number's house?" He asked.

"I wasn't thinking of anything, I just-" Dream tried to remember, "I touched the wall. It was a special wall. I was just thinking of how sorry I was, I guess and how I wish I hadn't been so vague and how I-" Dream began but suddenly came to a realization.

"What is it?" Sapnap questioned, and Dream started to stand, helping Sapnap up as well.

"How I wanted to go back." Dream explained, but Sapnap was still obviously confused.

"Hm?"

"Remember," Dream said excitedly, "how when you visited Darryl's house you were thinking about how having fun again and being alive was the reason you wanted to go back."

"Yes, and?" Sapnap raised his left eyebrow.

"and I was thinking about how I wanted to apologize to George. How that was why I would have wanted to go back. To be alive again." Dream grinned. "Will you go with me to city hall?"

"What the heck do you need to go to city hall for?"

---

"This is what you needed to be here for?" Sapnap asked in a bored tone, tilting his head at the sight in front of him.

They were standing in front of a statue commemorating Schlatt, the governor who had died in 1970.

The statue was visible for both of them, seemingly because it was considered a place rather than an object. It was usually ignored, or being climbed on by little kids. Someone had even drawn a unibrow on the statue in 1972, leading to a fence being built around it.

Dream walked over to the plaque reading "Governor Schlatt" along with the date he had died and some facts about him.

"I thought we hated this guy. 'Worst government official' remember?" Sapnap told him, "Why are we here?"

Dream tapped at the plaque, "The date. The date he died."

"What about it?" Sapnap questioned, reading the plaque and turning to Dream for answers.

"It's the date I met someone very important." Dream explained as he closed his eyes. He remembered that day.

He had learned of Schlatt's death through a newspaper, and he had planned to call Sapnap to ask him if he had learned the news.

Instead, the phone redirected somewhere else. He had called the

"Wrong number." Dream whispered out loud, and suddenly

---

Muffled talking filled his ears. He opened his eyes, and once again the world had been colorful and vibrant. There were children riding on bikes around the sidewalk of City Hall, and a pair of teenagers trying to throw a hat at the Schlatt statue to see who could get it on his head first.

Dream smiled, he had done it again. It felt like he would have a significant time there, but not nearly enough. He ran over to the exit, trying to get out of the area and to George's neighborhood. He had been sprinting, and had reached the road.

As he was about to cross, he had hit an invisible border. Confused, he knocked at it and banged on it, trying to get past it, but it seemed tough. He couldn't leave the area of city hall.

"Yeah, you're not gettin' through that." A voice behind him spoke, and Dream turned to see who it was.

Behind him too Schlatt. Rather, the ghost of Schlatt. He was flipping a coin repeatedly in his hand. It was a coin from 2021. A coin from the real world.

"Governor Schlatt?" Dream walked toward him, "You're a ghost?"

Schlatt rolled his eyes, "Sounds so childish. I'm just dead, kid."

"Right... dead." Dream said slowly, "You can get to this world too?"

Schlatt rolled his eyes, "I do it more than I want to." He explained, "Hint: I don't want to at all. I've been doing it for fifty one years, it's so annoying."

Dream only knew Schlatt from the news when he had added some ridiculous rule to the city that was unfair and corrupt, but now that he was speaking to him, he had loathed him even more.

"How do you do it?" Dream had hesitantly asked. As much as he did not want to converse with the man, he knew he had to get something.

"Haven't you been listening?" Schlatt said rudely, "I don't do this on purpose. I don't like being here. I spend every day wishing I could go back just to kick all these new government rookies out and show them how to do it my way. The right way." He had flipped the coin in front of Dream's face with an evil grin.

Dream's theory was right. If you longed to go back to the real world enough, you would. Schlatt just didn't know he was the one putting himself there.

The coin glistened in the sun, which put another question in Dream's mind. Bravely, he spoke again, "How did you get that?"

Schlatt sighed in annoyance, "What, kid?"

"The coin. It's from this world." Dream indicated the round gold coin between Schlatt's fingers.

"Obviously." Schlatt said, "I nicked it from the new governor's office. Never liked that guy."

"Callahan?" Dream asked, "You hate Callahan?"

"I hate everyone that's not me." Schlatt said plainly. This guy was a new level of full of himself. "But yeah, I stole it."

"How? Ghos- Dead people can't touch anything." Dream wanted to get as much information as possible. "We can't open doors either."

"Huh?" Schlatt asked, "I do that crap all the time."

"Can you show me how?" Dream asked impulsively, "To- to do that."

Schlatt gave in, mostly answering so he could get Dream out of his hair, "You hate the world enough, you can mess with it." He threw the coin toward Dream, who tried to catch it, but it went right through his hand. "Do you hate anything here?" Schlatt picked up the coin before it fell to the floor.

Dream tilted his head and squinted his eyes a bit at Schlatt.

"You hate me, don't you." Schlatt answered for him plainly, "Go like, kick my statue or something. You can hop the fence, not like the cops can see you. See if you can crack it."

"You're giving me permission to break your statue?" Dream made sure, and Schlatt shrugged.

"They got my beard wrong. What a disgrace to me." Schlatt shook his head at the statue in the distance. "Good luck, kid." He said as Dream walked away. There was still sting in his voice, but much less of it.

Dream walked over to the statue, hopping the small fence around it. One of the teenagers throwing the hat at the statue had thrown it bullseye at his chest, but it had gone straight through him.

Dream laughed and took a deep breath. "Okay."

He took one swing at the statue, and his hand went straight through it. He groaned and kept swinging, thinking of all the annoying restrictions Schlatt had put on the city in 1968. He swung and swung but nothing cracked. It hadn't even been solid.

He did this for fifteen more minutes, and he saw the real Schlatt watching him from across the grassy area, laughing at him.

"Oh shut up." Dream muttered to himself.

If he was alive, the bones on his hand would have been broken into millions of pieces already. He was lucky he felt no pain. He had crouched down by the statue, and given up.

He looked at everyone in the living world, watching the children play and the adults walk around the small park around it.

His eyes circled the field, until he saw something.

George.

He was with Tommy, showing him how to play some kind of video game on his cellphone.

Dream walked over to them mindlessly. Neither of his sons were there, so he assumed George was babysitting or had just taken Tommy outside to play.

"Good one George." Dream laughed to himself, "Take the kid outside just to make him play video games."

He had not seen George since the day he had died. He had not had time to study his face, or to see how accurate his drawing of him was.

He walked closer and sat down beside them, watching him.

"Oh!" Tommy yelled, "I got him! I got him!" Tommy yelled at the game on his phone. George and him celebrated the victory by high fiving.

"My turn, Tom." George told Tommy, who handed him the phone, "I can totally beat him faster than you."

"No. If you don't beat him faster than me, you owe me an ice cream." Tommy offered hopefully.

"It's on." George accepted the challenge.

George expertly tapped the buttons on the phone, sending attacks to whatever the game was. Dream still had the mind of an old man, so he did not understand what the heck the game was.

Instead, he focused on George. He just stared at him. At the man he used to love.

He watched George's hands, the same hands that had made the green handprint on the wall of his house when they had called each other.

"Oh, Georgie." Dream whispered, as he reached for George's hand.

Suddenly the phone had flew out of George's fingers. "Tommy!" George said, "That's cheating!"

"What?" Tommy said, bewildered, "What did I do?"

"You hit the phone out of my hand! You're not getting ice cream for that." George said jokingly.

"Did not!" Tommy defended himself, "My hands were right here!"

"Mhm, sure." George said skeptically as he picked the phone back up and looked at the screen, "See! I lost because of that!"

"I didn't do it! I swear on Isabelle from Animal Crossing!" Tommy almost cried, "You owe me ice cream now."

"Alright. Let's go, Tommy." He helped Tommy up from the grass as they walked over to the ice cream stand in the corner of the park. "That wasn't fair though." George kept joking, and the two continued to argue over it as they walked.

Dream tried to follow, but the ice cream stand was past the barrier he couldn't cross. He groaned in frustration as he banged on the barrier once more.

Schlatt walked up to him after a while, "Good job."

"What?" Dream turned to look at him in confusion

"You did it." Schlatt said as he flipped the coin in Dream's face one more time, "You moved something."