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With the fire glowing bright in their cabin home, and snow falling gently outside the windows they picked themselves, Gakushuu couldn’t help but feel content. Even second the two of them spent prior to this was just build up for their perfect life, a life in some far off town with their two year old cat. Gakushuu was happier than he ever thought possible.
But was Karma?
The redhead was sprawled on the couch with a book in hand, petting the orange cat who was just about asleep. He looked just as happy as Gakushuu, but with the news they received the night before, something was weighing on his mind.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Gakushuu gave into his curiosity and asked, leaning on the back of the couch where Karma was now stretching.
“You won’t like what I have to say.”
“And?”
For the first time in a dozen years the house was filled with an awkward silence. Gakushuu knew what Karma had in mind and Karma knew that Gakushuu wouldn’t agree. What was there to talk about?
“I’m going to bed,” Gakushuu sighed, to break the silence. He marched off to their bedroom.
A pulsing sound from the room next door could be heard through the walls, and no matter how hard Gakushuu tried to drown out the sound, it kept coming. He threw his pillow at the wall and groaned. Why did this have to be happening? He tried hiding under the covers.
After an hour or two of suffering in silence, he was finally lulled into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning Karma brought breakfast in bed, and their cat Banana went to sleep in his lap. They were avoiding the elephant in the room (next door) that was clear, but Gakushuu allowed himself to live in bliss for just a moment longer. Maybe if he never brought it up again, Karma would forget. They could live in their own world with Banana and the town.
After finishing their waffles and berries, they went out for a walk, leaving Banana and the pulsing noises at home, just for a bit.
“Don’t you love how the cherry blossoms here bloom all year round?” He hummed, smiling up at the trees.
“Mhm, too bad you can hardly smell them,”maybe they just weren’t built for bliss.
“I don’t like strong scents anyways,” he snapped, picking up the pace to put a bit of distance between him and the taller boy.
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he said as he caught up, swallowing his pride and suppressing his need to argue his stance on the matter. They left the house to have some nice time away from their problems, even Karma wasn’t thick enough to misunderstand that.
In the marketplace at the end of their walk, Gakushuu went to chat with the soap vendors which left Karma walking by the stands alone. He took this time to examine the world in front of him, take snapshots, he wanted to soak everything in before it was gone.
“Kid!” A man who had lived in the town for much longer than both Gakushuu and Karma called out. He had a basket filled with fruit and a few seashells.
“Hey! How’s it going?” Karma asked, eyeing the basket.
“I’m doing well, I’m doing well,” the man known as mr. Gonzales smiled, patting Karma on the back. “Where’s your guy friend?”
“Husband you mean? He’s with the others talking about soap,” he chuckled and took a seat on the bench that had just appeared, “where’d you get the shells?”
“A new coast appeared overnight. Nothing dangerous don’t worry, the seashells just remind me of home.”
Home . Karma was starting to forget what exactly home was. Was it a place? A person? A feeling? He already felt at home in the cabin with Shuu that had been his home for years now, but sometimes in the back of his mind another place that seemed far away would try to pull him back.
The place that occupied the corners of his mind that he only dared venture into after dark always presented itself in the same way. It came as a dream, and it always started and ended the same way.
The dream would start off slow, with him inside a modern Japanese style house, one with two storeys and a basement. The outside of this house was black and uninviting, and the same thing could be said for the inside. The Lavish furniture that took up most of the first floor seemed to be compensating for the emptiness that came with the place.
He would be sitting on the black leather couch, surrounded by textbooks and comics when suddenly his phone would ring. The caller ID would read: Second Place, and he’d answer and hear a younger Gakushuu’s voice before hanging up angrily.
After this he’d take a packed bag with him out the door and sprint a block or two to a large school building. The courtyard would be flooding with students, but Gakushuu was nowhere to be found. He could hear someone whispering about how he showed up before lunch for once, but he would always ignore them and head to class. After having the dream once or twice, he figured out he was in a science class. In that class he’d take a seat- his assigned seat, and he’d doze off.
When Karma would wake up, he’d be panting, sweating, and left with broken fragments of memories or dream sequences he could never put together. He figured they were night terrors that must’ve been the product of fighting for survival for so damn long, but after asking around the marketplace while Gakushuu was running errands, he learnt that the dreams meant it was time to make a choice. He could stay in the town or finish the dream.
At first he found it ridiculous that anyone would even think of replacing the paradise they were living in for a high school dream, but every time the dream would come back it would come with more and more details. It started off with him knowing that the class he would go to sleep in was a science class, then what his schedule was, and eventually the names of his teacher and classmates. He began to write the details down in the early mornings when Gakushuu let himself sleep in.
The more he learnt the more he wanted it to continue, he needed more after falling asleep in class. At this point he knew Gakushuu’s schedule too, for some reason him in the dream was obsessed with planning the best April Fool’s prank on the younger boy. He even looked into Shuu’s classroom while walking past it to get into his.
The turning point for Karma though had to be when he smelt the cherry blossoms in the dream, they had an aroma that the ‘real world’ couldn’t copy. That’s also when he asked old mr. Gonzales about the night terrors he was having. It was a Sunday, and Gakushuu was out helping the children at the school when Karma snuck out of work to ask the old man about what had been happening recently.
“I keep having this dream.”
“Well good morning to you too,” he heaved a stack of wheat into a wagon, “want to lend me a hand?”
“Sorry, yes of course,” he moved to help.
“So your dream?”
“It’s always the same day. I wake up in this house, a house that I know better than my actual home. I get a text from Gakushuu, no a call. Then I run to school just in time for my second period class. Then in that class, my science class, I doze off.” Saying it out loud made it feel smaller, but the look in mr. Gonzales’ eyes told Karma he understood.
“How long have you been here son?”
“In the market?”
“The country more like.”
“I don’t remember anything before being 16 in Pawldva.”
The older man closed the trunk of the wagon and gestured for Karma to go on a ride out in the field with him. They’d be putting the wheat where it needed to be to be properly harvested.
“That means you’ve been here for 12 years.”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s late,” he frowned, “you see I was under the impression that you had already chosen to stay.”
The same thing that had been happening to Karma occurred for Gakushuu two years before. His dream was a bit different.
“Come back to bed,” Karma groaned, turning to face Gakushuu who was putting a sweater on to take an impromptu walk.
“I’m not tired,” he lied, forcing his eyes open, “day off tomorrow, but not for you. Go back to sleep.”
“Shuu it’s like 3AM, this is a new record for you,” Karma shook his head and pulled the covers back up to cover all his body. If Gakushuu insisted on going back to sleep then..
“Good. Sweet dreams,” he said as he walked out, earning a chuckle from Karma who was already half asleep; he was under the impression that dreams never happened, not after their quest.
That early morning, Gakushuu sought out help from a merchant from the market. He explained the dream and how it kept coming back, no matter how much he thought of other things before going to bed and no matter how tired he was. He would always have the same dream, and every time he dreamt it it got clearer.
That night marked the third month of that same dream, the one where he would wake up in a house. The house felt more like home than his cabin at times, no matter how empty and bleak it was.
The house was large with two storeys and an attic. There were a total of five guest rooms between his and the master bedroom. For some reason he felt like the master bedroom was somewhere he wouldn’t be caught dead in. In his dream he would have breakfast served by a maid who he would later find out was named Marissa, and then he’d head off to class. It was dawn every time he left the large house.
He was wearing a white school uniform, walking at a slow pace to the large building that he learnt was his school. He was the student council president and knew everyone’s name. Everyone he shook hands with in the halls, and everyone that walked past him on his way into the school. This was his place. It felt so nice.
The dream made him feel nostalgic, and gave him a strange sense of belonging.
A bit later into the dream he would take his phone out and dial a familiar number to hear a younger version of the voice he would wake up to every morning. Everyday at the end of first period, or rather five minutes till the end, he would excuse himself from the room and call Karma. Their conversation was always short and cold, so cold that Gakushuu didn’t understand his original reasoning behind the call. He would basically just tell Karma that being late again was a bad way to kick off high school.
Then after the call each time, he wouldn’t hear from or see Karma again. Instead he would walk around and talk with a boy named Ren. They would make fun of Karma’s— Akabane’s tardiness. Then they had a plan to prank the redhead? Whenever Gakushuu would wake up he would wonder why he hated Karma so much while in his dreams that he would go as far as to talk about him behind his back with Koyama and Ren.
And finally the dream would come to an end in his second period English class, every single time. It would always end the same way, with no more information obtained than the first time he woke up from the dream. Gakushuu would fall asleep in class, in the front, and wake up in bed with Karma.
"Chosen to stay?" Karma asked, confused.
"Well, yeah. A bit into our time in this town we get an option to stay here or finish our dreams. No one who leaves ever comes back to the town so a lot of us decide to stay. Once we choose to stay we finalize the decision with a little get together and the nightmares stop."
"So you stop having dreams?" That did sound nice, only Karma was sure he'd miss this other life he got to peer into.
"Yep, and after a while we forget them. They feel like lost memories sometimes, it feels like when the word is on the tip of your tongue and you still can't reach it. It's frustrating at first, but sooner or later you'll learn to let go. All I can remember from my dreams a few years ago is that I liked the beach. I think I lived by one back in my dream, by one with beautiful water and seashells that would stick out of the sand," he looked lost in thought for a second, and in that second Karma could've sworn that there was something about the look in mr. Gonzales' eyes that looked hopeful.
"So you chose to stay?"
"What other option was there? Who knows what would've happened if I went back to the beach," the glimmer of hope was gone. His face was hard and he turned to Karma.
"Why? What happens if we chose to leave the town? Do we go back and do another quest or do we go into a coma, or," he thought, "do we die?"
"Your body is taken into the dream. There are no bodies to find here, as you know Karma," he paused and smiled, "no one dies here."
He was right, and the unknown was dangerous, so why did Karma want to give his dream a try?
After about half a year of the dream becoming so painfully real and it messing with his schedule, Gakushuu sought out answers in the market. He would talk to the soap vendors and subtly mention his dreams. They would look at him knowingly and almost patronizingly until he would ask them directly for their help. When he did they took him under the marketplace to where the dreams were stored.
Gakushuu was used to fighting rhinos, to running away from dungeons and having to bathe Banana, but nothing could prepare him for how light the air was below the market. The air itself was enough to make him feel like he was in a trance, but it only got worse when he held on to the yellow orb. It made him sick.
He felt sick to the stomach every time he was near it, so holding it was a pain. Hiding it under the bed and under tiles made it even worse.
He didn't know why, but the thought of smashing the orb felt out of the question. He grew attached to the glowing ball like it was another part of him, someone he had to protect.
"I know no one dies here, but how do you know that you die in the dream if there aren't any bodies to be found?"
"You're not going to be staying are you son?"
"I..."
"So what did you do about the orb?" Another day at the market with the orb in his pocket, pulsing and glowing in a way that only he could hear and feel.
"It won't let me sleep, I want to find out what happens next, and sometimes I stare at it for hours on end," he sighed, venting to his new vendor friends, "but," he closed his eyes.
"But?"
"Karma."
"Karma?"
"I'm not sure. If I leave to go pursue the dream, does that mean I'll be leaving Shuu behind? Does he have to wait for the dreams until he can join me? If I go into the dream and it isn't the same one as the one he'll get then does that mean we'll never see each other again?" There it was, his greatest concern.
"Oh."
"I'm sure he'll understand that you stayed. Plus, he's still here so you'll either be there for him when the dream does come for him, or he already chose to reject it. Staying is really the only way to make sure you stay together, you know that right?" Lin, the chatterbox from the sachet stand came over to convince Gakushuu to stay. It was so much easier to stay, so why not do it? What did he have to lose? A silly dream? Another alternate life?
"But what if I want to see what happens? Maybe we'll end up in the same dream. He was in mine so it's possible yeah?" Truth be told, no one really knew if it was possible or not.
“Honestly Shuu it’s safer to assume that staying here is the only way you’ll stay with him. Maybe discreetly bring it up?”
So he did. That night when Gakushuu came home, he threw his things onto the smaller couch where he would knit, and confronted Karma who was lying down on the longer one. The redhead looked amused at Gakushu’s determination.
“Would you ever leave me?” Karma blinked.
“Me?”
Gakushuu nodded and held his breath as he watched Karma stand up.
“ Me? ” He laughed, “not gonna happen,” he leaned in closer to flick Gakushuu’s nose and slipped away to check his bag out before Shuu could retaliate. “Why? Did you meet someone new at the market?”
“What? That’s ridiculous.”
“So you’re telling me that you’re not hiding something from me when you clearly don’t spend any time at home anymore,” Karma hummed, looking through the soap in Shuu’s bag. That boy was very fond of lavender soap. Karma found it disgusting, but Shuu wouldn’t have it.
“Oh that?” He moved to take a seat, “I’ve been working on my cardio. Running around in the morning.”
“Hmm, cardio. With who?” Karma looked far too amused for someone that was accusing their significant other of cheating, but then again he was only half heartedly doing that. Most of his attention was focused on the new type of soap Gakushuu had brought in. He rested it on his knuckles, where his left hand’s fingers were once.
“My thoughts,” he lay down, “where’s the spunk in your accusation?” Karma hummed in response, frowning a bit when the soap fell off of his knuckles, “do you think I’m not capable of cheating?”
“I think you’re capable of a lot of things,” Karma replied honestly, thinking back to all the things Gakushuu was good for. He was good for making ice barriers and shields, making tents, drawing maps, picking windows and door frames, good at hugging, the list went on.
“And?”
“You could cheat if you wanted to— that’s not an invitation to do that, I’m just saying that if you wanted to cheat you’d find a way. A discreet way to make sure I never found out. I’m sure you could lead a double life and fool us all if you wanted.” Gakushuu raised an eyebrow.
“But?”
“But you love me.”
If you forced him to pinpoint the moment when he knew for sure that he was going to marry Karma Akabane, he would run away from you. Still though, he would run away remembering this exact moment, because like hell he did.
Their wedding was a small thing, something the entire town attended yes, but a small thing given their numbers. There were about seven hundred people living in the region and about a hundred who lived in their town. They all knew each other and were thrilled to hear that after ten years of the rockiest relationship they had ever witnessed, Gakushuu and Karma were tying the knot.
Some were saying that it was about time, and the others who weren’t paying as much attention to the couple were just glad to be able to dress up for an occasion.
No one walked down the aisle because Karma didn’t want to be seen as ‘the bottom’ and Gakushuu insisted it couldn’t be him because he proposed.
It was a simple affair, but it left both men giddy on the inside once it was over. They were married after all! Their next plan of action was obviously to adopt. After two months of being married why adopted a cat, a cat that was supposed to be named Strawberry but took on the name Banana because Karma insisted it matched his last name best. The last name that he was no longer using.
“Son you can always just ask him. The most important part of a relationship is communication. If he wants to take this leap of faith with you then he will.”
“What if he gets the dreams much later? What’ll happen then? What if I die,” Karma groaned, he couldn’t leave his family. This was insane. How was he still thinking of leaving?
“I can’t help you there. I’m not married so I don’t know how this whole marriage thing works, but something tells me that if you don’t talk about it you’ll be separated either way.
So after a week of the dream and sleeping on mr. Gonzales’ advice, he confronted Shuu. This led to the purple orb being locked up in the spare bedroom.
“How long have you had it?” Karma had taken mr. Gonzales’ advice and brought it up at dinner with Gakushuu, who was now questioning him. He felt a headache forming.
“What? The dream? Maybe a month now why?”
“No. How long have you had the ball thing?” After a second it was clear to him that Karma had no idea what he was talking about.
“Ball? My dream’s always in a classroom.”
“Do you know your options? About the balls under the market?”
“I know I can either go or stay here.”
Gakushuu sighed, “and?”
“I don’t want to leave you, I like it here. I have you and Banana and the garden outside,” he trailed off thinking about everything he was grateful for.
“But?” Gakushuu knew firsthand that there was always a but.
“Hold on, if you know so much about this then does that mean you’re dreaming too?”
Karma didn’t know if he really wanted the answer to that, but the answer came and it was a ‘no,’ an answer that raised more questions
“What do you mean no? How do you know about the orb things? Are you just that prepared?” Karma laughed uneasily. He knew the obvious explanation was that Gakushuu had dreamt in the past, and that he had chosen to stay.
“Under the floorboards in the guest bedroom.”
“Under the what?”
It was between the busyness of the proposal and the wedding planning that Gakushuu decided to disregard the orb. He could let go of it, not with the doubt he had in the fact that Karma had already been dreaming. Instead of doing away with it he hid it under the house, under floorboards.
That worked for a while. He kept the door locked and visited every once in a while, but it never did stop until after the one day Gakushuu had forgotten to lock and even close the door.
He wasn’t aware of it at the time, but when Gakushuu had forgotten to lock and close the door, a cat walked into the room. Banana had found the open floorboard and broken the glowing yellow ball. It cracked and a mist began to form in the room.
“I’ll show you, here come,” Gakushuu led Karma into the room he had locked a little while ago. When he opened it though a yellow mist spilled out, making Karma cough and Gakushuu run out of their front door. It was happening.
It was too good to be true when the pulsing noises had stopped that one day, and now Gakushuu knew the real reason behind his sleepless nights. The orb had been leaking into the room. His chance for another world was leaking away, and it was all his fault.
After Karma fanned the smoke back into the room and shut the door, he ran after Gakushuu and they talked about leaving. Only they didn’t agree with each other. Karma showed Shuu his purple orb and was later given the choice to stay with his husband or leave and chase a dream.
It wouldn’t be brought up again, not until a few days later.
It was brought up again the night after the two of them returned to their house, tired and content with their walk and ability to avoid their problems. The two of them went to their respective couches and sat in silence reading books that had just come into town. Karma was reading a newer book called Aristotle and Dante, while Gakushuu was plowing through The Picture of Dorian Gray.
It was too quiet for too long. The silence wasn’t awkward or tense, but it was unfamiliar. Usually there’d be a…
“Did you let Banana out again?” Karma asked, putting his book down to search the floor for their feline child.
“No, she should be here. Maybe she’s sleeping.”
“She took a nap before we left, her schedule’s on the fridge.”
They looked at each other then towards the area where the loud bang came from.
“No,” Gakushuu whined, getting up and running towards the room he swore was locked. The yellow-orange mist was clouding his vision and making his stomach do flips, but he didn’t care. At that moment all he cared about was getting to Banana. He jumped through the hole in the floorboards thinking that he’d fall through a basement of some sort.
Needless to say, he ended up somewhere completely different.
Gakushuu Asano who was 28 years and three months old went through the yellow smoke and passed out while approaching a bright white light.
When he woke up, the scars on his knuckles and legs were gone and so was some of his hair— and about two inches of his height. He opened his eyes in the classroom he had dreamt about one too many times. It took him a second to recover from his fall, but once he did recover he remembered why he jumped through the smoke from the orb that he had refused to go near for a year now.
“BANANA!” He yelled, drawing all the attention to himself. He leapt out of his seat and knocked his desk over before looking at his clean hands and remembering his husband of two years. “Karma,” he said, picking his bag up and running out the door.
“Asano?” The teacher called out. She didn’t wake him when he fell asleep during the reading of The Importance of Being Earnest because she knew he was overworking himself but leaving in the middle of class was a bit too far. It seemed Gakushuu didn’t hear him though.
Gakushuu ran out of the room and started heading towards Karma’s class.
Karma watched as his husband’s back shrunk after jumping into the floor after Banana. He tried following them, but ended up with his leg trapped in the floor. He realized he’d have to go through his orb. The one he had gotten not too long ago. He smashed it on the floor, held his breath and jumped in.
Karma Akabane who was 28 years and three months old went through the purple mist and passed out while approaching a bright white light.
He woke up with a tingling feeling in where his fingers were supposed to be, only to notice that they were actually there. It took him a moment to process where he was, but once he realized he was in the classroom he had dreamed about too many times, he stood up. Then he remembered why he had jumped into the smoke that came from the orb he was thinking of throwing away not too long ago.
“BANANA!” The teacher looked done with his shit, but that didn’t phase him. He began to run out of the room, saying one last thing before he left, “Shuu..”
Karma and Gakushuu ran to each other in the middle of the hallway that was now filling in with students that wanted to see what the commotion was about. It was a dramatic scene, poetic really. Lovers getting reunited after thinking they would never see each other again. It would’ve been even more poetic though if they were alone with Banana. Right, Banana. They stopped in the middle before hugging and Gakushuu smirked.
He was also the first to break the silence.
“Your hand,” he beamed, and Karma laughed a bit, holding it up for Gakushuu to hold and examine. “Do you still know how to use it?”
“I think so,” he shook his head, “you’re so short!”
“Hey hey we’re the same height again,” they laughed and joked while dozens of others stared in disbelief. Didn't these two hate each other just ten minutes ago?
“So it worked,” Karma said, looking down to examine his body.
“ASANO?” A voice from further away asked, wanting to know what on earth he was doing so close to Akabane. Both Karma and Gakushuu turned to answer. Karma had taken Gakushuu’s last name.
“Oh we’re not married,” Gakushuu laughed, “can’t wait to break the news to Banana.”
“Banana,” Karma’s eyes widened again.
“She’s gotta be here somewhere.”
“First one to find him gets to pick what we eat for a week,” Karma smirked, running ahead of his husband— classmate?
“Yeah you’re on.”
Slowly but surely, their memories of this world came back. They came back vividly and clashed with what they knew. They came back like memories of the real world after a dream. The only difference here was that they wouldn’t be forgetting their married life anytime soon.