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See, it’s like this; Suna has been fond of dreams since he is a child, thinking it is the most interesting and fun activity that humans can do. He would try to remember his dreams during the day, writing them down in his notebook. The weirder and most incomprehensible they are, the happier he is.
He likes the idea that in dreams, not everything has to be perfect. He can make mistakes and nobody would scream at him, he can go whenever he wants and do whatever pleases him, even though he doesn't have a hand over what happens in them.
Still, Suna Rintarou, five years old, is fond of dreams.
Suna Rintarou, ten years old, likes them a little less.
The thing is, Suna stops dreaming all together. He would go to bed at night, excited, building his own little story and hoping it would appear in his dream. But the moment he’d fell asleep, nothing would come. And he’d wake up the next morning with no memories of what went through his mind.
He doesn’t know how it happened, and he’s pretty mad that he doesn’t have that little sanctuary anymore. He has lost his little bit of fun of the night, and what he’d wait impatiently for during the day. It feels strange, out of place, and Suna grows dreading nighttime.
That is, until one night, he meets someone.
It’s weird really, but not the kind of odd that he used to like. He’s sleeping, he knows that, but he’s also walking in a completely blank space, empty. And when he’s ready to ask if there’s someone here, a voice echoes behind him, making him turn in surprise.
“Hello?”
Suna is certain, he has never seen the boy facing him. He’s around the same age Suna is, and pretty much the same height too, but their similarity ends here. The first thing that calls Suna’s attention is the boy’s cheek— squishy and round, they look like meat buns and Suna wonders if he’s not actually chewing on something. But he’s not. His hair is styled on the side, and Suna thinks it looks messy.
“What are you doing in my dream?” Suna asks finally, squinting at him.
“This is your dream?” The intruder looks around, turning on himself. There’s nothing to see but white, everywhere. “It’s not really pretty.”
Suna clicks his tongue, he doesn’t really appreciate him judging his dream out of nowhere, even if Suna definitely agreed— it was the ugliest and most useless place his dream has ever chosen. “Who are you?”
“Osamu,” He says in a smile, adding. “Miya Osamu. How about you?”
The whole exchange feels surreal, as if out of place and time, and Suna can’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable, shifting his weight on his feet. He answers nonetheless, “Suna. Rintarou.”
Osamu’s smile grows bigger and he swings on his feet, hiding his hands behind his back, “So tell me Rin, what are we doing here?”
Suna frowns, he’s slowly getting irritated. This is completely ridiculous, and he’s starting to think that not dreaming isn’t actually that bad. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here, nor who Osamu is or why he’s appearing in his dream. He’d like some answers too.
He opens his mouth as he’s about to answer, but the moment he starts speaking his heart leaps in his chest and he finds himself sitting violently in his bed, gasping for breath. His head is throbbing, and it takes him several seconds to recognize his bedroom. He frowns, out of breath, as he looks around him, finding nothing.
He feels a little bit nauseous, and a shiver runs down his spine as he thinks about the weird dream he just had. Everything felt so real that he doesn’t know what to think of it, trying and failing to calm the beating of his heart. He shakes his head, deciding that he is probably overthinking it.
He can’t find sleep again that night, and gives up on trying, settling for reading a book instead.
When he tries to sleep again the next night, he is nervous. It’s stupid, he knows. He rarely makes the same dream twice anyway, and he doubts he’d ever dream about something as disconcerting as the night before. Still, it takes him two good hours before he finally closes his eyes.
He wakes up in a white emptiness again, and immediately groans because he knows a few things are up. First, he knows he didn’t actually wake up, he knows he’s still sleeping and this is starting to stress him up. Second, Osamu is already here, looking around him.
“Hello?” He says, approaching Suna.
Suna fidgets, crossing his arms to hide his discomfort. “What are you doing here again?”
“Is this your dream?” Osamu asks, taking another look around him before laying his eyes back on Suna. “It’s not really pretty.”
Suna squints at him, “Okay, stop this. You’re starting to freak me out.”
Osamu smiles and extends a hand towards him. “I’m Osamu. Miya Osamu.” Suna’s blood turns cold, eyes going wide. “How about you?”
He takes one step backwards, trying to put a bit of space between them. His heart is beating fast in his chest and he wants to wake up, this isn’t a dream anymore, it’s turning into a nightmare. But before he can say or do anything else, Osamu bursts out of laughter, bending down and holding his sides. Suna is even more confused.
“If you could see your face!” Osamu laughed, pointing a finger at him, and wiping a tear off his eyes.
Suna bits his lips, feeling his cheek heating as embarrassment took the best of him. He tightens his crossed arms, and pouts, “Shut up. That wasn’t funny.”
But this only encourages Osamu in his hysterical laughter, definitely pleased with himself. Eventually, Suna smiles a bit, more amused by Osamu’s laugh than the joke itself, and he ends up chuckling slightly too, joining Osamu in his little moment of joy.
“I’m sorry, it was too tempting,” Osamu admits after a while, trying to catch his breath.
Suna shakes his head, plunging his hands into his pockets. This brings his attention to his outfit and is surprised to see him wearing his pajamas. He takes a look at Osamu, who is just wearing jeans with a shirt.
“You still don’t know what we’re doing here?” Osamu asks, flopping down to sit crossed legs.
Suna follows him, and shakes his head. “I just know that I’m sleeping, and that this is my dream. The question is what are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m dreaming too, so we could say this is our dream.” Suna narrows his eyes at him, and Osamu raises his hands. “I’m not lying. My brother is probably snoring on the top of the bunker bed, and I’m sleeping too.”
Suna bites his lip, looking around him again, as if he would find anything different. “Do you think…” He pauses, thinks about what he’s about to say and shakes his head. “This is stupid.”
“No, say it.” Osamu prays, looking at him intently, showing that he is listening.
“Do you think we’re really able to talk to each other? That we’re… I don’t know, linked?” He finishes, feeling suddenly very dumb.
“Maybe we built a magic passage, so we can talk and see each other? Like telepathy!” Osamu beams, obviously not scared or disturb by the situation, as if meeting a stranger in a dream is a daily point in his to do list. “This is so cool!”
Suna doesn’t like that at all.
“It’d be better if it had more things to look at or play with though,” Osamu continues, looking around. “Something like a ball maybe.”
As soon as Osamu pronounces the words, a small noise echoes around them. Panicked, Suna looks around him and almost screams when he sees something falling over them. He doesn’t have the time though, as the object crashes between the two of them and bounces.
Shocked, they both watch, gaze following what seems to be a ball, falling between them and bouncing again. Osamu is the first one to get up, screaming in excitement. He catches the ball in its momentum and they both observe it very minutely, taken aback.
“What?” Suna whispers, confused.
“Did I do that?” Osamu says happily, swinging on his feet. “Do you think I can do that again?”
And before Suna can tell him not to, Osamu is closing his eyes and whispering intelligibly. Suna raises his head and a gasp escapes his lips as a dozen of balls fall towards them. They protect their head, hiding under their arms as they all fall, the noises of the balls hitting the ground resonating with their laugh.
“You idiot!” Suna screams once all the balls are laying on the floor, hitting Osamu on his shoulders. He is smiling though, adrenaline filling up his lungs. “Do you even use your brain?”
Osamu doesn’t care, he’s laughing and smiling wild, and Suna can’t help but feel happy too, as if they have really just discovered magic. Suna closes his eyes at his turn, and is trying so hard to think of something to materialize. But when he opens them again, he’s in his room.
The awakening is less violent than the previous night, as Suna just sits up, and blinks in the dark. His head isn’t deezy, his heart is perfectly fine and he’s even smiling. He tries to get back to sleep that night, forcing his eyes to shut down, in vain.
The third night, Suna is just too excited to find sleep. He turns and turns in his bed and it frustrates him because now that he wants to dream with Osamu, he finds himself wide awake. It’s not after two hours that he finally falls asleep. Osamu is already there, waiting for him. Suna smiles.
“I tried making things appear again but it doesn’t work when you’re not here.” Osamu says simply, catching the ball that he just materialized.
“It probably only works when we’re both sleeping.” He answers, shrugging.
He sits next to Osamu, and closes his eyes, opening them when he hears the small noise of an object appearing, and extending his arms to catch the book falling in front of him. He looks at his new friend, who’s already smiling at him.
They play like that, trying to test their limits and materialize anything they had in mind. It feels like a game, a quest that they both had to go through, discovering not only their own but also their dream’s abilities. They ask for a chair, and a table, tries to have a cat, just to test if they could have alive beings but nothing comes as they look above. They can’t even make a plant appear, and find out they can only make one object at a time.
Suna materializes his phone, curious to know if it ever works in their dreams. When he catches it effortlessly, Osamu whistles, looking at his device.
“Man, that’s old! You need to ask for a new one.”
Suna frowns, observing his phone carefully, turning it between his hands. He knows he doesn’t have the last model, but his phone isn’t that old either. He doesn’t need it much anyway, his parents have bought him one just so he could call them when he’d get out of school.
“Hold on, I’ll show you mine!” Osamu says, excited and he looks up, waiting for it to appear. But nothing comes, even as he says it again twice, thrice, ten times. “That’s weird.”
It turns out Suna can’t call anyone from there and can’t even take any pictures. Osamu and he do appear on the screen, but as he clicks on the button, and looks down on his gallery, there’s nothing. He should have guessed. Osamu grows rather frustrated as he tries again and again to make some of his belongings appear, like his console and phone, but nothing comes down. He can still make pretty much anything else appear as he tried again with clothes and balls though.
Dreaming with Osamu is… something. Suna meets him every night, and each time they test their limits a little more. Weeks after weeks they start doing more than making things appear, they settle a place for them to stay and play, even if it’d be gone the next night. They learn to play with each other, they talk about things they like and don’t, about their respective lives.
After a few months, they understand their dream better. For example, they know that Osamu can’t materialize a majority of things that he has in his world, while Suna, on the other hand, can make pretty much anything appear. Around a year playing together and experimenting with their little world, they are now able to make small plants appear, that they had fun putting in pots and displaying on their shelves.
Dreaming with Osamu is nice, Suna decides. He’s cool and fun, and they are clearly experiencing something extraordinary. They never get really bored, and always have something to say or do. It’s fun, even more than the dreams Suna used to have when he was little. Each day, Suna waits impatiently to get back to his house, and joins Osamu in his sleep. He always tries to sleep more, sleep longer, and sometimes, when he does enough activities during the day and is tired at night, he gets a whole night with Osamu, only waking up when his mother knocks on the door to go to school.
It’s fun, and Suna would lie if he’d say he isn’t getting attached to that little paradise Osamu and he create every time.
“Rin?” Osamu says between the silence, looking up from his cacti. Suna hums, keeping his eyes on his book, reading absentmindedly. “Do you think we could meet?”
Suna raises his head, curiosity picked by the sudden question. He frowns, observing as Osamu’s delicate hands pat the dirt slowly. “I don’t know? Do you think we live in the same world?”
It’s Osamu’s time to frown. “Why wouldn’t we?”
Suna winced, thinking back on the year and a half they had spent together, discovering more about each other. He hasn’t really thought too much into it, but he has always thought something in Osamu’s world is different, as if it isn’t the same as his.
“You’re always saying that my things are old. But you can’t bring any object from your world that I don’t know about.” It seems to make sense, and deep down he has always known it, but Suna can’t pinpoint why he feels his heart squeeze in chest as he continues, “It’s almost like you can’t bring down things that don't exist in my world.”
Osamu is now glaring at his plant, as if it had insulted him. “What year are you in?” He asks in a whisper.
Suna’s surprised at the question, but answers automatically, “2008.”
It takes Osamu a while to react to the information, and Suna gets slowly worried as he doesn’t move. Then, Osamu looks up, smiling sadly. “Yeah, that was two hundred years ago.”
They decide that it is fine. They’re already happy that they can be friends in a magic world, just for the two of them, and don’t need anything more. They still see each other every night. Sometimes Osamu isn’t here when Suna arrives, and sometimes, he disappears before Suna.
Their life goes on. Suna goes to school, he meets people, none as interesting as Osamu, but it’s okay— he can’t find anyone more interesting than Osamu anyway, he is different, they are bound to each other, living something greater. He doesn’t talk about his best friend to anyone, but it’s fine— he doesn’t have to talk about it, seeing Osamu every night suffice him, he isn’t greedy, he’s not asking for more.
Suna goes to high school, and learns that Osamu doesn’t. It’s something special two hundred years later, they don’t go to high school anymore. Suna doesn’t really understand, but he guesses he doesn’t have to. It has been almost six years now since they became friends, and Suna is happy. Suna is happy.
They are now better at materializing. They can create whole places, with trees and rivers, or even houses and arcades. They materialize food, because Osamu says he’s a fantastic cook, and Suna wants to try it.
It has no taste.
Osamu is disappointed, but Suna asks him to cook anyway, especially when Osamu doesn’t feel okay. And Suna eats it, even if he can’t taste anything, he eats and if he imagines it enough he can taste how much love and effort Osamu puts into it.
They’re not children anymore, and somewhere along the way, Suna falls in love.
It’s in the way Osamu, twelve years old, looks up when he materializes something, arms outstretched and ready to catch it, grinning so wide and puffing his chest in pride. Suna thinks Osamu’s smile is warm and beautiful— and if he always asks for Osamu to bring down something, just to see this smile a little bit longer, then it’s only for him to know.
It’s in the way Osamu, thirteen years old, laughs when he plays silly pranks on Suna. He’d close his eyes, asking Suna to get ready to catch something for him, and Suna would look up to see water falling from nowhere directly onto both of them. Osamu laughs then, the melody echoing loudly— and Suna can’t find in himself the will to be mad, because this was well thought, and his heart sways happily in his chest.
It’s in the way Osamu, fourteen years old, cries when he has a fight with his brother. He doesn’t dare ask for anything, and just sits there, pouting, glaring at the ground and refusing to talk. Until Suna hugs him, and Osamu grips his shirt, allowing himself to cry, allowing the tears to fall out— Suna likes that Osamu trusts him enough, that their magic place makes him feel secure enough to let it all out.
It’s in the way Osamu, fifteen years old, makes him a surprise for his birthday. He asks for Suna to stay put, and close his eyes, and Suna does because he likes Osamu and he’s happy that his friend is preparing something. And when he opens them again, he’s sitting at an old arcade, with loads and loads of different games, that they can play without restriction. Osamu is smiling, and looking at him fondly— Suna’s heart aches, with the need to really hug him, to feel him, for real, between his arms, and the sheer happiness of still being able to have Osamu as a friend.
“What are you going to do?” Osamu asks, setting the ball over the net.
Suna catches it quickly and sends it back, shrugging, “I don’t know.” He sees the clouds in the sky they had learned to create a year ago, wishing they’d know how to create wind to make them move. “I’d like to become a pro volleyball player, I think.”
Osamu hums, catching the ball and dropping his arms, turning the object between his hands. Suna looks at Osamu, taking in the little pout and the furrowed brows, knowing what he is about to say. Eventually, Osamu looks up and sighs, sending him the ball again.
“I want to open a restaurant.” Suna can’t help the smile on his lips as Osamu says the exact words he had thought he would. “Maybe like honoring the past, and doing something more traditional. Like some sort of retro food.” He chuckles and Suna scoffs, shaking his head.
“That’d be nice.” This time, Suna’s the one catching the ball between his hands, and tucking it under his arms. Osamu observes him. “What’s on your mind?”
Osamu sighs, smiling sadly, “Can’t hide anything from you, can’t I?”
Suna’s heart misses a beat in his chest, and he bites on his lips. The simple fact that Osamu tried to hide something from him suffice to hurt him, but he doesn’t show it either, so he guesses he doesn’t have the right to say anything.
“Do you think this will go on for a while?” Osamu asks, he looks vulnerable, gazing around. Suna remembers when they still had nothing to look at, when everything was white and empty. They have come a long way.
“Do you want it to?”
Suna’s breath gets taken away when Osamu’s gaze meets his, soft, afraid. It takes him a little while to answer, not because he’s hesitating, but because the weight of his words means way more than what either of them has ever admitted.
“Yeah,” Osamu murmurs finally. “I’d like to.”
Suna is in his last year of high school, close to the end. He’s tired, exams are flowing, practice is getting harder and longer, and he’s still waiting for teams to call him back. So overall, Suna is tired.
When he meets Osamu at night, he barely has any energy, or any will to do anything other than sit and talk. That’s what they are doing right now, sitting under the shadow of a tree, listening to the gentle melody of the river flowing in front of them. Their shoulders are touching, their feet play with each other, and they’re eating a popsicle, just for the sake of it.
It’s nice, calming.
“Atsumu has a girlfriend.” Osamu says quietly, looking at the water. Suna turns his head and waits for him to continue. “She’s nice.”
Silence falls between them again, and Suna wishes for birds, longing their soothing songs that always fills silence so perfectly. He waits a bit more, but when he understands that Osamu won’t say anything more, he sighs.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know,” Osamu says, and he is lying. He must notice that he isn’t fooling anyone, because he continues. “I never really thought about it. Did you… Do you have someone?”
Suna knows he shouldn’t answer, he knows from the moment they started their conversation that this was a huge mistake. Osamu is sitting next to him, but they could never be as far away as they are at that moment. They have years separating them, decades and centuries pulling them apart. They could never be, their friendship wasn’t meant to exist, they shouldn’t have met in the first place.
But see, loving Osamu doesn’t feel like a mistake, it feels like a blessing, a miracle. Because despite the odds, despite the time, they still found each other, and he still fell in love. Loving Osamu is the best thing Suna has ever done, and he wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.
So he says, sealing their fate, “My heart is taken, yes.” He locks his eyes with Osamu, and sees the moment he stops breathing, waiting and hoping for Suna’s next words to be what he wants to hear. Suna admits, “I hope that yours too.”
They kiss, right there and then, in between the space where time meets.
They know this won’t last forever. Even if the dream persists, even if the magic resides, they would eventually have to let go, and live in their respective world. It does not do well, to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
So they share what they can, they take little bits of each other, promising forever, lying together. They live through the night, dreading the time of their last dance.
“Maybe in a parallel universe, we’d find each other.”
Suna Rintarou, twenty nine years old, both hates and adores dreams. He just wishes they’d last a little longer.