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Paint splattered and stained every corner of the canvas. 

It marked Atsumu’s fingers pink and black and blue, crusted under his nails as he stubbornly summoned another stroke with his brush across the board, trying with his eyes half-closed and half-open to bring together the vision of a man that existed only inside his head.

The cloud of colour coalesced indiscernibly, but a pair of eyes stood out, wicked with silent humour and dark like the night. Atsumu stared at them with his heart in his throat, his creation, but those eyes called to him as though they had plucked him out of a sea of people.  

Paint dripped and smeared as Atsumu wrung empty another paint tube, as he meticulously added details to every lash, dotted ebony irises with flecks of light. He’s alive, Atsumu thought with awe, this nameless man. He’s alive, in the way Atsumu could see how he’d wrinkle his nose when his eyes creased in a smile, in the way he could imagine the wind would tease through his hair. 

Who are you? Atsumu wondered despairingly, as he added the finishing touches to yet another canvas that would inevitably join the amalgamation littering his studio’s floor. 

If the canvas had lips, perhaps it would have taken pity on Atsumu and responded, but the portrait spewed flowers from a mouth he could not see, white and yellow and orange.

Forever offering silent, opaque gazes but never words. 

Never, ever words.

*

The dreams started when he was too young to remember and too old to forget. They etched into his soul with every recollection—and they were recollections, for they revisited him in different settings time and again.

Atsumu oftentimes found himself musing if he could envision such a complex and wondrous creature as the man in his dreams. 

Osamu professed he was being crazy, losing his mind to his self-mandated isolation. 

Atsumu was hardly isolated. He made trips to the specialty store downtown to buy new paint supplies twice a month and shopped for groceries every Monday. To assuage Osamu’s accusations, he’d even made a habit out of visiting Onigiri Miya on the weekend. 

His twin pushed a plate of onigiri under his nose now, just as his shoulders were beginning to slump and he nearly face-planted in the food. 

“Look alive, will ya?” quipped Osamu cheerfully, immune to his glare. “Yer destroying the shop’s image.”

“Why do I even come here?” Atsumu grumbled, reaching for a yaki-onigiri glazed with soy sauce. Two bites in, he could feel his shoulders loosening, his face relaxing.

On cue, Osamu flicked his forehead, his grin teasing. “That’s why.”

Atsumu snapped his teeth warningly, and Osamu jerked his hand away, laughing. “Down boy.”

His brother allowed him the serenity of quietness as he dug slowly into his food, each bite melting in his mouth until his own thoughts dissolved. “Man, this is good, ’Samu.”

“Sure is,” replied Osamu with a proud smile and pushed another plate towards him. “Have some packed for take-away too. Knowin’ ya, you’ll starve if I don’t feed ya.”

Atsumu’s second attempt at a glare went about as well as the first one, the effect further dulled by the sated feeling in his stomach. “That’s dramatic, don’t ya think?”

“You tell me.” Osamu crossed his arms firmly, looking unimpressed. “You’re neglecting yer health—forgettin’ ta eat, or take breaks,” Osamu said, wearing a stern expression not much unlike the one their Ma used to give them when she caught them covered in dirt after a tussle. 

He wasn’t wrong. 

Atsumu’s gaze pored into his dish to avoid his twin’s probing eyes. “I eat jus’ fine,” he mumbled weakly. “This is my job, ’Samu,” he reminded, strained. 

Atsumu’s chest was aching, as it was wont to do these days. The world had made sense until it didn’t. His days were normal until they weren’t. And Atsumu was happy and fulfilled until … until. He still couldn’t pinpoint a moment in time when this shifted with certainty, but a dozen canvases on his studio’s floor begged to differ.

Osamu sighed, shoulders slumping. “How much longer are you goin’ to do this, ’Tsumu? And for what, a man who doesn’t even exist?”

Atsumu flinched.

“Eat,” Osamu’s voice gentled uncharacteristically, and he nudged the plate even close to Atsumu. “Eat more. Please, ’Tsumu.”

And so Atsumu did. He took a bite of onigiri and had the overwhelming urge to cry. Not because he was hungry or he was feeling like it, but for the same reason he did anything every time he looked his brother in the eyes and found them filled with worry and desperate hope. Osamu shouldn’t have to worry about his sorry ass, Atsumu always reasoned; Osamu had enough to deal with, after all. 

*

“Look,” said the man softly. “Look,” he insisted, fingertips sliding along Atsumu’s. Two palms slotted together perfectly, finger to finger, skin to skin. “Look how we fit together.”

Atsumu was shaking, and his insides hurt, and his face was tear-streaked. Cool hands cradled his feverish ones, and a soothing voice murmured words Atsumu barely registered over the buzz inside his own head. 

“You’re going to be okay,” the man said, though the broken look on his beautiful, shadowy face said otherwise. “We’re meant to be together.”

We’re meant to be together.

Atsumu was hurled back to the world like a crumpled piece of paper, chewed up and spat out. Bleary eyes blinked awake to a familiar ceiling, to a silent apartment. 

At his side, where one of his pillows was strewn away, and his blanket lay twisted and mangled like the knot in his chest, Atsumu could swear he remembered a familiar warmth that lingered like a shadow. 

He was crying, he realised belatedly. Even now, awake and sobered by the sight of his room. The tears were hot and sticky as they tracked down the sides of his face to soak his pillowcase. 

Atsumu sucked in a ragged breath, twisted his hands in his sheets and kicked the last corner of his blanket off.

Look. Depthless eyes and pale, sunken cheeks; worry writ into every line of a face Atsumu swore he had memorised by now. Look how we fit together.

A sob wrenched from his chest, alarming and hideous. He must be losing it. It certainly felt that way as he stared at his blurry, dark ceiling, chest all twisted up, and cried for reasons he couldn’t fathom over a figment of his own wretched imagination.

How could he miss someone he’d never once met?

Sakusa Kiyoomi wasn’t a man of many words. 

After all, his silence was ever-present and lingered in the company of many, and his conversation was scarce and, often, blunt.

It was a lie. A facade, if he ever wore one. Sometimes Kiyoomi was sure that if he unclenched his jaw, if he relaxed his shoulders, if he opened his mouth, a devastating ocean would pour out.

His notebooks were overfilled, bleeding into the margins with the words he normally choked back, and papers were scattered over his desk, half-formulated strings of thoughts jotted at the corners of assignment sheets and university work. His fingers itched, twitching for his pen again, as another thought poured out from the broken faucet of his brain to the world.

He had the rough draft of a book now, like a cracked open carcass of his own heart. Kiyoomi hadn’t even intended to write a book, but over a hundred and fifty thousand words later, he was forced to submit to his own creation. 

This was what he did. He shoved down a tsunami of words he never intended to say, and like traitorous little bastards, they crawled from his fingertips to etch onto paper.

One-hundred and fifty-thousand words of a nameless character that burrowed inside Kiyoomi’s chest the way thorny vines knotted around window sills and refused to let go.

Kiyoomi swore he could taste a name on the tip of his tongue, like he’d held it cradled in his mouth for the past millennium. But it dissolved before it ever found a way out, every time.

He buried his face in his hands as he thought back to last week. 

“Sakusa-san,” his literature professor had said, an errant piece of paper caught between her fingers. “Did you write this?”

It was an honest mistake—a stupid one. Kiyoomi had tucked another thought between the pages of his textbook to hide it from prying eyes, and now it inadvertently found its way to the person he was trying to hide it from the most. 

He had swallowed, willing down the burn igniting in his cheeks. “… Yes.”

The ghost of you lingers in my peripheral like you never left, the note stated, like a lovesick rendition of his most pathetic self. You’re a plague, you plague me, I’m sick, Kiyoomi had wanted to say. Instead, he had continued, on the same plaintive note: If only I had learned that the world is cruel, and that nothing lasts, especially not fragile and soft things like you, perhaps this would have hurt less. 

But knowing me—knowing the man you reduced me to—I would have declared that all beautiful things came to an end, except us, because there was nothing beautiful in the shattered remains of what we tried to build together. We are not beautiful. We are enduring. 

We are enduring. 

Kiyoomi didn’t think he’d yet encountered anything more enduring than the agony in his chest every time he thought of honey-gold eyes and teasing smiles. 

He had a theory now: it wasn’t ever about beautiful or enduring things, but about a man that Kiyoomi had foolishly allowed to burrow into his soul once upon a time, to carry with him, eons and oceans away.

“Very heartfelt,” Fukuda-sensei had said, waving the note between her fingers to gather his attention. “Though I’d appreciate your attention to your studies more.”

“Yes,” he had repeated, embarrassment bristling along his skin. 

She’d offered the note back, smiling. “Do you write poetry?”

“Nothing that elaborate,” Kiyoomi had said through the sting of self-consciousness.

“You should,” she decided as he snatched the paper away, crumpling it in his haste to shove it in his pocket.

“Thanks,” Kiyoomi had managed, then ducked away to berate himself somewhere private.

Kiyoomi sighed. A week had passed, but the note still laid on his desk and the draft still collected dust and his laptop was still a dark screen he refused to light up.

It should have been enough to let those words out, to stain paper with ink, yet Kiyoomi found his soul continuing to call, the way a wounded animal might yowl for help until it bled out or survived. 

Perhaps Kiyoomi was doomed. Maybe he would spend the rest of his life in an incessant state of longing, searching and searching for a man he lost a lifetime ago.

Enduring things last. 

Kiyoomi was intimately acquainted with the agony in his chest and knew, without a shadow of uncertainty, that it wouldn't ever let him rest.

Atsumu had a theory now, a collection of hypotheses strung together by the lingering afterimage of dark, fathomless eyes and pretty pink lips.

He thought so again as he found himself in the same dream, amidst a sunflower field. A speck lost in the sea. The yellow flowers danced merrily in the wind, brushing the tips of weary fingers where his arms hung limply by his side.

In the distance, in this idyll, one thing stood out starkly against the vibrant backdrop of summer. A man was dancing, little twirls and spins, arms twisting above his head, as though he had no care in the world.

He scintillated, pale skin glowing against dark hair, flowy arms capturing something boundless and heavy in Atsumu’s chest. 

Atsumu had stood here before, under the same summer sky and wispy clouds, to the same breathless vision. Here was a man untethered by reality, soft and feathery the way only dreams could be. 

Atsumu would start walking, traipsing through the dips of hip-high sunflowers, wading through the pullback of a dream that was set in stone, predetermined to end to the same note. Like every recollection, his feet would take root just out of reach, to become one with the sunflowers, and refused to budge. 

The dancing man, body twisting elegantly, head tipping back, would begin to notice him. The ghost of a smile would bloom on his face, like the blush of sakura in spring, and he would start to say something, lips moving over silent, effervescent words.

There you are, Atsumu imagined the words saying, as longing exploded over every inch of his body, akin to being dunked under water and unable to resurface. I’ve missed you.

He would strain and fight against the earth that entrenched him, hands grasping forward valiantly, trying to gain another measly inch. 

The man would smile sadly. His arms would reach back, as though there were no distance between them, and then Atsumu would wake up, aching in corners of his soul he didn’t know existed.

Atsumu had a theory now, a theory born in the perpetual darkness of his room, writ on the ceiling and his tear-stained pillowcase. 

Once upon a time, he must have held this man. Must have memorised the heat of his body in the circle of his arms, must have kissed the smiling slant of his pink mouth, because at times like this, Atsumu could taste him. Right there on the soft skin of his lip, and just behind his teeth, like a lurid splash over his tongue. 

If the man didn’t exist right now, not outside his dreams, he must have once upon a time—maybe an entire lifetime ago, maybe more. Atsumu was born with a warmth already tucked in his heart and a touch already embedded on his skin, with a taste already lingering in his mouth. Somebody had claimed him, and he didn’t wish to let go.

He hated waking up like this.

He wiped at his face again, sad and bereft, snuffing a few wayward tears. There was no use crying over what was lost. Atsumu had never considered himself a profound man; he’d never used to believe in the mystical, and the concept of soulmates didn’t exist outside of a vague memory from elementary school when he overheard Mina-chan, his then friend and classmate, chattering about it with her girl friends. 

But if they did—and the thought twisted its claws into his heart and tore mercilessly—if soulmates existed, why wasn’t his life a pink-coloured, sugar-coated serving of a delicacy that never stopped giving? Where was the miraculous shift in the universe? Why didn’t the world slot neatly into place? Why wasn’t this man delivered right to him, an epiphany come to life?

Atsumu kicked his sheets away, a ritual now, and slipped out of bed. Tonight, he didn’t touch the paintings. He slipped wearily into his clothes and then out into the dead of the night. 

The gallery was just down the street, dimly lit and silent behind transparent glass. One of Atsumu’s paintings hung on the divider, a lone, yellow spotlight casting a glow over the blend of oily tones. 

It lacked the vibrancy of Atsumu’s usual paintings. It depicted a dark, decrepit room, and a slumbering figure amidst pale sheets. Dark hair, dark room, dark eyes. 

The gallerist, Miyazaki-sensei, had taken one look at it and made a thoughtful hmm sound. As though some great mystery lay in the muted shades, in the only dash of red amidst all the greys. And then he told Atsumu he would gladly display it in his gallery. 

Blasély named El Arte, the gallery was eerily still at this hour, as though it were a painting in and of itself.

No one had purchased the painting yet, not even after seven weeks of hanging it on display, but Miyazaki-sensei didn’t seem bothered by that. Atsumu tried to needle him to see if they could switch it to display a more recent piece, but Miyazaki-sensei chortled and waved his hand dismissively. 

“Art is always meant to evoke something. The right person will come along.”

Atsumu doubted his art would evoke the same fiery blaze in his heart in others. They weren’t haunted by recurrent dreams, or by the knowledge that he’d once held the universe in his hands. 

The itch of loss simmered under his skin.

You wake at dusk

And there’s a beauty in the quiet of the night

In the way you sink into me

That I can’t compare to anything else

The digital clock on Kiyoomi’s bedside table read 2:19 a.m. It was a school night. 

The weekend seemed like a faraway dream on this Tuesday, and his computer sat tauntingly within his line of sight.

He could sit up. He could write. 

He was so goddamn tired of writing. 

Kiyoomi would write his life away if he kept attempting to shape the outline of a man in flowery words. “Firecracker” was what Kiyoomi had taken to calling him now—he was an ephemeral splash of light against the darkness, pretty and vivacious, there for a heartstopping moment and gone the next. 

Firecracker would laugh until he cried if he could hear Kiyoomi’s thoughts now. Kiyoomi knew these little facets innately. The way he knew Firecracker washed his face before he brushed his teeth, that he hated the taste of bitter coffee, and that he was a night owl, whiling away the small hours with small talk.

Finally, with effort, Kiyoomi sat up. He grabbed the wet wipes he kept on the nightstand and took one across the computer for a vigorous scrub. He only intended to clean it; it had been setting off an uncomfortable thrum under his skin the longer he stared at it.

But now his fingers lingered on the keyboard, keys once again pristine. Clicking the power button was a thoughtless gesture, and before he knew it, Kiyoomi had sunk down into his wheelchair, weary as he succumbed to the urge to write. 

The computer whirred to life, pulling up his recent tabs. He’d abandoned it with his blog open, with a half-written post blinking on the screen. 

If only this could have been a book about happily ever afters and the sunlight breaking defiantly through the canopy to paint his face in light. Instead, I sit in the dreary bleakness of a quarantine room too cold to capture warmth but burning nonetheless with his fever-bright body pressed to my side.

The sun would crack through the window; not defiantly, but brokenly, laboriously, to touch tentatively at sunken cheeks and hazy eyes. A caress of hopeless comfort that painted his sickness with light. Firecracker would smile, and even with his cracked lips and tired breaths, he was as beautiful as I’d ever seen him, a creature of sunshine.

Kiyoomi chewed his lip, his cursor hovering over the post button. He had around seven-thousand-two-hundred followers, and he was about to subject them to his half-lucid thoughts.

Did it even matter anymore?

Kiyoomi hit post and pulled up a fresh word document to start typing. He spilled open his notebook, overflowing as it was, and began transcribing.

When he stopped, it was five in the morning, and he had only an hour to catch an exhausted sleep before he had to be up for his morning lecture. 

This deviation would start a cycle, as Kiyoomi would return home every day, finish his assignments, and resume transcribing. If Firecracker existed somewhere out there, then Kiyoomi wanted to find him. And if he didn’t, he wanted to tell their story so that it could live somewhere even after he was long gone.

If Kiyoomi was doomed to always be left behind, well then, he was used to that.

*

Kiyoomi remembered harrowing heartache, akin to being ripped apart. And then it all came flooding back. 

He was thirteen-years-old, unbroken yet by the knowledge that would change everything. He was at volleyball practice; it was just another day in the same dingy gym, but exams had been trying, and his patience must have waned too thin, for by the time he was done and ready to take his shower, he was itching and antsy. 

The showers were empty, as they tended to be by the time he made it there. Water pooled in shallow puddles across the tiles, and steam still hung thickly in the air. 

Someone had thought it would be funny to trace the shape of a dick on the fogged-over mirror.

Kiyoomi breathed and reeled. He was overwhelmed by the stink of body spray and over-used deodorant. It did little to mask the stench of sweat, as though these boys had taken a perfunctory rinse. Someone had cut their hair in the sink. 

There was a forgotten used razor on the counter and a handprint of shaving cream on the tap. 

It was not an odd sight from a group of teenage boys, but Kiyoomi’s skin was buzzing, and the silence rang in his ears until it was deafening.    

Suddenly, he was aware of the grime in the grout, the forgotten toilet lids propped up, the underside revolting. He’d touched the door handle. How many boys had used the toilets, didn’t wash their hands, and then touched that? His skin was crawling, his breaths short and strangled.

Something important and indistinct was blaring in the back of his head.

The germs. There were germs. They were everywhere; on the handles, on the lockers, on every surface area here, and Kiyoomi was meant to be careful—if he weren’t, he would catch something, it was serious, he could die, he had to be careful, he told him to be careful—

Oh. 

Oh. 

Then Kiyoomi remembered. A bleak quarantine room and bleary golden eyes and rasping, heaving coughs. A fever bright body tucked into his arm, the weight of cloth on his face, guarding his nose and mouth. 

Most vividly, he recalled the sharp smell of bleach, the quiet tears that would drip down ashen cheeks.

Kiyoomi’s body did a violent heave, and then he was in one of those disgusting stalls, retching. 

Tears blurred his visions as his body trembled, overwhelmed by confusion and grief and a searing sense of loss. Kiyoomi half expected to look down and find an open hole in his chest where his heart was. To this day, he couldn’t recall how he made it home, what he must have looked like to his distressed mother, trembling and refusing to be touched and searching frantically for a face mask.  

Enduring things last. 

The dreams started soon after, at first vague and disjointed, but quickly gaining clarity with age. 

A man had died in his arms. Not suddenly, not unexpectedly. He had slipped slowly, disease draining his life while Kiyoomi bore witness. In the dreams, he would cry sometimes, sobbing into a warm shoulder, into the curve of a neck with a weak pulse. 

The man would wipe gently at his face, would mumble apologies, would tell Kiyoomi he loved him till his last breath. 

Each dream left him wrecked, every recollection adding to the growing feeling of phantom pains; as though Kiyoomi had lost a limb. 

Why? he would ask his pale reflection in the mirror sometimes, looking at his red-rimmed eyes. But Kiyoomi knew why. His soul knew why. He had lost a part of it. An extension of himself, and like all broken things, he was bleeding. 

He had made a promise many lifetimes ago. “We’re meant to be together.” He must have carried it with him, believed it so utterly that it manifested here, even in a different body, even in a different world. 

Kiyoomi slumped on his table, exhausted. His eyes dipped shut, briefly resting overstrained lids. He could hear the paper crinkling where his face was smushed to his book, but he made no move to budge. 

I want to feel whole, he thought bleakly, not for the first time. The ache was always there, the feeling of loss ever-present. 

Remembering hurt. The more he wrote, the more it felt like he was clawing at an open wound and bleeding out. 

His computer blinked back at him, apathetic as always. Kiyoomi sat up, world-weary, but he continued writing anyway. 

Atsumu was dreaming again. 

He’d learned to tell, to curb his awareness at a knife’s edge between wakefulness and dreaming. 

“Come here,” the man whispered, quiet as the dawn as he pulled Atsumu closer. He looked soft in the moonlight, glowing as though he belonged to the night and everything mystical. 

Astumu went willingly, warm hands in warm hands, two hot breaths curling together.

They sat there, simply breathing, basking. Atsumu could feel his skin buzzing, could hear the thud of his heart in his ears and the way the breath shook in his lungs. 

“What’s this?” Atsumu whispered. 

“This … is longing,” murmured his lover, fingertips sliding across his palms, fluttering over the pulse in his wrists. Atsumu shivered, wanting. “It starts here …” he said, tentative touch travelling from Atsumu’s hands to curve around his shoulders and finally slide down to rest upon the cacophony of his heart. “And ends … here.” 

“Please,” Atsumu rasped, voice cracking. “Just kiss me already.”

He did. He leaned closer—he was only a breath away, curls tickling Atsumu’s forehead—and pressed their mouths together. 

It was soft and sweet and tasted like the berries they’d eaten after dinner. 

“Kiss me again,” Atsumu beseeched when he pulled back for breath. 

And like a man possessed, his lover kissed him again, taking Atsumu’s face in his big hands and meshing their lips together. Once, twice, then again and again; sweet and loving and then passionate and hungry. He nipped and licked at swollen lips, reeled Atsumu closer, kissed him something fierce.

Atsumu’s blood was singing. He tried to reach back, to touch his lover’s face, to grip his sides. 

Awareness was beginning to thread back in again, his touch slipping on the edges of reality. A frustrated sob wrenched from him no, no no! 

And then Atsumu was lying awake in his bed, breathing fast, skin tingling with the weight of a familiar touch. Blood roared in his ears, and heat simmered in his belly, and anguish throbbed in his heart until he was sure he would cry. 

More. He wanted more. Anything he could get from that reverent touch and that warm mouth. Anything, everything. He desired it with a debilitating want. 

He sucked in a trembling breath, tried to center himself. It was useless to twist himself into pieces with this endless longing. No matter how much he burned for that familiar touch, it was nowhere to be found. Atsumu was adrift in the greatest ocean in the world, lightyears away, lifetimes apart.

“Fuck,” he whispered as the tears began. 

He stumbled out of bed for his clothes. He was not doing this today. 

Atsumu shoved his socked feet into his running shoes and sprinted into the dead of the night. He ran and ran and ran, until his lungs burned for a different reason and the tears abated, wrung dry. 

He ran some more and then circled back, feet carrying him defiantly to Miyazaki’s gallery. 

The glass was frosted over with humidity, a pale orange glow casting a halo over the displayed paintings. Everything was still and dark and quiet. Vibrant art stared back at him. 

Atsumu froze.

His painting was gone. 

Kiyoomi lay on his back, hypnotised by the whirr of the overhead fan. Chai’s weight on his chest was comforting, soft purrs reverberating through him as he used his index finger to scratch behind her ear. 

He’d abandoned his essay on his study desk when boredom had eventually cracked his jaw wide with endless yawns and summoned tears to his eyes. The words had blurred together until Kiyoomi gave up, realising he’d stopped writing and was doodling the pyramids of Egypt instead.

Chai nuzzled his hand and pawed lightly at his chest when his touch faltered. He resumed more sedately, eyes falling away from the fan to Chai, and then to the cardboard box propped against the closet door.

Kiyoomi had made an impulse purchase. 

Not thoughtlessly, but certainly with intentional disregard to logic. His parents allocated a monthly allowance until he graduated university, and while Kiyoomi tended to budget carefully and never spend on frivolous things, here lay a contradiction to his self-imposed rules.

The painting wasn’t large, an eleven by fourteen canvas that caught his eye through the minimalist display of an art gallery on fifth street. It was a little out of his way, but his sister insisted on meeting him for coffee downtown and then spent an insufferable hour prodding Kiyoomi about his future. Was he still single, and did he give their father’s offer another thought?

Frustrated, Kiyoomi had scarfed down his cake, barely tasting it, and polished off his coffee in a large gulp, even though it was cold and disgusting, then beat a hasty retreat.

When he’d stopped speedwalking like his life depended on it (as if Mitsuka-nee-chan would ever chase after him, but he’d rather be safe than sorry), Kiyoomi stumbled to a stop at the corner of the street, breathing hard. Bent over at the knees, he tried to ignore the way his skin felt clammy and overheated.

A breeze of cold air carried over to him as the glass door behind him opened and shut, once, twice. Kiyoomi looked up, still panting, only to have his breath stolen.

It was a wonder he’d noticed it first, caught in the middle of five vibrant paintings, with hardly a pop of colour save for the blood red of a scarf smack dab in the middle. He straightened, approaching it, until his nose was almost pressed to the glass.

The figure was dark-haired and pale in the thin sheet dipping around his waist. The scarf around his neck stood out, spread in a loose wave around him. He was beautiful in an understated way, in the soft brush strokes painting his curls, as though the artist had lovingly drawn them strand by strand. Compared to him, the rest of the room was cold and isolated, devoid of colour or personal touches. A single candlelight cast the warmest glow on the arch of one cheek and graced the slope of his nose. 

Kiyoomi stared. He stared because a nebulous feeling was rising in his chest. He stared because the strangest lump was beginning to form in his throat. And then Kiyoomi pushed through the glass door without a second thought to spend an admittedly not little amount of money.

He hadn’t even unpacked it yet, caught by the strange novelty of being possessed by an artwork. 

Growing up in a household like his, Kiyoomi and his siblings were taught to appreciate the fine arts, amongst other things like opera music and French wines, and old Hollywood movies. But he’d never been compelled by a piece of art quite like this before. Sure, he had admired the skill of many painters and artists, their attention to detail or their colour palette, but he’d never felt choked or filled with emotions that didn’t belong to him. 

After another moment of thought, he gently displaced Chai, despite her meow of protest, and approached the box.

There were many empty spots in his room; Kiyoomi wasn’t prone to collecting personal tidbits, nor was he the kind of person to look for decorations to add a personal touch to the room. Not when he worried about the additional cleaning it would take first and foremost.

The painting found a temporary home across his bed. Kiyoomi watched it for a while, in a trance, lost to why a mute melancholia simmered beneath his skin. 

Maybe it was the way the man smiled sadly, eyes half-lidded, hand curled lightly around the scarf adorning his neck, as if it was his anchor. Maybe it was the way the bed was the only warm-toned object in the room and everything else looked cold and bleak. Kiyoomi instantly wanted to know what happened there, who had stolen the sunshine and plunged everything into darkness.

A memory—or perhaps a dream—was tugging at the edges of his consciousness. A vague recollection of Firecracker lying across the room in a feverish cocoon, eyes hazy, murmuring to Kiyoomi to tell him a bedtime story. And Kiyoomi on the other side of the room, thinking he would risk anything to be close again, to brush the damp strands out of his eyes and press soft kisses to his flushed cheeks.

He wondered if the Kiyoomi of that life had known he’d eventually give in, that the ache of being apart would prove far worse than the fear of sickness. That sickness did eventually follow, but he no longer had Firecracker by his side to see the light at the end of the tunnel, that the fight had rapidly bled out of him. It could have been days or months of wallowing in heart-wrenching grief before Kiyoomi, too, slipped away.

The breath rattled in his throat. He waited for remembering to hurt less—didn’t time dull grief? Didn’t life continue to grow and shape around it?—but it never did, as though no time at all, even several lifetimes of it, could hope to shrink this wound. 

That night he dreamt of Firecracker’s soft protests as Kiyoomi slipped from cold sheets to burrow against a fever-hot body.

“I love you,” he’d said to him, hands in unkempt brown hair, the yellow almost entirely gone. “If you have to go, I want every last moment you have.”

“I wanted forever,” Firecracker whispered, voice cracking. 

Kiyoomi held him and didn’t cry, didn’t dare to, when Firecracker was barely holding himself at the seams. Instead, Kiyoomi kissed the sheen of sweat on his temple, rubbed comfort into the sore muscles of his back, and pressed him closer to the sure thud of his heart. 

And all the while, it felt as though the world was stealing Kiyoomi’s minutes, his seconds, and everything else that mattered. They slipped away so fast that Kiyoomi thought that indeed, even forever wouldn’t have been enough.

Miyazaki-sensei stood at Atsumu's door. 

All Atsumu could manage was a double-take. They’d never done social calls. “Uh—sensei? What are you doing here? Are you alright?”

“May I come in?” asked Miyazaki-sensei, smiling benignly.

Atsumu stumbled back to let his sensei shuffle into his cramped corridor, praying to god he’d had the foresight to leave his studio tidy. He’d passed out on his couch last night, paintbrush still in hand.

He flicked discreetly at the dried paint on his fingers as he guided Miyazaki-sensei in. “Come in. Please ignore the mess—I, uh, meant ta clean up yesterday.”

Miyazaki-sensei sank down on the spot Atsumu had hurt his back sleeping on up until just ten minutes ago. “Easy, Miya. I’m just here to deliver your money. The painting was sold. And I wish to discuss an upcoming exhibition I’m hosting.” He passed his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, and smiled warmly. Something about the look struck Atsumu as fatherly. “These are some crazy good paintings, Miya.”

Atsumu’s eyes jerked over his shoulder to where Miyazaki-sensei was looking. The recollection of a pretty face painted every canvas in the room. 

“Thanks,” he said, mouth dry. He must look obsessed, he thought faintly. There were at least ten in the open space, some not entirely safe for work. “It’s … ya can call it a passion project.”

An awkward clearing of his throat did little to dislodge the embarrassment he felt.

But Miyazaki-sensei didn’t appear to be judging him; if anything, a calculating look shone in his dark eyes. “Hey, what do you say about displaying these during the exhibition? I’m holding it next month, and I have some sponsors on board.”

Atsumu opened and closed his mouth twice. Finally, he spluttered: “Really?”

“You sound shocked.” Miyazaki-sensei’s voice twinkled with amusement. “You know, I wouldn’t host your art if I didn’t think you’re a talented artist, son.”

Atsumu felt his cheeks flush. He ducked his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Thanks,” he said again, trying to unstick the lump in his throat. “I guess sometimes I forget that others don’t see the trials and errors.”

Miyazaki-sensei chortled and stood up to survey the paintings more closely. He admired the black-and-white rendition of a pretty, smiling face, eyes averted shyly; the warm domesticity of a cluttered kitchen and jam-covered lips turned up in a reluctant smile. He peered closely at the splash of colours on a river’s surface, reflecting a green forest, blue skies, and the ripe bloom of apricots. In the water, the serene figure of a bare man floated aimlessly. He stared the longest at one that made Atsumu blush; the pale moonlight filtered through the curtains to splay over naked skin and lithe, pliant muscles. The man looked lazily over his shoulder, skin bearing a subtle bloom of colour, lips shaping around a blissed-out smile. 

“It’s beautiful,” Miyazaki-sensei said, reverent. “The colours here, the texture.” His fingers followed the slope of the man’s back, the dip of his backside barely covered by the sheets. “The way the light reflects here.” His fingers fluttered over the curtains. 

Miyazaki-sensei moved to pursue the next painting, this one quiet and intimate, set in the warm glow of candles. The man slumbered in a tub suffused with water and flowers, wisps of steam rising in the air around him. A pretty flush crawled up his neck where wet hair splayed in messy tendrils. 

“The way the water droplets are done here … the highlights … this is exquisite, Miya.”

Atsumu was never one to shy away from praise, relishing in it, but now his heart pumped in his throat, and he had the urge to bury his face in his hands. “You flatter me, sensei,” he muttered. 

“Nonsense. And this, I love the contrast of colours.” Miyazaki-sensei didn’t stop until he’d admired each displayed painting. Atsumu followed him, seeing them from another’s eyes. 

Perhaps he was biased, but he could hardly look away from the man in the painting—the man in his dreams, in his heart—and the way he looked beautiful in every setting and every light, midst every colour, but especially in the delicate moonlight. 

“I have room for five,” Miyazaki-sensei said. “What do you say?”

Atsumu sucked in a breath. “Yeah. Of course, sensei. I’d be honoured.”

Miyazaki-sensei clapped him on the back as Atsumu saw him out and made sure to tuck an envelope in Atsumu’s hand. 

It wasn’t the first painting he’d ever sold—Atsumu opened the envelope to peer in—but it certainly was the first one he earned a pretty penny from. 

He slipped it in his drawer to take to the bank later and decided he needed a shower. 

On his way to the bathroom, he stopped a final time to gaze upon his paintings, including the last one he had done, where the man was on the sheets in a languid splay of long, milky limbs.

“Miyazaki-sensei likes you,” Atsumu mused out loud, a smile quirking his lips. “If sensei likes you, everyone will, y’know?”

An obscure pair of dark eyes stared back at him. 

Atsumu’s heart squeezed. “But none as much as I do,” he added, quieter, realising how terrifying that statement was when the man likely didn’t exist outside his imagination.

Atsumu finished showering and called Osamu while drying his hair, phone on speaker. “Hey ’Samu, whatcha up to?”

“Wow, ya finally remembered ya got a brother?”

It earned him a fond eyeroll even though Osamu couldn’t see it. “Don’t be so dramatic. Guess who just got paid?”

“I see. Ya callin ta gloat, then?” 

Atsumu huffed. “’Course not, ya dildo, I’m callin’ to take ya to lunch. My treat.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t get off work until four.”  

“It’s alright, I’ll wait,” Atsumu insisted, slipping into washed, ripped jeans. He had to riffle through the closet for the least wrinkled shirt he could find and managed to fish out a decent white tee. “I got nothin’ happening today.”

Another pause. “Alright. If you say so. Are ya … are ya sure yer doing okay?”

Guilt rippled through Atsumu, but he stamped it down. “God, Samu, yer worse than Aunt Kiyoko when it comes to fussing. I’m treating ya to lunch, ya can afford to sound a little excited!”

“Shut up,” his brother said reflexively. “Fine. I’ll see ya at four.”

“I’ll come get ya at the shop.” Atsumu hung up and felt marginally better at the prospect of alleviating Osamu’s worries. He really was worse than their aunt, though Osamu didn’t try to keep him indoors for fear of catching his death in the form of playground germs. Atsumu snickered at the memory.

He whiled away the morning tidying his place. Whatever laundry had accumulated was now spinning in his washing machine, and the dishes were all washed and drying on the rack. He put away some of his paint supplies, and he even spared the time to water his plants before making his way to Onigiri Miya. 

Atsumu arrived fifteen minutes too early and circled back to the shop down the street to buy ice cream.

When he finally met up with Osamu, he unceremoniously passed the butterscotch ice cream cone to him. “Gotcha some ice cream.”

“… The heck, aren’t we going for lunch?” Osamu said, foregoing any form of greeting. 

Seriously, the stuff Atsumu put up with.

“Duh. But didn't ya know life’s too short not to savour yer dessert first?” Atsumu cracked, smiling as he enjoyed his cotton candy-flavoured ice cream.

Osamu’s head whipped to the side. “That’s not friggin’ morbid or anythin’ at all. Are ya dying? Please tell me yer not dying—”

“Fuckin’ hell, ’Samu, I’m not dying! This is what I get for bein’ nice to ya? I so take it back,” Atsumu groused, and he shuddered when a big bite of ice cream made his teeth throb. 

“Who eats ice cream in October anyway?” was Osamu’s response but he was already back to nibbling on his offering, so Atsumu rolled his eyes and didn’t deign to offer a comeback. “Where’re we going?”

“Some place that’s not work for you,” Atsumu said. “I thought maybe we can get barbecue?”

Osamu shrugged, falling into step with him. It was quieter than their usual inane chatter, but Atsumu attributed it to the ice cream. 

However, when the silence persisted even after they settled down and ordered, Atsumu felt inclined to break it. “Yer off. What happened?”

“Huh?”

“Ya haven’t insulted me once yet,” Atsumu pouted. 

“What, ya wanna be insulted now?” Osamu fired back, eyebrows raised.

Only two things could dampen Osamu’s mood. “I didn’t crash some date with Sunarin, did I?” Atsumu wondered.

“Nah,” Osamu waved him off. “Suna’s still at team practice. I wasn’t expectin’ ya to call though. What with the way ya’ve been lately.”

Atsumu winced. “It was just one bad week.”

“Uh, more like one bad month ?”

Well, damn. “Okay, so? Doesn’t mean we can’t hang out anymore … yer still my brother, even if sometimes I regret not eatin’ ya in the womb.”

“Feelin’ very loved right now,” was Osamu’s dry response. “So are ya okay now then? Whatever the hell happened anyway? Was convinced I’d stop by one day and find yer rotting corpse.”

“Who’s bein’ morbid now, huh?” Atsumu spat back, but it lacked the usual heat. “It was nothin’ anyway. I get lost inside my own head sometimes, ya know this already.”

Osamu hummed, lacing his fingers on the tabletop and regarding Atsumu for one unnerving moment of silence. “Fine. Well, now ya gotta tell me how to deal with it cause ya really freaked me out, ’Tsumu.”

The guilt was back. It churned in his gut. Atsumu knew he had to figure something out eventually. It wasn’t sustainable—this mess he devolved into every time the dreams got a little too vivid to be called ‘dreams,’ and he felt embroiled in every emotion and detail he’d otherwise miss with the first morning light. 

“Promise it’s fine now. Won’t happen again,” he muttered, watching as their waiter approached with their utensils. “I’m fine now.”

“If ya say so,” Osamu mumbled, sounding unconvinced but letting it drop.

That night, Atsumu stood before his paintings and stared pensively at the way the colours bled together, the muted sense of wonder and heartache found in each one. They helped him cope. 

But they also stole away time he could be spending in the real world. Time he could be meeting people or making friends, or hanging out with family. The thought made him sad in an intangible, removed way. 

Like Atsumu was observing this from outside his body.

Maybe it was time to stop. His studio was home to more than a dozen paintings of the same man, and countless sketches tucked into books and drawers, some splayed on his coffee table, others doodled in coffee shops on napkins that he brought back home. 

It wasn’t fixing his problem, only exasperating it. This man was in every dream and every memory and every corner. Etched in Atsumu’s fingertips and his canvases and his heart. 

He needed to stop.

He needed to heal.

Despite the fervour of his thoughts, the inward declaration twisted his gut into painful knots and compressed his chest. Like the world was punishing him for daring to want to forget.

But what other choice did Atsumu have?

His fingers traced the pale figure in the painting and made a silent vow. He’d hold on for a little while longer, just until Miyazaki-sensei’s exhibition. And then he'd tuck every canvas away to find its resting place.

Out of sight, out of mind, though he knew the latter was wishful thinking.

Kiyoomi was transfixed on the painting.

It was ridiculous and against logic; he swore he’d never been artistically predisposed outside of his chosen medium of writing novellas and purple prose. Kiyoomi didn’t know anything about colour theory or perspective.

But he lost hours admiring the blend of colours, the highlights, the brushstrokes, on the canvas hanging in front of his bed. It was not the artistry of it, but the unbridled emotion it winded in Kiyoomi’s rib cage. 

Were they his or the artist’s? Looking at it, Kiyoomi was reminded of a quote by Ocean Vuong: “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”

The gentle melancholy of it became a constant companion, suffusing the still moments between writing. 

It took him a month to complete typing down his novel. Or biography. The semantics of it gave him a headache. Some of the posts on his blog had gained more traction than he was anticipating, with strangers regularly leaving messages in his inbox with praise and questions about his story and whether he planned to post it somewhere. 

Kiyoomi shared snippets every Wednesday night and spent Thursday mornings poring over every bit of feedback.

Only one type of question stumped him. Some people wanted to know his inspiration. Kiyoomi didn’t know or want to divulge the essence of it; didn’t think he could handle the potential mockery of confessing his dreams.

His eyes caught on the edges of a truly beloved painting now, hanging across his bed, and he smiled. It inspired him in its own way too.

Many things inspired me, Kiyoomi chose to type. Most recently: a painting by A. Miya. Titled la douleur exquise. The heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable.

Kiyoomi went back and asked. 

It gained a new clarity with that brief explanation. Kiyoomi could see now. The longing in that shuttered, dark gaze; the aching sweetness of the red scarf wrapped around a pale throat and clutched loosely in delicate hands, as though it symbolised a yearning for someone he can’t be close to, save for this way.

Kiyoomi understood the man in the painting too well. The longer he looked at him, the more it felt like he was seeing a reflection of himself stripped down to something frail and sad. 

The painting accompanied Kiyoomi’s waking, idle thoughts and inevitably followed him to his dreams.

On Monday, Kiyoomi took his final exam of the term.

On Tuesday, he sat in a small coffee shop for twelve hours and drank four cups of coffee as he combed through everything he had written and made adjustments.

On Wednesday, he posted an excerpt and opened his inbox to read the influx of support from strangers and followers alike.

He replied to some questions, made vague promises to possibly share the first chapter, and read through general feedback. One message, however, jumped out at him.

callmesunarin: Miya’s work is being exhibited at El Arte on fifth street from the 7th till the 10th of November, if you’re interested. 

Kiyoomi glanced at his calendar. It was the 9th. Fuck. A quick google search pulled up a flyer with the details, proving that callmesunarin had given the correct information. It also informed Kiyoomi that the exhibition took place from five to nine.

It was already seven. 

He stared hard at his screen. He could always go tomorrow. But the prospect of meeting the artist behind the painting intrigued him far too much. He only needed to slip into a semi-formal attire he had on the go; black slacks paired with a maroon dress shirt and topped with a dark coat. 

El Arte was a twenty-minute walk in the brisk fall evening, but Kiyoomi had always preferred the crispy cleanness of the cold air to summer’s cloying heat.

A sense of surreality hung in the air as Kiyoomi drew closer to where an impulse purchase had ripped a hole in his routine. Wednesdays were writing days spent cocooned at home with his computer and coffee. 

Yet here he was braving a thin swarm of people as he slipped into the gallery with a single-minded focus, as if guided there by an external force. People smiled at him, the way one might smile at strangers who shared a passion; with wordless, mutual understanding.

Some men and women wore identification cards. Kiyoomi assumed they were in charge; they were talking to people, gesturing at paintings. Kiyoomi had never partaken in this kind of scene before, so he avoided them in fear of embarrassing himself. 

The spotlights on the paintings left the pathways dimmer, stealing the attention of strangers. It comforted Kiyoomi, allowed him to slink into quiet corners in peace.

It was a spacious place, and a winding staircase carried him to a second floor where more paintings hung on the walls. He perused them idly, eyes sliding over each one in search of the same feeling that had paralysed him all these weeks ago. A painting that spoke not with words, but with intangible empathy. 

He turned a corner, to where ceiling-to-floor windows let in the twinkling flare of the neon lights outside to rival the spotlights. 

And came to a dead stop.

Kiyoomi stared, stunned.

On the wall hung five paintings, all of the same man. Kiyoomi’s likeness gazed back at him through vibrant and muted colours. Smiling in some, pensive in others. In one of them, he was peering seductively over his shoulder, bathed in moonlight. In another, jam-stained lips quirked up in a shy smile, cheeks flushed amidst the cluttered, sun-warmed kitchen. 

Heart suddenly in his throat, Kiyoomi took an aborted step forward, fingers nearly reaching out to touch the dry paint. A part of him recognised this—the same buried part that turned his brain inside out at night pulling memories from unknown depths, memories that didn’t belong to his current lifetime. 

“I guess jam is like love,” Firecracker once said. 

“What?” Kiyoomi responded incredulously. 

“Makes me want to kiss the pink from your lips.” Then Firecracker leaned across the cluttered kitchen table with his hands already reaching out, and he kissed Kiyoomi until his breath was gone.

How? Kiyoomi thought with wonder at the jam-covered lips and the memory they summoned. Why? 

The others also levied a cocktail of feelings he had no words for. Kiyoomi was at once drowning in the memory of silky sheets on his skin, and warm, warm hands touching everywhere; the sting of teeth in his shoulder, and a whispered declaration in his ear: “My heart is yours.”

A burn flared up behind his eyes, a stinging wetness that refused to abate. How? Had he gone mad? How was he rediscovering love through the art of a stranger? 

Kiyoomi sensed a presence stop beside him, quiet footsteps falling completely still. They stood in shattering silence, Kiyoomi unseeing, the man wordless. 

Then: “Miya Atsumu.” The stranger’s gravelly voice lilted with fondness, a feathery chuckle on his lips. “The man in love with a painting.” 

Miya Atsumu. Miya Atsumu? 

Kiyoomi’s ears were ringing. “Do you know him?” He managed to choke out, the name ricocheting inside the walls of his skull, expanding in his chest cavity, pushing out out out until he could hardly breathe for how much space it stole. 

Kiyoomi had just found a crutch to lean on when he hadn’t even been aware he’d lost a leg.

“Sure do,” said the man, dark eyes twinkling as he turned to give Kiyoomi a once-over. “He’s here somewhere. Do you know him?”

“I—” The words died in his throat. “I don’t know,” Kiyoomi whispered. “I’m not sure.”

Did he know Miya Atsumu? He’d never met him, he could say that with certainty. So why did his soul dance to the symphony of a name he’d never heard before?

The man nodded, like he understood. Like he had any idea about the kind of be-all and end-all sensation rising in Kiyoomi’s throat. “I think he might know you,” he mused obscurely, looking over Kiyoomi’s profile and back at the paintings. “How curious.”

The low, unobstructive music that had been crooning in the background seemed to fade entirely into white noise. Kiyoomi strained to hear over the gush of blood in his ears, to reroot himself in his body when he suddenly felt like he was observing it from another person’s point of view.

“Miyazaki-sensei, Li-san is looking for you.”

Kiyoomi’s spine went rigid, and he froze, eyes widening at the ringing familiarity of the voice behind him. 

“I’ll be right with her,” said Miyazaki cheerfully, and clapped a shell-shocked Kiyoomi on his shoulder as he swept past him. “Your admirer is back,” he added to the person behind Kiyoomi before his footsteps disappeared around the corner.

“Oh?” echoed the voice with subtle curiosity. 

Time seemed to slow as Kiyoomi tentatively tilted his head, extricating his body from the entrenching roots of gravity, to bring them face to face. 

The world violently careened to a screeching halt and then to a deafening silence as Kiyoomi’s dark eyes set on him. 

The face haunting Kiyoomi’s dreams stared back, stunned, mouth opening and closing silently. Wide, honey-gold eyes flitted from his eyes to his hair, to the paintings over his shoulder and back. Over and over while Kiyoomi tried to rediscover his voice, to draw in a breath that didn’t sound like he was choking his last. 

Finally, Miya Atsumu said, voice cracking: “It’s you.”

Kiyoomi grasped sloppily at a few atoms of air: “It’s you.”

Like two puzzle pieces finally slotting together. Recognition flashed in Miya Atsumu’s eyes, and he took a halting step forward.

“It’s you,” repeated Atsumu faintly, eyes gone liquid in wonder. Kiyoomi was reminded of sparkles, of the sun itself, of melting beneath the heat of its gaze.

Kiyoomi nodded his head jerkily. Nodded again, rapidly, hands already reaching out. “It’s me—it’s me. Hi. Hi? Atsumu? I’m. It’s me. Kiyoomi. I’m Kiyoomi. I don’t know how—or why—” Big hands caught his, calloused and sure and so achingly familiar. “But you’re—you’re—”

“Omi,” Atsumu breathed, and all the pieces finally found their rightful place. The words died on his lips.

And oh. 

Oh.

It’s him.

He found him.

Kiyoomu realised he was crying when those same tender hands reached to cradle his face, to gently thumb away the hot tears even as Atsumu’s own eyes welled up and overflowed. “H-hey. Heyy. Yer here,” he whispered wondrously, drawing closer like he was possessed. “I’ve seen you as a ghost this whole time.” His voice cracked again, thick. “Some—some figment of my own imagination. Omi? But you—you’re a dream .”

Kiyoomi clutched the hands on his face to anchor himself; he feared floating away, or waking up, or some horrible combination of the two to end up in another bleak world where he’d forgotten Atsumu’s name. 

Their foreheads pressed together, Kiyoomi’s eyes squeezing shut before snapping open again in fear of Atsumu suddenly disappearing. “I’m here,” Kiyoomi whispered hoarsely. “I’m not a dream.”

Atsumu laughed, shaky and quiet and sounding closer to a sob. “You’re a dream that came true.”

And then he dragged Kiyoomi the rest of the way in to mash their mouths together without preamble. Colours were going off inside Kiyoomi like fireworks as he curved closer, unhindered by the surreality of it, the impossibility—all the ways this was unconventional and terrifying and the thing he wanted the most in his goddamn life.

“It’s you,” he murmured again and again between kisses that tasted like home. “Atsumu. Atsumu .”

The world made a mistake—it stole him too soon, and now it was handing him back. Back to his rightful place, here in Kiyoomi’s arms in a dimly-lit art gallery before a display of memories from another lifetime, all bled into canvas and immortalised; proof that they always existed, that they always belonged to each other. 

That no matter the distance, their souls would gravitate to the right place and the right time to unite them again.

It was said that soulmates fractured from the same cloth, like two interwoven threads twisted up in each other. Once torn apart, the frayed thread would struggle to function, always lacking, always a little too broken and damaged to knit together again. Until it met the jagged edges of its other half and the threads intertwined again, seamlessly, as though they’d never separated. It was an ancient magic that outreached the physical laws that governed the universe.

And as such, Miya Atsumu would always, always, find his way back to Sakusa Kiyoomi.