Archive of Our Own ^beta

Out in the world, a human boy waits for a spirit to talk him into sleep.

Oikawa Tooru usually stays up until then, mulling about the house with the television on and music thrumming from the record player, because he'd much listen to that sort of noise than the kind of commotion he'd hear on the street. Ah yes, he even reminds himself, checking the clock on the wall, because it's one in the morning and the on-ryo should be out at this time, floating about while out on evening walks. “I wonder who I should haunt tonight,” one of them says loudly enough for Oikawa to hear from the window, and he can only reply, much to himself, well, certainly not me .

He draws the curtains to hide, traces his hands along the eerie glow of the night, and finds his bed after that. He leaves a record spinning on the player. The television still talks of low cloud warnings , and says to look out for a cumulonimbus gone rogue .

(Get caught in the current, and your life will never be the same!)

Oikawa lets out the smallest laugh, drifting against his pillow. Maybe he won’t need consultation tonight. He even wonders if it would be bad form, to ask the dream eater to turn off the music instead, just so he won't have to get up, but remembers that laziness has never solved a single thing in life.

“Up you go,” he says to himself, a small push. Off goes the television, the record player after that, and Oikawa feels the life run through him again. He perches himself by the window once more, watches the spirits rule the night and rile the city folk, and sighs when there's no sign of him.

The dream eater does not arrive that night, and Oikawa Tooru sleeps fitfully.

“I had the worst nightmare last night.” Iwaizumi Hajime tells him, always frank amidst the city’s default pleasantries.

“Really?” Oikawa asks back. “I slept really well yesterday.” This is a lie. “The cloud cover blocked out the light and the on-ryo were abnormally quiet.”

“What? No talk of vengeance on the city’s population?”

“Only minimally.”

“So you didn't have any nightmares?”

Oikawa shakes his head, eyes on his best friend. He does his best not to let his sights flit away, masqueraded under batted eyelashes, but Iwaizumi never fails to catch him at it.

“Don't give me any of that today, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says (because lies are useless against old friends and former lovers ). He peers up from his bento box, points his chopsticks under both of Oikawa’s eyes, and draws the curve of dark circles. “You didn't sleep a wink,” comes the accusation, like he knows he right—

(—even though Oikawa will never admit when Iwaizumi’s right.)

“How do you know that?” Oikawa teases right back, content to divert. He peers up at the recent cloud cover, low hanging and thick to make the deepest shadows below. When one passes over them, looming and slow, Iwaizumi blinks up, too. He closes his eyes for a moment before finding the sky again, and looks back to Oikawa; in turn, the latter pretends to fall prey to distraction—“oh, oops, what did we set out to do again?” he asks, looking to an empty store display they sorely needed to fill, anyway.

Iwaizumi sighs, peers elsewhere. Down the block, a youkai’s drum sounds in rehearsal for a neighborhood parade, while the kitsune prepare their dances for that same evening. Oikawa thinks it'd be a shame not to have anything to show the passing ghosts—“ so it might be worthwhile to leave the matter of dreaming for some other time,” he motions in the most charming of threats, like a host at their first fancy dinner party.

(Or, in other words: let's stop talking about this.)

(But Iwaizumi never bites at his diversions, either way.)

“The dream eater hasn't come back to you in a while, has he?” he asks, and Oikawa keeps his smile on, pleasant.

“What makes you think I still need a dream eater? I'm not a kid anymore.”

“Because sometimes your worst nightmares come when you're grown,” he says, always unexpectedly sage about things, “and I can't even imagine what they look like on you. ”

Oikawa gleams up at this, frankly annoyed, but only lets the minimum of the sentiment pass through. He's right. Iwaizumi pretends to flick his chopsticks again, because he knows he is, and goes back to eating his lunch.

“Maybe you should get a refund, if they're not doing their job.”

“Oh, funny.” Oikawa just laughs, slightly peeved, and no more is said about the matter of sleep, or dream eaters , or any evenings ahead. After a post-meal coffee and tea time snacks, they get to installing a new neon sign they've been putting off for weeks—a brave blue for the passing parade, the neighborhood, and the world to see—and step back to get some perspective.

“Don't you think it's time you've renamed the place?” asks Iwaizumi, content to admire his work in the meanwhile. “We barely put any thought into it the first time.”

Oikawa shrugs.

“Maybe it'll come to us soon,” he just says, because he's too tired to fight him on new titles or signs, and he thinks he's already done enough to get the spirits to notice them today.

SPECTRUM OPTICAL, the neon reads, because the world exists on both day and night and even ghosts need corrective eyewear sometimes. Oikawa brushes past the notion, shows Iwaizumi a new display of sunglasses in the window instead, and lets the sentiment linger.

(If only, if only he'd understood the night.)

Oikawa comes across the answer by the end of the day, when the clouds fall away like wisps and the sky’s decided to reign a rosy sheen.

Up along the alleyways and shop arcades, he glances down at a copy of the Phantom Shimbun (“the number one news source for modern ghosts and ghouls!”) and reads up on the newest scandals: an Azukiarai declares she is not actually fond of azuki beans, while a prominent kitsune has given up all matters of shape shifting for health reasons . The on-ryo from last night have been given a warning by the police— because for crying out loud, you're not banshees, said one of the officers—and a new baku, a dream eater, has been assigned to all of Tokyo’s special wards.

Oikawa reads that last part, barely a snippet underneath sudoku. A new baku. This explains things, Oikawa thinks, and he breathes easy when he thinks about the lack of nightmares tonight. So let the evening rise— and it does, like on cue, when the stratus clouds dust over the remaining sun, and Oikawa thinks himself a god for a moment.

Maybe I’ll even dance with the on-ryo tonight , he surmises, all ordinances be damned.  

Oikawa glances up, right at the folds of uneven sky and visible stars. They do not stare back. Hand like a visor, he meets the city’s sharp corners and rooftop silhouettes, waves to ghosts instead like he knows them—to the bakeneko, to the dearly departed, to the off-duty shinigami—and keeps to his own planes in the meanwhile. (The spirits do not wave back.)

Time to go home, Oikawa thinks, because he’s been out too long, and he’s thinking all these thoughts again. He hopes the new dream eater will have a hearty appetite, and surveys the stratosphere once more before leaving.

The ghosts peek out from their windows. Sparrows whisper sweet nothings across the rooftops.

One boy, the back of him, lingers along the edge, head to the sky. Oikawa thinks about waving once more, maybe calling to get his attention, and decides better against it.

When Oikawa wakes up, he’s got tears in his eyes, an ache in his throat, and a call for a dream he can only remember in pieces.

On the other side of the room, the baku holds out flowers, offers a hello Oikawa can barely hear, and the insistence to bow, low and apologetic.

Oikawa wipes away unwanted tears. “Who—”

“Ah, I came here too late,” he interrupts, out of breath—like spirits can even get out of breath—and remains at the wall, feet lightly raised. A bit nervous, maybe. He sighs out, mutters kept to himself, “not a good way to start out,” and Oikawa might be inclined to agree.

Through hazy eyes and darkened spaces, it’s hard to make the baku out, minus the pale grip of petals and a sweater sleeve. Bare feet, ten toes. Oikawa knows it's terrible manners to even ask about such things like “what do you even look like under all that darkness?” because if he had to learn anything about the city and their spirits, some ghosts did not take well to showing themselves in the middle of their hauntings.

Still, Oikawa does not look away. The dream eater does not dissipate, either.

There’s a silence after that, or as much as a city like Tokyo is able to bear, and Oikawa seeks to keep it with the best of them. Footsteps thump towards him regardless, whole-sounding and quick, and Oikawa watches a bouquet drop on wrinkled sheets. Forget-me-nots, Oikawa observes, and he can only make a joke about it. “Do you want to grow a garden with me?” he asks up to the dream eater, before he realizes he's looking down, and that closeness with a ghost is a strange, impossible thing.

“Hi there.” The baku, a mere boy, smiles back at him. No way. Oikawa scans the ground below him instead, catches the glimpse of human feet, and stays on them without meeting him in the eye. He knows it is rude to stare.

“You're no dream eater,” Oikawa supposes. “You're here to rob my apartment," because dream eaters don't look anything like you—

But a sigh rises, huffy but short. “I am not here to steal from you— okay, maybe I am, but it wouldn't be anything you'd exactly miss—”

“You're a bad dream, then,” says Oikawa, glancing up. He catches light hair, a heart-shaped face, and a mole right under one of his eyes—definitely, irrefutably human. “I mean, you can't be a dream eater,” Oikawa insists, because he's had seven different dream eaters since he was five, and they all looked like floaty, pieced-together things; he even puts a finger over his nose, all to indicate the baku’s lack of trunk, and the baku just rolls his eyes like he's used to this.

“You don't have a trunk.”

“That's rude. Do you go around asking about people’s nostrils all the time?”

“No tail.”

“Also rude.”

“A monkey’s face.”

“Even ruder than before!”

“You don't have any of it,” Oikawa goes on. “I'm no stranger to this. I've seen the best baku come through this window, and none of them look like you.”

The baku’s grin does not falter. He just turns to do a round about the room, insistent upon walking, and leaves forget-me-nots on his trail. Oikawa climbs out of bed to follow him. “Well, the best told me to look after you,” the baku says. “I've been doing this a while too, you know, so don't be so quick to underestimate me, Oikawa Tooru,” he says in a sudden stop.

The music blips on from his record player, and the two of them come to meet in the middle. Oikawa peers down, notes that they might look like the same age, how plain this baku’s dressed—white tee under an unbuttoned sweater, rolled up jeans and no shoes—and tells himself not to believe any of it. The baku gleams up anyway, buoyant in his strides, and leaves Oikawa with a single thought, a series of them strung together—that like a sprig of mint, or the cool side of the pillow, some first dance to a mid-tempo song, this guy is refreshing, and only the worst way possible.

(Because Oikawa hates admitting it, especially of ghosts, because ghosts already had everything going for them, and he'd hate to throw compliments on top of that—but wait—)

It is then when he realizes. “Wait,” he says, stepping back. “How did you even know my name?”

The baku smiles. “Your reputation proceeds you, don't you know?” He stares down at his bouquet, eyes lowered. “They say you're the biggest dreamer in all of Japan.”

What a joke.

Oikawa lets the smile drain off his face.

“Well, baku, I must tell you that not all dreams are worth having. You must know that, right?” He expects the baku to falter at the question, or at least understand what he's in for, because his nightmares were never a place for the faint of heart. Oikawa watches him do just that, before seeing those feet reach their tips again.

The dream eater smiles in return. He does not hide. Oikawa suspects he might be dealing with the utmost anomaly.

“Not be rude, and I feel that we’ve both done our fair share of being rude tonight,” he says, pushing the flowers into Oikawa’s hands like an armistice, “but I feel like we must agree to disagree.”

Oikawa submits to the challenge. “Oh, and why is that?” He comes but millimeters closer, catches the scent of something not-baku , because bakus usually smelled like one step out of this world, like closet dust or an old man’s aftershave; instead, he catches a whiff of something fresh this time, like laundry, or flowers, and he thinks it sort of pleasant.

Oikawa inhales, close and heaving, and the baku does not flinch.

“To dream would be the greatest privilege,” he tells him instead, all soft, before pacing backwards by the heels. Oikawa reads him like he would with all the others: don't ask, and thou shalt not need . Distance is the key, always the key, and he knows not to pry any further.

Let the dream eater widen their gulfs.

Let them toe the lines at opposite worlds.

“Goodnight,” Oikawa answers in something tentative anyway, and the dream eater stares back before drifting out the window.

He says three things: a name, another, and a guarantee, and Oikawa remembers both like a promise ready to be broken.

“My name is Sugawara Koushi—Suga for short—and I'll make sure to chase those bad dreams away.”

Oikawa leans over a pair of sunglasses he's trying to adjust, presses them over the bakeneko’s face, and declares it, quite handsomely, a perfect job. Kuroo Tetsurou, a longtime customer, peeks out from under them, declares it quite a perfect job indeed, and folds the pair of aviators right into his front pocket.

“As I was saying—wait, what was I saying?” Kuroo asks, tilting his head to side. Oikawa rings up the cash register for the usual service fees.

“You were busy discussing him with me.”

“Oh, you mean, how I've never heard of him in my life?” Kuroo asks, and Oikawa nods back. “Well, if be the wrong sort to ask. We bakeneko don't really talk much to the dream eaters, you know? They might as well be living up in the clouds.”

Oikawa frowns, drops a few coins back into the till. “What do you mean?” he asks, slinking back to the counter.

“What I mean,” Kuroo says, eyes glazed over a pair of prescriptions he doesn't need (goddamn these cat spirits and their perfect vision ), “is that they're they’re some of the most aloof spirits you'll ever meet. It's not like they go around haunting houses or stealing from shrines, or anything—and say, shouldn't you know all of this?” he follows up with the question. Oikawa just shrugs back.

“I mean, it's not like I really want to be friends with someone who's looking into my head every night,” says Oikawa. “A preference for personal space, is all. I'd say it's an unspoken thing .”

Kuroo rolls his eyes, a single sigh abound. “Yeah, but no harm in engaging in a bit of small talk, right?”

“You mean like this?” Oikawa gets closer to Kuroo over the counter, ever the flirt, but this never takes Kuroo by surprise. He just leans back in his chair, rings the bell for Iwaizumi because Oikawa’s being insufferable again, but no one comes. Iwaizumi just waves them both away, content to watch the sky and finish his meal (because breakfast might be the only thing he's ever really loved, and Oikawa can't blame him for that;‘to hell with all of you!’ he even pictures Iwaizumi saying, puckering up at a particularly sour piece of umeboshi in the process ) .

“Well,” Oikawa resumes, back to Kuroo. “I doubt he'd want to make small talk with a guy like me, anyway.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

Oikawa gleams out the door, past the display cases and Iwaizumi, right up to the looming cirrus clouds.

“You said it yourself.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Explain it to me, then,” Kuroo insists. “It's always good to understand the human condition , even if I'm not sure any of you have got a good grasp on it.”

Oikawa thinks about this for a moment, eyes cast down. He makes out the smallest blue, humble in reflecting against the display glass.

“Why come for me when you've got the stratosphere for a friend?” he says, and Kuroo sits up in his seat, attentive.

“Stratosphere, huh?” he asks, like he isn't as never-ending as the rest of them, and Oikawa prickles when he knows he'll never know the word.

Oikawa finds out more about Sugawara Koushi from the Phantom Shimbun again, in the tiniest article he could've missed if not for the sudoku puzzle up above. He makes out the tiny blurb in a typeface he can barely read, from a column called “On Dreaming,” and bites his tongue at the descriptions of him: Small appetite for a baku. Steady, but not a maestro in his field. Faint, in presence.

Along the Kanda River, Oikawa gulps down the words, remembers the forget-me-nots in the vase next to the record player, and shakes it all off. It would be a terrible waste to write someone off so easily. He throws the newest copy into the garbage at the thought, picks his pace up into a sprint, and embarks on an evening jog instead.

When he dreams this time, he's running. “It's a storm!” someone shouts, but Oikawa knows better, because it's not a storm when a group of youkai come chasing after you—it's a haunt, and a nasty one at that, and he's got no choice but to leave the prefecture again. It's the sort of dream that plays out like a memory, because maybe it is a memory, but he he's not sure he'd like to find out—so he runs and runs and runs, right until he falls and hits the ground, then through the sky, all to start again. Ah, this dream is repeating.

(What a delight.)

It always begins on the floor of his old house in Sendai. He’s eight again, but not so in spirit, so he peers through the door in a haze. A never-there aunt has just stepped out for the week, face a blur, a voice already a mile away, and Iwa-chan’s off meeting an uncle to stay with in the mountains. It’s a lonely summer without school or passing friends to keep him honest, but at least he’s learned to make omelettes over the stove and a side of freshly brewed tea. I can be alone. He’s eating, much to himself with a book in his hands, a piece he read in college called The Game of Contemporaneity (so he knows that part is a dream). Then comes the creaking, the snickering, the ghosts sliding against walls. Oikawa pretends not to be afraid.

He gets up from his breakfast, insistent to all those above him that it’s time to water the plants again. I’m not scared. I can do this alone. This is the part of the dream he always remembers, that smile to no one, like the mask of it might be something he’s committed to muscle memory by now. And when he slides the door open without shoes or a plan, a run out past the wilting garden, the gates beyond it, they come chasing after him. The roof erupts in shingles and dust (and an aunt will come back to a nasty surprise, later).

And so Oikawa dreams in a loop—run and fall and run again, all in the most common of nightmares, of memories—until he wakes up from a cold sweat. He does no such thing, this time. The ghosts fall back farther and farther, as if Oikawa might win this race, until he realizes no one’s chasing him at all.

“Hey, Oikawa-kun!”

When Oikawa looks ahead, strides widened, lungs filled, all full grown, he sees the ocean in front of him. The Karakuwa coastline waits ahead of him, serene, and Sugawara Koushi—Suga—wades by the water.

“You— ” Oikawa’s not even sure what to say. “You changed the dream,” he accuses, because this isn’t what dream eaters are supposed to do. Sugawara knows this, judging by the slight wince on his face, a half smile and the tilt of his head. This all dissipates when Oikawa edges closer to him, ever urgent.

“I don’t—”

“Don’t what? ” Oikawa urges.

Further up the hills, the ghosts roar again. Oikawa takes a deep breath and kicks up a splash. “Just eat it. Eat the dream! ” he insists, because if he doesn’t, he knows the dream will start again. At once, he thinks of the absent aunt and the half-cooked omelette. The ghosts taunt him and call him names from the cliffside.

Please don’t let the dream start again.

At once, Sugawara understands. His face curls up in a frown like he doesn’t want to. Their hands link anyway, ever so briefly, and Oikawa wakes up at the touch of fingers interlinking.

“Hey—wait— ”

Oikawa sits up. Alone in his bedroom, he reads the clock. It’s barely past midnight, and Oikawa rips the covers off to find him in the apartment. Forget-me-nots wilt by the record player. The record player dares not to play dream a little dream of me . The dream eater sits on the floor of his kitchen, with a cracked plate at his side and crumbs of a nightmare quite eaten. He’s got his hands over his mouth, hitches forward like he might vomit, and stays to exhale deep, instead.

“Why did you try to change the dream?” Oikawa asks, gulping down. “Everyone knows that never works for too long.” On the floor, he spots a few pieces of paper, all written on in ink—game plans for ruining nightmares. Oikawa scoffs past the x’s and o’s, keeping steady at the doorway frame.

Sugawara uncovers his face through cracks in his fingers. He does not answer.

“I read about you in the newspaper, you know,” Oikawa starts. “The article said you didn’t have a big appetite. Is that why you try to change dreams? Instead of eating them?”

Sugawara sighs. “I told them not to write about me,” he mutters.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The dream eater looks on ahead, eyes glazed over the pan cabinet and utensil drawers. Oikawa waits, arms crossed, for what feels like forever. It falls quiet again, minus the city’s most common noises, and the two of them settle into unease. And the thing is—Oikawa’s used to all these little machinations, the familiar ways of diverting , whether it be through silence, through changed subjects, and he wonders if he’s stumbled upon some of the same ( but of course it isn’t the same).

Sugawara’s eyes reign bright and clear. He gets up, knees wobbly under him, and finds the ground to stand on, anyway. He does not divert.

“I want to do things my own way,” he says, and he does not waver. “There's something wrong about eating so many nightmares.”

Oikawa stays where he is. “No, there isn’t,” he tells him right back, insistent. “I don't know if you know this, but nightmares are not something humans look for. Take them all!” he grins with his offerings, still peeved. “I really don’t care.”

Stubborn, Sugawara shows no signs of budging. He keeps silent for a moment, mouth parted to say something before stopping. He inhales deep—like ghosts even need to inhale deep—before continuing on.

“Do you know what they say about eating nightmares, Oikawa-kun?”

Oikawa shakes his head. Sugawara comes closer at the answer, steps hesitant, and Oikawa takes enough caution to step back this time. Sugawara frowns at the motions, the instance of keeping at different planes, but Oikawa pretends not to see it. Hold your own, he tells himself instead, with a chin tipped upward, all better than thou.

“Tell me,” Oikawa insists, almost like a command.

When Sugawara tests his limits with another step forward, a tease and a test, Oikawa realizes the challenge: it’s a battle by body language, and the realization that Sugawara Koushi can read it just as well as he can. He stares up at Oikawa like he's seeing him for the first time, all glassy eyes, an ambush by the way of benevolent warfare , and the two of them come to a standstill.

“Eat too many of a person’s nightmares, and you'll start cutting into their good dreams, too,” says Sugawara. “And that is something I refuse to do.”

Oikawa shakes his head. “So? Weren't you the one to say it— to dream would be the greatest privilege? Get your fill. Take my dreams, and get rid of my nightmares, too—”

“No.”

“I don't understand you.”

“I don't want to eat any of your dreams,” Sugawara insists.

“What ? Why not? Are they not good enough— ”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

Sugawara’s eyes flicker, once, twice in blinking, and Oikawa likens it to a steel in resolve. He braces himself for the practiced answer, an excuse, a diversion , but Sugawara offers no such ease.

“Because once I start, I know I would be too selfish to stop.”

When he says it, small, but honest, Oikawa learns that candor does not have to burn bright.

“Then I’m not sure I want you around at all.”

(But Oikawa also decides that he can speak the truth, too.)

Oikawa stares back, seeing for miles ahead, but he does not close the distance this time, either. With a no on his lips, the things that do not need to be said, he leaves the kitchen altogether.

The dream eater does not follow that night, and Oikawa barely sleeps at all. He resolves himself to cleaning his apartment instead, to rid of all the clutter, and finds a tag by the foot of his bed. For Oikawa Tooru, it starts at the top, and he remembers the forget-me-nots on the table. He thinks it must've gotten lost on the way, as things tend to do, and lets himself read the rest of it.

To the biggest dreamer in Japan, the one I've heard so much about—I hope to dream as big as you, too.

Let's work well together, all right?

“Hey, Oikawa.”

In the verge of memory, he sees the water again. A cool mist hits his face, a good dream ready to unfold, before fading out.

“Oikawa. ”

The words flit through Oikawa’s head again—faint. Not a maestro. Mediocre. At once, and because he’s found a way to get in his own head again, Iwaizumi smacks Oikawa on the side of the cheek with a new set of letters. He snaps out of it when Iwaizumi says it, “love letters,” like it's become a routine, because they’ve been coming on an almost weekly basis since moving to the city, give or take a dozen with each batch.

“Oh.” Oikawa merely tosses them aside, the usual, and lets them scatter across the floor in quiet chaos.

“I counted them, you know,” Iwaizumi says, not willing to let them slide this time. “Seventy-seven of them. From on-ryo and ikiryo... even a tanuki, or two. They all ask, when are you going to let us have a bit of your soul? ”

“How forward of them. You'd think they’d buy me dinner, first.” Oikawa purses his lips, ever haughty (and definitely not enough of a morning person to deal with this). He welcomes a kitsune at the door for morning deliveries instead, because he was supposed to get a new shipment in for gold-rimmed monocles anyway, which was always terribly exciting and—

“You usually get what ? Like fifty, at most. There’s something wrong,” Iwaizumi nags on, picking up the letters, and Oikawa just rolls his eyes down at the glass counter. “And I think it has something to do with those nightmares of yours. You're giving off some kinda weird smell to them, or something.”

At this, the kitsune at the door perks up and nods along. “You do smell kinda good. What is that? New cologne?”

“Yes, and it's called eau de denying your dream eater,” Iwaizumi glares back at Oikawa. “Also, it's rude to eavesdrop,” he tells the kitsune, and the youkai stiffens up, hands up in surrender. In a light grumble, he goes away laughing with other packages to deliver next door, and Iwaizumi just goes back to business.

“I prefer the term aroma,” Oikawa says, purposely neglectful. He doesn’t really want to talk about Sugawara, or the lack of him lately, for that matter. “And what ? You think I smell that good?”

“You know what these nightmares are to them ,” Iwaizumi says. “Let’s remember Osaka in ninety-nine, or Sendai and your aunt’s house blowing up—”

“Let’s not.”

“Well, whatever it is, you need to talk to your dream eater again,” says Iwaizumi, “before these other guys really start coming to get you. Because you know it's not all love confessions and letters in the box.”

At this, he swipes at one of the dark circles under Oikawa’s eyes, offers the sort of graveness only an honest friend, a best friend, can muster, and goes back to picking up the letters. Oikawa sighs, not willing to admit, okay, maybe you're right, and settles for places to start looking.

To the biggest dreamer in Japan—

Under his breath, and under a blue sky of mid-afternoon, he calls out to Sugawara.

Let's work together well, all right?

Oikawa blinks up at the passing cloud cover, realizes that this isn't the sort of darkness he's supposed to meet him in, and seeks to search elsewhere. The wind kicks up at that moment, strong enough to make a scene, and Oikawa accidentally catches an airborne page from the gust.

“On Dreaming,” the Phantom Shimbun article title reads through faded letters, and Oikawa thinks about his first steps.

“You.”

“Me,” Kuroo Tetsurou answers, eyebrows raised, before going back to fiddling with the camera on his desk. Under various film rolls and reject front page shots is an old copy of the Phantom Shimbun, an establishment Kuroo’s neglected to tell Oikawa he's been working at for the past three decades, and he's nowhere near sorry about it. He just goes to the window, their little one-floor office in the sky, and snaps another picture. Another reporter, a mellow bakeneko by the name of Kenma, just blinks up at the flash; he tells Kuroo to quit it before going back to another riveting round of solitaire on his laptop, and Oikawa might be tempted to say the same. Still, he waits for Kuroo to give a reasonable explanation, whatever that might be, and leans back in his chair, caught in a precarious lean.

“You lied to me,” Oikawa says. “When I asked about Sugawara Koushi before, you said you had no idea about him.”

Kuroo shrugs. “I really don't, though.” He turns to Kenma, who doesn't even bother looking back from his screen. “Isn't that right, Kenma?” he asks, and Oikawa gets the barest nod in return.

“Hm?” Kenma drones. “Yeah, I guess. It's not like the arts the culture department usually talks much with the ghost writers. ”

Kuroo turns back to Oikawa. “ Get it ? You know, ghost writers—”

“Yes,” both Oikawa and Kenma chime in.

“Anyway,” Kuroo goes on. “Kenma’s spot on with that one.” He uncovers a particularly ancient looking issue from his desk drawer and clears his throat. “We here at the Phantom Shimbun believe in the spirit of the story. All works published in evening editions are subject to strict anonymity, and no author shall ever be named.” He clears his throat for the next part. “Those who do name authors or out themselves will be subject to demotions, forced resignations, and blacklisting.”

Kenma holds up another copy, finger on the disclaimer, and Oikawa takes a look for himself. “So, in other words, you can't help me ?”

“I can't help you.”

“Not even an inkling of a clue?”

“I can't just compromise the integrity of this paper over some dream eater you’re so clearly smitten over—”

“I am not.”

“Oh?”

“I'm sure.”

“So you're telling me that you took a train across the city to pay a visit to this dump of an office?” Kuroo asks, and Kenma rises up in the smallest scoff before settling.

“I would just rather live in peace, mind you. That's all. Even if it means coming to your dump of an office.”

“How mean.”

“You said it first,” Kenma takes the turn to chime in.

“Well, whatever the reason, you've hit a dead end here, my friend. My sincerest apologies ,” Kuroo says from behind his camera, peeking out from the over the edge.

Oikawa hunches forward in his seat and peeks around the office. Kenma’s gone back to playing solitaire, while the kitsune at a nearby desk departs with a purse in her hand and a call to the other yurei on the floor.

“I'll give you free sunglasses for the next one hundred years,” Oikawa announces, and Kuroo gives up something wry.

“As if you'll even live that long,” Kuroo insists, still content to take a seat to listen. “What? Striving to be Japan’s oldest man alive? Wanna get in the record books?”

Oikawa shrugs. “I'll do just that, if you can help me out here. I'll break records, get you new sunglasses—and hey, when the reporters come asking me for a story, when I'm old and shriveled and gray , I'll tell them you were the utmost inspiration.”

Kuroo smiles, and Oikawa feels the small wind of a bakeneko’s scoff. Silence reigns, certainly not the good kind, and Oikawa wonders if it's time to find himself a new dream eater.

“Humans are the funniest things,” Kuroo says. “You push and push until you can't push anymore.”

“Whatever it is you want to call it,” Oikawa pushes back, equally as resilient, and the two of them exchange a stalemate by stares. Kuroo is the one to break it first, resigned in a sigh and the mumbled insistence that he had a bunch of apprentices to look after anyway , and that Oikawa was doing nothing but take up valuable space.

“Hey, Kenma,” he calls after his apparent confidant, and Kenma barely has the willpower to look from his game. “You're sorta friends with one of those ghost writers, right? Can you tell me anything about Sugawara Koushi?”

“The word there is sorta. I would hardly call accidentally taking the train to work together friendship,” Kenma refutes.

“Still, you must know something,” Oikawa chimes in.

Kenma shakes his head. “Don't trouble yourself with small leads.”

“It's better than no lead, don't you think?”

Kenma looks back up at Kuroo, positively nonplussed—all fine, whatever—and takes out a notepad from one of his drawers. In the smallest handwriting, a secret on the paper, he writes a lead for only for Oikawa to see.

MIYAGI, it says, right between the ruled lines, and Oikawa takes the challenge.

(He figures it's been a while, anyway. With a sign on the door, ‘out on holiday,be back soon,’ he catches the first train out of the city with Iwaizumi, a hometown their destination.)

When he dreams again, it's about the family name. He sees it written across in the usual strokes, engraved on a headstone neither too flashy or grand, twice for a lost mother and a lost father. Along the hillside, it stands in line with all the others, and even the incense smoke rises without towering, like spirits wafting out of existence.

Oikawa is two when he loses his parents, and five when he visits them for the first time. He wonders if they'd haunt him just this once, even asks in the form of prayers and other muttered wantings—but no one dares to answer. They hadn't when he was a child, and they wouldn't now, even in a dream.

Dream—ah yes, dream, and Oikawa even breathes in, body too languid for someone at a funeral. This really is a dream, because he had cried the first time, and he knows that's something you can never recreate.

Instead, he dares to call it something lucid. He hates feeling it down to his core, anyway.

Regardless, Oikawa lets the memory play on. Along Miyagi’s hills, past cemeteries and family plots, he sees Iwaizumi alone as well, down the row at his own plot to despair, or wonder, since they had both lost their parents too young to remember. “There you are,” he says to his first friend, a first love of sorts (because warmth like that is not something you'll ever forget). The steps to him come easy enough after that—airy, really—because this has always been an easy sort of dream. Calm, Oikawa forgets to put his guards up.

The monsters come like an avalanche.

Iwaizumi is the first one to say it. “ Run, ” he shouts, because the hills are alive with things you don't want catching you— and Oikawa watches him get swept up in the darkness behind him. Headstones topple over, trees bend with the weight. “ You better run,” a chorus of them sings next, “as fast as you can,” and he does. This dream is not supposed to menace.

Oikawa runs, out of breath, until he goes over a cliff and wakes up on Iwaizumi’s shoulder. He catches his breath until the train comes to a full stop at the station, and Iwaizumi doesn't bother to push him off. He just looks off, stillness almost mistaken for something somber, and Oikawa must remember to breathe for the better.

“Take it easy,” Iwaizumi scolds.

“I can't exactly control what I dream about,” Oikawa tells him right back, still on his shoulder. He gulps down the lump in his throat, casts himself off, and wipes at his face.

“You all right?”

“Oh, sure, why do you ask?”

“You were fidgeting in your sleep.”

“Ah, you know, maybe I was stressed about closing the shop, because we will be losing a lot of good business and all—”

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi calls, firm in resolve. “Please don't give me any of that.”

“What?”

“You know it's hard for me to be here, too.”

“Why would it be hard?” Oikawa asks back.

“I'm going to leave you right here , if you don’t quit it —” Iwaizumi gets up from his aisle seat first, digging his duffle bag from the overhead compartment, all in a grumble and really ready to leave .

“Wait—” Oikawa grabs at the stray strap to stop him instead, head caught in a shake. “I'm...sorry. Just not yet. Don't go yet,” says Oikawa, because he knows this is something he has to go at alone in the long run—but Iwaizumi’s never been one to deprive him of those momentary reprieves. “Let's pause,” he says, relenting. They have a whole last stop to take their time, anyway.

Iwaizumi sits back down and Oikawa doesn't let go of the duffle bag. It almost feels like holding hands again, and a life held long ago.

“What's the number now?” Oikawa asks.

“One hundred and three to one,” Iwaizumi answers without much hesitation. “An official ghost town .” He says this a bit too loud for the yurei next to them to hear, and they take offense by the tiniest scoffs. Oikawa laughs, all in the smallest sort of vengeance, the pitiful sort, and lies back in his seat.

“You’d think, that after growing up in a place like this, we’d turn into spirits, too,” Oikawa tells him.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “Well, I know how much you used to dream about it. We’d play with the dog spirits down at the park and you’d come back with stars in your eyes. You used to ask me— hell, you know what you used to ask me?”

Oikawa smiles. “Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan,” he mimics a younger version of himself. “If I reach high enough, do you think I could become one, too?”

“We had a lot of ideas, then.”

Oikawa hums, pleasant, and peers out the window without saying anything else. He watches the ghosts greet their loved ones at the platform, humans mixed in here and there, too. Oikawa glazes over as an Enenra gathers all their smoke to meet their mothers, while a grandfather greets a child by the benches. A tanuki welcoming party holds up their paws in a wave further down, because their favorite son has come home from abroad, and a few lone onryo drift through the walls of the station. Other stragglers, noticeably normal, with no tails or pointed ears, or elephant trunks , find their way to the stairs, to the streets below, to their prefecture turned dream.

“Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi turns away from the aisle to face him. Oikawa knows he doesn’t have to say it, let’s go, because they were never bound to let momentary reprieves become more than just that. With a nod of his head, not quite ready and just a bit unwilling, Oikawa gathers his things, sets off into the dusk, and waits for a Miyagi night to come.

“Oh, didn’t you hear?”

“That he’s back? Of course I did! Oikawa Tooru, are you here to offer your soul?”

“Oikawa Tooru! Oikawa Tooru!”

Oikawa suspects that this is why he might always prefer the city. Sitting outside his old stomping grounds of Aoba Johsai High School, he listens as the spirits chatter on about his return, ever the mavens on neighborhood gossip. That was the difference between the mountains and the metropolitan—it seemed here, in Miyagi, that everyone knew his business, ghost or not. It made it hard to move or breathe or think with all that chatter in front of him, even with all the open spaces, the clean air, the high-hanging skies above. With the smallest mourn and a scowl up at the ghosts on the ceiling, he thinks of Tokyo, ever-moving, too busy to care for too long, and resolves to get back soon.

“Heh heh heh,” says one of the ghosts. “Were you homesick? Did you want to come back to play?”

Oikawa shakes his head. “No such thing,” he says. “I’m actually looking for someone tonight. Would you be willing to help me out?” he asks next, voice as light as he’s able to command it.

“Oh, well, that might cost you,” the spirit says right back to him. They drip off the ceiling, wobbly in forming a wisp on the ground. “ Something quite dire.”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m not offering my soul today,” says Oikawa.

“Aw, why not?”

“I might need that down the road, I guess.”

“Well, I’m not telling you a thing until I get something in return.”

Oikawa sighs. “Well, is there anything you’d like?” He kneels down to dig into his duffle bag. “I have some snacks, a favorite sweater of mine. A book, if you’re interested in reading this—” He holds up his old copy of The Game of Contemporaneity before the ghost swats it away. “—or not.”

“I don't care about your earthly possessions.”

“Well, no need to get so huffy on me,” Oikawa says. “You're not exactly helping me along, either.”

The spirit goes silent for a moment, before conferring with their friends still up on the ceiling. They speak in whispers, loud enough for Oikawa to almost hear. No way, they all insist, halfway between giggles and the smallest scolds, because there's no way he'll do something like that. Let’s propose a dare! From there, Oikawa expects the worst like, oh, swallow some spiders for me, or eat your least favorite food, but the ghost comes back, a laugh and a will o’ wisp.

“I have decided what I'd like.” The other will o’ wisps cheer on.

“Okay. What is it?”

“A kiss.”

Oikawa frowns. “A kiss? ” he repeats back, to make sure he's heard right. “I'm not sure how I'd make that happen.”

“Well, I can! Follow me, and I'll show you,” the spirit says, caught in a furious sort of float down the hallway. Through corridors and the abandoned classrooms, they come up to what Oikawa recognizes as an old prop room for various cultural festivals and performances. When he pushes the door open, the spirit makes its way to a box of masks and digs one out to wear.

It’s a noh mask , Oikawa observes, as the spirit comes close enough for unease. He feels the air grow cold between them. He sees his breath when he exhales, throat dry from the thought of kissing a phantom .

“So, if I kiss you, you'll lead me to who I'm looking for?”

The spirit flies around in a nod, and the other ghosts chatter on from outside.

“You can count on me,” they say, and Oikawa swallows. He thinks about how many years it's been since he's kissed anyone—past Iwa-chan, the passing beaus before and after—and remembers to take it easy. Just a peck. So closer and closer he looms, lips brushed against the dried lacquer, until he ends up keeping his pacts.

The kiss feels cold against his mouth, too smooth for comfort, and it doesn’t take him long to recoil. The spirit bounds up anyway, a shriek muffled by the mask, and Oikawa sighs when he dares to think, job well done .

“So, tell me where I can find him. A dream eater, by the name of—”

“No way! He actually kissed him!”

“I want a turn, too! Really!”

Oikawa doesn't get to finish when a whole herd of spirits comes barging in, racing past him to put on their own masks, too. Up come the others, the kabuki masks, the tengu with their long noses, the other noh —and it doesn't take long for him to, well, run before they catch him . “ You tricked him! You tricked him!” they even tease, because of course he'd been gullible enough to believe a bunch of bored spirits.

“Kiss me too, Tooru!”

“Make mine as deep as the universe above us!”

Oikawa manages to make it out if the school, caught in a full blown night outside. The other will o’ wisps fall like apples out of courtyard trees, ready to chase him, too, while the crows snicker about him on the rooftop. He calls for Iwaizumi, before remembering he's probably halfway across town by now, perfectly capable, and probably smart enough not to kiss ghosts on the way to an uncle’s house at the foothills. At this, Oikawa chides himself instead, thinks about making a hard stop and a turn back to the train station where he came from, never to set foot in this prefecture, again.

“Kiss me again, Oikawa Tooru!”

“Hey, don't you know it's rude to go asking for kisses?”

“Oh, what do you know, dream eater?”

Oikawa stops at the name. Caught in the middle of the mountain pass, branches aglow with the lines of ghost light, he peers up and searches for him. “Sugawara,” he calls, because he knows he's here, but chatter awaits him above instead, incessant and dragging.

“What happened to the biggest dreamer in Japan?”

“You used to be the one chasing our coat tails!”

“You're no dreamer!”

“Didn't you want to be a spirit, too?”

“Well I’d say your dreams are dead!”

“Shut up!” Oikawa says. He thinks back to the days spent chasing tanuki spirits through these mountain passes, taunting the on-ryo in abandoned houses. “ I'm not… ” He thinks back to knocking his head hard, trying to pass through walls as a child, and the scraped knees from proving he could climb as high as a ghost in the forest’s tallest tree. He sees temple prayers and nights spent sitting on rooftops. He sees a better life in the city, ghost or not, and the unclasp of teenage hands. He sees a train out of the prefecture. He comes to the edge of understanding.

“I’m—”

“I'm—” OIKAWA TOORU, he wants to shout—like the name is synonymous with dreaming itself—because he has never, ever stopped, and because he doubts he ever, ever will.

And so he doesn't. He stares back at his naysayers, a smirk perched for them to see, and hears them laugh back at him, anyway. ‘ Why don't you look ahead of you, big dreamer?’ the ghosts say, and Oikawa does what he's told this time.

Eyes ahead, quick— oh, shit.

‘Why don't you fall right down, big dreamer?’ the spirits taunt next, and Oikawa catches his foot on nothing but the hillside below, too abrupt to stop himself from losing balance. The will o’ wisps dance above him, chanting broken bones, broken bones, I'll still kiss him with broken bones— and Oikawa just lies back on the leaf bed, sighs made for the mess he's gotten into this time. Shutting his eyes for just the briefest moment, he seeks rest, even purses his lips for the kisses they might come back for.

“Hey there, sleepyhead.”

Like rain on his face, Oikawa feels the almost-touch come across his cheek. He opens himself back to the world again, sees the light wisp of hair and that particular mole. A smile comes, ambling across Sugawara’s face, and Oikawa thinks it looks like something he’d find under all that darkness.

“Have I died?” Oikawa asks him, staring up. Sugawara laughs at this, swatting away the will o’ wisps with moderate effort. He's stronger than he lets on.

“No, you haven't died,” he answers, head tilted towards a shoulder like he wants to add, and you should be happy about that.

“So why am I still on the ground?”

Sugawara shrugs. “You tell me.”

Oikawa gets up after that, something wry daring to greet Sugawara on the way back to standing. He winces when he realizes he's sprained something (or maybe it's that horrid knee of his again, always acting up ). Either way, he knows he'd like to get out of here, because nothing good ever happened in the forest after midnight, and that there must be merit of erring on the side of caution.

Oikawa walks on after that, with Sugawara tailing after him. “Ever heard of the gashadokuro ?” he asks without looking back, just to fill the silence somehow .

“Hey, now. You're talking to a member of the higher plane , don't you know?” Sugawara jokes, voice lulled into something of the lightest taunt. “I’ll know every sort of spirit you throw at me, and I'll definitely know something about giant skeletons.”

“You have a point there,” Oikawa concedes, and he lets Sugawara catch up next to him. “So you know about the ones that live in the mountains, right?”

Sugawara pauses. “What?”

“So the great dream eater doesn't know everything, then? ” Oikawa teases. “Isn't this place your jurisdiction now, anyway? It's a lot less to learn than Tokyo.”

“Ah, well…” Sugawara answers. “No, actually. I'm not staying here permanently.”

“And why not? Scared of gashadokuro?”

“Partially the reason, if I had to be honest.”

“But not the whole reason,” Oikawa surmises.

“Oh, of course not.”

“Then, what?”

Sugawara falls behind on the path again, caught up in silence, and Oikawa waits to hear his answer.

“There nothing wrong with Miyagi, really. It might be a nice place to grow up, and I might've liked it if I had the chance to grow up, but…” Sugawara trails off, and they come to a clearing up ahead. “For someone who didn't have that chance, I'd at least like to be around people, you know?”

“You have people here, though. Not sure if you've noticed, but Miyagi is a ghost town now,” Oikawa says in half-mourning.

“But those aren't the kind of people I'm talking about,” Sugawara answers back, and he follows Oikawa when he takes a turn up back into the next neighborhood. “I'm talking about your kind, Oikawa-kun.”

Oikawa stifles a frown, leaving a remnant of something vaguely annoyed. “My kind? You mean like, humans?”

“Of course,” says Sugawara, all in a swoon. The sound of it makes the backs of Oikawa’s ears prickle.

“But you have it so much easier than us!” Oikawa says. “Think of all that power, those lifespans. It's like being a god on earth,” comes the remark. He breathes in, thinking of all his favorite rebuttals—like you can shift dreams and Kuroo Tetsurou can shape shift —before knowing he doesn't have to say a word. It's not a ghost town, but a ghost world, and Sugawara would be blind, not to know that.

It goes quiet again after that. Oikawa hears a ringing come into his ear not long after that, and he wonders if he's hit his head too hard from the fall; but then comes a low growl, like a rumble of the earth, giant steps a symphony of falling trees—and at once, he knows.

He turns to Sugawara. “We have to run,” he says, more a whisper than anything, and they both take wide strides down the hill.

In a shared pay phone booth, Oikawa digs out the number for Iwaizumi family residence, looks across to Sugawara on the other side, and waits for his best friend to scold him.

“You ran into a gashadokuro? ” Iwaizumi asks over the phone. “Are you trying to get eaten?”

Oikawa leans against the glass and makes out the small most against it. Sugawara guides a finger along the sudden rain. “I mean,” he says, with all eyes on the dream eater. “The key word you're missing is nearly. We were nearly eaten by the gashadokuro.”

“We,” Iwaizumi repeats back. “So I'm guessing you found your baku, then.”

Sugawara looks back up, still caught in half a haze, and offers the smile of something wearied. He hides it not long after that, self-conscious, but it's not hard for Oikawa to read—because even if they were caught in an armistice by now, both of them were much too beleaguered by the insistence of body language. A tension. Sugawara shifts his fingers through hair. Oikawa mashes his lips together, a slight pain, before settling.

‘You read mine, and I'll read yours,’ comes the exchange, and it is full with possibilities.

“Oikawa?”

“Ah, yes, I did,” he finally answers, all eyes on Sugawara still. The moment passes, and Oikawa regains any facade he had on before. “Did you know he's afraid of the gashadokuro? Those boneheads ?”

On the other side, Sugawara frowns, kicking at Oikawa. It feels like a small wind against his pant leg, an almost touch, and Oikawa takes note of this. “Shut up,” Sugawara mouths, and Oikawa merely sticks his tongue right back out at him.

“Anyway,” Iwaizumi continues. “You better get inside before you really do get eaten. Isn't your aunt’s house around here, anyway? ”

“Oh, you mean the one she had to rebuild after the ghosts blew it up?” Oikawa asks with a bit of a laugh, and the small of huff of it makes Sugawara flinch.

“She's got enough blessings on it to ward off all of hell. The gashadokuro won't stand a chance.”

“I suppose you're right, but I’d rather not run into her tonight. She'll ask about marriage prospects again and I'm not prepared to answer her about that.”

“Like she's ever home, though.”

“True,” Oikawa answers, fond at the thought of having somewhere to sleep tonight. “Listen, I'm going to go now, before we really run into trouble,” he adds, before adding a good night, Iwa-chan, and he watches Sugawara perk up at the name.

Placing the phone back on the receiver, ready to go, Oikawa hears him say it. “Iwa-chan,” Sugawara repeats, and he won't admit to how nice the name sounds coming from him. “I've hear that in your dreams often, like an echo.”

Oikawa gently nudges the door open, cup of a palm out to catch the shower. “I guess it's because I've known him a very long time,” he answers, stepping out of their shelter. Sugawara follows, and Oikawa shrugs without looking back. “You might call us best friends, or something. I don't know.” He adds the last part, just to keep any sentimentalities at bay, and he knows Iwaizumi would do the same.

Sugawara hums, barely two notes strung together. “It must be nice to have a best friend.”

“What? Like spirits can't have their own, too?”

“Well,” starts Sugawara, insistent on walking up ahead instead of looming. “Baku are different, I suppose. There aren't so many of us, and a lot of people to tend to. There's barely any time to sit down and have a cup of tea, much less make close friends.”

“Well, you're hanging out with me, aren't you?” Oikawa asks.

“Big dreamers take up more of time,” Sugawara lilts, pleasant but threatening, and Oikawa can't help but smirk back.

When they walk up the street together, ducking into an alley beneath low-lying trees and leftover will o’ wisps, he notices how the rain doesn't stick to Sugawara at all. Bare feet don't get muddied, and his sweater sticks to him, all fresh; Oikawa doesn't ask though, mostly because the matters of the night are something he's learned not to question, and Sugawara does not supply the answers.

What he does not lack however, are questions. “What's it like, having a best friend?” he asks, and Oikawa has to think about this.

“Like, having a person. A whole person. You know them, and they know you. And it gets to a point where it doesn't matter how much you've fought, or made up, or broken up all over again— but, well. Forget that last part,” Oikawa says at the end of his spiel, crossing the street. “They're just...a part of you, maybe.”

“You were together with him at some point, then,” Sugawara finishes.

Oikawa feels himself redden.“Well, no, Iwa-chan was crazy about me and I had to shoot him down—”

“Oh, be serious.”

“I mean—fine,” Oikawa says. “We were younger, then. Two years in high school, and it was the worst decision I’d ever made in my life.”

“Really?”

Oikawa laughs down into his shirt collar. “Not really.”

“Then?”

“Then what ?”

“What's it like?” Sugawara asks, and Oikawa stops right in his tracks. They've reached his aunt’s house anyway, warded carefully at the gate by talisman charms and other Shinto fixtures.

Still on Sugawara’s question, Oikawa doesn't even realize he's let himself think out loud. “I mean, it's just a bunch of stupid things, like first dates and feeling like garbage over tiny, inconsequential things, so maybe it wasn't even worth it to begin with, but then again, yeah it was and—”

Oikawa stops when he gets to the front door, Sugawara still waiting alone on the street. He waves in small motions, and Oikawa goes back to get him.

“Oh, come on now,” Oikawa insists. “The house’s blessings are only for bad spirits.”

“Well, they're strong enough to keep me out,” says Sugawara. “You have to invite me in.”

Oikawa rolls his eyes. “ Sugawara Koushi,” he starts, “mightiest dream eater I know, you are cordially invited into my humble abode—” but when he tries entering again, the house rejects him, clear cut by a sudden gust, the way Sugawara flinches on his heels.

“Oh, it's all right,” Sugawara says. “I can…” he looks back out at the city, and they both hear the laughs of some on-ryo out on the prowl. “...get acquainted with this city while you sleep. It's no problem.”

(But it is a problem, Oikawa surmises, because everything on Sugawara’s face says don't leave me alone out here.)

“Suga-chan,” Oikawa calls in next steps, and Sugawara’s eyes go wide, head up from the ground at the call. Hand cautiously outstretched, right between his side and the other, Oikawa lets Sugawara place a palm atop his, a slow graze of an almost touch. Oikawa’s tempted to recoil. Revert. Sugawara hovers like he's not sure he's meant to take it.

And it's then when that sort of moment arises again—that simmer, a late summer in Oikawa’s chest: he heaves out the smallest breath, remembers he's dealing with a spirit, not a boy—no matter how much he looks a boy—and that there's no need to make it into anything else.

‘What's it like?’ the question rises again in his thoughts anyway, gentle in its indiscretion, and Oikawa is the first to pull Sugawara towards the house. The touch is nearly there, like the repulsion of the nearest distance, but it's enough either way. It’s enough to ask a new question, one not to be spoken, but swallowed, but thought all the same:

‘What's it like, to fall for a spirit?’

(And Oikawa can only tell himself, I don’t know, but it might hurt, one day. )

An index finger comes across Oikawa’s lips, and another talisman peels off the wall. A gashadokuro peers through the window, socket empty where there should be an eye, jaw unhinged when he accuses a certain dream eater of thievery. “Give us the dreamer,” it says, all ugly, bone of a finger tapping on the glass. A few will o’ wisps dance around the gashadokuro, antsy to get inside the house, and Oikawa just sticks his tongue out to draw the curtains closed.

“My aunt probably forgot to put up new blessings,” Oikawa says. “Either that, or she hasn’t been here in years.”

The smallest moonlight sneaks in through the window, and Sugawara blows at the visible dust. He sighs, realizing their predicaments, but Oikawa doesn’t mind; he remembers the nights spent here as a child, hidden under blankets or tables until the worst spirits passed like a storm, and it brought him the smallest satisfaction to know that he didn’t have to, anymore. I’m not afraid, Oikawa even says to himself, and it’s almost true, and it’s enough to look forward to the rest of the night.

“It’s not a house I picture you in,” says Sugawara, probably a commentary on the emptiness. He walks along—still insistent on walking—and Oikawa leans against a bunch of moving boxes. He takes note of the bare feet again, the slim ankles and the way Sugawara cuffs his jeans, and lets himself linger up altogether.

“You really don’t have a tail, anywhere?” Oikawa asks, partially joking.

Sugawara stops in his false plank walk, his balancing act long the floorboards, and turns back in a frown, barely one at all. “ Again, you ask about that?”

“I just don’t get it!” Oikawa muses. “I’ve never seen a dream eater like you before.”

Sugawara spins back around, caught in the doorway to the next room, and shrugs. “It’s just the way I want to do things. No offense to how the dream eaters present themselves, but I like the form I’ve taken.” He plays with his sweater sleeves, long enough to reach his palms, before rolling them up. “Don’t you know what we are, Oikawa-kun?”

“You’re spirits that eat dreams,” Oikawa answers plainly. “That’s the gist of it, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Sugawara starts. “It’s more complicated than that. Won’t you come closer?”

Oikawa does, more readily this time, and Sugawara holds up a forearm. He makes out the tiniest lines all around, from the base of a ring finger to the fine stitch tracks dividing an elbow.

“Pieces,” Oikawa remarks next, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind when he sees them, and Sugawara does not fret; he just floats his head to the side, like the word might be the last thing he'd like to hear, but he takes no offense.

“Exactly,” Sugawara says instead. “So I just take those pieces and rearrange them the way I want. What I get is this—you know, instead of a tail and all,” he explains, holding up a hand, partially covered by the sleeve, a smile, charmed, yet charming all the same. Oikawa smiles, still curious over the lack of un-earthly things, but he decides to leave it (or, well, almost leave it).

“But you could look like something else,” Oikawa can't help but remark, and Sugawara nods along. “Could you show me?”

Sugawara offers the slightest shake of the head, almost afraid to offend. “I guess I'd rather not,” he supposes. “It took me a long time to figure out this combination, and I've grown fond of how I look.”

“Fair,” says Oikawa. “I'm just confused.”

“About what?”

“About why you'd take this form,” answers Oikawa, with sights loomed up. He traces a finger along the line of Sugawara’s forearm, not daring to make contact, and grins, a little achy at the corners. “Because you could be anything .”

Sugawara blinks once, serious. “But so can you. Since when has human been more limiting than dream eater ?”

“Don't talk to me about limiting,” Oikawa has no problem refuting. “You're jumping from dream to dream every night while I'm drooling on a pillow.”

“Well, people call on you more than just to eat dreams . I don't even remember the last time someone called on me other than that. You have the sun, and waiting at train stops, and curling up with good books and—”

“Those are things you don't need,” Oikawa scoffs—

“Yeah, but they're things that I want.”

Oikawa gulps down at the answer and says no more about it. Hands come off the graze, the touch along the stitch lines, and the both of them look after the things they might say next. Oikawa abandons the sentiment quickly though, as much as he'd like to stay in such practiced confines; daring enough, he even steps closer, and Sugawara does not inch back.

“What do you want?” Oikawa asks with little space between them, and Sugawara does not answer. “To wear sweaters and read novellas on Sundays?”

Sugawara stifles back a laugh.

“To dance, maybe?” Oikawa asks, maybe a little drunker on drowsiness than he'd expected, body swung in the more impromptu of waltzes, an empty house their ballroom. They spin around, Sugawara half the weight of something real, until Oikawa feels the room spin and his legs too tangled to keep going. He lets himself fall, a mess on the floor, and Sugawara follows, too. Up at the ceiling, they stare, and it's peaceful just keeping it that way.

“I want it all,” Sugawara finally answers Oikawa, head tilted to face him. “The novellas and the sweaters. I want to feel rain on my palm and the way first loves never work out.” He laughs, hopeless. “I want it all.”

Oikawa swallows down hard, when he knows the feeling more than anyone. With eyes shut, he thinks of where to start, calls Sugawara for a dream to eat, and says the first thing while drifting.

“Don't we all?” Oikawa asks, over and over, until he's gone under with a whole other world to show him.

It's near sunset, summer, judging by the crisp white shirts and high-hung ponytails, air like honey with the heat on his nose.

“Sorry to make you wait.”

“It’s okay,” Oikawa says, slightly miffed, because he doesn't know if he's waited ten minutes or ten thousand years. “It's just a dream anyway,” he continues, mores to reassure himself. He is seventeen again in this one, stuck in a Seijou uniform, and standing outside the school gates at a place not his own; Sugawara’s got his own school attire on, too, plain in style but recognizable— Karasuno , he guesses, and the two of them make their way down to the convenience store at the bottom of the hill.

Sugawara tugs at his shirt without untucking it from his pants. “High school?” he asks, taking out a student ID in the process. “And... third years ?”

Oikawa nods. “I thought it'd be a nice time.”

“Why?”

“You learn a lot at this time,” Oikawa says, light in his terms, because his last bit of time at Seijou had certainly been one for the ages, if not, well , bittersweet; the breakups, rebounds, and rejections notwithstanding, it was also the year of the usual third year struggle—like taking exams and finding your future and finding out that hometown glory wasn't all that it was cracked up to be; because you’ll die if you stay here, his nightmares used to say, even if he was sure the were exaggerating. So just this once, Oikawa thinks it'd be nice, not to feel so stifled by the prefecture, and that maybe it'd be worth the false memories.

“So, what is this?” says Sugawara. “What are we?”

He tells himself Sugawara’s just along for the ride, a sneer made in return. Sugawara smiles anyway, shoulders raised in anticipation, and Oikawa comes up with a story to tell like we’re no one (but oh, that's not quite right). Looking out to the dusk, pink by the horizon, a forming darkness on the edges, he thinks of opposite sides, the melding of night and day, and breathes in, confident. “We're two acquaintances, and we’ve decided to hang out for the first time today,” he imagines, shutting his eyes closed for a moment. “We’re from, um, different school teams. Volleyball, maybe.” (Because he's always wanted to play volleyball.)

Sugawara laughs. “Okay. Not that I know anything about it.”

“But you do,” says Oikawa. “You're Sugawara Koushi, of the Karasuno High School volleyball club. You're a setter like me.” He starts walking on after his proclamations, too antsy to keep still. “That's why we're friends.”

“You said acquaintances two seconds ago.”

“It's complicated,” Oikawa decides, because that's the word for it, and they go on with the dream. In the blink of an eye, Oikawa devises a riverbank, sprawled out with their bags open, their workbooks out, and milk tea bottles half finished. He even keeps a perpetual sunset in front of them, sun stuck in place, because Sugawara can't keep his eyes off it (and Oikawa has to admit that it really isn't too sore of a sight in the first place). A wind passes through just then, gentle but firm in its current, like the most insistent roar against an ear, and Oikawa tears

himself away altogether. Sugawara, in turn, gets up from the huddle.

“What's it like?” he asks again.

Oikawa frowns. “I told you, didn't I? About Iwa-chan? I'm not sure I’d like to repeat myself.”

Sugawara shakes his head. “I didn't mean that. I mean , yeah I did, but not just that.”

“Then, what?”

“Everything.”

“You...want me to explain everything ,” Oikawa repeats back, blinking once more, and the flowers bloom under them. Sugawara nods, leans down like he knows the forget-me-nots were his doing this time, and plucks one to offer to Oikawa. I'm sorry, a twirl between his fingertips say, and Sugawara does not back down. Oikawa takes it anyway, crosses his eyes in trying to concentrate, and finds some place to begin. To be.

“What would you like to know first?” he asks, and Sugawara’s eyes light up.

By the next part of their dream, they're sitting in an empty gym at the end of the day, two setters. Oikawa’s let himself pretend he's worked himself to a sweat while Sugawara’s taken to mopping up the hardwood on the other side of the net, and it's quiet minus the squeak of his trainers, the intermittent hums, and the insistences that Karasuno would beat Seijou next time, for sure.

Oikawa sits up to fiddle with his knee guard (and it figures, that his knee would be messed up in dreams, too). When he presses down a little too hard, he flinches, lets out a little seethe, and feels the smallest rumble when he sends it back to a body asleep up above.

“What's it like?” Sugawara asks again.

Oikawa glances up, sees the way Sugawara’s traced his vision back to a knee, slightly bloodied. “What? To have a bad knee?” he guesses. “Not fun.”

“No, I mean. To hurt.”

What a loaded question. Oikawa thinks about it for a moment anyway, draws a bent leg closer to him in the process, and decides he's already off to a bad start. “It's hard to say,” he answers. “But—maybe like your body’s failing you. Like, why do you have to bleed? Why is there this weird lump in my throat? Not that I know the feeling too often—I imagine that's what it's like, though,” he finishes off, holding his head up high.

At this, Sugawara just sits down to join him. He offers a roll of fresh gauze, jokingly wraps some around his pinky finger, and declares himself officially hurt .

(If only, if only he'd understand the very start of it.)

“You've got a lot to learn.”

The train rolls by the station, creaking in its stop, and Oikawa lets Sugawara get on the train car first. In the next part of the dream, they're going home from school (or practice, judging by the duffle bags at their feet), and it's still sunset. Another day in the summer , Oikawa guesses, or maybe it's just a different version of the same evening they shared at the riverbank; all he knows is that he isn't the one keeping the sky in its place this time, and that Sugawara might be the one to blame. He twists around in his seat to get a better look at passing town outside. Oikawa blinks, and the trees spring up in empty fields, saplings to skyscrapers.

“What's it like?” Sugawara asks again, hands creeping out the open window. “To grow up?”

Oikawa groans, and feels the haze shake him into a yawn. “What?” he asks back. “Like you didn't get to grow up? When I was a kid, I used to play with this tanuki duo at the park. They were kids, too. They own a bar in Kyoto now.”

“It's different with me,” Sugawara reminds Oikawa, head tilted away like he might've hit a nerve. Oikawa rolls his eyes, lets out the smallest sigh, and lets the train rumble on. He has a feeling like it might run forever.

“It feels like waking up on your seventh birthday and reaching down to your toes,” Oikawa says, “and realizing that nothing feels different.”

Sugawara turns back to him.

“But one day, you look in the mirror, realize you've had your first kiss and first night alone with another boy, and you've got a bit of facial hair you have to take care of. And it hits you all at once sometimes, because you didn't even notice until then.”

Oikawa’s the one to look away this time, but Sugawara’s gaze does not leave him. It feels like the last bit of sun on his cheek, and warmth followed by the cool air of onward motion. Refreshing, he thinks again, and he still hates it. He dares not to move, though.

“Is that what happened to you?” Sugawara asks, soft out of respect, and Oikawa scoffs.

“Purely hypotheticals,” he answers, petulant, and he catches himself gulping down something he'd long forgotten.

“You mentioned first kisses before.”

Oikawa looks up from his homework, right up at Sugawara and their shared desk at the end of the day, classroom empty save for the whir of a single fan and the sound of scribbling pens.

“Please don't ask about that,” Oikawa says. “It was a long time ago, and it was so awkward I try to block it out of my memory,” but the memory plays on anyway , and Sugawara pretends to avert his gaze. Oikawa hears the name, “Iwa-chan,” spoken soft and broken at the syllables, and the two silhouettes remain outside the door, caught in the tension of a post-confession. Then comes the name, “Tooru,” spoken only in the most sacred of manners, and Oikawa feels the need to look away.

“Ah,” says Sugawara.

“Yeah,” Oikawa tells him, blinking the memory away, and the two of them remain. The feeling leaves like a dull thud in his chest, a door barely opened only to be closed again.

“Do you still think about him that way?” Sugawara asks next, smile already sad, and Oikawa wants to wipe that stupid look off his face altogether.

“No,” he answers, and this is not a lie. “Iwa-chan is Iwa-chan,” he says like it’s some kind of decree, the universal kind like the second law of motion, and Sugawara nods along like he might just get that.

“Then would you…” Sugawara trails off, before taking a deep breath. “Nevermind,” he finishes off with a hand over his mouth, and Oikawa just leans forward.

Closer and closer he gets, lingering much too close to the back of Sugawara’s palm, before stopping at the last minute. With the tip of his finger, he taps Sugawara on the nose instead, and leans back in his seat.

“Did anyone ever tell you you're the worst flirt on the planet? ” Sugawara asks right back, the semblance of something flustered , maybe, and Oikawa just shrugs. He comes close again, caught in the gravity of another first kiss , and forgets about the novelty of sharing this with a phantom. It's just Suga-chan. Breath lingers, only but millimeters away, when the first howl comes from the distance. “Give us Oikawa Tooru,” it says, distant but on its way, and the two of them separate before starting anything.

Sugawara sighs, head pressed down to his collar. “The blessings aren't holding up, Oikawa-kun.”

Oikawa knows this. So much for wishful thinking. From there, he gets up to shut the window closed, collects his things, and waits for Sugawara to join him.

“Then let's keep dreaming,” he say, before we've got ourselves a nightmare.

“What's it like?”

“What are you asking about, this time?” Oikawa asks, and they've hit a new part of a dream: they're roommates in an apartment for two, caught in the heart of the city without a table to eat on, beds to call their own. Sugawara’s laid a blanket on the floor in the meanwhile, books to flip through; he's going to be starting university in a couple days for sports medicine, while Oikawa will be off playing college volleyball with Iwaizumi. Oikawa looks back, eyebrows knitted in question—‘you sure you want something so mundane? ’ he asks without having to, and Sugawara nods, content to move into his first apartment.

“What its like,” Sugawara repeats, “to change your mind?” he asks, with his nose in a book. He's on his stomach on the floor, legs dawdling behind him, and Oikawa can't help but smile at the view. He wipes it away soon enough, though, and goes back to working on his boxes.

“Change my mind?” Oikawa asks. He has a bit of trouble with this one. “I mean, it's easy enough, with small stuff, but it's different with things you might really, really want.”

Sugawara peers up, right on the edge of serious. “I mean, I think I might get that.”

“Then why ask?”

“Because you came back to me,” Sugawara says plainly, neither victorious or in the mood to gloat. Just a fact.

Oikawa frowns and offers the slight toss of a head. “I don't know,” he says, and he sits down next to Sugawara on the blanket. “It's just. Something that you set your mind to? Because it's important, or because you had to make adjustments. And, hey, don't tell me that you've never changed your mind before—”

“I have,” Sugawara interrupts, small in his smile, and Oikawa just turns to get a better look at him. “I just wanted to make sure we had some things in common.”

Oikawa isn't in the mood to decipher what he means about that. “Well? How else do you think we're alike, then?” he asks, and Sugawara turns away to flip to the next page in his book. Oikawa glimpses at the title, understanding human anatomy , before seeing Sugawara himself: he thumbs the page before letting out the smallest scoff, like diagrams might not be enough to study.

“How badly we might want things,” Sugawara finally answers, finger still held over the heart , and Oikawa pretends not to understand the feeling.

There's a knock on the door after that, and Oikawa goes to hear the call.

“Come out, come out, Oikawa Tooru. Come see the spirits you've left in Miyagi.”

He swallows, holds still at the door, and looks to Sugawara.

“There's no running from us. You'll always have those nightmares, don't you know?

Sugawara shakes his head. When Oikawa blinks, the knocking does not vanish.

“Might as well give your soul to us.”

“What's the use of hanging around a baku that won't eat dreams?”

“Come on, Oikawa. Stop dreaming, stop dreaming that you'll be anything more than you are—”

“No,” Oikawa answers, with a bang against the door. “No!” The spirits howl outside, all in their own version of wanting, and he blinks a few more times until the scene disappears from right under them.

“Suga—” he says, taking Sugawara’s hand, the almost grip of an almost person, an almost something, and lets them start again elsewhere. “Suga,” he calls once more, letting the name form when they land, and the spirits taunt from the mountains ahead.

“Suga.”

Sugawara does not let go. He keeps close, close enough to eat, and Oikawa shakes his head because he knows he doesn't want to.

“You don't have to,” Oikawa says. “Don't eat. I'll be fine. I will fight this,” he challenges to him and the world instead.

“Okay. I won't,” he says back like a promise, and Oikawa takes it.

It is then, in the worst way, when he understands the matter of want. He blinks until the next part of the dream appears. He dreams a home, a whole town, a goddamned city, until it is enough to keep the spirits at bay.

Up above, the stratosphere sinks, and a sunset resumes its descent.

Along the Kanda, Oikawa leans over the railing, looks into the water, and realizes he can see Sugawara through the ripples. “You’re still worried, aren't you?” he asks him, because he's in rare form, and nothing can get past him when he's in rare form —at this, Sugawara walks on, makes out a sky near dusk, and answers without dodging.

“Yes,” he says, cross, and Oikawa rolls his eyes.

“Well, don't be. I've dreamed up a city so big, not even the gods could find us now.”

“But it won't last.”

“And why not?”

“Because you can't live in a dream forever," Sugawara tells him. "At some point, you're going to wake up, and all those spirits will be flying through the window. And you never know! They might've carried you away already."

Oikawa leans back in his walk, right up to the sky with his arms crossed behind his head. "Everyone keeps telling me that I'm biggest dreamer in Japan. So that's what I'm doing— I'm dreaming, " he says, with a glint of something resembling a glare, but not quite, because it's Sugawara and he's not sure the dream eater deserves it. When the clouds come to blanket the city once more, he raises a hand up, more than willing to play god— up you go, and Sugawara winces at the sight.

"It's not meant to be this way," Sugawara says. "This is not the kind of dreaming I'm talking about."

Overhead, the last peek of the sun warns about hiding under the horizon. Lights come on over the city, but not by either one of their doings, and they both watch the rapid blink of skyscrapers across the water.

"Oikawa ." He flinches at the way Sugawara says this, not a plead, but a call from a place of no return. Like they both know. Like one of them has to say it.

"What did you mean, then?" he asks, staring back. The city stays empty. Traffic lights flash, and unrest lights the neighborhood. Sugawara, still in that uniform, still with the world to see and annoying questions to ask, closes his eyes before lifting back up. It's the right kind of light, honest and steady and mourning , and Oikawa cannot help but step close.

"What's it like, then?" Oikawa's the one to ask this time. "To see the kind of dreamer you think I am."

Sugawara doesn't answer.

"Suga."

"I see a boy running an optical shop he inherited when he was five," he answers.

Closer, Oikawa comes. Sugawara does not move. The Kanda turns into the Karakuwa coastline in Miyagi, and the rest of the city falls away from the both of them. The low crawl of waves run up past their feet, and Sugawara stands his ground past the sensation.

"I see a boy who calls his best friend Iwa-chan and reads the newspaper every night."

No more school uniforms, or falsehoods rule the day ; just a boy and his dream eater keep at the edge of the end, and Oikawa watches the tears form, small and and almost ugly. Sugawara wipes them away, like he can't believe them himself, but ignores them to keep going.

"I see old record players and the way you curse at the on-ryo for trying to haunt you."

"I see the way..." Sugawara hiccups, determined to continue. "I see the way you look up at the sky, like you want to own it."

Oikawa takes him by the hands, a touch almost whole. Why can't you be whole, he wants to ask, but he doesn't, because he's afraid he might just break down, too.

"I see the boy whose dreams I could not take," says Sugawara. "As much as I wanted to, as much as I said I would. "

Oikawa breathes out. Words form, and words fail.

"Damn it. Why am I even crying about this?" Sugawara asks, feeling the sad urge to laugh about this. "The first time ever , and it has to be about you ," he follows up with a mumble, head shaking and incredulous . Oikawa laughs, too. He wonders if his insides are collapsing. He lingers close anyway, and the seas churn with the rise and the fall and the rise again. The spirits call up from the hills, and he wishes they'd all drown.

"It's because you've fallen for me," Oikawa says, daring to be cheeky, and Sugawara hits him against the chest with a small fist. But he doesn't deny any of it. Neither of them do.

"Shut up."

The day says goodbye after this, and night comes for them both. Morning waits on the other side. Oikawa sighs against Sugawara's ear at the thought, shaking his head, because he swears he can feel him breathe against him, too— and that he should see the morning, too, god damn it, gods willing .

(But it's not like the gods ever will such things in the first place.)

"What do you want me to do, then?" Oikawa asks instead.

"Let me eat your dream," Sugawara tells him, head pressed against his shoulder. "You made something so big that I'll be able to swallow it and keep a piece of you with me. I'll mix with the other pieces. I'll walk out, I'll run, and the spirits will all think it's you."

"What do you mean?" Oikawa pulls himself away, already caught between a no and a never .

"I'll have that piece of you," says Sugawara. "And I'll rearrange the others. I'll walk out of here as you."

Oikawa shakes his head. "You can't. I mean, how long did it take you to become this?”

“That doesn't matter.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Sugawara interrupts. He is steeled in his words. He shakes, like tectonic plates already starting to shift.

“They'll tear you apart."

"It won't hurt, remember? What are they going to do to a ghost?"

"No. No , because you're aren't thinking about—" me, but Oikawa doesn't finish his sentence, swallowing it down. He pulls Sugawara against him instead, full as he's ever felt him, and says it so low he's not sure he will hear. "You're not thinking about the dreamers that will miss you."

"I'll come back," Sugawara whispers back, equally low, like a secret.

"You can't promise that—"

"No matter where they chase me, I'll come back, okay?"

Oikawa nods, a slow descent, and Sugawara holds him back.

"Oikawa."

“You can't do this.”

“But you're going to let me, anyway, right?”

Oikawa looks back, unforgiving, and Sugawara disarms him with a hand to a cheek. “How could you say that?” he asks right back, and Sugawara just smiles that Sugawara smile—it's a wince, but the kind sort, and Oikawa watches his face unfold. That kindness never leaves, but something else rises, too: a certainty, a forgiveness over unfortunate circumstances, and Oikawa waits.

“Because we both know you have to keep living,” Sugawara tells him.

“And you?” Oikawa asks back, seeing right through him. “Didn't you want that, too?”

Sugawara does not answer. He gets closer. Oikawa doesn't think they could close anymore distance if they tried.

“I'll do things my own way,” he insists, quiet. “I'll make it somehow.”

And when Sugawara swoops in to kiss him for the first time, lifted and bare at first, he apologizes with every press. Oikawa feels the breath leave him altogether, the touch of his face a selfish graze, and Sugawara can barely say it in the first place— I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I'm sorry— and Oikawa can only kiss him back, so high and so whole it's like waking up again. I'm gonna kiss the daylights out of you, he wants to say in between each brush, but he can't, because daylight is the last thing they have.

"Tooru," Sugawara says out of the kiss, when Oikawa’s caught unaware.

"Yes."

"You're going to wake up now."

"What?" Oikawa opens his eyes, feeling the touch lift right off of him. Hands go empty from the hold, and a weight shifts to nothing.

“And when you wake up, I won’t be there.”

“Suga!” Oikawa calls out. “Suga!”

“Hey, keep quiet, won’t you? I don’t want them to hear you!” There's a laugh mixed with a cry, farther in sound.

“Suga!”

“Goodbye for now, Oikawa Tooru.”

“And good night.”

“Hey.”

“Oikawa, wake up.”

When Oikawa Tooru wakes up from a dream remembered, he bolts up, nearly knocks Iwaizumi on the head on the way up, and gasps out instead. “Suga,” he calls, hand dragged over his mouth, and Iwaizumi steadies him upright.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says. “Hey. You're shaking,” he says, and Oikawa attempts to exhale. Breathe deep. Eyes go roaming around an empty house, no trace of a dream eater in sight, and he slumps against Iwaizumi at the thought of him. Iwaizumi, in turn, holds him back, a sign of all things terrible when even he's lost the will to nag.

“I heard the news,” Iwaizumi tells him instead. “I left the house as soon as they said they were chasing you through the mountains.”

“That wasn't me,” says Oikawa, and he barely has the will to say it.

Iwaizumi nods against him. “I know. Sugawara is his name, right?”

“Yeah,” Oikawa swallows. “I…did you see him? Has anyone seen him since?”

Iwaizumi does not answer.

“Iwa-chan.”

“We haven't found him yet,” Iwaizumi finally says, smaller than usual but steady. “But they're on to us,” he adds, “and they're coming back down the mountain pass to find you.”

Oikawa does not speak.

“It's not safe here, in the prefecture,” Iwaizumi adds.

“I know,” Oikawa finally says.

Iwaizumi takes more look at him, a sigh before getting up altogether, and watches Oikawa rise from the floor, too. He looks down when he finds his foot on a sunbeam, warm as the day outside, a sure sign of summer. He decides to keep on it for a moment, eyes cast down at the mahogany paneling, and presses the dream like something to keep.

“What's it like?” Sugawara asks once more, head caught in a small turn and a challenge, always a challenge. He smiles back, unrepentant, and Oikawa cannot help but follow. What do you mean, he asks back again, like the playback on his favorite record, just to keep it all safe, a memory, and Sugawara poses his favorite question.

“Everything,” he says, like last time, and Oikawa’s still not sure how to answer.

Like waiting, a sunbeam stays, and daylight has never looked better. He humbles himself, sights to the ground. Oikawa nearly laughs when he sees it like a sign, his face a ruddy, crying mess instead, and he prays for better days; because I'll never know, but I might be able to show you when you come back.

“Listen,” Iwaizumi says. “We can keep tabs on the prefecture if you want, maybe get some of my relatives to patrol—”

“No need,” Oikawa says in deep breaths.

“Why not?”

“Just a feeling.” Oikawa stares back, just once, before taking his leave.

A single flower, a forget-me-not, grows in between two floorboards. It lives with the day ahead, and Oikawa’s certain, maybe, that he’ll come back.

“You're actually writing back to them?” Iwaizumi asks one day in the autumn, when Oikawa’s closed up early to respond to the newest round of love letters .

“Well,” Oikawa muses, “I figured they deserve some sort of closure, and it helps me sleep better at night knowing they won't come pounding at my door.”

“True, I guess,” Iwaizumi shrugs, and the two of them stare out at the last remnants of a clear day. It's comfortable in the city this evening, with no spirits to pester them, and the clouds have decided to hang a little higher than usual. Oikawa just hums out a sigh, content as one can be in the city, and shuts his eyes closed for a moment.

“Are you sure you'll be alright, running the shop all by yourself?” Oikawa asks, half-lidded and back at Iwaizumi. “I don't have to leave.”

At this, Iwaizumi scoffs, flicking Oikawa against the cheek. “Don't offer things you won't deliver on. And besides, you were never much help, anyway. I'm not sure why they thought you'd be good to inherit a shop like this in the first place.”

“Oh, don't praise me too much, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa chides back, and the two of them break into smiles.

“I mean,” Iwaizumi starts up again. “I don't think you wanted to sit around here for much longer. And you know, when you want something, it's hard to stop you.”

Oikawa leans back, stuck on what to say to a particularly feisty kitsune from Nerima. “You usually do, though. You pull me back before I get in that head of mine.”

“Yeah, but that's the thing.”

“What?”

“I don't want to, this time,” Iwaizumi tells him, honest and at peace, all falls quiet after that. Dusk calls, hazier in the likes of Tokyo, divided by the eager lines of telephone pole wire and on-ryo waking up for the day, and Oikawa thinks he can see it fine all the same.

“Well, I suppose it's time to go, then,” Oikawa sighs, a frown feigned, and Iwaizumi rolls his eyes.

“Don't make it sound like you're leaving the country,” says Iwaizumi, “or even Tokyo for that matter. I still expect you to have dinner with me when you can, because sometimes you forget to eat and—”

“Oh, there you go with the nagging. I'll have you know that I've started cooking for myself. And running five times a week. And sleeping at a reasonable time.”

Iwaizumi crosses his arms. “Is that so?” he asks, not seeming terribly surprised. He goes on with his meal, partly enraptured by a particularly tough piece of mackerel.

“If it can keep the nightmares away, I'll do it.”

“So why not call on a new baku?” Iwaizumi follows up in the slightest of dares, but a dare nonetheless; go on and say it , he says by the matter of telepathy, maybe something a little proud, and Oikawa smiles into his answer.

“I don't want to call on them, anymore.”

Iwaizumi is satisfied with that answer. They go on with the usual protocol after that, dinner and the reciting of the most ridiculous love letters, and let no past hold them back.

“You know, I've really been thinking about renaming the place,” Iwaizumi tells him, key at the door and neon signs lit up.

“Yeah? What were you thinking of?”

“Stratosphere Optical.”

Oikawa smiles, head tossed up to the sky.

“I think I might like that,” he tells him, and nothing more is said on the matter.

Oikawa lies to Iwaizumi that same night. He doesn't mean to, because not being able to fall asleep at night is not particularly anyone’s fault, but it's not something he feels good about either, and he'd rather not admit to knowing exactly why. The on-ryo are particularly chirpy tonight, as are the neighbors through thin walls, but he's got something quiet on his mind. Sugawara Koushi brushes along his memory, non-imposing, but oh, it'd be nice, if you were to find me .

With the music spinning along the needle, Oikawa sits up, glances at the empty jar where he kept forget-me-nots once, and swallows back something uncertain. Under darkness, he sits up, looks to the window, and says it.

“Hey,” Oikawa says. He doesn't like how small it sounds, but he keeps going anyway. “Are you there?” He swallows, deep breaths abound. “I'm calling to you, don't you know?”

No one comes. A small wind, just right for an early fall, blows through the window and kicks up a drawn curtain. Oikawa sighs at this, traces the outline of a city’s almost-darkness, and shakes his head when he can't see anyone under it.

“Not today then?” Oikawa asks, his smile wry, and lies back down to face the night. Outside, the ghosts go quiet, the wind dies down, and Oikawa drifts to sleep.

In dreaming, he calls, once, twice, a thousand times over.

(Oikawa won't remember doing this in the morning, and the memory of him will fade a little more each day, but he will experience the strangest lightness in his step, anyway.)

“You.”

“Me,” Kuroo Tetsurou says with his legs crossed over the tabletop, nearly kicking over the dusty name plate reading EDITOR-IN-CHIEF at the edge of his desk. He grins as much as Oikawa glowers at him, flits his gaze up to the ceiling, and turns back to greet Oikawa.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Oikawa asks.

“You never really asked,” Kuroo answers with a shrug. “Plus it's not a big deal. I'm still getting paid nothing , and bah— I guess that's besides the point. What do you want from me today anyway, huh? Got another dream eater you need me to profile?”

Oikawa shakes his head, peering down at all the letters and printed Phantom Shimbun copies on Kuroo’s desk. “No,” he says all hushed, like he can't let the world know. “No, I'm here for something different,” he repeats, with his head held up high instead.

Kuroo raises an eyebrow, crosses his arms, and leans back in his seat. “Yeah?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Out with it, then.”

Oikawa blinks into something half-lidded, wide eyes, bravado into the beginnings of bravery. Fists go clenched on his lap, and he feels the air heave into his chest.

“I want a job here. I want to be the first human you hire.”

Kuroo hums, the drawl of it like the drone of an electric fan. “Well,” he starts, looking Oikawa up and down, “you're not exactly qualified. I don't see you passing through walls or shape shifting or—”

“It doesn't matter.”

“I mean, it does, but okay,” Kuroo says, and the wrinkle in his forehead talks about something on the verge of peeved. “We spirits go through hell and back for our stories, don't you know? The underbelly of the spiritual world and—”

“What? Even the arts and culture section?” Oikawa says with the small bob of his head, and Kuroo pulls back, snide.

“Well, alright, you got me there.”

“So let me work on the paper, then,” says Oikawa, hands gripped on the armrests, toes raised under him, “and I'll show all you spirits.”

At the challenge—because Oikawa Tooru knows a thing or two about the merits of accepting challenges —Kuroo leans in close, cut with a grin, some nod of the head, and slides something across the desk to him.

Oikawa peers down at the camera. It's an old SLR with a frayed strap to match, and it doesn't take him long to get it around his neck. Kuroo turns his head up at the sight of it, a sigh, and goes back into nonchalance.

“You're gonna take pictures for me,” Kuroo says. “And no blurry-woah-I-caught-a-ghost-on-camera-viral-sensation garbage. I want real photos of real spirits for real stories,” he insists, with the most conviction he can muster, a flame lit enough to burn. “Can you do that for me?”

Oikawa nods, if not too quick, and swallows back. “I'll try my best,” he says, swelling.

“Well, your best could be a youkai on a bad day, so—”

“Better than best, then, ” Oikawa revises, “and maybe you'll finally beat the Demon Shimbun in circulation ratings.”

Kuroo flits a gaze away, and a hand goes to slide a drawer out. “Well, enough about what you can't and can do. It’s been a long day,” he says, “and I'm too tired to process you for our payroll or any of that nonsense.” He presses an envelope on the desk. “So you'll have to make due with this, for now.”

“What? Some sort of advance?” Oikawa asks, taking it into his hands. It feels light in his grip.

“You can think of it that way.” Kuroo looks away, and the bakeneko basks at the end-of-the-day sun. “But there's no monetary value behind it.”

“So, it's not worth anything, then,” Oikawa sinks.

“I never said that, now.”

“Then what is it?”

Kuroo glances back, serious, before turning away. “It's a letter to the editor. We’re printing it in an edition next week, but I figured you should be the first to read it. I didn't make any edits to it, either. It's all there. I was going to mail it to you before you came here, unannounced. ”

“Why should I get to be the first, though?” Oikawa asks, disregarding all else.

Kuroo shrugs, but it's not uncertain. “Because that's the thing. It's a letter to the editor, but not addressed to me. It was written to you.”

Oikawa shakes his head. “I don't understand.”

“You will when you read it, and that's all I'm going to say.”

“Kuroo—” Oikawa says, right on the edge of knowing, and maybe he already knows, but Kuroo says no more on the matter.

Tentative, Oikawa rips along the sealed lines.

(It is there he finds him, written.)

Dear Oikawa-kun.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to see you. I don't know if you know this, but it takes a while to put my pieces back together, and I’d rather not bore you with the details of finding myself (and some of my lost limbs, for that matter). So I've been running around the country for a while, prefecture to prefecture, because I wanted to regain my strength as a dream eater. But I realized something along the way. It's something important that everyone needs to hear, which is why I'm writing to the Phantom Shimbun in the first place.

I realized, along the sea with the sky to my back, that I no longer wanted to be a dream eater in the first place. With a small voice, I shout out to the world. This is my promise to be whatever I want to be.

But also important, and something I'd like you to know. This is also a love letter for a life ahead. One day, I'd like to really walk the city, and sit by the riverbank, and take trains, and laugh, and cry—all with you. You see, they call you the biggest dreamer in Japan, and I want to put you to the test. I want to see the world in my own way, and I hope you'll meet me there, too.

(So, will you meet me there, one day?)

Suga

Two years into the job and right at the beginning of spring, Oikawa walks along the Kanda, brisk and much too busy, when he gets the phone call.

“Yes, yes, Iwa-chan, yes to dinner already,” he answers without the hello. “And yes to yakiniku, no need to remind me, because I know how much you've been craving that lately, and I haven't forgotten—”

“Calm down,” Iwaizumi interrupts on the other line. “You're in a frenzy, again.”

Oikawa throws up a scoff. “I am not a frenzy.”

“Now, this is where I know you're lying, because I can hear the camera click on your side of the call,” Iwaizumi says, and Oikawa sets his camera down just to prove him wrong. He takes a deep breath, settles himself down on a bench, and offers a smug smile for no one to see; he even leans back on the back rest, disregarding the mountain of deadlines on his desk back at the Phantom Shimbun, and hums into the phone, terribly pleasant.

“What brings the phone call today then, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa asks. “Miss me?”

“Like anyone could.”

“You're always free to visit me, you know. My new apartment’s only one stop away from the shop now, and you could finally tell off those annoying on-ryo living next door and—”

“I'm actually not in the city right now. That's why I'm calling.”

“Oh?” Oikawa asks. “Forget to feed your cat?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“Well, because you wouldn't pick up your goddamned phone all morning, your aunt called me. Now, she was the one in a frenzy, if I've ever heard one.” Iwaizumi pauses, caught in a sigh. “She said you were in big trouble.”

Oikawa frowns. “Me? In trouble? She hasn't even been in the country for like, three years. She didn't even wish me a happy birthday last time.” Up comes the camera again, balanced by one hand and right up to eye level. Click. He catches the pink hue of sunset, not the right color this time (or most times these days), and looks for another shot. He takes another picture. That one isn't right, either.

“Oikawa.”

“Hm?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Oh, I'm sorry, Iwa-chan, it's just that I need to have this landscape piece into the Shimbun tonight, and I just—” (he tries again, to no avail) “—can't seem to get the shot I need.”

“What? That sunset thing again?”

“Yeah,” Oikawa looks back into the lens. “I know they could just get someone else to do it, but it's really been bothering me.”

“Maybe you're not just not cut out to shoot that kind of sky.”

Oikawa laughs. “Don't underestimate me, Iwa-chan.”

“I'm not. And don't change the subject,” he barks back. “So, as I was saying, your aunt. She says you're in trouble, because you left her house a mess, to the point that it's absolutely unlivable—"

“That can't be right. I haven't been there since—well, you know,” he says, and he feels his shoulders raise from the memory of things. He brushes it off as best he usually can (and it's pretty well, depending on the day), and takes another picture. No good on this one either, and Oikawa thinks of chucking his camera into the river.

(Elsewhere, and only half a thought, he remembers the motions of a boy, looking back from the water. He smiles, and Oikawa just shakes him off altogether.)

“Well,” Iwaizumi starts up again, less gruff, “I think you'd better get to Miyagi when you can. I'm visiting my uncle the rest of today and tomorrow, so I won't be able to join you, but it's worth seeing it for yourself.”

Oikawa leans forward. “See what, Iwa-chan?”

Iwaizumi takes his time with an answer.

“What the world can do, when you're not looking.”

At this, Oikawa steels himself for the things he cannot explain. He bids farewell to Iwaizumi after that soon after, camera still in hand, and breathes deep into a folded sleeve. Click, comes the camera, bold in capturing the city and the low-hanging clouds, and he wonders if he'll finally be able to reclaim other places, too.

And so, he walks along the Kanda. He takes his strides like he owns it, remembers the motions, and tells himself he will need them for tomorrow.

(But “you'll be okay,” Iwaizumi had said over the line, his own sort of goodbye for the night, and Oikawa might believe it, this time.)

He prepares his steps, anyway. They never feel small anymore.

The trip to Miyagi is short and dreamless, disturbed only a halted train and the promise of the prefecture. It’s mid-morning when Oikawa Tooru arrives at the station, empty save for a few lingering youkai and the humans about to depart, and he feels a small envy shoot up his spine when they do; leaning back on his heels, he thinks about following them too, sights cast behind him before deciding to keep on. “Up you go,” he even tells himself, because nothing ever got done by staying still, by letting up, and it’d be a waste of a train fare anyway, to turn back home.

And so he goes. He passes by a few parents, scrambling by with bouquets in their hands, the students walking up the road with reluctant tears in their eyes. Graduation day, maybe. A school bell tolls and the usual songs play, goodbye and good day , when Oikawa’s stopped to take a few pictures for a bunch of students at the school gates.

“Say, aren't you Oikawa Tooru? That guy on the Phantom Shimbun?” one boy asks Oikawa, when he’s still got a camera to his face and his finger on the trigger.

He gets the perfect shot, nods, and feigns something small about it. “Ah, yes,” he answers in the most modesty he can muster.

“Oh, the ghosts around here talk about you all the time . They say you're the biggest dreamer in all of Japan.”

Oikawa shrugs. That's not new. “Ah, well—”

“And that you have the ability to make those who haunt into humans,” one of the girls pipes up. Oikawa can't say he's ever heard of that one.

“I mean, that's certainly not true,” he says in all lightness, and hands the camera back right after. He gives the tiniest bow out of respect (because he really ought to get going, even if they all look like they want to invite him to lunch), and wishes them all the best. “Have a nice graduation at, um—” he reads the sign at the entrance to get the name, a familiar name— “Karasuno.”

He waves goodbye to them after that, smile a bit too practiced and he knows it. They don't see through him anyway. It takes him little effort to sneak away.

Down the road and through the mountain pass, wildflowers grow like constellations, and the wind kicks up into something pleasant. Oikawa leans down to pick a few before remembering one of Iwaizumi’s passing remarks, that “ in the past two years, the government’s lifted that ‘ghost town’ label off of the prefecture ,” like he really ought to visit more (even though he tells himself he won't ). He just takes another deep breath again at the news, deep enough to ache, and peers out over the cliffside.

“Fine,” he says, to no one in particular, the day ahead, and relents into a smile of sorts. “Fine.” Sending his hometown his blessings, a declaration of peace, he raises a hand to his mouth, presses a kiss into his palm, and releases before sending it into the stratosphere.

After this, he passes the clearing where they first walked together. He grazes past the phone booth they once shared without stepping in, and picks more wildflowers sprouting from concrete and other impossible places. People build houses, all anew, and the spirits continue their taunts from spots in the shade.

“Well, if it isn't Oikawa Tooru?” one of them say, still hidden under darkness. “Here to give us the kisses you owe the ghosts at Seijou? ”

Oikawa smiles. “Afraid not, but I did hear you guys tore down my aunt’s house again,” he says, more in a sigh than anything else. “Because of all of you, I’m in huge trouble and—”

“Hey, now! We didn’t do anything about that!” they chime back to him. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“They’re calling it a miracle house. Something too hallowed to haunt.”

“And why’s that?” Oikawa asks.

“There’s something growing in there.” The spirits shake up the trees above, making light between the leaves. “Something we’re not able to touch,” he continues, and Oikawa’s already got his heels turned to go.

“Oh—then, I should—”

“Hey, now, Oikawa, shouldn’t you stay and humor us?

“Why should I?” he asks back, defiant.

“It’s about time you let us eat your soul!”

For the last time, because Oikawa’s tired of saying it, he shakes his head in a no. “I can’t give you my soul today, spirits.” Not ever. He holds still, waits for their wrath, and feels them shrink in the daylight instead.

“And why not?”

“Because I need it for the person I’m seeing.”

“Well, if it’s who we think it is, don’t get your hopes up! Nobody’s seen him for two years!”

“I’ll take my chances,” Oikawa says, when he decides he’s done humoring spirits (and the sort that hide, at that). It’s nothing but a sprint after that, a challenge to himself to go as fast as he can, up the stairs and through alleys, current streaming in something he’ll never be able to take back. Under him, the air smells of spring, but a sweet one, and Oikawa thinks it’ll bloom, soon , into the fiercest summer.

“Suga!” he lets himself shout out for the first time in two years, and it burns in his throat. Oikawa is quick to turn. He meets no one on the path.

“Suga!”

Ahead and past the new houses, one stands, barely so but still there, nonetheless. The sun stands atop it like the house the morning made, and rot overcomes the wooden fences and the foundation beneath it. Wildflowers grow and ivy climbs, past broken windows and the holes in a ruined roof, and Oikawa can’t help but breathe in and think, not beautiful, not broken, but a brilliant place. He looks around before going in, a name still needed to be said, and goes in, swallowing it down instead.

The door hinges open with the utmost ease. Light streams in better than it ever did when he was a kid, and everything’s dressed itself in a thick layer of dust. Oikawa sees birds come to the window, perched atop broken glass and the panes below, chirps incessant but not necessarily unwelcome. Curtains rise up, sheens of grace, barely a whisper, and a clock ticks in a minute urgency. Oikawa freezes before unwinding.

Somewhere, deep into the house, a camera goes click. Someone hums out a sigh, not just any someone, and Oikawa follows the sound of him.

“Oh, that’s not right, either.”

When he finds him, him, of all people, he’s standing in the place they once laid together, cities to rise and cities to fall, a bed of forget-me-nots under him. Sugawara Koushi turns, still in his Karasuno uniform, blazer off as a recent graduate , and meets Oikawa with a lens to the face. He lowers the camera altogether, both of them with their breaths held, their faces caught in the clearness of day, and offers that smile, daring. Oikawa takes the challenge, ever willing, like he’s waited the course of a million dreams for this, but no , no, this isn’t a dream—

“Hi,” Sugawara says.

This isn’t—

Oikawa plucks a forget-me-not from the bed between them, and it takes him nothing, this time, to close the distance. Hands come to close the gap, and Oikawa leans in, hushed, to kiss him.

“Hi.”

And at once he knows this isn’t a dream. Never a dream. Better than a dream.

Not one come true, but a life ready to begin.