Chapter Text
That face had haunted his dreams forever.
Till couldn't remember the first time in his dreams he'd seen the pale boy with jet-black hair and equally black, piercing eyes with small red specks in the middle. He felt as if this unknown figure had been with him since birth, perhaps even longer. And he'd grown up with him, because he remembered well that as a child, the boy in his dreams had been his age, maybe a bit older. And now, as Till was turning 21, his dreams were haunted by a handsome, confident man who no longer resembled that awkward, slightly weird child.
And although he dreamed of him often, he never remembered much of what this unknown figure did in these dreams. Mostly, he saw him just staring at him.
And whenever Till tried to look away from him, he woke up with a pain in his chest.
At first, Till didn't think it was strange. He was simply happy that at least in his dreams he had someone he could call a friend. It made him feel less lonely, because he knew that somewhere in his head there was always this strange little boy, even if he didn't always see him in his dreams.
Over time, however, Till began to grow up and understand that it wasn't normal to constantly dream about someone you'd never seen in person.
And it was even more frustrating when Till began to realize just how handsome the man in his dreams was.
At one point, he even began to think he might have seen him online or on TV, because this guy clearly had the potential to become an idol. But that wasn't possible. He'd "known" this person his whole life.
And now this person was making him feel something he couldn't define.
He hated these feelings that were confusing him.
That's why his salvation was Mizi, whom he'd met in high school.
A beautiful, cheerful girl to whom people were drawn like a moth to a flame.Till couldn't resist her charm.
And for some reason, this kind, warm person wanted to be his friend.
"I feel like we were friends in a previous life!" she told him once with a broad smile, and Till knew then that he would do anything for her.
It was so easy to fall in love with Mizi.
"Why do you like me so much, Till?" She asked him one day.
Till was surprised and embarrassed by this direct question. Mizi always acted as if she was unaware of Till's feelings. But apparently she simply had to hide it. After all, it was obvious for everyone.
Because thanks to you I don't have to think about him, Till thought immediately, but he couldn't say it aloud.
"Because… you're pretty." He said after a minute. It was true, but the moment he said it, he knew he'd made a mistake.
He clearly saw Mizi's lip twitch and a shadow appear in her eyes. He couldn't take his words back, though.
But it quickly passed, and she returned to her cheerful self.
Till preferred not to dwell on it. Apparently, there were things they both wanted to keep to themselves.
He knew Mizi would never return his feelings, but that didn't bother him at all.
"I don't like men like that, Till. I see myself with a woman." She said it as if she knew the kind of woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
Till wasn't surprised. From the moment he met her and fell in love, he knew deep down that their relationship would never develop into a romantic one.
"I know." He replied. "But let me continue to adore you, because..." He couldn't finish the sentence. He couldn't say that he needed someone in his life, that he needed a light to keep him grounded, and not to resort to something that didn't really exist.
She just nodded at him. As if she knew those feelings would help Till.
When he focused on Mizi, it was much easier to avoid thinking about his complicated feelings for a boy who didn't exist. And it was easy to navigate around someone like Mizi.
As he grew increasingly engrossed in his unrequited feelings, the boy appeared less and less in his dreams.
At first, he felt relieved. At some point in his life, he hated all these dreams because they confused him. The boy's gaze began to unsettle him. And Till always reacted with anger to anything unfamiliar, a fact his mother constantly pointed out.
So, as another dreamless night passed, he found himself hoping that he would finally be normal, not someone clinging to someone who didn't exist.
But then, when a month had passed without a single dream, Till felt it fully.
The longing.
The boy from his dreams had always been with him. And now, when he hadn't been able to see that face for so long, he felt restless. As if something certain and necessary were missing from his life.
It felt wrong.
When it finally hit him, he quickly reached for his sketchbook and pencil. He had to see that face, even if he had to draw it himself.
He started with the outline of the face, but after a few nervous strokes with his pencil, he stopped.
He closed his eyes, trying to remember that face he had seen almost every night before, the image that should always be present in his mind.
He realized with horror that he couldn't see it clearly in his imagination.
When he was younger, he often drew the boy from his dreams. His mother laughed at him for drawing his imaginary friend. It was partly true, but Till didn't care. He was glad he could draw well enough to at least transport the boy of his dreams into his own world.
And now he couldn't even remember him. He couldn't imagine the person he'd previously drawn with his eyes closed.
Frantically, he began searching for old drawings, just to remind himself of what the boy had looked like a few years ago.
He pulled out an old sketchbook from under his bed, which, to his surprise, was filled exclusively with drawings of the boy.
Till felt his chest tighten at the sight.
"Come back, please, don't leave me." He whispered desperately, gently touching the face of the boy he'd drawn.
He didn't know how long he sat on the floor, absorbing every detail of the childlike face of his oldest friend, who didn't exist.
At some point, he must have fallen asleep, snuggling into the sketchbook.
His prayers were answered. Till’s soul yearned so much to see this boy that it had to call out to him. Like in the old days, when Till felt bad, a familiar face would appear, bringing him comfort.
In the morning, he woke up with tears in his eyes.
Something irrevocably changed within him then. He accepted some of the feelings he couldn't understand, changing his attitude towards two people who were unattainable for him.
And from then on, he began obsessively painting the boy of his dreams, whose face he could not allow himself to forget.
The black-haired, handsome men looked even more handsome in white. Yet, for some reason, the sight brought tears to Till's eyes.
Yet he persevered and steadily applied white paint to the canvas of his latest portrait.
He was so focused that he didn't hear the door opening, and only Mizi's voice broke him from his trance.
"Till, are you painting your boyfriend again?"
He jumped in place and turned to his friend, feeling a blush forming on his face.
"He’s not my boyfriend!" Till exclaimed, his reaction earning a laugh from the girl.
"What else should I call him?" She asked, tilting her head like a curious puppy.
Till had no answer. He never wanted to give the boy in his dreams a name, because it seemed inappropriate.
He looked away, rinsed his brush and paused the painful ballad playing from his phone. He would finish painting later.
Till usually felt uneasy when someone watched him paint. Sometimes he let Mizi look over his shoulder, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else should be in her place.
"He’ll look wonderful." She said. "Although I do like the pictures of your boyfriend smiling like a real prince."
Till grimaced. He knew exactly which paintings she was talking about, and he didn’t share her opinion. He believed that in most of these images, the dream boy's smile was fake. He didn't know why he kept getting these images, but he had a feeling the learned smile somehow suited the man. As if he'd been faking it all along, which was why Till couldn't figure him out.
He shook his head. He didn't want to think about it. After all, he wasn't a real person.
"I think you'll like this painting the most." Till said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into the corner of the room.
Since he'd somewhat recovered from his crush on Mizi, it had become much easier for him to initiate touch.
When he showed her the still-wet painting, she covered her mouth with her hands and squealed.
"That's her! My goddess from dreams!" She screamed, her gaze riveting on his newly completed work — a pale girl with short, black hair and violet eyes.
That was the main reason Till could actually believe he and Mizi could be friends in a past life — they both dreamed of people they'd never met.
When he finally accepted that he would be doomed to dream about this mysterious boy for the rest of his life, because he wouldn't be able to part with him, something changed in his attitude toward Mizi. The girl, aware that their relationship had changed somewhat, opened up more to him and began to tell him that for as long as she could remember, she had been dreaming of the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. That was why she had never dated anyone, because her heart belonged to the girl she believed she would surely meet someday.
Then Till dared to show her images of the boy from his dreams and told her that he had always dreamed of him. Mizi, that pure soul, began squealing with excitement.
She was really into it all. She once asked him to sketch the girl from her dreams, according to her description, which was fun because Till felt a bit like a police sketch artist drawing a portrait of a criminal from a witness's description.
Of course, he gave her the sketch, but first he took a photo of it so he could use it as a reference when painting the actual picture for Mizi.
The girl had various theories as to why they had these dreams. She believed most strongly that they saw their soulmates in their dreams. However, she didn't rule out the theory that something had happened between them and the people from their dreams in their past lives, leaving a permanent mark on their souls, which is why they haunt them in their dreams.
She was absolutely convinced that they were real. That they were destined to meet one day.
Till, who didn't know if he believed in past lives, soulmates or alternate universes, also doubted that the boy who constantly haunted his dreams was a real living person.
However, he didn't have the heart to share his thoughts with Mizi, because he didn't want to dash her hope.
"The paint still has to dry, but you can take her home tomorrow." He said, smiling.
Mizi, squealing, threw herself at Till, hugging him tightly.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she repeated excitedly.
He felt his face heat up.
The crush on Mizi would probably never completely disappear.
When she pulled away, he cleared his throat awkwardly and said:
"You’re welcome. Will you give me five minutes to change, and then we'll go to the concert?"
Mizi, who was once again devouring the girl in the painting, just nodded.
Till smiled sadly. On the one hand, he envied Mizi's naive belief that she would one day see the girl of her dreams. On the other, he worried that it would all turn out to be one big disappointment.
"Did you see the post that Navi was thinking about revealing his face?" Mizi asked as they walked toward the Sejong Center for a piano concert. Till mostly enjoyed harder music, which Mizi wasn’t particularly fond of, but he didn’t shy away from other genres. If he weren’t so absorbed in painting, which he really loved, he’d probably want to try his hand at music too.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. Navi was an online musician he’d discovered around the time he finally accepted the need for his dream boy. He wanted to play some music while painting another picture of him and this artist popped up in his Spotify recommendations. When he heard his first song, he was completely hooked. The melodies seemed familiar to his soul and the words struck straight to his heart. The deep voice put him in a trance while painting, which for some reason was all too often accompanied by tears. Out of curiosity, he wanted to learn more about the musician, but there was no information or photos of him. He hid behind a pseudonym and a cute rabbit avatar.
"I didn’t see it. Honestly, just listening to his music is completely enough for me; I don’t need to know what he looks like."
"Aren't you curious?" She asked, surprised. "I bet he's a very beautiful man. Someone with a voice like that must have the appearance of an angel." She clapped her hands in a moment of revelation. "Maybe he's even your dream boy! That voice would totally suit him!"
Till laughed.
"You see the possibility of finding them everywhere." He said, amused. Recently Mizi had dragged him to some plant fair because she was convinced that her beloved (who was as beautiful as a rose ) must like plants and such an event might attract her.
Of course, they didn't find the girl, but Till returned with a small cactus, which he quickly killed.
"I have to hope for both of us, since you refuse to acknowledge that he might actually exist in our reality."
Till sighed. He loved his friend, but they would never agree on this matter.
"It's just..." He began, but Mizi's exclamation interrupted him.
"Oh!"
She jumped up and ran to a nearby bench.
"What happened?" He asked, quickly approaching her.
"A pebble!" She said excitedly, showing her a small pebble with some red flowers painted on it. She pulled out her phone and, shifting from foot to foot, quickly copied something from the pebble.
"Wow, this pebble came all the way from Busan!" She said excitedly. "This really is my lucky day." She laughed happily. She turned on the camera and took a picture of the pebble on her hand. She tapped something on her phone, but at some point she stopped typing and turned back to Till.
"Where is that guy from who commissioned a painting from you for his wife’s birthday?" She asked.
"Cheongju?" He said, his voice almost questioning.
"Can I go with you?" She folded her hands as if in prayer. "I know I could ask you to leave it yourself, but this is the first pebble I've found, and I wanted to take it myself."
Till totally knew what she meant.
"Sure, whatever you want." He said, because he would have agreed to anything Mizi asked him. "But can you explain this to me?" He pointed to the pebble she was holding.
Mizi's eyes widened in obvious surprise.
"Haven't you heard about this?" Her voice had become squeaky.
"About what?" He asked, confused. Mizi was always surprised when he couldn't keep up with trends. She should get used to his awkwardness in this matter.
"So, there's a community on Facebook..."
"Do people still use Facebook?" He interrupted, clearly surprised.
"Shush!" She shushed him. "You don't have the right to speak, you don't even have a TikTok. And you only use the company Instagram."
Well, she wasn’t lying.
"Anyway, there's this community on Facebook where people paint the pebbles, tag them with the postal code of their town, and place it somewhere. Someone else finds the pebble, takes a picture, posts it to a Facebook group with the appropriate tag, adding the postal code to make it easier to find, and moves this pebble to another location, preferably another town. And so on and on. This way, their pebble travels, and you can follow its journey."
Till tried to calmly process all the information. Once he had everything sorted out, he nodded, indicating that he understood.
"I admit, it's an interesting idea." He said honestly. In his opinion, any campaign that promoted art was worthy of attention. Mizi nodded vigorously and waved the pebble in his face again.
"This pebble comes all the way from Busan!" Dhe repeated excitedly.
Now he fully understood her delight. It was almost 300 kilometers, if he knew correctly. He'd never been there, though, which made him realize that the pebble Mizi had found had probably been to many more places than he had.
"It's amazing how far a pebble like that can go. And even more amazing is that some people turn these pebbles into true works of art." She said, examining the pebble in her hand closely.
"I don't even know what these flowers are. They look familiar, but I couldn't tell what they are."
Till looked over her shoulder at the pebble. The painted red flowers did remind him of something, but he couldn't say what. There was something about them that caught his eye.
Suddenly, Mizi jumped, as if she'd had some kind of epiphany. "You should do this too!" She said excitedly, placing a pebble in his hand.
"What?" He asked, surprised, turning the pebble over in his hand. On the other side, someone had written in marker the postal code and the name of the group where the photo should be shared.
"You're an artist! You could paint something on the stone, write our postal code, and then we could watch its journey in the group. Maybe it'll even travel abroad!" She took the pebble from him and turned it over in her hand.
He wouldn't have dared to do something like that himself, but seeing how much Mizi liked the idea, he couldn't refuse her.
"Why not? I haven't painted on stone yet, and maybe I should start with other materials. Maybe that will help me get more clients." A vision was already forming in his mind. Maybe he could actually do it? And the next step would be the mural he'd always dreamed of. He could already see the outline of several young figures walking ahead in his mind.
Mizi started jumping and clapping with excitement.
"You absolutely must paint your boy on your rock! I won't accept anything less for the first time!"
Till choked on his own saliva.
"What? No! No way!" His voice cracked as he screamed.
"I know you don't want to share your boyfriend with anyone, but you could let him travel a bit!" The girl insisted.
"No way!" He choked out. It was embarrassing. Mizi kept pointing out that he'd painted tons of pictures of this man, but he never posted them on his social media, as if he wanted to keep him to himself. He simply considered him as something personal, known only to him, his mother, and Mizi - his only friend. A friend who believed the world deserved to see such a beautiful man.
Except Till didn't necessarily want others to look at this boy too. Maybe he was possessive, which was irrational, but he didn’t care.
"You mainly paint him anyway. If you're going to start painting on stones, you can start with him." The girl wouldn't let go.
"Mizi..." He shook his head, blushing. "You're just hoping the stone will fall into the hands of someone who knows this guy... The guy who doesn't exist." He emphasized.
"I'm sure he exists! Just like my dream girl!" She insisted.
This was really going in the wrong direction.
"Maybe I'll paint her first..." He tried.
She shook her head.
"This will be your pebble, so you should paint something close to your heart yourself. I'll try to paint her on my rock myself."
"But Mizi..." He wanted to remind her that she was terrible at painting and that this dream girl would probably look more like a panda than a woman, but he didn't dare.
"Please, please, please!" She looked at him with those big eyes of hers. "Trust me, I have a very good feeling."
"Just like you had a really good feeling about the plant fair?" He couldn't help himself. He really didn't feel like sharing the image of his dream boyfriend with random people.
Mizi grimaced, a look he didn't often see on her perpetually smiling face. He immediately regretted what he'd said.
"Oh shit, forgive me, Mizi…"
"I'll forgive you if you do it." She said in a tone of voice he'd never heard from her before. "You hurt my feelings. I really believed I'd find her there, but all I found was a begonia that died after a week. I was crying, Till!" She grabbed his arm and started shaking him. "And now you remind me about it! You have to make it up to me and paint that boy on a rock." He was fully aware that Mizi was manipulating him. But he couldn't tell her no, especially not when she looked at him with those big eyes which were watering.
He knew Mizi could cry on command, and that she probably did so now, but this woman had far too much power over him and was fully aware of it.
And Till, like the fool he was, would do anything for her.
"Okay, fine." He said with a sigh, already regretting his decision.
"Yay!" Mizi shouted, raising her fist in victory. "Now we can go to the concert." She added, tucking the stone into her purse and walking towards the Sejong Center as if nothing had happened.
Till was too weak. But his excuse was that no one could resist Mizi, and anyone would do anything she asked.
Although Till had been painting since childhood and had been earning money from his creations for several years, he had to admit that painting on a stone the size of sushi was quite a challenge.
He looked through the group Mizi had told him about, and indeed, some people were really talented. It was incredible that some people could create true landscapes in such a small space.
He felt motivated to try his hand at it too.
Till put on a playlist of Navi's songs and focused on painting. He could already see the face of the boy from his dream he wanted to immortalize on the stone.
"Shall we leave your boyfriend at the station?" Mizi asked when he told her his stone was ready. She'd left the one she found in Cheongju, as planned, and now she was constantly checking the Facebook group to see if anyone had found it yet.
"Mizi, that sounds bad." He said, clutching the stone tightly in his hand.
He couldn't believe he was doing it.
"But that's where he'll have the most opportunities to go out into the world. I regret choosing such an unconventional place for my stone, I didn’t see any updates yet."
"Or no one added a photo and they just kept this pebble." He said pessimistically.
"Or the next person will take a picture, when the current finder leaves it somewhere else."
Always optimistic.
He shook his head and headed toward the station.
"Did you take a picture of him?" She asked, curiosity in her voice.
"Of course."
He had to keep the image of this guy. This was the first time he'd let him out into the world, which made him feel uneasy, and he had to have it, at least in the form of a photograph.
He placed the pebble on one of the benches in the nearly empty waiting room. He looked at the painted image one last time and rubbed the painted boy’s cheek with his index finger, wishing him to find the right place.
"I have a good feeling, Till. I believe you're doing something groundbreaking that might surprise us." She said in a soaring voice.
Till, always skeptical of everything, almost believed her in a surge of some strange feeling.
And when he dreamed of this boy again that night, smiling genuinely for the first time in ages, Till did indeed feel a surge of hope, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was hoping for.