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Sea lived with hypnagogia—those vivid images and sounds that blur the line between waking and dreaming.
Rather than resisting them, he used the phenomenon as fuel for his novels.
He treated his dreams like fieldwork: carefully selecting prompts, cataloging impressions, and searching for a scene that matched the tone he wanted to write.
When he found a prompt online named “Dream”— promising a recurring encounter with a familiar unknown — he felt oddly satisfied.
He fell into sleep that night with the intention to study, to feel, to file away every nuance.
He opened his eyes into an untamed landscape: the sunset had been steeped in saffron, the fields shimmered olive-green, and birds threaded the air with distant calls.
He sat beside someone he hadn’t noticed at first — a man who returned his gaze with the same quiet attention.
“I’m Sea. Who are you? Uh, what happened to your face?” Sea blurted, pointing to a pale scar.
“Jimmy,” the man said softly. “It’s from an accident.”
Sea nodded and allowed the panorama to swallow him for a moment.
Then, as if to puncture the seriousness, he asked, “Don’t you get bored? We could play something.”
Jimmy brightened. “I have Uno,” he said, producing the cards with an easy cheerfulness.
Sea shuffled, made a show of confidence, and luck seemed to side with him — a +4 card landed in his hand and he laughed at the silly fortune.
They played until the sun had tired; they laughed, teased each other, and let the afternoon become a single, long breath.
They left their sandals on the mat and raced across the low hills, breathless and reckless like children.
Later, as golden light softened their faces, they lay on the grass and watched the sky.
“Sunsets are majestic, isn't it?" Jimmy said. “Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Sea answered, but Jimmy fell suddenly silent. The quiet widened until Sea broke it.
“Did I say something wrong?” Sea asked.
“No.” Jimmy’s voice trembled. Tears leaked from his eyes before Sea could understand why.
Sea pulled him close, ashamed and startled by the intimacy his own clumsy words had forced.
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy sobbed, and Sea tried to dry his face, but Jimmy’s palm stopped him.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispered.
Sea awoke with the weight of guilt sitting in his chest like a small, hard stone.
He showered, dressed, and tried to write, but the morning’s images clung to him.
He deleted and rewrote the same sentence for half an hour, each revision failing to wash away the apology he felt he owed.
Dusk slipped in before he noticed. He washed again and hoped sleep would restore him to the dream where he could put things right.
That night he sobbed until exhaustion pulled him under.
When he returned to the saffron light, Jimmy was alive and playful — flying a kite, laughing in the way Sea had come to love in dreams.
Sea ran to him and whispered the apology he had practiced.
Jimmy smiled and accepted it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
They sat on the grass and talked.
Jimmy told Sea he was a photographer who used to run a small studio in the city until technology and economy dry-rot had closed it.
He invited Sea to his house to see old cameras and prints.
Another day, at their usual spot, Jimmy lay back on the grass, folding his arms behind his head, while Sea scribbled on a small notebook he had brought with him while eating the noodles from a street vendor nearby and sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves which was so good Sea thinks he can have five of it.
The scratch of the pen caught Jimmy’s attention.
“You’re always writing,” Jimmy remarked with a smile.
“Even here, you can’t escape it, huh?”
Sea paused, tapping the pen against the page. “It’s not that I can’t escape it. It’s that writing is the only thing that keeps me alive. When the world feels too empty… I build another one. I fill it with voices, moments, people I wish existed.”
He glanced at Jimmy. “People like you.”
Jimmy blinked, caught off guard. “Me?”
Sea nodded, a little shy. “You don’t realize it, but you’re becoming part of my stories. Every word I write lately has pieces of you — the way you laugh, the way you look at the sky, even the way you shuffle cards like you’re plotting to win.”
Jimmy chuckled, shaking his head. “So I’m your character now? What if you write me wrong?”
Sea smirked. “Then you’ll just have to correct me in the next dream.”
Jimmy grew quiet, watching Sea’s hand move again across the page.
"You know,” he said softly, “I think that’s beautiful. That even if the world takes things from you, you still create. You still choose to give something back. If you ever finish that story, I’d like to read it — especially if I’m in it.”
Sea’s pen slowed. “You already are. Every chapter starts with you, whether you realize it or not.”
Jimmy squeezed Sea’s hand and told him he’d have a promising future.
When Sea woke the next morning, he felt inexplicably buoyed. He wrote for hours — the pages flowed as if the dream had been a faucet finally opened.
A publisher read his draft and praised it; Sea felt the strange, electric happiness of a work that finally fit.
That night, when Sea drifted back into sleep, he found himself in the dreamscape again — the saffron skies stretching wide above them, the fields rolling endlessly like a sea of green.
But this time, the dream was alive with laughter.
Jimmy had brought a kite, its tail fluttering wildly as he ran across the grass.
“Come on, Sea! You’re too slow!” he shouted, grinning over his shoulder.
Sea groaned, half-laughing as he chased him. “You’re cheating! You’ve got longer legs!”
They collapsed onto the ground after minutes of running, both of them gasping for air between fits of laughter.
The kite danced high above them, catching the colors of the sky as it dipped and soared.
“See?” Jimmy said, nudging Sea with his elbow.
“Life isn’t always about sadness or guilt. Sometimes, it’s just about… this.”
Sea lay back, staring at the sky painted with streaks of gold and rose.
“I don’t remember the last time I laughed like this,” he admitted softly.
Jimmy turned to look at him. “Then promise me you’ll keep laughing. Even if I’m not here to make you.”
Sea hesitated, then smiled. “I’ll try. But I’d rather you be here.”
Later, they built a small bonfire by the edge of the hills. Jimmy roasted marshmallows — badly, burning most of them — while Sea teased him relentlessly.
They told stories, shared secrets, and when the stars blinked awake above them, Sea felt the dream shift from a simple fantasy into something real.
Something he wanted to keep.
That night, under the glowing arc of the sky, Sea realized that Jimmy wasn’t just a character in his dreams anymore.
He was becoming a part of him— someone he wanted to protect, someone who made his lonely world feel whole again.
Another morning, Sea is in an unfamiliar place, and the unmistakable sound of a camera shutter made his heart jump.
Jimmy was nearby, carrying a stack of cameras toward him.
“These are mine,” Jimmy said, offering them with a shy pride.
“Use them. The prints are inside.”
Sea’s fingers trembled as he lifted the top camera.
“Is this… a Canon EOS 5D?” he asked, fumbling to hide his awe.
Jimmy nodded. “It’s my favorite.”
Sea thumbed through the pictures. There, among city lights and rooftops, was a photograph of himself — smiling alongside Jimmy.
The image was so real and intimate that Sea flung the camera away in shock and fainted.
He awoke in a hospital bed with his parents by his side.
Confusion gave way to a more terrible blank, he couldn’t remember the accident.
His mother’s tears answered the questions for him. “You fainted,” she said worriedly.
"Who is He?" Sea demanded a name.
“Jimmy.” His father cried knowing that his son's memory have come back.
“You were with your him." his mother sobbed.
“There was a car accident. Jimmy didn’t make it. You’re the only one who survived.”
The world tilted.
Sea’s mind moved through foggy frames of conversation that weren’t his and photographs that felt more real than the sterile white room.
His parents, who had once helped him become a writer, were proud of the books he produced — novels that readers found heartbreakingly true — but they had never accepted Jimmy.
“Can he support you?” they had asked once, voices like cold knives. The couple’s tension had bruised something delicate in both men.
Due to the constant upbringing of the couples faith, both of them fought for days.
Trying to mend what had frayed between them, Jimmy suggested they escape to Sea’s late grandmother’s hometown.
For five days, they laughed again like they once had — tasting local delicacies, wandering the hills, and lying on the grass while the sun poured molten gold across the horizon.
They shared bowls of steaming noodles from a street vendor and sweet sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, teasing each other over who could handle the spiciest food.
In the mornings, they hiked up the rolling hills barefoot, the dew soaking their feet as they raced to see who could reach the top first.
Sea always lost, but Jimmy would wait for him with a triumphant grin and two cups of hot coffee from a nearby stall.
Afternoons were spent sprawled under the shade of an old acacia tree, swapping stories — Sea about his novels and the blank pages that sometimes haunted him, Jimmy about the photographs he wished he could still take.
At night, they lit small fires by the riverbank, their laughter echoing against the water as they roasted marshmallows and argued about who made the better storyteller.
The stars spread out endlessly above them, and sometimes Jimmy would grab Sea’s hand mid-laughter, holding it just a little too long, as if afraid that letting go would make the moment disappear.
The sunsets became their ritual.
Each evening, they would find a quiet spot on the hills and watch as the sky transformed into molten gold, soft pinks, and deep orange fire.
Sea often caught Jimmy staring not at the horizon but at him, and when their eyes met, Jimmy would quickly look away, embarrassed.
It was during one of those sunsets, the golden light soaking their faces, that Sea whispered, “I could live like this forever.”
Jimmy smiled faintly. “Then let’s make forever last at least five days.”
And so they did — five days that felt eternal, stitched into their hearts with laughter, warmth, and the fragile kind of happiness that made them believe nothing could break it.
It was mainly at sunset, especially, that they felt whole again, hand in hand, whispering promises that the world could not shake from them.
But the drive home carried shadows. Sea’s parents had been calling endlessly, their disapproval heavy even from afar.
Jimmy gripped the wheel too tightly, his knuckles white. The road stretched ahead, bathed in the last blush of the sun, sky turning amber and rose.
“Why can’t you slow down?” Sea pleaded, sensing the edge in Jimmy’s movements.
“I can’t,” Jimmy muttered, eyes locked on the road.
“I’m scared of your parents… scared they’ll take you away.”
The golden light spilled over their faces, warm and tender, even as their words trembled with fear.
Sea reached out and touched Jimmy’s arm.
“You won’t lose me. I’ll always be with you,” he said softly.
Jimmy finally looked at him, and in that instant — with the sunset framing them like a painting — they shared a fragile, desperate hug.
The world seemed suspended in that glow, a perfect photograph of love against the dying day.
And then, the screech of tires. Metal twisting. The golden sky shattered into darkness.
When Sea awoke in the hospital, Jimmy was gone. Only the memory of that sunset — their last moment together — remained, replaying endlessly in both dream and daylight.
Sea’s recollections, when they came, were jagged.
Jimmy had been a stubborn man, sacrificing his career for their relationship when Sea’s parents’ disapproval grew sharp and constant.
As grief, guilt, and a foggy void in his own identity conspired to make Sea carve an idea.
He hunted for the camera and found it on his bed, every scratch and sticker exactly as in the photograph.
Inside the roll were images he’d seen in his dream— the two of them laughing, running along the hills, holding each other like people who had nowhere to hide from one another’s truth.
The photos became Sea’s sacrament. When the images blurred into memory they cut him open and let the things he’d lost back in as pain and as tenderness.
He learned that Jimmy had not failed to try — he had tried until it broke him, until the world and the weight of other people’s expectations unstitched them both.
Sea continued to write — feverishly, painfully.
His novels, hauled from the small salvage of dreams, resonated with readers who felt the ache of loss and the awkward, luminous joy of being seen.
Yet the fame could not staunch the hollow where memory had been.
At night he returned to the saffron-dusk fields, pleading for a version of Jimmy who would forgive him, for resolution.
In daylight he boxed and unboxed the camera, staring at the print of himself with Jimmy that felt both like an evidence of their fluorescent love.
One evening, as rain began to wash the town’s dust into rivulets, Sea sat at his grandmother’s old kitchen table and placed a print face-up.
For the first time, he let himself speak aloud everything he’d been saving for his dreams.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice small in the empty house.
“I’m sorry I didn’t fight more. I’m sorry I let them tell me who to be. I’m sorry I wasn’t braver for you.”
The photograph, soaked in lamplight, seemed to answer with the quietness of memories that had always belonged to him.
He couldn’t bring Jimmy back. He could not undo the past. But with the camera, the prints, and the rooms of the dreams where Jimmy still smiled, Sea found a way to keep a life that was true to the man he had loved.
Months later, at a small launch where his latest book — the one that had grown from saffron fields and cards and a kite-string tugged in wind.
Sea stood in the doorway and felt, for the first time in a long while, as if two parts of him were stitched together.
The applause was distant; closer, at the edge of hearing, was the remembered click of a shutter and the certainty that some things, while gone, live on in what we make of them.
After the event, Sea walked alone, carrying the camera close to his chest.
The evening sky unfurled in gold, the same shade as in his dreams — saffron light dripping into olive shadows, the horizon painted in warmth.
For a moment, he swore Jimmy was beside him, gazing upward the same way he used to.
“Sunsets are indeed majestic,” Sea whispered to the air, recalling the words that had once broken into tears.
But this time, he smiled through the ache, as though Jimmy had answered back.
The golden skies seemed to embrace him, assuring him that love could stretch beyond memory, beyond even death.
He picked up the camera, long familiar now, and let his thumb rest on the same sun-sticker by the button.
He breathed, and in the quiet between breaths he imagined Jimmy’s laugh carried on the wind.
It was enough — not closure, perhaps, but permission: to remember, to write, and to keep loving across the thin border between being awake and being truly, finally free.