Chapter Text
“Hyung, when we are born again promise me you will meet me again. Maybe then they would let us stay together.” The trembling hand of the dying man reached for Hao, a small smile on his hazy but bloody face.
“Don’t say that, please. Stay with me please, love. Don’t close your eyes, I’ll try to get some help, just keep your eyes open.” Hao’s voice cracked at least five times trying his best to keep the hazy man’s multiple slashes from bleeding out. His own bloodied royal silk ripped to tend the wounds.
“Hyung… Mend your own wound first, the world without you would be… awful for everyone alive.” The shaky hand fell unconsciously. The faint image of his eyes shutting down simultaneously.
Zhang Hao woke up in a cold sweat on his very messy bed filled with assignments and an open laptop. He must have fell asleep while doing his work.
However, the work he was doing was the least of his concern for his dream that he just saw now thoroughly messed him up. This was the third time Hao saw a dream like this.
A few days ago, when he fell asleep at Kuanjui’s he saw the mysterious man calling him ‘Hyung’ for the first time. Though the contents of that dream very vastly different, the ending had a similar tone of him being separated from the mysterious man he felt like he was in love with.
These dreams were devastatingly tragic for Hao. What he felt for that man in the dreams were something he had never felt for anyone in real life. But what sucked more than those dreams were the fact he never saw the younger man’s face clearly. It was always a blurry face.
As stupid as it sounded but Hao found his dream self to be deeply in love with a man who he doesn’t know the face or name of. And no matter how much he tried to separate it from his real life, these dreams had started affecting his personal life.
With shaky hands Hao picked up his phone and called Kuanjui. An unknowing tear left his eye when the contents of the dream seeped in. This time the dream felt even more real that it felt before and quite a bit more painful too.
“Hao I am literally in the next room you can just come here instead of calling me at six in the morning.” Kuanjui answered from the other side of the phone voice visibly annoyed and still very sleepy.
“Jui, can you come to my room? I saw another dream, its worse.” Hao whispered into the call still digesting what he had seen in his dream.
Less than a minute later Kuanjui barged into the room. “Do you wanna talk about it?” Hao nodded as Kuanjui settled down beside him.
“What happened? Did you see his face?” Hao shook his head and started speaking after swallowing a lump inside his throat.
“I did not see his face or get his name but it felt too real this time. I was holding him when he was bleeding. I could feel his hands on my face when he reached out. I felt the wetness of the blood in my hands. He died in my arms.” Hao choked up while saying the last few words.
“Hey it’s fine. Take a breath. Do you remember anything else? Like where you were and what was happening?” Kuanjui caressed his friend’s hand slowly trying to comfort him.
“We were in the woods, I think. It was dark and it felt like we were trying to run away. We were both wearing expensive looking clothes but the style was very different from Korean or Chinese traditional wear. It was something I had never seen before. I don’t even know if exists or I just made it up. But it was pretty clear that we both came from similar backgrounds. Someone attacked the both of us but his injuries were way more serious that mine.”
Hao took a deep breath again, unable to speak any further. The two previous occurrences might have ended in tragic separation, none ended in death or felt this real. The others still felt like dreams while this felt like he lived it.
“Hao. It’s alright. Don’t let this get to your head alright? You probably felt it more because you were stressed and get a little more emotional. I am pretty dure things will get better when the semester ends.”
Hao nodded a part of him hoping that there is an end to this but a smaller part of him wanted to know more. He wanted to know who this mysterious younger man is who he seemed to be irreparably in love with in every other dream universe.
-o-
It did not end with the semester end. He dreamt two other times after that day though these were a little tamer and a bit more distant.
But one thing that did happen was an increase in storyline. Many of the dreams he had recently weren’t just centred around him and the mysterious man.
Now they were expanding beyond just the two of them and showed more people whose face Hao could finally see.
He even got to know the names of a few who appeared more than once. There was the tall puppy looking guy called Gyuvin, who is sometimes Hao’s friend or the mysterious man’s younger brother.
There was the Yujin, an adult who was babied by all the others, sometimes considered Hao’s non biological kid.
There was also another Chinese man named Quanrui or Ricky. He was usually blonde and was almost always found with Gyuvin though probably not out of his own wishes.
There were four others whose face Hao remembers but he never really caught their names. So, in total he saw 8 complete strangers in his dreams across multiple nights but he still couldn’t catch a hint of the mysterious man who his dream self seems to be madly in love with.
Hao sighed while taking a sip of iced coffee—a choice he had to make to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep in the middle of his very boring elective lecture—while simultaneously aggressively typing on his laptop that doesn’t deserve this harsh treatment.
Honestly, Hao did not care about what happened to his devices because his mind was clouded by the repeated chant of “Hyung” in a strangely melodious but haunting voice.
If Hao had to physically describe the dream man without overly glazing his appearance, he would still sound like a liar. The man was almost the same height as him maybe just shy of a single centimetre, younger by what he had collected over the course of almost two months of horrifyingly beautiful dreams.
Hao had given him the nickname ‘Bean’ very lovingly because the amount of time he used to melt into dream Hao’s arms reminded him of overly cooked beans in a hot pot.
‘Bean’ had dark hair like him and was most definitely not Chinese by what he had collected. He had a voice like honey and had a way of his word’s literature would fail to explain.
Above all he had the same overly amazing personality in every universe. As if he was created exactly according to the entries of a ‘perfect man’ survey.
Always polite, never let Hao do anything by himself, complimented him every five minutes and grazed his cheek gently like he is made out of a delicate and rare silk from the far lands.
Safe to say if Hao had an ideal type ‘Bean’ would check all his boxes. Strange enough for him to say when he had never even seen his face.
Hao used to care about looks back when he was a teenager but after having his heart shattered more than once by good looking but shitty guys, he did not care.
Hao will not even deny now that he had developed a liking for ‘Bean’ despite him only appearing in Hao’s dreams. If people can have crushes on fictional people that don’t exist in real life, he was allowed to like a guy from his dreams who was devoted to his dream self.
When Hao tried to take another sip from his coffee and found nothing but a bit of condensed ice, he finally stood up to order tea. Coffee is not going to do anything for his headache anyway.
“Excuse me can I have an iced tea with no sugar.” Hao said looking up at the barista who had his back turned to him. Then something straight out of a movie happened.
“Sure, I will get that for you in a minute.” The very handsome barista gave his polite customer service trained smile. Though that was not what Hao cared about at the moment because this is not the first time, he had seen this gorgeous man.
Well, Hao only saw him in his dream. He was one of the four people he didn’t get the name of but Hao remembers calling him ‘Hyung’ in one random conversation.
The Barista, ‘Jiwoong’ as his name tag suggested waved at Hao when he saw his stunned face with wide eyes and a gaping mouth that just couldn’t shut. “Is there anything else you needed?”
Hao, now visibly embarrassed, closed his mouth and shook his head. “No sorry I don’t need anything else. I just thought you look familiar.”
Jiwoong just smiled and muttered a short “Its alright” before going back to his work.
But it wasn’t alright. Jiwoong should not exist I real life. He is just supposed to be a character Hao made up in his fantasy novel type of tragic dream. All of the eight people are supposed to be a fragment of is imagination not real, living people who work in cafés for God’s sake.
In no way, shape or form was Hao ready for this turn of events. He was half convinced he is still dreaming until he got zapped by the static on his sweater.
Looking back at the counter, Jiwoong was still there. Handsome, real and exactly like in his dreams.
Having no other options Hao packed up his things collected his iced tea and called the only person he could lean on. “Jui, something happened.”
-o-
“So, you saw the hot vampire guy in real life?” Kuanjui raised an eyebrow at his best friend who munched on a durian flavoured bun (rare find, he stocked up a dozen) while having a rather pathetic confused face.
“Is he a vampire though?” Kuanjui did not follow up with the question because of how quickly he got smacked in the head.
“He was a vampire in one dream, stop milking it. Now can we talk about actual important stuff? Jiwoong is not supposed to be real!! There are more chances of him being a vampire than him being a real person.”
“Hao, I think you might be overthinking it. Sometimes you see a face once and subconsciously see them in your dreams even if they are a stranger. You probably just bumped into him on the road or something. You only saw his face anyway. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
Hao just nodded, in denial himself. A part of him still questioned the entire incident but this was the best explanation he could have gotten that wouldn’t drive him insane.
“Gosh I don’t know if I can even sleep tonight, I have to spend the entire day at the library tomorrow for research. I’m going to be drowsy all day!” Hao whined as Kuanjui softly patted his back.
-o-
The library is supposed to be a calm place, and most of the time it is. Unfortunately, at the time of high school finals the library is more tense than a locker room of a girls’ volleyball tournament.
Hao did not have a choice though so as every other senior in college he searched through the very mismanaged library section to find the correct book for his essay.
“Excuse me, do you know where I can find a high school calculus text book? I checked the section but I think they did not organize it properly.” A figure around the same height as him called the crouching Hao.
Hao looked up to find a familiar face that he did not register until the boy called him out "Hyung?”
Hao froze for a moment
The boy in front of him was none other than Yujin from his dreams. But this was worse than the accident with Jiwoong because what do you mean he knew Hao?
“Sorry, I don’t know what came to my mind, we don’t even know each other.” Yujin apologised, looking even more confused than Hao. Understandable given the amount of overthinking that goes through a teenager’s mind.
“It’s alright. The library recently got rid of many older books that will be replaced next week so your book might have been a part of that lot. Sorry.” Hao smiled awkwardly, shutting down his very loud inner monologue.
“Alright then thank you for your help.” Hao didn’t know what happened to him when he saw Yujin’s slightly disappointed face, his almost parental instincts overpowering his thoughts.
“If you want, I can help you out. I used to have calculus back in high school so I remember quite a bit.” Hao stood up to now be face to face with the younger.
“You would?” The joy on Yujin’s face when he saw Hao nodding was so priceless to Hao that he understood why everyone babied Yujin in his dreams. He doesn’t even know the kid but he still had this strong urge to protect him from every bad thing in the world.
Surprisingly, Hao did better in explaining than he thought he would. Yujin actually got help from Hao. Did the time he spent explaining maths to a high school kid pile up an assignment for Hao? Yeah, but he got to know about his son… sorry Yujin.
“Thank you for helping me out Hao hyung. If it wasn’t for you, I would have had to go through detention for not completing my homework.” Hao smiled at the younger full of adoration.
“How are you going home? It's pretty late Yujin.” Hao’s voice was laced with concern. When they were walking out of the library, the sun had already set long ago.
“Oh, don’t worry. My cousin is here to pick me up. I’ll go now Hao Hyung. Thank you again, have a good night!” Yujin waved at Hao before running towards a raven-haired man with a cat-like smile probably Yujin’s cousin.
“Cute.” Hao muttered under his breath then quickly came back to his senses because he had bigger problems to solve than find a man attractive.
Trying to ignore Yujin’s cousin, Hao focused on Yujin again because from what he figured there was something way deeper about his dreams.
He had a connection with the people who appeared in his sleep, beyond just dreams. If it wasn’t that, Yujin’s first reaction to him and his almost natural instinct towards the younger wouldn’t have happened.
“I’m so fucked.”