Chapter Text
A rooftop. A fiery orange sky, with the sun setting in the back. A warm body. A boyish voice. A head filled with dark brown curly hair. A face. But there’s no physical features.
A fleeting memory.
Get up.
Your eyes shoot open as if waking up from a nightmare that you’d rather forget. But that was no nightmare. Just a weird, indescribable dream—or at least that’s how you’d explain it. Darkness shrouds your eyes, yet you can still vividly see the colorful painted strokes in the sky and those brown curls.
It’s been four years since those dreams have been plaguing your mind. First time it happened? You just brushed it off and thought your brain was thinking of crazy things. However, when the same exact dream kept up popping up almost every night, that’s when you got concerned. Well, kind of. You did not consult any professionals about the occurrence but rather only told your friends about it and posted about it on social media—and yes, nobody in your life knew what was or why it was happening.
About a year into having the repeated dream, you came to conclusion that the universe is telling you that the man in your dream is actually your soulmate and one day you’ll meet him. You excitedly presented your idea to your roomates, MJ and Ned, and only Ned supported your realization while MJ lovingly said you’re partly delusional. But despite the “negativity”, you’d continue to believe in your proposal and by a few months, you’d been actively seeking out Dream Man. Or more like looking for men who may resemble him.
Your eyes blinked, and your gaze fell to your door then your clock. Twelve thirty-four AM. It’s only been three years since you’ve practically become a detective. Yeah, you’ve been at points where you think you should just give up, but you persevered and pushed through. Right now, though? You lost most hope, yet there’s still that special sliver of optimism residing in your heart. Maybe, just maybe, Dream Man is supposed to come to you rather than the opposite of you searching for him.
Ten more hours until you have to get up and be a productive human being whom no one pays attention to. Your ceiling stares back at you, even after you teared your eyes away from it. Maybe it’s trying to tell you something, but you’re not giving it the time. You’re told you never do that.
When those ten hours pass, you’re on the metro, hands in your lap like you’re waiting for something to happen. Now, your phone does nothing but bore you, slowly but surely disintegrating your brain into mush like every other human on this planet. You pick your head up and spot someone with her hair in a ponytail with a red jacket over her shoulders, and some blond guy is sitting across from you, his leg bouncing up and down. It isn’t much—you don’t think too hard about it, but every single time your eyes flick to their faces. It happens each time you go out: you search for Dream Man’s face in everyone. It sounds really stupid, but you swear if you find the right person, you’d instantly know it’s Dream Man—or at least you hypothesized you would.
No one on this subway is Dream Man. You never got your hopes up when getting on the train. Dream Man is one in a hundred thousand people living in New York. It’d be crazy to find him randomly one day, just taking the same train as you.
The train screeches to a halt, the noise of the wheels forcing themselves to stop being an assault to your ears. You get off the subway anyway, leaving without any thoughts.
A building stretches in front of you, begging out to you and praying for you to come in and do your job. Just some random merch shop squashed between a fine diner restaurant and a crappy apartment. You’ve been job surfing for ones that actually fit your profession, but unfortunately you have been left fruitless and empty handed. You tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes, you have no will to do it. Procrastination always gets the best of you.
You clock in, fix your hair, and put on your best customer service smile at the counter. Despite already knowing all your coworkers, you still search for Dream Man’s face. Nothing. As expected, even though you still are waiting for him to turn up. Instinct. You call it instinct to look for him. No wonder why you can’t stop. “You should just drop him,” someone once said to you, and although you know it’s for the best, you just can’t. Everything circles back to him, and you hate it.
Today, you thank customers, bag their items, and wave them goodbye. Nobody who walks in looks like him. Who are you kidding? Why would Dream Man walk into a merch store? There’s no way he could be interested in such things, right? He’d totally be indifferent in these types of things, you think as you play with a Miku keychain in your hands. The teal haired Vocaloid smiles and winks back at you, oblivious to your turmoil. A sigh escapes your lips and you put her back on the rack, ringing up another customer as they walk up to you.
As your shift ends, it’s around six fifty-four PM and, like in your dream, the sky this evening is a warm orange color with hints of yellow and pink placed in. The wind whistles and blows in the opposite direction of you walking, so you stuff your hands in your jacket’s pockets, hair softly blowing in the breeze. Slight discomfort blossoms in your shoulder when someone bumps into you, and instinctively, you look back as they yell out, “Sorry!” and continue to walk down the street. Your lips tigten when curly brown hair meets your eyes. But you can’t see their face. Surely, that couldn’t be him, right?
When you look up from the person walking away, you hear excited shouts and see the flashing image of red and blue fabric. You watch as the superhero swiftly webs to right around the corner and cop cars follow suit. Your heart pounds in your chest as your hand balls up in your pocket. He was a blur of color and memories.