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Kazuha dreams of a space cowboy.
The space cowboy is her. Dressed in her full Western outfit with big jeans and boots, brown cowboy hat on her head, long jet-black hair flowing behind her. She carries a plastic ray gun, shooting rings of colored lights at aliens and creatures that try to attack her. Though, really, they are not quite moving. They’re two-dimensional and flat, like a cardboard cut-out or a pixelated graphic on an old, 8-bit video game. They sound and look silly, just like the noise Kazuha’s ray gun makes when she pulls the trigger, that pew-pew sound. She is running across different planes of land, just trying to get back to her home planet. There is a desolate wasteland, a dry desert, a galaxy field, on and on.
The last ‘level’ of sorts, is a house of mirrors. and it’s already beyond confusing, so now imagine it in a dream. Kazuha goes this way and that, her reflection both following and avoiding her. She runs into and away from herself, and the whole time there is a looming wizard figure towering over the whole place, where there is apparently no roof. And the cloaked figure laughs menacingly, like it’s almost game over for Kazuha. And then Kazuha finds her way out, bursting through an invisible exit door, and a little ways away, for her grand finale, is the image of Yunjin, trapped inside a rocketship of some sort, with one of those half-sphere windows on it so her face is visible. Kazuha races over, and there is a timer suddenly that appears, the red numbering ticking down. She reaches the rocketship, and the palm of her hand just barely lays flat on the rocket window, before—
“Zuzu, wake up.” Yunjin gently pokes Kazuha on the cheek, and the brunette sleepily blinks her eyes open.
“Hm?” Kazuha hums groggily, baby-brown eyes bleary.
“You fell asleep.” Yunjin smiles, laid down beside Kazuha on the sand. Her blonde hair is still damp from her swim, and she sits up to straddle Kazuha’s hips, wearing the Japanese girl’s fleece zip up, with the zipper undone. Her hands trace Kazuha’s biceps, warm from how she fell asleep in the sun.
“You’re gonna get burnt.” Yunjin fusses. Kazuha’s skin is already a little pink. The ocean’s waves crash somewhere in the background, and the sky bends so that light can fit in a halo behind Yunjin’s head, like she is the sun that keeps everything warm. She is the thing that will burn Kazuha, the thing that will turn her into wax, while simultaneously being the fire that will melt her apart. And oh, it will be so sweet.
Kazuha, still sluggish, reaches out, slipping past the sweatshirt that hangs open, her hand coming to rest on Yunjin’s bikini-tanned hip. “I did,” she smiles sheepishly, and paired with the squint of her baby brown eyes, Yunjin thinks she looks sweetly young and almost wolfish, in a way, and her heart skips.
“I must’ve been worn out.” Kazuha had been swimming and playing volleyball and trying to learn how to boogie board all day, and as soon as she had laid out on the towel, she supposes it had caught up to her.
She licks her lips that she forgot to put chapstick on. “I had the weirdest dream.”
“Yeah?” Yunjin’s fingers rub random patterns on Kazuha’s midriff. “About what?”
“I was a space cowboy.” Kazuha says. “In a video game? Sort of? I was carrying bags of money. Then I had to beat all these aliens to get to you at the end, before you were sent off to another planet. You were asleep in a rocket, and there was a giant evil wizard who was trying to make me lose.”
“An evil wizard in your dream? What?” Eunchae asks, coming up to them from where she was just in the water, and Kazuha sits up to readjust, so that Yunjin is instead sitting, her back to Kazuha’s front, in between Kazuha’s legs. “Was it me?”
Kazuha snorts with laughter. “No.” She shakes her head. “You weren’t in it at all, I don’t think.”
“Wow, okay.” Eunchae sounds mildly offended. “I see how it is.” She flips open their cooler and pulls out Sakura’s pouched coffee. “Do you think she’s gonna drink this?”
“You can have it.” Sakura grants permission, having overheard while trudging back from the water with Chaewon at her side; Eunchae beams and twists it open, taking a long drink.
“So I’m your damsel in distress, in your head?” Yunjin teases, tilting back to look at Kazuha’s face.
Kazuha smiles playfully. “Of course not, I know you’re capable.” She pecks Yunjin’s cheek. “But there’s no one else who is so worth saving, to me.” She bumps their noses together, a grin on her face, and Yunjin swoons.
“Except for maybe my salt bread, but that wasn’t in it.” Kazuha says teasingly, making Yunjin roll her eyes.
“Such a romantic.” She smiles, leaning up and pressing a blind kiss to Kazuha’s jaw. “You’re right, though. That is a weird dream.” She shrugs off Kazuha’s sweatshirt and takes her hand, pulling her up. “C’mon. The sun’s almost gonna set. Let’s go in one more time before it gets too cold.”
The five of them go down to the shore, Chaewon splashing in first.
“I think we should have a karaoke night.” Kazuha proposes, the bubbles of sea foam lapping at her feet.
“You do?” Yunjin looks at her, amused. “Tonight?”
Kazuha shakes her head. “Not tonight. But at some point.”
“Hm,” Yunjin steps up, arms circling Kazuha’s neck. “Why’s that?”
Kazuha’s hands find Yunjin’s hips. “Because I heard you singing in the shower the other day, and I wanna hear your voice again.” She admits, bending forward to kiss the blonde. “You sounded like an angel, unnie.”
“No, no.” Yunjin blushes. “My singing voice isn’t that great.”
“Yes it is,” Kazuha frowns. “Besides, we don’t have to do karaoke at a bar or anything. They sell some machines online. We could get one and do it at our dorm. Or we could steal the one from the practice room.”
Yunjin tilts her head. “Wouldn’t that be worse? The noise would be louder, and our neighbors would know for a fact it’s me.”
Kazuha considers this. “Okay, true.” She concedes. “But I just wanna hear you sing!”
“Maybe we can eyeball it,” Yunjin negotiates. “See if any idols on our floor have a party, and time it so that we can blame the noise on them.”
Kazuha’s face lights up with a smile. “Perfect. Will you sing that one song you always do?”
Yunjin hugs Kazuha closer. “Yes. Anything for you, Zuha-ya.” Eunchae calls for them to hurry up, and Yunjin disentangles herself to wade in. The waves crash at Kazuha’s feet, and she stands there a moment longer. She feels the pull of the water try to drag her out, and reckons it’s not so different to the way she feels when she looks at Yunjin. The only difference is that in those instances, she surrenders.
Yunjin, singing that one song and maybe being a little loud at times. Yunjin, accidentally spilling a little bit of wine on herself, and fretting about the stain. Yunjin, stumbling slightly on the steps, half-asleep in the morning before their first schedule. Yunjin, with her hands finding Kazuhas’s face to hold before they fell asleep.
All these little things she does that make Kazuha feel like she is in a rip current. Being forced out, into deep water, with no warning, and even less control. Lapsing, over and over and over again, just hoping she can find a way to survive. To not die, from how brutally she has found the hands that hold her beating heart.
She imagines Yunjin, turning to find Kazuha when she realizes the younger girl is not right behind her, and Kazuha can already see the smile that will be searching for her, that will beckon to her. And Oh no, she thinks. You’re going to do that thing that makes me love you even harder, even more. And I won’t know how to encompass all of this within me, without being able to fully show you, all of the time. And all Kazuha wants to do is fall to her knees, like she cannot hold any of this up to stability, not even physically. And I love you. I will follow you, into everything, like in my dream. Into a wasteland, into another world, into a house full of ourselves, into a spaceship, into the dark. I will slip away with you, fall where we must. I will hold you, twist us so that I hit the ground first, and you have that cushion. I will do anything. I love you.
Yunjin turns to smile at Kazuha, and Kazuha’s belly beats its wings, and she feels weak; she is so dazed she doesn’t notice Eunchae sneaking up to her, and she’s brought back harshly to reality with cold splashes of water on her.
She squeals, immediately defending herself and splashing Eunchae back while the two of them erupt into giggles. Eventually they end up near Sakura, and cool it down so as to not get her involved. Eunchae goes to swim with a wave, and Kazuha lets herself float on her back.
Yunjin’s face is the sweetest thing, her slippery hands cupping Kazuha’s jaw, as she throws herself onto her wolfish dreamgirl and the two of them kiss, their bodies dipping underwater.