If I see you in my dreams

He has dreamt about him again. He has woke up covered in sweat, his heart throbbing, an itching needling over its skin, cold blood flowing through his body. It was just a nightmare, but it felt so real, too real to ignore and the bugging sensation inside his mind keeps popping up every time during the day.

He draws it nevertheless, as he always does – he makes a living out of his dreams, anyway.

He has those dreams since he was 10; people around him told him, back then, when the vivid dreams confused him, blended with reality, that it had something to do with his soul mate. Firstly he was excited, happy to know that, somewhere, someone was destined to love him back, waiting for him to find that person who featured in his nights every day, to span him somehow, swimming the oceans that might keep them apart. Later on, growing up used to the image of that unknown, mysterious person, he loathed that: the idea of having his other half away, unable to reach him, feeling the aching in his heart, the missing part; his soul ripped, stripped in two and he was totally incomplete, unwholesome. But he has never hated him, the one who appeared in his dreams and with who he has grown up with the passing seasons; months and years together but, somewhat, worlds apart – and sometimes Minho wondered if all of this was even real. In his dreams, he has created a story, from the beginning until now, a story about love and fate and it was beautiful even when it hurt. 

When he turned 20 and his career as a webtoon was starting, he supposed that drawing his dreams would, maybe, help him find that person without a name – it pickles his pride that he knows all of his features, the taste of his lips and the color of his thought but not the most simple of the things. They have been together for years but, since the start, he has been only “he” for Minho, even if he can recognize his voice and put all the words he has said into a song, his name escapes his hands, his fingers grasping only air.

He has built a life with that man, from friends to lovers; they have traveled the earth together, have made love in places he is ashamed to say, with fury and quietly, teasingly, nothing but a sacred name he can't pronounce; they have kissed slowly, burning with passion; he knows his deepest secrets and his inner fears, he can paint and name all the things he loves and the ones he hates, he has memorized the shape of his face, the way his brown eyes turn into precious crescents when he smiles – and the world under his feet is consumed with the brightness that he irradiates. – He knows him inside out, more than ten years of strange friendship and more and, yet, he is still an angel without a name.

He opens his laptop and takes his tablet with him, a coffee steaming in his hand while turning everything on, the last reminiscence of last night clouding his eyes and he feels like crying – but he knows that, in the end, nothing that happened is real, that the person he silently, secretly loves the most is somewhere, happy and well and that he is here, stuck in a life without him by his side, that he can only dream about him – and for him this is not a metaphor.

Minho is aware, truly, that it’s all a dream, a mere product of his imagination – he has come to terms with himself, accepting the fact that soul mates are only a tale, just another pretty story about love and destiny that he has believed before, when he was young and innocent and full of expectations – and in need of an explanation for his very intense and strange dreams that left behind, with the morning gleam, the aftertaste of a kiss never made, the phantom of a hand holding him, the soft essence of something that didn’t belong to him but was utterly his – but, even then, nothing has prevented him from falling, for giving away his heart to a ghost, the constant being of someone not quite tangible, inexistent (a part of his unconscious brain at least).

With the pencil in his hand, but, all turn into reality while he draws it the way he remembers it. He has wrote their shared, partially unreal story since the start, not sleeping for days, focussed on capturing the halo of illusoriness that came with him and, after years practising he is still unable to catch the gleam in his eyes, the pinkish hue that paints his glossy, perfectly curbed lips, always smiling, always happy, his soft hair that he has brushed so many times from his forehead, the touch lingering in his skin, the form of his perfect oval; it’s impossible to seize all the beauty that lives in him – he likes to think that not even Michelangelo would be able to paint him the way he truly is and, with a lie like this, he smirks, content, reassured. Other times he thanks God for blessing him with the capacity to see him, even if he can only he see it in his sleep, to be able to meet him in another world that is entirely his, where none of them belongs but where they can be together for a short among of time (when the moon shines in the sky and Minho’s eyes are closed tight, the last notes of a lullaby dying in the air, like waves in the ocean night), he has prayed to the almighty for a chance to find him, to put a name to his otherworldly face, but God had ignored him and, exasperated  he has let it go. 

Minho has looked for him, has stared into everyone’s eyes, looking for that spark he knows so well but only finding out that none of them was that person his heart belongs to and, after a while he, eventually, gave up, stopped believing in soul mates and in love – but his affection only grew bigger because that person is so lovable, so nice and thoughtful and incredible that he has to, there is no way to halt it and he doesn’t want to anyway; the feeling of loving him is what keeps his sanity.

He turns around, confused, only to glance over a pile of brown boxes standing in the corner of his new house; he has moved in a week ago and all his belongings are still inside the boxes; he is waiting for help, actually, in the form of his best friend Seunghoon, who has promised to come over, – come over from next door - and settle in this new place that is barely familiar and completely foreign to him. The bed is still unmade and his clothes are thrown on the floor, but the walls are colored in blue and his stuff is nowhere to be found. 

He sighs, tired already, defeated. The dream he had is still clouding his mind, fogging his sense and his fingers are a bit shaken, and he feels uneasy; also he can’t find his coloring pad and, without it, he can’t work properly. He closes his devices and goes out because there is no way he will tidy it all by himself. 

He rings the door and waits.

He waits for a second before pressing the bell again, insistently; Seunghoon has to be home because he can hear steps. 

The person who opens the door, wearing an exasperated expression on his pretty face doesn’t smile the way he has been expecting – dreaming, imagining, waiting, longing, craving for. But it’s the same face that starring in his dreams; same eyes, same wrinkles, same way to grumble, annoyed, same fierce in his stare. Minho stares at him, amazed, in awe, open mouth and watery eyes that must have caught the other's attention.

“Sorry, I didn’t meant to be rude!” he rushes to exclaim, changing his bothered face for something that is more familiar to Minho; softened his expression is just the same that loiters in his mind all the time; a smile that smells like flowers in bloom and windy days on the beach, the waves caressing his skin. “I’m Kim Jinwoo, how can I help you?”

When the night falls over him and he lies in bed, the first thing he hears when he closes his eyes is his name whispered in his dreams. After all soul mates are real. He has finally found his one.