I'm drawing a dream so I can see you

It’s past 2am when Bang Chan stumbled into his room – a box room in a communal housing near his office, it’s cramped but that’s all he could afford for now. He already felt delirious, a combination of fatigue after working all day long plus the alcohol in his system. If he had any choice in it, Chan would choose to go straight home after work, but he thought there are 3 types of drinking: happy drinking when you drink because you want to and you feel happy to, sad drinking when you drink because you want to and you want to feel happy, and then there’s survival drinking, when you drink because you have to in order to survive in the society. And that’s what happened to him, a recurring night in his five weeks working as an intern in a medium-size company. His department head loves to drink, and he loves to drag all the employees. As the new kid, there’s no way he could refuse.

He tried his best to stay awake, washing up and changing his work suit into a comfortable tee and shorts. He opened the small refrigerator in his room and he’s glad he still had a bottle of those recovery drinks in it. Chan had also taken some precautions before his department went drinking – he ate, he took some vitamins, and he secretly dumped whatever on his glass when no one’s looking. Because tomorrow was a big day, and even though there’s only a very slight chance, Chan didn’t want to ruin it by having a hangover.

He sat on his bed, drinking the pear juice slowly, his half-lidded eyes staring at the calendar on his desk. He had marked it, a big circle in red ink, on tomorrow’s date. There’s no note except a letter bellow the date: R.

Exhaling, he put down now empty bottle of the recovery drink on his desk and lied down, tapping around in his phone until he played a playlist: R. Soft music started to fill his small room, and as Chan lying down, he looked up to the window – like everything in his room, it's small, but he could see a piece of the dark sky outside. There’s barely any star visible from his angle, but the one there was twinkling as if it’s swaying along to the music.

It was her debut song, and tomorrow would be her comeback showcase.

Bang Chan closed his eyes, letting her voice drifting into his dreams…

on days I miss you like this, you feel so far away

I go closer to you every day but you’re still faraway

hello shooting star, will you hear my wish?

***

It had started with a word in a soft whisper in his younger days, so quiet Chan had mistaken it for his own thoughts.

But as the years gone by, the voice grew louder, the words got clearer, he had come to realize that it’s not his inner self. It’s a girl’s voice, one he had never heard, and—oh. He had a soulmate.

Not everyone have a soulmate. And thus who have, each has different experiences. The most common thing is his first, hearing some words thought by their soulmate. Some with stronger bonds could hear complete sentence, though it’s no way a form of communication because the words and sentences heard are completely random, not at will. Others don’t hear words, they hear music, snippets of a song. And then there are people who shared feelings, mood… The variety of the cases happened to soulmates are so diverse and personal, it’s still studied all around the world.

For Bang Chan, all of the symptoms, he had them all. Not all at once, not all the time. Like the whispers, at first he didn’t realize they're the soulmate bond. Out of the blue, he would feel happy or sad without any reason. Once, he had a stomach cramp so bad he had to skip class, which gone in thirty minutes after he lay down – the school nurse made a passing remark about period cramp, and Chan wondered…

It wasn’t a big deal for him, having a soulmate. His family and his closest friends knew about it, but he didn’t share all the details and it’s not something he talked a lot. He was young, he’s not interested in finding his soulmate yet, besides, he knew that it would be a hard thing to do. He lived with the bond, quietly wishing his soulmate is well, whoever and wherever she is.

Until he heard a song.

It was different, because usually he would had a random song pops up in his mind, and that’s how Chan knew his soulmate was listening to the song. This wasn’t like that. It was her voice, singing it. Even though her voice sounded hazy like it came from a dream, he still caught on the words, the melody.

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