Chapter Text
An army of Jack Frosts marches towards the school’s gates to the tune of HEE-HO. It has started snowing indoors. Hand-sized snowflakes clump around their desks while the teacher drones on about porn in front of the blackboard. Yu isn’t listening, nor is he bothered by the icy chill. There are more pressing matters that demand his attention.
Namely, Yosuke has made Yu’s lap his personal throne.
With an arm slung around Yu’s shoulders and his feet tucked under Yu’s thighs, Yosuke smiles down on him like summer rain. His sun-kissed cheeks curve with the motion, dotted by never-before-seen smattering of freckles. Breathlessly, Yu has the wild idea to press his fingers on them. He could smear those spots across Yosuke’s skin until he bears Yu’s signature for everyone to see. Perhaps he could even use his tongue, to confirm if those freckles taste as good as they look. Summer is a good look on Yosuke. All Yu ever sports in summertime are skin burns that make him a shrimp, even after slathering his whole body with suncream.
“Woah! Think those Jack Frosts will make popsicles out of our classmates?” Yosuke asks, giddy. “I hope they get to our cuckoo teachers first.”
“I’m sure no one would mind. It’s hot enough that everyone would appreciate some ice in their veins,” Yu says idly, his mind entirely occupied by the hitch of Yosuke’s shirt, the now visible silver of his stomach beckoning Yu like uncharted land. He could trail his fingers inside to discover the beauty marks that undoubtedly dot Yosuke’s body. Perhaps Yu could trace those into a map only for his eyes to see, too.
“But it’s snowing. It should be cold, actually.”
“Even then, it’s hot. Don’t lie.”
“Okay, a bit hot. Though mostly because we’re sticking close, I think. Isn’t that a thing, skinship to combat the cold? Why am I here anyway?”
“In class? We’re students here, and it’s—” Yu tries to think of the day before giving up when the thought slips his mind. “—a schoolday.”
“And it sucks! But I meant in your lap. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a comfortable lap. I like your lap.” He looks down at Yu’s lap, at Yu’s hands that have been trying to steer clear from grabbing Yosuke’s shirt off of him by sticking to the not-so-safe zone of Yosuke’s thighs. The questions of the universe logs between his pinched brow. “Can I stay in your lap, or am I too heavy? I’ll get off, just say the word.”
“I don’t mind,” Yu says a beat too quick. Yosuke doesn’t feel as heavy as he should anyway, more of a presence than a weight. “I want you here.”
The smile unfurls wide and toothy and dorky as if a gift for only Yu to enjoy. He peeks at Yosuke’s teeth, the one incisor that is most imperceptibly longer than the other, and counts the soft creases around his eyes that show the sincerity behind. It lights a warmth that spreads all over his body, so nice feeling he becomes melted butter against Yosuke.
So nice, Yu’s body acts against his better judgement too. He can’t help it.
His hands shot up, unbidden, to steal the joy of the smile for himself—it is his, after all; directed at him because of him and therefore his— only to land on Yosuke’s cheeks. They freeze. Yu’s hindbrain becomes a newt that slithers under the solid rock of his worst impulses, never to be seen again. Fingertips finally, finally, finally get to pad the freckles penciled over Yosuke’s nose bridge, just under his eyelashes, the one straggler tucked under the sleek curve between his chin and neck. Yu’s thorough, counting them one by one under his breath, until an indescribable sense of accomplishment tugs his own lips upwards. He feels his heart stutter like the flapping of an army of butterflies, wreaking untold havoc inside his thoracic cage.
Under his touch, Yosuke’s own smile doesn’t waver. It widens, softens, as if he’d been waiting exactly for this to happen. He leans in against the touch, secures his arms around Yu’s shoulders to close the gap between them, like a cat seeking warmth, and Yu thinks in a bout of madness: if he starts purring, I’ll use my mouth next.
“Man, I still wonder what the Jack Frosts want,” Yosuke says in the kind of airy tone he uses when most of his brain is busy with something else. His eyelids flutter when Yu’s wandering fingers reach under his shirt. To their right, HEE-HOs and the shrill of their teacher to pay attention slip past their ears like oil over water. “Think they come in peace? I don’t want my ass to freeze again; they got a mean bite, those shadows.”
“Jack Frost’s mostly playful. They probably want to become king of Yasogami High by bringing merriment and snow.”
“And they’ll use icepops and snow-fights to establish their new regime?”
“Maybe. You’ll have to cover for me if it comes to that. I’ve never had a snow-fight.”
Yosuke gasps, wide-eyed, back to becoming alert, and Yu’s pretty sure it’s not because his fingers have tentatively breached the boundary set by the hem of Yosuke’s pants. “No? Not even with your parents? In kindergarten, or in some school trip to Hokkaido?” Yu shakes his head. Yosuke glowers as if the fact were an affront to his faith. “We need to fix that, dude. I worry about you.”
“It’s just a snow-fight. A lot of kids around the world haven’t had those either.”
“You’re not like most kids.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. The universe says so, too, because you’re our leader and can use all those persona. You’re the only one who can see some ugly old man behind some stupid blue door that only exists for you. How’s that fair?”
“You want to see some ugly old man?”
“Not! The point!”
The shrilling pierces through the air; the snow has reached their knees. With a sudden worry heavy in his chest, Yu searches the planes of Yosuke’s face for the same kind of frustration that had painted him in bruises when they fought by the Samegawa River. “You understand I don’t want that, right? I never asked to be the chosen one.”
“Yu. Partner, that’s not—”
“If I could share all this, I would. It’d be so much easier if I could—”
“Of course I know! My partner deserves all the good things because he’s the best, and because you’re the best, I get jealous sometimes, but mostly I just want to be with you doing stuff together.”
Yu blinks. Blinks again, his grip taut around Yosuke’s waist. “You do?”
Yosuke huffs, “Sure do! You can beat me up again if you think I don’t.” Yu gapes, the oppressive grip around his lungs loosening into a hold that is far more tender but equally present. Yosuke continues, “So, yeah, I think you deserve to know what’s a snow fight like. Because they’re fun.”
The Jack Frosts continue their rampage while the teacher screeches even louder. All Yu can focus on is Yosuke’s steady grip around his shoulder, and his determined eyes boring down on him.
“Your partner deserves not to be cold,” Yu says, an idea popping off in his mind like a shaken energy drink can clasped open. “It’s cold.”
Yosuke pouts, put out by the abrupt topic change. “S’not. Don’t lie.”
He’s right, it’s not even if they’re getting buried in ice, but who cares. Yu doesn’t, which is weird because usually he does. Then again, Yosuke’s usually not sitting in his lap as if he belongs there, saying all the right things Yu’s ever wanted for him to say. So.
With all the seriousness that befits the situation, Yu answers, “It is so. Skinship’s good for the cold, you said? We should take off our shirts.”
Yosuke’s gobsmacked moue lasts for less than a mere instant before the idea sinks in, and with it the last remnants of their propriety. His hands hastily grip the hem of his shirt under Yu’s greedy gaze and then pulls up.
“Sure!”
Yu wakes up to a bare wooden ceiling, off-kilter, drooling and uncomfortable in his pajama pants. His clock alarm is shrilling off to his right. When Yu tries to sit up, the sheets stick to him like dirt under nails. He might as well become a pig from all the sweat he's exuding; the summer rays blare down punishingly, heating his room in the Dojima residence into an oven despite the blinders. Nevermind the news warned the previous evening that they’d suffer through the hottest summer night yet.
While Yu’s dressing, the dream clings to the back of his mind as tackily as the night sweat.
He detachedly thinks, “That was weird.”
Yu usually doesn’t dream. And lately, when he does, his dreams have become of Igor and Margaret.
The day goes on as always. Breakfast with Nanako, house chores through the morning, a trip to Junes before lunch to buy produce. It’s the beginning of August and Yu is settled in his summer holiday routine.
When he meets up with his friends in the afternoon, the memory of the dream hammers against his head with the force of a hydraulic press. His mind constantly meanders towards the vivid imagery of Yosuke’s freckles, the closeness of his presence in a world gone winter wonderland, while in the very real present his French fries become soggy as they gather around their usual table in the food court. Yosuke’s seated in the distance common of best friends—right next to Yu, but not any closer.
The freckles are real, though, little proof of Yosuke’s life that have surfaced into clarity like sunflowers.
Yu’s thoughts on them are very much real too.
His strange attitude doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Something with my t-shirt?” Yosuke asks, worried. He’s frowning because Yu has gone quiet for the last minute to daydream about the vision of what hides underneath the t-shirt. The others are listening in too. “Did I spill my drink?”
“No, no. I’m—” On these occasions, Yu’s forever thankful that his facial muscles are stiffer than the average person’s, that his hair successfully hides the embarrassed slant of his eyebrows. It would be hard to explain away a blush to such a simple question. “I just had a weird dream and was thinking about it.”
“…About my t-shirt?”
“You could say that.” Yu smiles dryly. “It looked weirdly real, and I remember it so vividly; it’s stuck in my head.”
“Sounds part of the course with dreams,” Kanji interjects. “Heck, I can’t tell ya the times I woke up with a fright ‘cuz I dreamed about an incomin’ exam that doesn’t exist. Puts the fear of god in me for the rest of the day.”
“Or when you do something embarrassing in them and then still feel embarrassed after waking up.” Chie half laughs, half groans. “Those are always the worst.”
“That’s interesting. I never remember mine,” Yukiko says. “There’s just nothing there for me in the morning.”
“You don’t think it might’ve been an aftereffect of yesterday, right?” Rise says unexpectedly, her concern palpable in her sudden grip around his arm as she scoots closer, the distance between them completely erased. “That strange shadow we fought and its attack were new. Your dream might’ve been related to that.”
Yu hums pensively: sometimes status effects follow them to their daily life even after leaving the TV world behind—fear turned into incessant twitching at the slightest noise, rage that bubbles in short fuses over petty annoyances. It takes a whole day for the effects to truly wear off even after treating them, sometimes longer, and Yu supposes Rise might have a point.
They all turn to Yosuke, who’s gone quiet, his lips thinned into a chalk line as he stares at the dwindling space between Yu and Rise.
He shrugs. “Nothing out of the usual stuff for me, so I don’t think it was that.”
Hope withers away within Yu’s chest. He doesn’t know what else he’d expected: if Yosuke had dreamt about the two of them getting handsy with each other, he would have already exploded into a ball of red mortification as soon as he faced Yu. He’d made his thoughts on the topic very clear on the camping trip.
“Well, I might just be disoriented. Since I came to Inaba, I’ve mostly dreamt about the Velvet Room, and the one time I didn’t took me by surprise," Yu ventures carefully, trying to quell the topic before anyone wishes to pry deeper into it. “Anyway, we were talking about Mitsuo, right?”
Yosuke’s lips taste of air, of nothing, of want. Mostly of wet t-shirt, weirdly enough, which might have discouraged everyone else but not Yu. The world explodes in geysers of broth and noodles around them. They part ways with twin gasps, not for long and not too far, before Yosuke mouths along Yu’s neck with a hyperfocus that leaves Yu grasping for air. His gaze blurs into smears wrought by desire while he grinds down against Yosuke’s leg nestled between his own, once, twice, until the latter bites down on the curve of his nape with a sharpness not unlike desperation, and all at once Yu can finally see the sugary rainbow shining over their heads.
With a huff of laughter, Yu detaches himself and dunks Yosuke into the pool with a harsh push. He resurfaces with a wheeze as quickly, splashing broth from the ramen bowl all over. Yu relishes in his squawking.
“You asshole! What was that for?!”
“You looked like you needed to cool down,” Yu answers from his secure viewpoint on top of the cooked slab of beef. “I thought a swim would work.”
“That an excuse? If you didn’t want me, just say so.”
“I do want you; I just don’t know how to go about it.”
The raw honesty stabs them with tacit brutality. It marinates in the oppressive gap between them until Yosuke boils with the kind of embarrassment only the bluntest hope can provide, scarlet like overcooked tomato. Yu dares one step forward, unsteady on his feet.
Yosuke raises both his arms to cover himself, the flimsiest shield against Yu’s newborn expectations.
“I didn’t know if you’d want me either,” he mutters shyly yet loud enough for Yu’s ears to pick up. “So I’ll settle for whatever you give, in whichever form.”
And next he dips under the turbid sea of noodles like a coward. Doesn’t come back up again.
Yu waits, but the seconds tick on without word of him. Worry festers where anticipation sowed a mere moment ago. He wearily approaches the edge of the beef.
“Yosuke?”
Yu kneels, leans out, searching for any trace in the waves.
Then—
The world tilts on its multicolor axis, momentarily weightless. A tearing resonates—Yu’s sleeve unthreads from Yosuke’s forceful grab. The splash of broth meets his body with forceless impact, and Yu is drowning in a dream comprised of garlic, ginger and shiitake mushrooms.
Yu fights for air desperately, his lungs now full of oily sauce, the fear of drowning as instinctual as the fear of rejection. He drowns, and nothing happens. Yu swims back up in two powerful breaststrokes powered by the wish for retaliation, for gratification and, at the core of it, for verification of Yosuke’s promise.
He breaks through the liquid’s surface to meet a world that is solely held up by Yosuke’s delighted laughter.
“Now we’re even,” he announces, then opens his arms wide in invitation.
Yu doesn’t even think twice: he grabs him by the waist, pulls closer like a trainwreck waiting to happen, kisses him senselessly until breathing becomes nothing more than mere suggestion. Yosuke returns the fervor with all that is held within him, although mostly by making good use of his own hands as he buries them underneath Yu’s wet shirt and up his abdomen. For Yu to seek out their warmth without much success. Even when they sink down under again, the world fading into sweet darkness, they don’t dare part, beholden by a desire that has overtaken their essence like an antidoteless venom.
Though Yu might not know how, he does know what he wants, and what he wants is—
“I don’t think I’m in the mood for ramen,” Yu says to Yosuke’s proposal of having lunch at Aiya’s. He doesn’t think he could keep a straight face after the dream that night. After waking up to dirtied underwear and the dry taste of cotton on his tongue from having bitten down on his pillow while asleep.
“Yeah, guess the heat doesn’t help,” Yosuke concedes after a beat. A nervous energy shakes his foot into relentless tapping, his headphone’s cord twisting into knots between his fingers. He’s been trying to make eye contact to no avail because Yu evades him at every turn. “How ‘bout burgers?”
The sun is a deadly laser-ray overhead. The noxious fumes of heated asphalt assault Yu’s nose, mixed with the other scents characteristic of Inaba: the earth, the decaying wood, the unpicked trash. His clothes are gluing to him in all the uncomfortable places, causing an itch without reprieve. He closes his eyes, tired from all the things that aren’t happening.
With his mouth parched, lipskin cracking, mind still stuck in the gutter back in the witching hour, Yu says dimly, “Alright. That could work.”
Below them, TV Inaba expands as far as the eyes see, glitching in and out of existence with jagged blacklines, the deep-green forests and mountains around it framing the picture into clear-cut sharpness. The view is pretty in the way broken things can be, where charting the cracks and the missing whole steals one’s attention as easily as the most inspiring beauty could. Music has been booming since they’ve reached the hill’s summit too. It’s a song Yu has never heard, a powerful beat that shakes his bones, and underneath it an unsettling double bass worming its way to his very core, making a home of the empty space there. It sets his teeth on edge.
Mostly, Yu tries to revel in the fact that Yosuke’s fixated on him, on gripping his ass and mapping his neck. The need to slot their bodies as close as physically possible to grind each other into completion. The wooden fence repurposed as a viable surface creaks under their weight.
“Do you know this song?”
“Hm?”
“The song,” Yu repeats slowly, sneaking fingers between strands of amberglow-dyed hair to momentarily yank him away from the curve of his throat. Yosuke groans at the pull, out of annoyance, yes, but also with a deep timbre that reveals a new discovery; Yu archives the knowledge for later. “The one that’s been playing on loop since we arrived.”
Yosuke hazily blinks away the distraction, listening. “Oh yeah. It’s not just a song, though. It’s many of them put together,” he says, licking his lips clean of Yu’s spit. “Wild. I didn’t know they’d sound like that when mixed together.”
“What are they about?”
“You.” Yosuke chuckles breathlessly. Then quiets when noticing Yu’s frown. “Don’t like?”
“No,” Yu says abruptly. “Yes. I don’t know. The song, it sounds like—" Wonder. Regret. Acceptance. “—like it should be about you.”
“No way! It’s a mash-up of my song list about you; it can’t be about me.”
“You made a song list thinking of me?”
Yosuke recoils like trapped animal. “Well…! Yes, but don’t get too cocky.” Too late for that—Yu’s already thumbing along the pulsing veins in Yosuke’s throat, head full of what he’ll do next. “It’s mostly for myself anyway.”
“If it’s about me, it concerns me. Why haven’t you shared?”
“I can already be quite pathetic without needing to actively aim for it.”
“I don’t understand. You already told me I’m special. In this very spot.”
“It’s different. You know it’s different.”
“Which is why you should have told me,” Yu argues, indignantly patting Yosuke’s cheek twice. “I would reciprocate tenfold if you showed your admiration more overtly.”
The admission wrenches Yosuke’s jaw out of its hinges.
They gaze at each other expectantly, daring the other to make the first move.
Suddenly, Yosuke kneels.
Yu freezes. “What—?”
“Showing my admiration,” Yosuke says with scorching zeal.
He unclasps Yu’s buckle, then undoes the belt, hands unsteady with hurry and his pupils dilated until only a chestnut halo remains for irises. Yu stops breathing altogether as his nails dig into the wooden fence behind him, as the image of Yosuke leering up at him mouth one inch away from his groin snapshots itself to the corner of his brain in charge of long-term memory.
The world goes dark with a sonorous click, like a turned-off TV.
Yu wipes away the sleep clinging to the corner of his eyes and lets out a sigh that rattles his whole body. The frayed fabric of the sofa prickles him in discomfort, but he can’t bring himself to move. The lethargy of a nap that has extended beyond any recommendation lingers behind the exhaustion in his limbs, tattletale signs of a sleep that offered little rejuvenating.
Yu glances at the clock, and the fatigue deepens. He had hoped to recoup from long, agitated nights with a power nap, but half of the afternoon still awaits. Nanako’s away for the night in a friend’s sleepover and Dojima will be busy with work. There are no distractions available to alleviate his restlessness except for the uncomfortable stretch in his jeans and the sound notif from his phone.
Yosuke’s messaged him:
>wana hangout 2nite?
>got new cds
>gona make of u a music fan yet
Yu stares at it. Stares, and stares, until a dam that has long been cracking finally breaks.
He doesn’t reply to the message—not now, at least.
Instead, Yu blindly shoves a hand down his jeans. The other covers his eyes from the glare of shame that flares from within. He gnashes his teeth in frustration and begins to work the unneded out of his system, before he can agree to Yosuke’s invitation with a clear mind and pure intentions.
“Oh my,” says Margaret.
While Igor hums, “Fascinating.”
And Yosuke says, “Damn, you’re actually really ugly.”
And to that Yu tsks, “Where are your manners?”
“Set those on fire after I had to smile along to a customer trying to lie to me about how it wasn’t them who damaged the oranges so they could get a discount.” Here, Yosuked does a dramatic pause. “For the third time in a single afternoon.”
Yu considers the very sound defense with furrowed brows. He nods sagely. “Fair. You’re absolved of any charges.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Yosuke kisses him on the cheek, gropes his thigh once. “Now, can anyone explain why we’re in a limousine, please?”
The limousine in question treks along the endless foggy road, smoothly, unstoppably, with the champagne glasses softly clinking in their repositories, the low velvet glow casting the interior in iridescent blues. Igor and Margaret ogle them with bare-faced curiosity from their respective seats, while Yosuke awkwardly shifts next to Yu, a bit too tight for the space, which is the main reason Yu has draped his legs over Yosuke’s like a king on his divan as soon as they found themselves there. Margaret raises a dainty hand to cover her mouth. Yu squints at her. He just knows she’s smiling behind that hand, although he has no proof.
“Welcome to the Velvet Room, Magician. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. It seems you found your way into this plane of existence sheltered between dream and reality by stowawaying inside your companion’s own dreams,” Igor explains. His lipless mouth stretches ear to ear although it’s hard to parse what feeling rests behind the full set of abnormally white teeth. “A curious thing, indeed, though not so strange when the influence of a third party is afoot.”
Yosuke owlishly blinks at Igor. Margaret hands Yu the persona compendium; he opens it out of habit.
Yosuke whispers into his ear unstealthily, “You weren’t kidding when saying he speaks like a Chinese fortune cookie.”
“That is true.” Yu whispers back loudly. “But it’s not polite to voice it aloud.”
Igor chuckles in the low, unnerving lilt that belongs entirely to him. “Oh?”
Yosuke and Yu straighten their spines into steel bars, as if thoroughly chastised by the whipping of a mere interjection. Margaret has finally broken character, stopped hiding her mirth at the situation by directing them a smirk as sharp as a blade.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just, this place’s super weird, like you call it a room but has very little of room, and that you’re even weirder somehow, and frightening to be honest, but Yu also says you and the pretty lady over there help him tons, so I’m thankful too.” Yosuke loudly inhales as Yu pretends to peruse the book, red to his ears. “Which is why I really didn’t mean to insult or anything, please don’t kick me out from a moving car I promise I’ll keep my mouth shut now.”
So he does. The ensuing silence is deafening.
No one twitches for a full beat.
After he realizes Igor and Margaret aren’t in a hurry to exorcise him, Yosuke huddles his head on Yu’s shoulder with a whimper, as though a dog scurrying away from thunder. The tension breaks even, with Igor and Margaret expectantly waiting for them to continue and Yu considers it as good as any permission to focus on what matters: quietly disregarding them, he begins to work through the compendium. All throughout, from the safe perch of his shoulder, Yosuke’s hot breath fans against the sensitive skin of his nape.
Sometimes, against his own promise, Yosuke pipes up with a question Yu’s all too happy to answer—he’s tried to explain the persona shuffling process and the Velvet Room to his friends before, but every time he’s met with glazed eyes that hardly veil their perpetual confusion. They believe him, of course, mostly because it’s become hard not to believe when they travel weekly inside a TV into an alternate world, but there’s a harsh, uncrossable line dividing their experiences and Yu’s.
Here, though, in the liminal space of the material and the abstract, for once Yu gets the chance to show off the persona compendium he’s been laboriously working on. He can tell the exact mechanisms of how his powers work, the intricacies, the slow process of putting together plans and counterplans by actually showing the examples and the method, and Yosuke drinks in the whole of his words like a thirsty man quenching his primal needs. He listens, and he asks, and Yu’s becoming weak in the knees as his throat dries up both from use and hope.
“You’re incredible,” Yosuke proclaims with the same surety someone might use to say the sky is blue. His expression is painted in awe and the shine of the origami stars dangling from the limousine’s roof.
He also kisses Yu in the mouth, with confidence and reverence. With teeth. A hand sneaks along Yu’s cheek to guide the motion of their heads, a measured hold to chain down the most wicked of their whims. Neither pays any mind to their audience until they do, and the mortification of getting carried away in front of others becomes ashes before the prospect of what they could get up to if they just left first.
Yu slams the book close with finality, then hands it over with a hushed apology to Margaret whose bafflement is equal to her amusement in the curve of her mouth. He opens the limousine’s door and jumps with Yosuke’s hand in his.
Darkness embraces them gently in an endless fall. The limousine becomes a rectangle, then a spot, and finally just an idea in the far horizon. In the abyss where neither light nor warmth reaches them, Yu wrestles the darkness by wielding the knowledge that Yosuke’s by his side like a sword, slicing through the fear and the hesitation with laughter. They fall, and fall, and fall, until the origami stars soften their landing into a tangled tumble where Yu covers Yosuke, or Yosuke him. It doesn’t matter, really.
What does matter is the chest-wringing certainty of Yosuke on top, below, by his side, the onslaught of kisses and wandering hands into places yet to be explored, ready to swallow Yu whole with want, mirth all over.
The need to repeatedly blink away the blindsiding desire that blurs his sight, the world fading into clarity as if in a dream.
Yu wakes up to not countless stars but a dreadful summer morning in the Dojima household.
With silence as the only companion, Yu wants to scream. To stomp in tantrum. To throw up all the bits that have been festering overnight, clawing at his insides.
He does none of them and instead gets up in order to get on with the day.
Later, Yu stands before a blue door that exists in the unseen periphery of reality, one hand around the handle and the echo of awed praise, the invisible caress of lingering laughter filling his ears. The phantom has persisted long after coming back to the waking world, a tingly brush against the tender corners of his being. Yet Yu’s stomach lurches sickly, making him want to eat away his own self. Gnaw at his deluded, frantic heart for putting him in the spot until not even crumbs are left.
The world around him continues to march on, uncaring.
He’s been stuck in this conundrum for five minutes now; passersby along the shopping district have started side-eying him. The humid air clings inside his nostrils with the scent of dust and the neighbor’s laundry. Sweat gathers in every joint, making his hold slippery and his body twitch uncomfortably as he breathes in measured takes while gathering the courage to open the door to the Velvet Room.
And still, Yu doesn’t consider himself brave enough to face the two paranormal entities lying beyond it, who have witnessed firsthand the delusions his mind has fabricated over a silly crush.
His hand quietly slips away from the handle.
He also remembers Igor’s words—how Rise might have been more right than not.
Yu scrubs his face with his trembling hands. He really might have been afflicted with some sort of curse or status effect that affects him by… what? Giving him wet dreams of his best friend?
What a joke.
Then again, he’s aggrieved with eyebags as dark as tar all day long. A nauseating energy that crawls under his skin until exhaustion becomes him. An ache of the heart that never fades, never sleeps, for it follows him into slumber in perpetual reminder.
A joke, but one that fundamentally works.
The worst of it is that it would be so much easier if these were only wet dreams, conjurations of a horny and lonely mind, and not the gateway to the truth that Yu harbored like a parasite, something a bit more than just a lust-induced infatuation.
Because when the dreams unfold into directions other than the euphoria of the skin, those always end up being the worst—because those dreams turn into soul-scarring nightmares, the disfigured pantomimes of all Yu’s impossible hopes, forever out of reach.