Dream

There was a certain dimness to it, despite the bright spring-like atmosphere. As if it were trying to get away, but not.

Despite it being a dream, she started to wonder the 'what-if's when she felt the ghost of the weight of his head on her shoulder as well as the phantom warmth it brought after waking up.

"A warm dream," was how she described it. It was a very beautiful and warm dream.

True enough, the remnants of the dream were dyed pink and white like a Japanese spring day. She could scarcely remember all the details, but she remembered the plainness of a big house, a small group of children, and a neighbour with a face she was all too familiar with.

It started off as normally as any dream could without the fantastical ideas and strange things happening. Her exact location was unknown but she waved it off as something that couldn’t be possibly determined in a dream (but she suspected it was a mix of her house and her cousin’s). A group of parents were there at first, faces all unidentified. Their kids were blobs of faces she didn’t know as well.

“Stay here and look after them,” were parting words before they left out the door and faded out into the outside. And so she did comply with a constricting ‘yes’.

After this, the details became hazy. She could pick out small images of a blue truck in a mechanic’s tower and a parade.

The kids were getting rowdy, so she decided on going outside to watch the parade, but there on the street was the all too familiar neighbour. The background was blurred as if she were looking at a photograph, and his back was in complete focus. She said his name in a hesitant stutter, in the succeeding moment he was turning around to look at her in surprise. She could see everything. The part of his lips, the way he blinked with his ridiculously long and girly lashes, his glasses sliding down a bit as his eyes widened slightly in surprise.

In her dream, she could feel herself blushing, her hands bunched at the sides.

All of a sudden, they were back in the house, talking softly. He smiled a lot for some reason, which was odd since he didn’t smile as often in the real world, and he was a lot more tactile. Their shoulders were almost inseparable, while his hands would always find some way to touch her around the neck and shoulders.

At some point, there was a shift in a dream.

He was wearing a grey-black kimono, holding a big paper umbrella. He was sitting on the dark brown floorboards along with her. She couldn’t tell what she was wearing because she was too busy trying to fathom him leaning on her shoulder, but she could tell her hair was in a neat bun. His heat was radiating in rolls that had her blush even more so. His hair tickled her nose and it was soft. She tempted--oh so tempted--to do something, anything but...

...the warmth disappeared.

Cold cold cold poked at her feet and sides, and she opened them to look at her room. It seemed that she awoke to the sound of the pattering rain.