𓆩♡𓆪

“i keep seeing you,” you murmur in your dream. “who are you?” 

the man laughs. 

he seems sad, for a second. 

“a dear friend,” he responds. you see it on his face, the way his lips twist at his words, that it’s not quite true. and he leans in again, watching your face. “it’s okay if you don’t remember me.” 

“but i do,” you say in protest. you think you remember this face. “i want to.” 

you must remember this face, surely—this face that, upon your words, looks sadder. and then you wonder if he’s even real—or if this is simply your subconscious, saddened that you can’t remember. saddened that your mind replays this moment, again and again, a repeated brushstroke pulling open the blank canvas underneath. 

“we all want things we can’t have, sometimes,” the man says. 

he leans into kiss you, 

and you jolt up out of bed, awakening to a phone call from your manager. 

“hello…?” you mumble into your phone, pressing it against your cheek as you rub the sleep out of your eyes. “it’s rare you call me randomly like this…” 

“tis no random call,” your manager responds. “you’ve received a request to exhibit some of your works from a museum. will you do it? i hear the pay’s pretty good.”

“mmm… any specific theme?” you ask. 

“not really. they said to let your imagination go wild.” 

“hm.” 

you touch your lips, and when you close your eyes, you see a hint of those crimson eyes again. 

“alright. i think i’ve got a pretty good muse this time,” you say. 

[…]

hoshina wasn’t exactly someone who was very in the know about art. his job, for one, meant that it’s not like he would exactly be interested in art in general, and it’s not like he was even spending his days off on art museum trips or admiring the local art scene. 

so why was it that everyone seemed all abuzz about art today?

and why did it seem like there were more eyes on him than before? not that he particularly abhorred attention or anything, but the eyes seemed to be looking at his face specifically. 

his eyes flit to some of the new officer recruits—iharu, reno, kafka… fuck, even haruichi and aoi? what the hell was going on—huddled around a laptop. haruichi’s brow furrows as he stares at the illuminated screen, and then flits up to look at hoshina. when hoshina stares back, harder, haruichi’s gaze immediately ducks back to the laptop.  

okay. 

well, something was definitely up. 

hoshina strolls over to the recruits, who immediately seem to start panicking—the panic is written across kafka’s face more obviously than the others, and reno elbows kafka in the side. 

“what’s all this about? if you’ve got time to huddle you’ve got time to run laps—” hoshina starts, leaning over at the screen before—

“about that, vice captain,” iharu says. 

hoshina’s in stunned silence staring at the screen, because… isn’t that—

“holy shit,” hoshina says. 

“holy shit indeed,” haruichi says grimly. 

on haruichi’s laptop screen is a painting of— him. hoshina’s damned face, brows gentle and a softened smile on his face. it was a beautiful painting, and yet—there was something sad about the smile, the brows belying deep sorrow. 

“this painter’s pretty well-known, too, aren’t they?” kafka asks. “for like… the psychedelic stuff.” 

“no,” reno says. “they’re like our modern-day monet or something. impressionist paintings.” 

“impressi-what? how do you know this much about art, reno?” iharu asks, wrapping his arm around reno’s neck in a headlock. reno coughs, slapping iharu’s arm. 

“shut up,” reno chokes out, but even as the bickering picks up, hoshina’s gaze is still transfixed on the painting. 

it’s him. no doubt about it. 

“i’ve never talked to them before,” hoshina says after a moment. at once the arguments rattle to a halt, but in the empty relief of silence is the carved truth—that the painting is definitely of him, and its painter was a person who he’d never talked to before in his life. 

“the artist is going to be doing a panel about their exhibition soon,” haruichi says, glancing up at hoshina. “i think they can get me a ticket if i ask.” 

“… just don’t expect me to lighten your laps around the training course,” hoshina says with a chuckle. 

[…]

you hated speaking in front of an audience. cliche, of course, the introverted artist that squirrels away in in their studio—but that was often your reality. you liked to say you wanted your work to ‘speak for itself’, as it were, so you didn’t often make public appearances. 

but your most recent exhibition, featuring the painting of your mysterious dream visitor, created far more buzz than you could have asked for. suddenly everyone and anyone wanted an answer as for who your muse was, why he had a very striking resemblance to soshiro hoshina of the japan anti-kaiju defense force’s third division, and had you gotten permission from hoshina to do it? did you have a specific message surrounding your work?

“just stick to the script,” your manager says to you. “i talked it through with some of the reporters and i wrote some answers for you if you’re scared.” he hands you a slip of paper, and your eyes scan the page, and you swallow the lump in forming in your throat. 

“i shouldn’t have done the painting after all,” you say.

it was strange. in the days and weeks you’d worked on the painting, you hadn’t seen your muse in your dreams at all. you’d been forced to rely on only the memory of the dream–which only seemed to get fuzzier and fuzzier until it became barely a wisp. and now, in those ensuing weeks that the painting has been on exhibition, you almost felt embarrassed of the painting–its vague subject matter might have been charming and a little kitsch, but charming and a little kitsch wasn’t supposed to garner this much attention.

“nonsense,” your manager says. “it’s a wonderful painting.” he pushes you by the back, gently urging you forward. “they’re ready for you.”

you push past the door separating you from the reporters–and then are immediately flashbanged with cameras and lights, and jumbling, layered voices creating a discordant symphony that made you wince.

“um. thank you… for…” you wince as your grip fumbles on your microphone, nearly dropping it, the feedback screeching across speakers. “um. sorry. i’m not exactly the best public speaker–my repertoire of events… like this, isn’t many. but thank you for attending this panel… surrounding my exhibition of my latest work. i’ll answer… a few questions.”

the reporters looked like a jumbled blob for the most part–a thrumming organism of similar faces that melted together into one homogenous mess, a splotch of badly-mixed paint on the palette that you’d scrape away with a knife and discard. 

reciting your manager’s written responses wasn’t the hard part. as you continued to banter, your eyes swept across the crowd.

what were you even doing here?

you wanted to crawl back to your studio, already, and go back to painting. at least then the idea that you’d dreamed up some man who bore a striking resemblance to someone who already existed would fade away with time. and then your eyes found that telltale shade of crimson and purple–for just a moment. and you think his eyes meet yours, too–crimson eyes the exact shade as the one in your dreams. 

his eyes widen. 

“... as you were saying?” a reporter’s words float back to your ears, ephemeral, and you pause.

“can we… no more questions.” you shake your head, finding your vision swimming, blurring, and you raise a hand wiping tears from your face. “sorry. something just… came up–”

and you push into the crowd, trying to find the face from your dreams.

that had to be him, right? his face? it was like as soon as you saw him, the underpainting of your memories flowed back to you–a heartaching loss pounding in your chest. something was wrong. something was missing, because you’d forgotten–and now that you’d remembered it, it hurt. 

“i’m sorry,” you say. 

“you’ve nothing to be sorry for,” the man says to you, and leans in to kiss you. “i’ll find you again in the next life.”

“i’ll remember you,” you say. 

the man watches you, a somewhat sad look on his face.

you press your thumb to the corner of his lip.

“and when i do, i’ll do something big. to capture your attention. and then your eyes will be on me forever.”

you finally manage to catch the man in the crowd, and you realize you’ve seen him before. only once or twice, though–on a small poster or on television. soshiro hoshina, of the third division. you did know this man–but just barely.

he lets out a surprised noise as soon as you collide with him, and you gasp breathlessly. 

“i’m sorry,” you say, looking up at hoshina. “i just… have we…”

“met?” hoshina answers your question, cocking his head, blinking down at you.

“yes,” you say. “i think… i think so. maybe. we… you look familiar.”

hoshina blinks, and then smiles.

it’s so different than the way he smiled at you in your dream. the corners of his lips quirk up, his eyebrows relax almost as he watches you. 

“i thought so too,” hoshina says, and you hear relief in his voice. “so… um. hi.”